Do you see what I see? Here, look. That’s a bump. Shoosh, yes it is, it’s a bonafide baby bump. Everybody warns you time and time again that your belly will just magically pop out one day, but it still doesn’t prepare you for the fact that your belly just magically pops out one day. Responses to said belly vary. Mostly it’s lovely, largely squeal-based exclamations in the higher registers that I get in response to my new fuller figure, but some people seem oddly put out by it. It’s a strange thing. I’ve been approached several times by colleagues I barely know, sporting wounded looks and saying things like ‘I had no idea…’ or, even better, ‘when did that happen?’ (Good bloody question mate!) One charming woman I had never before spoken to came up to me in class last week, poked (poked!) my belly and said ‘baby!’ What do you say to that? Naturally I’ve thought of thousands of utterly devastating comebacks since then, but at the time I was so stunned I just sort of looked at her. Lots of people opt for the simple ‘when are you due?’ of course, though I myself have always avoided this particular question, landing one as it can and occasionally does in extremely hot water… you just can’t ever be sure (at a wedding recently someone asked me same, and I replied ‘Hmmm? Oh, I’m not pregnant.’ Cruel? Maybe. In bad taste? Oh dear lord yes, but I just had to do it. The look on her face was pretty unforgettable, let me tell you, though I of course came clean immediately).
Movin' and shakin'. The most exciting thing that’s happened in the last while, baby-wise, is that I can feel bub move now, and move he most certainly does. I first felt his fluttery little twitching whilst lying in the bath (as opposed to standing up in the bath?), having just scoffed a large and rather tasty chocolat au pain (sounds so much better than chocolate croissant). Since then I’ve felt him more and more regularly, and now I feel him every day at certain times (and before you jump to any conclusions we just call him ‘him’ cos it’s easier and nicer than ‘it’ and because I’m opposed to using politically correct terms, which in this case would be ‘she’). We recently had our 20 weeks scans to check for all sorts of things we hadn’t really thought about; heart chambers, kidney function, hare lip and club feet (obviously you want the first two to be present and active, the second two not so much). They showed us that 3D Foetus-cam thing which was pretty amazing and kind of weird at the same time. Radiographer reckons his head’s quite big. Oh, awesome.
Everybody’s doing it. We’re all booked in and up to date and ready to go with our midwifery malarkey and hospital rigmarole now. Apparently it isn’t our imagination and there really is a baby boom happening, and what’s more our midwife Cath reckons we’re bloody lucky ours is due in Feb and not December as they’re kind of fully booked for peak season. Just think, in the future we’ll all be able to say we had our babies on the eve of global economic collapse, awww!
Where the Wild Things Are. My mood swings have definitely calmed down a hell of a lot. in fact, I feel pretty bloody normal. Actually I feel completely, 100% normal, as normal as I did before I was knocked up, and don’t really feel ‘preggers’ as such at all anymore– a fact belied by my girth and, you know, seeing it on a screen and all that. D and I were recently reminiscing fondly (ha!) about back in the day when I was (more of) a snarling medusa. We’d been going back through all my old sent text messages to D from during this time and oh how we laughed! (actually D was rocking back and forth on the floor in the corner and crying, but anyway). Golly. What a complete psycho I was. Up and down like a whore’s drawers! One message in particular is so hilariously nutty that I feel I must share it with you, albeit at great embarrassment to myself. I have no idea what we had been arguing about at this point, it doesn’t matter now and probably didn’t then, but whatever it was I had clearly felt the pressing need to send D a comprehensive dissertation on his shortcomings, whilst channeling Dr. Phil, via SMS. I'm thinking there had also been some dinner plans chat somewhere along the way, god only knows. Anyway here it is, just for you, unedited and verbatim:
'I want us to get along, but I just can’t deal with whitewashing issues to get along. If we don’t communicate things will fester and build up and make things between us extremely tense and touchy and just unbearable. I really need to be able to talk to you about stuff, even if it’s negative stuff. It’s good to let things go, but it’s also important to acknowledge concerns, problems etc. I’ve just been so stressed lately, and I think we can do better. Think I’ll grab a cucumber.’
Think I’ll grab a cucumber. Rightio.
There’s not a great deal more to report right now, except I began my prenatal yoga classes last night. Meh. It was ok. I’ve been yogaing for a long long time and so found the imposed limitations a bit frustrating, but I was expecting that. I was also expecting a bit of nafness, and nafness there was my friends, nafness there was… I really hate to sound cynical (that’s actually a lie, I don’t care how cynical I sound), and I did enjoy the class, and I will of course keep attending regularly, but ‘celebrate your beautiful uterus’? Woman, please! We also had to do a bizarre holding-of-one’s own leg move that involves cradling your own knee and rocking it back and forth whilst simultaneously chanting the hysterically unimaginative mantra ‘baaaaaaaa-byyyyyyyy’ over and over. No one can do this exercise and not feel absolutely ridiculous. Aaaaanyway, yes I know, it has its place and it’s all for the greater good, and to be fair the meditation bit was pretty good, as were some of the ‘endurance’, pain-overcoming exercises and what have you… I suppose I was just hoping for more practical advice, like how to open your pelvis 1.5 metres wide, or how to paralyse yourself from the waist down using simple breathing techniques, but there you go.
D and I are off on some well-earned hols now, and so til next time y’all!
PS – Here is a piccie of how we think our baby might look, with its winning combination of Doyle-Hunt genes…
