Week 12: you’re real July 30, 2007

Dear space prawn,

On Thursday your father and I got to see for the first time that you’re really in there, and you have four limbs in working order, a head, a nose, fingers and toes all accounted for and a very cute little wriggle action when you’re woken up.

We had our scans for Down’s Syndrome and to date your arrival properly.

I was a bit nervous before we went in. What if there were two of you in there? (At least that might help explain my gargantuan eating habits).

I lay back on the bed as the doctor spread some cold gel on

Week 12: you’re real July 30, 2007

Dear space prawn,

We had our scans on Thursday.

Your father and I got to see for the first time that you’re really in there, and you have four limbs in working order, a head, a nose, fingers and toes all accounted for and a very cute little wriggle action when you’re woken up.

I was a bit nervous before we went in. What if there were two of you in there? (At least that might help explain my gargantuan eating habits).

I lay back on the bed as the doctor spread some cold gel on my belly and I looked up at the screen on the ceiling, holding on to your dad’s hand tightly. There was a little swoosh movement on the black and white screen and then all of a sudden - there you were. So tiny, cushioned in there by layers of my belly (womb + too many shortbread biscuits and steak bakes).

The doctor measured you from head to bum, then measured a fold at the back of your neck to make sure you were developing properly. She pointed out this little black hole, which to us looked just like a black hole, but the doctor insisted it was your heart, and sure enough - we could see it beating away, and then she turned the microphone on and we could hear your heart beating. Your teeny, little, super-fast precious heart, ticking away. As it should. At 166 beats per minute.

After a few more minutes, the doctor asked me to jiggle my hips to get you into position for some more measurements. And we woke you up! You wriggled away, probably rather grumpy at being woken up so unceremoniously. Not unlike your mother, then.

But mostly: you are so cuuuuute!

We got some pictures to take away, and while a little bit blurry, we know it’s you.

It was like you became really real for the first time, and I think it affected us both more than we anticipated.

When I met your dad I was in a dark place, and I didn’t think my sore and scabby heart had any room or capacity to be filled with so much love - and your dad showed me (and still does) that I was wrong.

I still marvel at how much room there is for more love for your dad, and what I learned on Thursday is that now there’s even more room - so much more - for loving you as well. I can’t wait to meet you and give you a cuddle. The labour side of things I’m happy to miss out on.

Well, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that your mother is turning into one of those pregnant women who gets all gushy at soft toys and baby clothes. This is not good. I am finding it deeply unsettling, given how much I hate pastel colours and anything remotely cutesy. Still, I really liked the Sesame Street cuddly toys and all-in-one zoo animal jumpsuits I found yesterday. What’s not to love about Bert and Ernie and Snuffleupagus and crocodiles and lions?

And I wish I could stop crying at everything. That’s driving me a bit mental and it does strange things to my colleagues, who generally speaking just want to know if I’ve collected my printing or formatted that design job yet.

My belly is getting tight as I think you are growing at a great rate, which is back into the good news category. Only 28 weeks or so to go …

Week 11: child, how shall I discipline thee? July 21, 2007

My mother brought me up in a very “I am NOT having my daughter brought up how I was” kind of way.

Which meant, on the good side, that there was always food on the table, the electricity never got cut off and I never, ever saw my mother having a good time. As in, get drunk with mates at home. Or go out and get drunk with mates. No matter. Perhaps it is just not her way.

On the down side, my mother was extremely strict about my comings and goings, what I wore, who I spoke to on the phone, which people I hung out with. As a teenager, I felt very constrained, suffocated and frustrated by the sheer weight of the rules in our house.

For a long time whenever I thought about having kids, how I would discipline them came down to this: I am not going to do it the way it was done to me. Ergo, the pattern repeats, the pendulum swings, the cycle continues.

Can you imagine this dialogue in 15 years time (perish the thought I will one day parent a teenager)?

ME: YES, you bloody well will young man.

HIM: NO. I WON’T.

ME: When you’re living under our roof, boy, you live by our rules. Now DO IT.

HIM: (through gritted teeth) I. WILL. NOT.

ME: You will, and you’ll LIKE IT TOO.

HIM: NO I WON’T!!

ME: DRINK THAT VODKA YOUNG MAN, OR I’LL … I’LL … I’LL BLOODY WELL FORCE IT DOWN YOU!

HIM: Muuuuuum … I just want to read my book! LEAVE ME ALONE.

Weeks 10-11: my health, my god, the system, philosophies on gender and parenting in general July 14, 2007

My general health

I went through a real phase when I was about 28 of reading pregnancy week-by-week books, partly possibly because I subconsciously thought at the time that it might actually make me pregnant, a state I feared and hoped in equal amounts I’d be at the end of each 28 day cycle for as long as I could remember.

I also read them partly because of what I call the Snot Factor. Everybody has a Snot Factor, some have a factor higher than others. I, personally, have a reasonably high factor. I have no problem squeezing The Beloved’s zits, no problem watching pus or operations on the telly. So I partly read these books for the Snot Factor, thinking at the time: err! that’s gross yet fascinating! my body won’t do that. will it?

It has. It pleases me not.

Heartburn? Tick. Constipation? Tick. Oh, go on then, a bit of reflux? TICK. Indi-fucken-gestion? Tickety fucken tick. Let’s not forget the ever expanding bosoms and the ache they cause me when I move position in the night. Or the constant action in my bladder. Fucks sake. And it’s only week 10-and-a-half.

Having never experienced heartburn before, after my first attack I had to calm myself down (because there’s this part of your brain that goes, oh, shiiiiiit, I’m dying … IS THIS IT? NO BABY? NO WEDDING? Oh, man … aaarrrggghhh!!! the pain! I AM DYING!) then get myself to a chemist quick smart to get some pregnant-safe antacid.

A double-edged sword: the agony I was undergoing with heartburn was equalled only by the really shitty tasting tablets I had to chew to get rid of it, a pint of milk not being within buying distance. I mean, aniseed tasting salty chalk?? What the fuck?

Small sundry health snipes aside, my general health is good. The morning sickness has subsided (mostly) and been replaced with the most gnawing hunger I’ve ever experienced. I wake up hungry, I wake up in the night hungry, I go to work after three bits of toast and a bowl of cereal and I get hungry; this is interrupted only by mild nausea mid-afternoon in combination with the almost completely overwhelming urge to sleep my life away, at least for the subsequent 60 minutes.

My health, according to the system

I endured my first visit from my allocated midwife last week. Madam Too Busy To Be Nice was very busy ticking all the boxes on all the forms and rushing through the asking of questions that she forgot her bedside manner and to be gentle when she took my blood. She was also too busy to take my blood properly, so some of our test results are now a little late in arriving. If she’s like that sticking a needle in my arm, I thought, there is no way she’s getting near my clacker. Absolutely no fucking way.

Not impressed, was my assessment, and after two days of hand-wringing, desperate for some way through the maze of the NHS that would allow me to pick someone who, you know, at the very least acted like she gave a shit I was pregnant and going to squeeze a giant watermelon out of my clacker in about seven months, but for a while there I thought I was going to be stuck with the dragon the “free” system threw my way. Luckily, this is not the case. Luckily, I have a very nice GP who specialises in antenatal care at my local surgery, so after a wee weep with the district nurse, who took my blood properly and gently, my problem was solved. One step at a time. And breathe.

Baby brain: not so much

One of the first signs for me that something was a little up the duff was that the sound of kids and babies crying no longer bothered me. It still no longer bothers me, to the point that I now bother new mums on trains and in the shops to start up a conversation about how I’m pregnant and ooh, so cuuute! The little one! And where did you get that pram from?

My baby brain does not extend, however, to sighing and cooing over baby clothes in shops. In the shops, clothes for babies under six months are in neutral colours like beige (NEVER ON MY WATCH), white (clearly made by people whose babies don’t shit or vomit), pastel pink or pastel blue. Over six months there is immediate and very distinct gender characterisation occurring: clothes are either pink/red or blue. Flowers or trains. Hearts or bears.

WHERE IS THE FUNKY PURPLE? THE CRAZY ORANGE? THE CLOTHING THAT ISN’T CROSS MARKETED WITH A MOVIE/TOY?? WHERE, good people, where?

This antiquated notion of rigid and boring gender roles for fucking humans WHO CAN’T EVEN WALK, let alone think for themselves, my god, what is this? My brain does not understand this need to relate to a boy baby differently to a girl baby. It’s just a baby. *It* doesn’t care what it wears, as long as it’s warm and dry. It’s only a societal, adult perception that babies and toddlers should be immediately identified as either a boy or a girl, leading on, still, boring as it is, to relating and coaxing those little human sponges into continuing this gender stereotyping that I REALLY FUCKING HATE.

I have for quite some time been of the opinion that people should relate to, and treat each other as exactly that, people first, and your esteem for another be based on information, evidence, words and deeds. It doesn’t matter their sex.

Apparently the makers of children’s apparel are of a different opinion.

Fine. Fuck them. I’ll learn to sew my own.

Parenting in general

The Beloved and I have been talking about parenting and how we are going to approach the family dynamic once this sprog comes into the world.

We have talked well into the night about what it means to be happy, and what we think makes a child happy (other than boob juice and swaddling). I think we are united in how we are going to go about things, which gives me confidence going into this thing.

A child cannot be spoiled with too much love. There is no such thing as too much love for a child, I really believe that. You cannot spoil a child by telling it you love it every day. But children are spoiled with toys and other material things and given love in ways that spoil them. I am already committed to making sure that my child will never doubt my love, never question who its family is, or doubt that it can talk to me or The Beloved, about anything. It may doubt my methods, and will probably spend a great deal of its teenage years hating my guts in general for being embarrassing (can’t wait to spit on the tissue to wipe on its face!!) or for not buying that PlayStation X, or whatever the latest game will be by then. But it will never hanker for my time or my (quality) attention.

Unless it’s having a tanty. Then it’ll just get locked back under the stairs, where it belongs.

Weeks 7-10: *yawn* July 12, 2007

Dear sproglet,

While you are very busy growing eyelashes and de-webbing your fingers and toes, I have been very busy doing … uh, doing … hmm. Lots of sleeping. Wanting a lot more sleep than I’m getting. Getting over my morning sickness, which in reality lasted most of the day, and gradually getting used to all the squirming and shifting that’s going on in my Downstairs Department, as my body starts to make true space for you to grow.

Are there two of you in there? I’m just wondering, because I seem to be eating sufficient for at least four separate, other people, and no matter what I eat within five minutes of consumption I’m scrounging around looking for more. My cravings shift and move every day and it’s getting evermore difficult to plan what I will want to eat at my next meal. There has been at least two occasions recently when I’ve got food to my mouth, thinking that it was what I wanted, only to be so put off by the smell or texture that it went straight in the bin instead.

I am over the apple juice: it kept me going for the first few weeks but I’ve now moved on to orange squash. Each weekday morning I clutch my bottle of orange squash and it keeps me from vomiting on the train. This is a good thing.

I am getting fat(ter)! I keep telling your father that you’re just a growing wee bean, but he’s not convinced. Regardless, some new trousers and tops are in order because my bazoombas are ginormous and I have a total of two shirts that actually fit me these days, and given the way things are going, they won’t fit me soon either.

In recent days I have been overcome by what more experienced mothers term Baby Brain. Not baby on the brain, but Baby Brain. I find myself at various times during the day just staring out into space, vague as you like, nary a care nor thought in my head. I am forgetting friends’ names, days, dates, simple nouns, theories of physics. All I feel like doing is having a nice long lie down with a trash mag.

Your father and I have been talking a lot about what to call you once you arrive. We’ve got a shortlist, but we’re not sharing it just yet. Plus we figure that we’ll know your name when we finally get to meet you.