nineteen weeks

Another age since I've written. I'm now nineteen weeks (as the title may have unsubtly given away) and my bump is no longer a slight protrusion of the waist, leading onlookers to assume I am a little bit porky and perhaps should lay off the pasties.

It is growing rapidly, ensuring my centre of gravity is forever in turmoil and my legs just have to make it up as they go along with regards to keeping me vertical and to aid avoidance in the general falling over or crashing into things that would otherwise be my daily life.

They are doing quite well, however Newf isn't helping matters. The other day, frolicking with a new found friend up the woods, she collided with my legs so badly I fell crashing to the floor, luckily with my knee taking the impact. I then hobbled, tearily, onwards (luckily the dog seemed to not have an owner nearby) until Newf decided, in another frenzy of play with a Springer, that the top of my thigh was not going to stop her onward attack of said Springer.

Needless to say I was rather in the wars after that point, and nursed my bleeding knee in the bath with no one to offer a word of sympathy. I am really looking forward to when we can have Disney plasters in the house. Somehow they make everything better.

So Newf and I are going back to training classes. In the house, on a walk without other furry friends, she is the picture of innocence and incredibly easy to control (despite being, as my sister described, somewhat dyspraxic, often forgetting that various limbs or her tail are actually attached to her when negotiating gaps between myself and someone else/an inanimate object/another part of myself). When another dog is added to the fragile equation she becomes deaf to my commands and entirely disobedient.

We did try puppy training, where she largely performed like an angel and would respond to treats and calls, if a little slowly (as is the Newf way). Out of the 'classroom' however, and into a real world scenario, nothing, not her mother's love, not her father's bellowing, not even a bloody treat, will tempt her away from terrorising (in her mind 'playing') with other dogs. For, due to her sheer size, and due to a curious stalking-then-bunny-hop approach she seems to have adopted in greeting new dogs, she largely terrifies them to the point they run (giving her the impression they are inviting her to play), bark (for which she also takes as a sure-fire sign that its playtime), whimper (for which she tends to stare blankly at them for a moment, then continues to bunny-hop regardless) and snarl (for which she appears to adopt a near identical approach to that of the whimper).

This play, which is a joy to watch when well matched with another fearless or large dog, is also impossible to interject without suffering bruising or running in the opposite direction praying that she'll find you more entertaining than the dog she was playing with (a tactic that should only be attempted if you're feeling particularly blessed). Calling works perhaps every one in five occasions. Odds and skills which work fine for J, who is strong, fearless and fast, but which aren't entirely helpful or practical for a near-five-month pregnant woman who is only increasing in her size and lack of agility. And also has a baby strapped to the front of her stomach (thank God Newf is the supposed runt of the litter, any taller and my unimpressed thighs would become my terrified womb).

So, as treat training is about as effective as a really un-effective thing when another dog is added into the equation, back to training class it is.

In other news, I am (whispers) not feeling sick.

Well, that isn't entirely true, but I let it have a paragraph to itself anyway just to bathe in those glorious words.

I am getting a life back. I only feel sick now when I am tired or stressed (this morning I am both, which is why I am cowering from an increasing, daunting, hideous workload in the comfort of the Blogger window). The nasty taste in my mouth, that my wonderful acupuncturist attributes to my liver, has now subsided to the degree it again only rears its ugly head when I am exhausted, hungry or stressed. Headaches have evaporated, and last week I even managed four decaff coffees and half a glass of white wine.

Looking back on these last months, it is quite terrifying to the degree that I became such a shadow of myself. I don't spend my days coping with just functioning anymore. I went through a rather unsavoury stage of eating white bread for pretty much any meal. But now I can be tempted with a variety of foods, and some of them even a little spicy (dependent on certain variables, of course). As I become heftier (I now own an extra half a stone onto my once trim stature, which has negotiated its way around the baby and my swollen and rather unattractive breasts harnessed into their ever tightening maternity bra, as well as settling in an unsightly manner on my hips and legs for which I didn't request and could frankly do without, if they wish to deposit themselves elsewhere or, even better, on someone else).

I eat. A lot.

I am not 'eating for two'. But I'm definitely eating for Webstress+. At least, and I should be thankful of my stomach's ever raging complaints, I am only eating low fat products. Although the amount of carbohydrates that march, sometimes in a fanfare of delight, sometimes unnoticed, into my mouth throughout the day would make a dietitian wince.

I can't help it. I am driven to the kitchen by a force deep within me, the foetus demanding consumption of an ever expanding list of foods. There is no way of controlling the internal desires of my inner growth. J has taken to calling me 'The Host' for which I have not taken to too kindly but is terrifyingly accurate. Although I would like to highlight at this point I am hoping that my birth doesn't replicate John Hurt's in Alien (especially as he, as the host, then snuffs it, unsurprisingly). I am not in control. And I have, finally, given up trying to be.

My exercise regime is no longer a regime, more of a whistful, lustful dream, where I am burning calories and fat cells are disintigrating and evaporating effortlessly, my figure evolving into that of a Catalogue Bump, a Model Preggers who's bump blossoms beautifully on the front of her slender figure without any impact on the rest of her perfect, petite curves.

I get up, walk the dog, work, walk the dog, work, walk the dog, eat dinner, work, sleep.

I do not: entertain Smug Pregnant Exercising Women on a DVD that still remains unwrapped, dance energetically around the room to another DVD that still remains untouched, swim (despite my purchase of a swimsuit with expanding panels from Mothercare that makes me look like an oompa loompa), or attend any sort of Yay I'm Pregnant Let's Get Fit classes that I am constantly reminded to go to by various sources.

I am desperate to. But my exhaustion and my continuing wave of nauseating deadlines mean that I don't ever have the time. And I really don't. I work from 7:30am to anything between 6 and 11 at night. Muscle in three dog walks a day, time to bath, time to eat and the day's pretty much maxed to capacity.

Get up earlier you say? Considering I spend half my designated sleeping time being prodded awake by a baby snuggling into my bladder, and wandering blindly to the toilet (up to seven times a night of late) getting up earlier would mean crowbaring a grumpy pregnant tired lady out of bed in the hour of six. I tried it. I even packed my swimming bag. I cancelled the alarm.

Cut down on your workload, you say? Don't. Even. Go. There.

So I am resigned to another week of lethargy but next week I am on holiday with J and Newf in Cornwall and am intent on at least taking the labels off my swimming costume and shaving my legs for the possibility that I might want to plunge my rotund frame into the water (sickness dependent).

In other news: I have felt movement. Baby movement.

Throughout the last week I have felt a number of movements that, even for me and my poor digestion, could not be attributed to wind or stomach complaints. I felt it. I felt my baby.

It wasn't the momentous occasion I ideally hoped for because I spent a good deal time after each movement pondering whether it was actually the baby or maybe a figment of my over active and highly volatile imagination (if you were to bear witness to my dreams at present you might be a little terrified and think about having me sectioned).

But I felt the baby turn as I was walking the other day. It was an incredible feeling and send me completely off balance to the point that I nearly fell over. This baby is definitely taking after J. And paving the way for how it assumes the next few years of its life will be. Which generally involve a great deal of sleep deprivation from its mum.

And now, with thirty minutes killed and a stomach aching for yet more consumption, I'd better face my workload that I have been hiding from. Its like an eternal episode of Doctor Who and I am the Webstress of my youth, sheltering my eyes and cushioning them through slits in my hands. Blogger is my much neglected but always comforting sofa and I have enjoyed hiding behind it for forty minutes and not thinking about my Things To Do.

Mourning the loss of the tea-making process

I miss tea.

I thought it'd be alcohol I missed, out of everything.

My liquid consumption consists of: orange or apple juice, orange squash, hot or cold water and the occasional fizzy pop.

The idea of drinking a cup of tea or coffee makes me feel rather uncomfortable. Queasy, unsettled. It isn't even so much that I'm disinterested, if I was then I'd still 'endure' the drink. But I just really, really don't want one.

But it isn't so much the lack of tea that affects me so.

It is the actual process of making a cup of tea.

I used to adore that kitchen time. Making a cup of tea for me represented a fresh approach - I could sit down at my computer again and start over. I would get up, defiantly, make a cup of tea, and sit down again, that tiny interlude of normality, of a treat, still not losing its novelty of being able to drink cups of tea at my desk after 10 years since I left school. I relished that moment.

Now any person who comes to the house is bombarded with numerous hot beverages, just to allow myself a glimmer of my previous normality. My glass of squash lies eclipsed on the side behind a line of proud, self assured tea mugs. Someone is going to love that tea.

It just won't be me.

People have adorned me with numerous fruit and herb alternatives, but even then don't rest well on my tormented inners. So right now I have a hot water. At least I have the kettle boiling process to relish, briefly, in that.

Even if the aftermath is so unbelievably rubbish.

Four months in

16+3 weeks today. Yup, I'm still sick.

I am, however, making progress.

After what I can only describe as a mild breakdown on Sunday which involved my return home after a mammoth weekend on the road which began on Friday with a 6 hour drive into central London and concluded with a return journey from the Midlands after spending the night in an unmemorable hotel due to a weekend of trawling round his various friends and relatives scattered around his hometown feeling permanently queasy.

Anyway, I digress. I returned home to discover my parents had cleaned my much neglected house.

The floodgates unceremoniously opened without warning. They took me back to their home. I was not coping well.

That was probably the lowest I have been in recent weeks. Another sad, hard goodbye to J, this time with a 3.5 hour journey ahead of me, emotionally and physically exhausted, stocked up with crackers and prepared for the Archers omnibus (which I was actually a bit excited about) and knowing it'd be yet another 5 nights until I saw him again.

My good friend Yorkshire Lass said to me yesterday that she didn't know how we were doing it but we must know what we're doing.

But sometimes I don't. I want to beg him to come home so badly, I want to call him, to ask him, to demand him.

I have been here before, without the bump. When he was in New Zealand training, I would ache, I would hurt so much, but I never asked. Eventually, he called me and told me he was on the next flight home. I stood by him through the most painful of times, through hearing his hell out there, through missing him beyond belief.

And this time, at least, I have him on weekends. I don't know how service wives do it.

But I have these constant goodbyes, these constant feelings of loneliness, of endurance, of constant trial. It is so hard being on my own.

And now he won't be home until two weeks before the baby is due.

He has been away just two months now. And I have five to go. Even as I write this I have tears stinging my eyes, but I can never beg him. He is doing this for us, for our baby. He wants to be home just as badly as I want him. If he came home we would not be able to cope financially. And he has a commitment which he would never break.

But it hurts so god damned much. I am so lonely in a way that only he can ease. My family and close friends have got me through each day, but I miss him beyond all comprehension. I miss his cuddles at night, I miss hearing him breathe beside me in bed, I miss just talking to him, I miss just being with him, being in the same house, the same environment, together, how it should be. And now I can't stop these bitter tears which to me are just flooded with weakness and guilt and the inability to cope.

Thanks to my wonderful, wonderful sister, I visited the acupuncturist on Tuesday. A midwife as well, I didn't realise how much hope I had pinned on this visit until I was there. My voice was shakey, she must have known how I fought back these all too regular tears, as I told her how I felt. About the continual bitter taste in my mouth that plagues me and increases in intensity until I cannot cope in the evening, the rising of the sickness as the hours go by (its a good job I'm a morning person otherwise I'd not get anything done), the pressure headaches that feel like I am crumbling beneath the weight of sandbags balanced delicately, invisibly, on my head.

So she stuck pins in me. This midwife-come-acupuncturist treated me with such gentleness, promising me that she'd help me get better, listening to me, helping me, soothing me. She asked me such questions that I knew she knew.

I lay there, on the table, some gentle music playing, pins in my feet, my wrists, my chest, my head. I lay there and gradually, after my anxiety started to reside, after my giant gasps of air to surpress my tears has died, after my body began to accept to relax, after my mind slowly, slowly, with great effort, began to drop its crowded thoughts until I lay there just thinking about names.

I now have ball bearings in my ears and on my chest. I have an appointment next week and the week after. I am not sure whether anything is helping yet, it is too early to tell. My massive, unrelenting, unforgiving workload plagues me into exhaustion and tiredness that I know is a hindrance to my recovery.

But she gave me such hope. She listened and, I do believe, she understood. Where modern medicine fails with morning sickness, I have been offered a lifeline. Thanks to my sister and this woman, I feel like I have been given the opportunity to fight, to try again.

It made me realise how low I had fallen, and how far down I still am. I am still a shadow of myself, I still look at myself in the mirror and see a face riddled with the scars of pregnancy - dark shadows, spots, pale and tired skin. My body is unfamiliar to me. I have put on an incomprehensible half a stone. I have no tone, no definition. A mass of fat cells accumulating around my back and hips along with my bump, I feel like I am within a shell that isn't my own. I feel like I am within borrowed skin.

On Saturday morning, though, J and I saw our baby. J for the first time. I will never forget that moment. This time it had such long legs, such beautiful fingers and toes. It turned and stretched and rolled over and was just so incredibly beautiful for a few moments I forgot everything and there was nothing in this world other than J and our baby.