Let me get something straight. I don't believe you're really in there.
At least, perhaps I can't let myself.
There have been numerous times over the past 10 weeks that I have wondered if I am, in fact, pregnant. Despite having symptoms showering themselves upon me in gay abandon - sore, aching and rapidly expanding breasts, constant sickness, a 'thickening' of the waist (as so many articles and books delicately put it), exhaustion, and an emotional instability like a 30ft high badly constructed giant Jenga. There has always been that wondering, that doubt.
Now, I am fairly convinced I am. Finally. But trying to equate pregnancy to the growth of a foetus, you, is just something I am struggling to join up the wayward dots to (they'd rather conclude with a badly constructed image of just a hormonal, irrational, bloated and poorly WebStress - end of).
This week, you are the size of a lipstick case, with the ability to kick, swallow and move. I have been reading about your growth constantly, but I am struggling to equate it to my own rapid changes.
I have been thinking about writing to you for some time. I don't think about you much, which is a funny thing to say. But I don't. I think about being pregnant. I think about the sickness, the exhaustion, the inability to multitask, or even singletask, effectively.
It is strange that I should feel so lonely, with another whole person growing within me. Someone experiencing everything I think, say, feel or do. Someone who was there in the night when I couldn't sleep, someone who has felt my tears, who has already met some of my dearest loved ones. You have already been with me across the country. You have already had Newf nuzzling up to you (and slobbering on the material just inches away from where you are stretching your cells and multiplying your size).
My sister told me that one of her friends became incredibly introspective, in a joyous way. She rose above issues and problems, everything passing under her without consequence. The only thing that mattered was her growing child within her.
I am two weeks away from the end of my first trimester. You will double in size over the next few weeks.
I am protecting myself, I know. I am terrified that I will lose you, this tiny thing that I don't even believe I have. It is like belief, I have no other proof, I have not seen or felt your physical existence, apart from your repercussions on my body. But, unlike a normal belief, I am terrified of believing too much. Just in case.
I have my scan, hopefully, in two weeks. Then I should see you - then belief may become a solid, tangible thing. I desperately want to believe in you, to indulge in you.
I protect you, fiercely. You would have thought it funny to see me the other day out walking with your father, and I turned away from a group of lads playing football, just in case a ball were to hit me, you. You are so fragile, so delicate, yet seemingly so impossible to please and so all-consuming.
Your father is working for you in London at the moment. Father is a word for books, for literature really, dad sounding somewhat childish oddly in a novel.
Your dad I should say, for I can't imagine you ever calling him father unless you absorb some sort of misplaced public school education throughout your early childhood. He adores you. He has visions of you, a genderless image, but his, all his, holding his hand so tightly, splashing in the sea, in the bath, you will be a water baby in every sense of the word (and at your birth, perhaps...?). You will adore him, I know. And he will adore you more than he has ever loved anything, even me.
I understand that, I understand he will be consumed by you. That is a strange feeling. Maybe if I didn't know I was to be too, it would be different. But I have no choice, he has no choice, we will become your slaves.
He told me yesterday he can stay in London until the summer, so that we have enough money for when you arrive, so that I don't have to work. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wouldn't be able to work, but I knew what he meant. I felt a pang of selfishness, as if already you were demanding his love, his time, his attention more than me. As if you were more important, your birth and the time after more important than me, now.
He would be absent for most of my pregnancy. I know that importance does not feature and he is so homesick and aching for me, for our life, but my emotions spike me angrily, a surge of sharp, cutting, isolated attacks that I loathe but that I allow myself to indulge, to weak to rationalise. I face a long six months.
We have not agreed to anything yet, but how can we not. He left his job in November, for us to start a business. We chose to conceive, we had discussed it for such a long time. Were we terribly naive in the assumption that we wouldn't need such a vast injection of cash, that we weren't going to be in the financial stability we would have longed to be in, that both of us working freelance together, your dad himself starting a totally new career, was a gamble that jars icily with your conception, your birth? Or were we presented with an option that would make everything easier, in that holy grail, that distant reward, of The Long Term?
I am not sure it is the long term. He will continue his work, then return, perhaps not until August. Then he will be back in his old career, too dangerous, too unstable to immerse himself in a new one, in the business. And I, I am alone again, freelancing on my own. But we can only choose one path to take. We will both work so hard, we can only both do so much.
Your dad is my rock. He is everything to me. I adore him with my whole heart. I adore him and I will adore you. We will be such a loving family, I promise you.
I hope you consider my outpouring this morning to be something of a good thing, and to not scare you off, not to terrify you of an emotional, unstable, selfish mum who aches for your protection and your health and your happiness more than you will ever know, throughout the rest of your life, and asks only for your love in return.
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Steps to Stardom
"If your dreams seem more bizarre than usual, filled with images of sex, talking animals, and huge, towering buildings, you can put them down to a combination of the progesterone surging through your veins and your excitement and apprehension about pregnancy and motherhood. "Dreams reflect your emotional reality," says sleep expert Mary O'Malley. "Pregnancy brings up positive and negative feelings that you'll digest through your dreams."
Another reason why your dreams may have changed in style is that you are more likely to interrupt a dream-filled cycle of REM sleep by frequent waking during the night to go to the loo, ease a leg cramp, or move to a more comfortable position.
Source: www.babycentre.co.uk
On Sunday night, among other peculiarities, I dreamed that Amy Winehouse was formerly one of the key members of Steps.
She was receiving an award for her musical achievements (obvious references seeping in to my REM) and they presented a brief flash back of her previous pop career. There she was, in a video not quite of anything, with a soundtrack equally as bland and unmemorable, standing next to Faye (if she's the dreadlocked one) doing some sort of choreographed dance routine.
I thought to myself it was surprising I had not noted this previously, but didn't find it all that surprising, drawing comparisons with Robbie Williams' former boy band career in Take That.
On Monday morning, where her gentle soothing airs and graces wafted over the airways in an award winning speech regarding a recent award (ahem), there was brief moment of total belief that her career in Steps had been the springboard to greater talents.
Then, sadly, reality kicked back in and I remembered that no such wholesome career had prececeded her rise to Diva-esque fame.
Another reason why your dreams may have changed in style is that you are more likely to interrupt a dream-filled cycle of REM sleep by frequent waking during the night to go to the loo, ease a leg cramp, or move to a more comfortable position.
Source: www.babycentre.co.uk
On Sunday night, among other peculiarities, I dreamed that Amy Winehouse was formerly one of the key members of Steps.
She was receiving an award for her musical achievements (obvious references seeping in to my REM) and they presented a brief flash back of her previous pop career. There she was, in a video not quite of anything, with a soundtrack equally as bland and unmemorable, standing next to Faye (if she's the dreadlocked one) doing some sort of choreographed dance routine.
I thought to myself it was surprising I had not noted this previously, but didn't find it all that surprising, drawing comparisons with Robbie Williams' former boy band career in Take That.
On Monday morning, where her gentle soothing airs and graces wafted over the airways in an award winning speech regarding a recent award (ahem), there was brief moment of total belief that her career in Steps had been the springboard to greater talents.
Then, sadly, reality kicked back in and I remembered that no such wholesome career had prececeded her rise to Diva-esque fame.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Week 9: A good week for crackers, a bad week for Newf digestion
Friday. I feel my whole body breathing a sigh of relief. My partner will be home in just over 12 hours.
Looking back on this week and I see a blur of tears (mine), diahorrea (Newf's), sickness (both of us), exhaustion (mine, Newf sleeps approximately 70% of the day so its difficult to tell whether she is in any way affected by her inner turmoil), loneliness (mine) and wonderful support (family, extended family and exquisite friends, partner).
Throughout all of my dark moments, my loneliness, my exhaustion and my coping strategies crumbling around me (as they usually involve eating and exercise and I have failed to do either with any success), I have felt like there are these invisible hands, from people 20 minutes away to those hundreds of miles away, holding me up, helping me, telling me everything is going to be alright.
As we tell more people, I am beginning to feel less introverted, more supported, more secure. Every time I tell someone I feel some inner strength hold me up, announcing that no, I'm not nuts and miserable and generally about as fun to be around as a really un fun thing (at least well I am, but I have good reason to be).
But there is a dark side of me, a shadow that follows me, haunts me, magnifies every twinge, amplifies aches and discomforts until they overshadow my consciousness and become all I can think of. With every person I tell, it is in my head that there is one more person to tell if and when things go wrong.
The worry, I have noticed, has begun to subside, or at least be eclipsed by time advancing towards the holy grail, that 12 week mark when the chances of miscarriage are supposed to dramatically reduce (some say 16 weeks, but one step at a time). But then often, occasionally but with fierce determination, it forces its way through my conscious and presents itself at the forefront of my brain, proud, assertive, strong. And with every person I tell it is there, knowingly, a smug older sibling elated with experience I can only be humbled by, riddled with statistics to present to me and my newly informed friend.
I cannot live my life through worry. But all the same if I am to forget, I am reminded, complacency will make a fall harder than I could ever knew.
But after nine weeks of carrying a growing life form, I can't imagine how anyone could ever cope with loss and it terrifies me more than I could ever know. I understand a little now about the bond between parent and child. That you would do anything, anything, to see your child healthy and happy, no matter the cost to you.
Sometimes I forget that, constantly to be honest, when my sickness overwhelms me and I beg it to stop. For my sickness to stop now it would mean a loss I can comprehend.
Looking back on this week and I see a blur of tears (mine), diahorrea (Newf's), sickness (both of us), exhaustion (mine, Newf sleeps approximately 70% of the day so its difficult to tell whether she is in any way affected by her inner turmoil), loneliness (mine) and wonderful support (family, extended family and exquisite friends, partner).
Throughout all of my dark moments, my loneliness, my exhaustion and my coping strategies crumbling around me (as they usually involve eating and exercise and I have failed to do either with any success), I have felt like there are these invisible hands, from people 20 minutes away to those hundreds of miles away, holding me up, helping me, telling me everything is going to be alright.
As we tell more people, I am beginning to feel less introverted, more supported, more secure. Every time I tell someone I feel some inner strength hold me up, announcing that no, I'm not nuts and miserable and generally about as fun to be around as a really un fun thing (at least well I am, but I have good reason to be).
But there is a dark side of me, a shadow that follows me, haunts me, magnifies every twinge, amplifies aches and discomforts until they overshadow my consciousness and become all I can think of. With every person I tell, it is in my head that there is one more person to tell if and when things go wrong.
The worry, I have noticed, has begun to subside, or at least be eclipsed by time advancing towards the holy grail, that 12 week mark when the chances of miscarriage are supposed to dramatically reduce (some say 16 weeks, but one step at a time). But then often, occasionally but with fierce determination, it forces its way through my conscious and presents itself at the forefront of my brain, proud, assertive, strong. And with every person I tell it is there, knowingly, a smug older sibling elated with experience I can only be humbled by, riddled with statistics to present to me and my newly informed friend.
I cannot live my life through worry. But all the same if I am to forget, I am reminded, complacency will make a fall harder than I could ever knew.
But after nine weeks of carrying a growing life form, I can't imagine how anyone could ever cope with loss and it terrifies me more than I could ever know. I understand a little now about the bond between parent and child. That you would do anything, anything, to see your child healthy and happy, no matter the cost to you.
Sometimes I forget that, constantly to be honest, when my sickness overwhelms me and I beg it to stop. For my sickness to stop now it would mean a loss I can comprehend.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
And here's one I wish I'd made earlier...
Last night I did my best housewifey bit for Newf and cooked her battered cod, which I then scraped all of the batter off lovingly (with a rather unsettling desire to munch on that and the anaemic looking fish inside, slightly worrying for a strict veggie) and served it with long grain wild american rice (I was unprepared for Newf to be the consumer of such a purchase).
She adored it. I don't think I've ever seen her quite so determined to give herself heartburn by eating so fast.
So last night, I purchased some frozen cod fillets and some less expensive white rice to give her a few tasty meals over the next couple of days.
The only slight issue I am currently facing is the thought of cooking said Newf food this morning.
She is sulking beside me, unsure of what exactly I'm up to, and certainly not impressed with whatever it is as it certainly isn't preparing her breakfast.
I wonder if she'd care for a weetabix with low fat soya milk instead.
She adored it. I don't think I've ever seen her quite so determined to give herself heartburn by eating so fast.
So last night, I purchased some frozen cod fillets and some less expensive white rice to give her a few tasty meals over the next couple of days.
The only slight issue I am currently facing is the thought of cooking said Newf food this morning.
She is sulking beside me, unsure of what exactly I'm up to, and certainly not impressed with whatever it is as it certainly isn't preparing her breakfast.
I wonder if she'd care for a weetabix with low fat soya milk instead.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
Mid-morning moan
My longed for piece of jam on toast was hideously misguided.
To the point I have had to consume a mountain of Swedish crispbread to calm the volatile, angry foetus that obviously wasn't impressed.
I have so far eaten:
1 x bowl of cornflakes with low fat soya milk and a teeth decay inducing volume of sugar
1 x piece of granary toast with olive spread and low sugar jam
5 x dry Swedish cracker breads
It is 11:07. I feel obese. My fat cells are having a party and it seems that everyone's invited.
And I appear to have forgotten how to design. Quite problematic as a web designer or, under my more pretentious alter ego, a digital artist.
Today does not bode well.
To the point I have had to consume a mountain of Swedish crispbread to calm the volatile, angry foetus that obviously wasn't impressed.
I have so far eaten:
1 x bowl of cornflakes with low fat soya milk and a teeth decay inducing volume of sugar
1 x piece of granary toast with olive spread and low sugar jam
5 x dry Swedish cracker breads
It is 11:07. I feel obese. My fat cells are having a party and it seems that everyone's invited.
And I appear to have forgotten how to design. Quite problematic as a web designer or, under my more pretentious alter ego, a digital artist.
Today does not bode well.
Canine Culinary Creations
The lovely vet called me and told me that as long as Newf was excitable and lively not to bring her in. The best thing I could do was not feed her (I didn't mention I had already...) and when I did feed her later to cook her some chicken and rice, or perhaps a little white fish.
Brilliant for the near vegan with morning sickness who's meat cooking abilities, while not totally ignorant, are far from culinary brilliance and who's stomach is about as stable as a fat man on a tightrope.
My SP has just given me chicken cooking instructions for idiots. Let's hope I don't give Newf food poisoning. I don't think that'll help with her constitution.
Brilliant for the near vegan with morning sickness who's meat cooking abilities, while not totally ignorant, are far from culinary brilliance and who's stomach is about as stable as a fat man on a tightrope.
My SP has just given me chicken cooking instructions for idiots. Let's hope I don't give Newf food poisoning. I don't think that'll help with her constitution.
The foetus wants pancakes
I discovered, with a certain amount of hesitation and excitement, that I am actually not seven weeks but nine weeks pregnant.
I hadn't trusted the doctor's assessment that I was further on than I was due to a mumbled discription of the first day of my last period, as he also predicted I was due in early October. The midwife had just looked at my notes and scribbled something down. I just relied on guess work and numerous dodgy online calculator predictor things.
But, apparently, its true. 40 weeks starts from the first day of my last period. I am in my nineth week of pregnancy. Woop woop!
My good friend Yorkshire Lass negotiated a whole heap of public transport to come and visit my messy self on Saturday. She told me repeatedly that I personally didn't have any control over the goings on and had basically been consumed by an alien, who had comandeered my body for its own use. It was to be in control now, of whatever it decreed suitable. Sleep, food, rest, (and, in my case, TV and music, for I have now developed an uncontrollable desire to watch Red Dwarf and listen to Cats).
She was immensely understanding, even through my constant cracker grazing, my whining about my sickness, my troubled, guilt ridden mind and my chocolate cake baking indulgant (one vegan cake later, and after a small piece on Saturday night, I had to pass the majority over to her, the sight or even thought of chocolate making me feel a little bit on the queasy side).
Last night I had a strong urge to make pancakes today with my sister (I won't dwell on this for too long as pancake isn't a food I can negotiate discussion with at this time of the morning). Yorkshire Lass called me to make sure I was still vaguely hinged (after a few slightly worrying emails I had sent to her throughout the course of yesterday) and I informed her of my desire.
She said simply 'the foetus wants pancakes'.
And I thought, yup. Okay. I'm going to go with this one.
Right now, the foetus wants some jam on toast, even post breakfast. I need to seriously adjust my portion size if grazing is going to keep me sane (and from doing and work it seems).
Oddly, I realised after attempting two scales, I have actually lost 4lb since becoming pregnant and weigh now just under eight stone. This was a rather terrifying realisation as my breasts are growing at quite a rate and my stomach is inflating at a similar worrying speed until I realised with terror and horror that all those months of hard work, muscle control and toning are unravelling before my eyes.
My muscle is turning to fat.
Oh bugger it, a piece of toast and jam isn't going to make much of a dent on my unravelling body now (I can hear the voice of weight watchers all over the country screaming that it will be my downfall).
I hadn't trusted the doctor's assessment that I was further on than I was due to a mumbled discription of the first day of my last period, as he also predicted I was due in early October. The midwife had just looked at my notes and scribbled something down. I just relied on guess work and numerous dodgy online calculator predictor things.
But, apparently, its true. 40 weeks starts from the first day of my last period. I am in my nineth week of pregnancy. Woop woop!
My good friend Yorkshire Lass negotiated a whole heap of public transport to come and visit my messy self on Saturday. She told me repeatedly that I personally didn't have any control over the goings on and had basically been consumed by an alien, who had comandeered my body for its own use. It was to be in control now, of whatever it decreed suitable. Sleep, food, rest, (and, in my case, TV and music, for I have now developed an uncontrollable desire to watch Red Dwarf and listen to Cats).
She was immensely understanding, even through my constant cracker grazing, my whining about my sickness, my troubled, guilt ridden mind and my chocolate cake baking indulgant (one vegan cake later, and after a small piece on Saturday night, I had to pass the majority over to her, the sight or even thought of chocolate making me feel a little bit on the queasy side).
Last night I had a strong urge to make pancakes today with my sister (I won't dwell on this for too long as pancake isn't a food I can negotiate discussion with at this time of the morning). Yorkshire Lass called me to make sure I was still vaguely hinged (after a few slightly worrying emails I had sent to her throughout the course of yesterday) and I informed her of my desire.
She said simply 'the foetus wants pancakes'.
And I thought, yup. Okay. I'm going to go with this one.
Right now, the foetus wants some jam on toast, even post breakfast. I need to seriously adjust my portion size if grazing is going to keep me sane (and from doing and work it seems).
Oddly, I realised after attempting two scales, I have actually lost 4lb since becoming pregnant and weigh now just under eight stone. This was a rather terrifying realisation as my breasts are growing at quite a rate and my stomach is inflating at a similar worrying speed until I realised with terror and horror that all those months of hard work, muscle control and toning are unravelling before my eyes.
My muscle is turning to fat.
Oh bugger it, a piece of toast and jam isn't going to make much of a dent on my unravelling body now (I can hear the voice of weight watchers all over the country screaming that it will be my downfall).
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