Week 29

Flying

One great thing about pregnancy: flying. On Easyjet, the Airline of Unallocated Seats (or AnUS), being pregnant avoids the mad scramble onto the plane to try and get seats together! On our weekend trip to Berlin, Jas flashed her bump at check-in, and out came the red carpet to the front seats on the plane. Marvellous. Unfortunately it didn’t assist in getting the plane off the ground in time, nor did it get us free tea. But we were up front, with leg room!

On the way back to London we also managed to get priority boarding but not after all the passengers had to sit outside the gate, on the hard floor, in a hallway, for hours, while passport officers sat waiting for the go-ahead to start letting us into the gate, where there were seats. After some time of sitting on the hallway floor, I asked the kindly officers if I could have a chair for the pregnant wife, and they immediately let Jas and I through, into the gate. Lovely chaps. We then had 100 seats to ourselves!

Doctors Orders?

Jas had been making more regular visits to her chiropractor to assist with back discomfort associated with carrying the bundle of joy that filled her belly and strained her body. He regularly advised Jas on exercises to do, and what not to do, to keep herself in shape. One day Jas told me that she was told to no longer to do any kind of twisting actions, “like vacuuming”, and that she wasn’t to bend over and pick up anything, “like emptying the dishwasher”. I sensed a disturbing trend. I demanded signed instructions from the chiropractor in future.

Week 28

Copycat

We might have a blogging baby on our hands. Jas was typing on the computer, and she noticed that at one point, when she typed, our blueberry tapped. She stopped and looked at her bump, and he stopped tapping. Imagination? She pressed a few keys and stopped; he tapped again and stopped. Type, type, tap, tap. Recently, he seemed to be responding to certain noises and certain voices, but now he seemed to be joining in on what was going on the outside!

The Shopping List

We have so much to buy. Our little three-kilo person will need much of what we already have but in a tiny version. A little bed, little sheets, little clothes, a little bath. I’m also told we need a “Grobag”; I thought this was something you grow tomato seedlings in, but apparently it is a little sleeping bag for fresh-borns. Most mammals are able to walk within a few hours of childbirth; humans take a year to get around to getting on their feet, requiring their parents to obtain a little transport device or a sling to get them about. Most mammals are lucky in that they can clean their young with the aid of a large, sticky tongue; we humans require wipes, buds, cotton wool, lotions, oils, nappies, bibs and a changing table. Even though we’ll (hopefully) be self sufficient in the new-born feeding department, we’ll still need maternity pads, nipple cream, bottles, bottle sterilisers, and a milking machine breast pump. And maybe some cabbage - apparently a cabbage leaf lining the bra helps with painful breastfeeding boobs; it’ll also be handy if we come across a starving goat. What’s more, most of this equipment will need to be able to withstand copious quantities of pee, poo and puke. Do they make Teflon bibs yet?

Week 27

Islands

It’s not really a bump any more. It’s more like a boulder. It is quite obvious to all that Jas is pregnant now, even when swaddled in the winter layers that are now needed in London. And with the boulder getting heavier, we try to visit the pool once a week so Jas can get some relief from constantly supporting the weight of our large blueberry. When floating in the pool, with most of her body submerged, Jas actually looks a little like a small treeless atoll in the water; a small, steep-sided atoll with a delicate little crater at the top of it.

Big issue

Naturally Jas was becoming more and more conscious of her size. She looked gorgeous pregnant, but she was finding it hard to feel gorgeous at times moving the increasing weight about. Out walking at lunchtime one day, Jas passed a woman who was trying to sell “Big Issue” magazines in the street. As Jas approached, the lady looked Jas up and down and cried out “Big Issue for a big lady?!” Big issue indeed! The sales pitch didn’t help Jas’ delicate self-esteem: Jas gave the lady a withering look that probably curled the pages of her magazines, and she had to restrain herself from taking the magazines from the lady and forcefully inserting them elsewhere.

On the subject of reading material, it’s not uncommon for commuters on crowded trains to peer sidelong at their neighbours book or newspaper if they’ve nothing to read themselves. I often snigger to myself at what others might think if they peered over my shoulder and viewed content of some of the books I’ve been reading lately; on the subject of labour and childbirth, I’d love to see the looks on faces that spotted section titles like “Stirrups During Delivery”, “Enemas” and “Shaving the Pubic Area”.

Week 26

I’ve gone off the pregnancy reading a bit. Well, the pregnancy parts are fine, but it was just when I started reading about end of the pregnancy - the birth! - that I felt like skipping to the chapters to when the little person has left his womb without a view and everything has been cleaned up. I knew that child birth is very tough and not something you’d video and show on family film nights; I knew that the little one comes out all misshapen and covered in cheesy stuff, but there were other details I was blissfully unaware of. The physiology of it all is incredible but the fact is that it’s not just cheesy stuff and placenta that accompanies the child on its short uncomfortable journey to meet us. I won’t go into details. I think I’ll actually try and forget some of the details and leave them to the midwife when the time comes. Like many things in life, the most rewarding experiences are associated with difficult and uncomfortable moments; a bit like eating prawns, to enjoy the delicious little morsels you have the effort of shelling and of cleaning up a sticky mess.

For those expectant folk who are completely comfortable with the whole childbirth process and the by-products of it, a (very) alternative cookbook I was perusing provided a recipe for “Placenta Pate”, which included garlic and bacon. Oh, yum.

Baby smells

I wondered if I could hear our blueberry, perhaps with some swishing or hiccupping noises. Placing my ear on the bump, I heard...nothing at all. But I could smell him! Amazingly, at that point, Jas’ belly smelt like baby. He was somehow propagating that unmistakable pleasant milky odour to the outside world.

We visited friends for lunch, and Jonty – their delightful spoodle (Cocker Spaniel/poodle cross) - did something similar to me: he approached the bump, curious, and had a lingering sniff. He looked like he could definitely sense something, perhaps he smelt the baby smell, or perhaps could detect much more. (Or perhaps Jas spilt some of the delicious lunch onto her top; her belly was getting very good at catching bits that didn’t make their intended destination!) Interestingly, Jonty was very cautious, and didn’t jump up and sit on Jas’ belly and say hello as he commonly did. Respect to the bump. Jonty then moved over to me, leapt up and unceremoniously planted himself in my lap.

Week 25

The pregnancy literature typically marks each month of pregnancy with what can be expected in the mum & baby: together with the aches, cramps and growth spurts there has always been “continued absent-mindedness”, which Jas has marvellously shown on numerous occasions. However, in month seven we can apparently expect “increasing absent-mindedness”, which I found mildly disturbing...and Jas gave an excellent reason for me to find it mildly disturbing the same day that I read it. I came home from work – before Jas did - to find a candle in our bedroom burning away; Jas had lit it in the morning – 11 hours previously – and duly forgotten about it. I began to wonder how our house was going to last the full term! Our thoughts of having a home birth might be limited to a marquee with a camp fire in the garden beside our blackened abode. Perhaps I should start to child-proof the house now and hide all the matches...

Humorously, I did the same thing the next day. Ha ha. We had a few candles lit in the bathroom in the evening...Jas found one of them burning early the next morning. Naturally, I was just making Jas feel better about her absent-minded incident. 

If I might be so bold, I’m getting quite knowledgeable with this pregnancy business. When Jas was telling me about a colleague of hers who had given birth by caesarean (“through the sun-roof” as my father-in-law beautifully describes it), I asked if the incision was vertical or horizontal. Jas looked at me as though she was about to ask the being who had just entered my body to kindly leave, but instead asked “Why?” Well, apparently it matters for future births – it’s better to go horizontal than vertical.

I’d also started diagnosing Jas’ ailments. When she complained of a brand new kind of cramp, I promptly indicated that it was probably Braxton Hicks contractions. She looked at me questioningly (really, I think she needs to spend less time baby shopping!), and I explained that it was a temporary tightening of the uterine muscles, getting practice for the heavy duty contractions that will be squeezing our little one into the world.
    
Anyway, enough of the medical malarkey. We’ve been playing with our little one. Jas’ bump has quickly become as round and tight as Roseanne Barr’s fitness ball during a workout, and occasionally she pops it out to play with when we’re bored. Our little one seems to respond to a spot of belly rubbing or poking, and wriggles about to our touch. Maybe we’re just annoying him and he’s trying to get more comfortable! Whichever it is, it’s entertainment for us... 

The little one also likes to play. With balls. During one of Jas’ pilates lessons she was lying side down with a small ball under the belly. As soon as the ball came in contact with the belly, little “Beckham in a bag” started kicking vigorously at the ball. Was this coincidence? Jas rolled onto the other side for the same exercise...as soon as the ball touched the other side of his dome, he thumped the ball again! If he was reaching the other side with his foot, maybe he was practicing his overhead kick. Maybe we have a future Arsenal player in the making. It’d be the most likely way I'd get a season ticket!

Week 24

Manners

In the early hyperemesis days, Jas had a bad train trip to work, where she was forced to stand when she was unwell, and then had promptly passed out. Since then I’d become more aware of pregnant passengers in search of a seat on my daily commute. One day I looked up from my book to see a young lass moving down the carriage with a cargo that looked like it would be delivered before we arrived at London Blackfriars. I stood up so quickly – without thinking - that it was as though I had just sat on something very pointy. She was grateful for the seat, and I hoped Jas would have pregnancy-aware chaps on her train, however unlikely that may be.

On another occasion I was again about to leap out of my seat at the sight of a slightly protruding undercarriage moving towards me, when I checked myself and thought, “Is she or isn’t she...pregnant?” Predicament: Do I stay seated and risk being rude and inconsiderate, or stand up with the chance of being offensive?  

Interruptions

The little mans’ movements is something amazing and entertaining for me, something I can tap into when I want to. But Jas feels it all the time - little jiggles or slides at any time of the day or night. It’s something I find hard to imagine, having something living inside you that can interrupt anything you are doing, wherever you might be doing it, without warning. The closest sensation I could think of was the day after a bad curry. It would be distracting, say, in a meeting at work, or performing something important or precise. I could imagine female laser eye surgeons being unable to work during advanced pregnancy! I heard an exclamation from our bathroom one evening: kicks during a toilet visit. I guess it could help things along.

Research

We’d started doing a lot of online searching for the growing list baby of essentials we had to buy. Well, ok, Jas had...I was just viewing the odd thing of interest, a potential bargain, that she’d found. One day she emailed me a link of an item to have a look at while I was at work. I replied: “Ok, will look at this at home. Checking out breast pump websites at work will probably raise eyebrows.”

And those breast pumps – have you seen them!? They look like something from Dr Who, not something you’d have suctioned against your tender bits. I was certainly glad I didn’t view the sites at work, with the images showing the “operational side” of the devices, and phrases like: “Change your pumping rhythm any time you wish. Relax and enjoy the experience...”

We began to learn that we had certain post-birthing practices to consider. “What shall we do with the placenta?” I asked one day. Jas looked at me as though I’d just told her I fancied having a pet lizard. I told her that different cultures have certain rituals: fathers in Peru bury the placenta in a far-off location so it doesn’t become “jealous” of the attention paid to the baby; some Philippinos bury it with a book to increase the intelligence of the child; I’d heard of some families freezing it to cook as part of a roast for a special occasion (“Afterbirth or gravy, nan?”); in the UK, most hospitals actually sell it to cosmetic companies. Jas said: “Let’s leave it to the hospital to recycle”. Those L’Oreal advertisements won’t ever look the same...

Week 23

Parenthood practice

I think our child was assuming control of my wife, making her do things to prepare me for fatherhood: Jas had been sick; she peed all the time; she woke me up through the night; she needed constant feeding; she needed help getting her shoes on; she cried, without obvious reason, wetting my good shirts with her tears. He was in there, maybe doing a Jedi mind trick with his little fingers, periodically having Jas do something out of the ordinary, unexpected, out of her control, just when I might be getting on top of it all. 

Lightning

Up until this point our babies’ movements could have been kicks, punches, tumbles, cartwheels, hiccups or somersaults. Now, he had no place in the uterus to do much of this, as he got plumper and the tummy tighter. And so I started seeing his movement, not just feeling it. And for once, it was something I experienced before Jas! It first happened on the south side of the mound, on the far side of the dome, where Jas could no longer view. I was amazed when I first saw it. I began to peer motionless at the tight belly skin, unblinking, until a little limb, foot or hand would jab visibly outwards. It was like watching for lightning bolts in a big storm, seeing a force of nature suddenly show itself in momentary flashes. “Did you see that one! That was a big one!” And then suddenly Jas could see, as if he knew he was being watched, and the skin around the navel – further north - begun to bubble. We were highly entertained. We don’t need a TV anymore.

Recycling

Sometimes you learn something that you’re not quite sure that you wanted to learn. Up until recently I had been blissfully unaware that our bub would have a need to pee – inside the womb - despite the fact that we all obviously do this once we’re on the outside. I’d just naively thought of our foetus as something like blowing a balloon up, with stuff flowing in through a little tube, making it grow, nothing coming out. But no; our little one actually drinks the amniotic fluid in which he is suspended...and then, when he has processed it, puts it right back. 

Taking this snippet of information - reluctantly - to the next logical step, I thought: “What about...number two’s?” Thankfully, most of what he “eats”, he uses, and the rest is saved until just after birth. After I googled “baby’s first poop”, I joyfully discovered that a new borns’ first bowel movement is quite a memorable one. Hm, I can’t wait.

Week 22


Note: Rather than clumsily writing “he/she” or “it”, from now on I’m going to refer to our banana-sized bub as “he”. I’ve always thought of him as he (Jas has never been quite sure either way), and I’ve had what I’m sure is a prophetic dream about “him”, when I took him mowing. If I’m wrong, I’m sure our little girl won’t mind the little Arsenal beanie, and will find a use for the football... 

Since I felt our little one move last week, Jas was always alerting me to when he was dancing about so I could try to experience it. But it seemed as though the little thing would stop wriggling as soon as my hand touched Jas’ belly. It was quite uncanny. Jas thought I had a calming influence and my touch was somehow relaxing the blueberry. Nice idea, but if this was true, I sincerely hoped that it would carry through to babyhood when I could merely lay my hand on the head of our bawling bub and lull it to sleep. I’m sure bacon will fly before that happens.

One evening I felt loads of bumps. Like a frog in a sock. The little one was kicking like crazy, as though there was half a football team in there. Sometimes I pictured him floating about, like someone in a space station, playfully tumbling about in the weightlessness, pushing himself off the walls as he bumped about, perhaps like a zero gravity bouncy castle (wouldn’t that be fun!!).   
At five months, the pregnancy literature abandons its fruity comparisons. Now, apparently Jas’ uterus was the size of a basketball.  Jas’ belly really was expanding quickly: as she entered a room, her bump came through the door quite some time before the rest of her. The “linea alba” had also appeared, a line straight down the belly that looked as though someone had drawn on Jas with a brown pencil. Funnily, it wasn’t quite a straight line - as though someone had drawn on Jas with a brown pencil, with their eyes closed.

As I climbed into bed one night, in the dark, some time after Jas - as happened often with Jas getting tired early now - I noticed that my side of the bed had decidedly shrunken. There seemed to be a tall wall of pillows that had encroached on my mattress real estate, with my sleeping wife somewhere on the other side. Had I done something wrong, perhaps? Not unlikely. It took me a while to get to sleep, with my limited snoozing area and with my mind seeking possible reasons for the curious new construction that loomed in the dark. The reason was: lying down with a pregnant belly often didn’t really provide much relief; at times, support was needed to take the weight of the growing little person...thus, a few of the dozen ornamental pillows we had were actually put to practical use.

Week 21

As the belly gets bigger

Jas: “It’s official. I cannot see my feet anymore.” Being a bloke, I was obviously not able to experience much of how pregnancy affects the body. On this occasion I (kind of) could, so I stood behind Jas, put my head on her shoulder – as though she had grown another head - and peered down through her now-impressive cleavage, and searched for something with toes on the end of them. “Wow. You’re right. That big round bit is in the way!”

Pregnant bellies are like hand magnets. Bulbous body parts rarely attract attention in public, but when there’s a baby encased within them, different story. It’s as though touching the bump brings good luck, Buddha-like. The problem is, sometimes this attention is uninvited, as Jas realised one evening out, when a waitress couldn’t resist touching Jas’ belly. Jas looked as though the waitress had spilled a tray of drinks on her, rather than a friendly frontal fondle.

First movements!

Jas was starting to become used to regular internal jabbing. Rather than jumping in her seat, she’d started to calmly respond to the punches and kicks with an “Ooh, hello”, as though the little one had awoken and was looking up for a little attention. During some (very) early mornings, Jas had started waking me - rather abruptly - when the baby started moving about, by grabbing my hand and quickly pulling it to place it on the source of wriggling, in the hope I would experience some contact with our bub, even though I was very happily and deeply asleep, and even though my arm really couldn’t bend in three places. But then the wriggling would stop! Frustration – at being awoken and missing out on the baby aerobics. However, one morning I was finally rewarded by the slightly spooky yet amazing sensation of foetal movement, like something stretching, or trying to half-heartedly push itself out through Jas’ skin. It was quite a moment.

Big bits

We visited Nan and showed her the scans from week 12. Her first reaction was: “Its head’s big!” Nan is always delightfully direct. It did indeed have an inordinately large head, no doubt to contain the burgeoning intelligence it had inherited from its parents. Nan was also amazed to see a picture of an unborn child. Her first sight of a fresh baby was when she was fifteen and her twin brothers were born: when the first came out, the midwife thrust him into nans’ arms and told her to hold it, still covered in fluid.

Jas went for another scan, in the hope our delightfully obedient child would cooperate with Ms Ultrasound. He did! I wasn’t there, and mum gratefully went in my place. He/she posed for some lovely profile shots, to which Ms Ultrasound pointed out – somewhat inevitably – that he/she had “quite a nose”. If our child had a prominent proboscis at age minus 5 months, things weren’t looking up for our first born having a cute little button between its blue eyes.

Pram shopping

I didn’t think there was a form of shopping that was more frustrating than shoe shopping with ones’ wife. There is. The array of options available for prams/buggies/strollers/perambulators/baby transport devices is overwhelming. The permutations of weight, number of wheels, suspension, collapsibility, age range, braking systems, materials, seating style, seating angle, seating switch-ability, storage, shade covers, rain covers, storage covers, wipe-ability (!), drink holders, add-ons, add-ins, and of course price, was too much to absorb in one Oxford Street outing. At one point our lawn mower seemed like a marvellous option. In our third baby department store for the day, during a pram dismantling demonstration – which looked a bit like a shop assistant having a disagreement with a sleepy Transformer - I began drifting off to a happy place, and started to think where the nearest pub might be.

The only thing we bought were tea cakes for the train trip home.   

The Clothing Crunch

As the boobs and belly grow in pregnancy, there is the sudden issue of diminished wardrobe options as clothes become too small. The process of a female dressing typically involves a great deal of decision making, trying to pick from a huge array of clothes a combination that enhances her curves. In the second trimester, dressing involves a great deal of searching through a huge array of clothes for something that will actually encase her curves. Pants no longer come all the way up; tops no longer come down.

But is this just a female issue? Ooooh, no. What begins as an innocent “Can I borrow an old T-shirt to sleep in?” swiftly escalates into free-for-all clothing poaching. I should have read the signs, when my old shorts went missing. Then, when Jas told me over the phone that my tracksuit pants were “really comfortable”, I went briefly silent as realisation dawned. “You mean my favourite striped ones with the fleecy lining?” “Yes, they’re nice and snuffy”, she said cheerfully, as though nothing was wrong. An old T-shirt was fine, but my favourite trackies? Feebly, I said: “But they’re mine.” I might as well have been standing alone on a beach and kindly asking the tide if it could stay out until further notice. My small wardrobe had melded into Jas’, and I was then in the unusual position of encouraging Jas to go clothes shopping. It was probably all an elaborate ploy.

Expectant men: lock up your cupboards!

Week 20 – Boy or girl?

Movement

“My bellybutton looks funny.”

Pre-pregnancy, a comment like this from Jas would have resulted in me looking sideways at her and saying something like, “What are you talking about?” Now, nothing Jas says is particularly unusual. Now, she could have indicated in passing that she was growing a sixth toe. “Oh yeah? Give us a look,” I would say. I took a look at the aforementioned navel. It did seem different: while the outside had moved with the expanding belly, the button bit seemed to have stayed put, some distance inside. Overall it had a slight megaphone shape to it, as though I would be able to hear words of wisdom from our soon-to-be first-born. I put my ear to it: no words, just faint gurgling. 

To those who wouldn’t know Jas was pregnant, it might seem as though she was talking to herself; that she was starting to go a wee bit senile. Not so: from time to time, she just had a few things to say to the blueberry, often when he/she was on the move. One day, from another room, I heard her exclaim: “I know you’re in there!” I looked around wondering what it was I could be doing wrong, but then realised that – thankfully – Jas wasn’t talking to me.

Jas’ sanity might also be questioned by strangers who saw her jump in her seat on the train. She’d be sitting quietly, perhaps reading a book, and then suddenly spasm as though her seat had suddenly grown a few pervy fingers and pinched her firmly on her derriere. Her jolts were responses to the little one moving about; what were once pleasant, bubbly sensations caused by his wriggling had become strong little stabs, as though he was practicing Bruce Lee moves and trying to escape. His kicks always caught Jas by surprise.

More name searching. We had a formative list of names we might fancy. But there were others I found in our baby books that would definitely not make the cut: in the top five would be “Ikea” (!), a girl’s name from Sweden. Whatever we have, I don’t want to have to assemble it!

20 week scan

Technically, we were half way. I was looking forward to seeing the little one in ultrasound action, to see how it had progressed, to see how big it was, to get another nice little profile picture to pop on the fridge. But once the scanner started sliding over Jas’ greased-up bump, we realised it wasn’t interested in showing off or being helpful to the ultrasound lady. He just showed us his butt. No matter how much the scanner slipped and probed above him, all we saw was his back and his butt. Ms Ultrasound even tilted the bed, rolled Jas from side to side, asked us to go for a walk, to jiggle about a bit (Jas, not me), in order to encourage a re-arrangement in foetal position. No luck. It was like he was hanging on to the sides refusing to budge. Jas could have done cartwheels, but - as though he was in one of those big clear spongy balls you could roll down hills in - he’d resolutely maintain his antisocial posture. The only picture we were going to get this day was of two stubborn little bottom cheeks.

What we did see was its internals. It was great. We could see clearly see a beautifully curved spine, kidneys, and a heart bidoomping away. We could even see the individual chambers of the heart, and – when Ms Ultrasound added colour to the screen – the (blue) incoming blood and (red) outgoing blood. Amazing stuff. I wondered if one day it would be possible to attach little screens with inbuilt ultrasound scanners to pregnant bellies so dads-to-be could watch their little ones being “Bruce Lee in a bag”, in the comfort of their own home. Ok, so maybe it’s a bit shallow and wouldn’t be so comfortable for the mum-to-be, but it would certainly beat a fish tank, eh?

We’d spent weeks trying to decide whether or not to find out the baby’s sex at the scan. Essentially it came down to whether we wanted it to be a surprise on birth-day, or whether we could go out and get it a Spiderman jumpsuit and an Arsenal beanie. Eventually, we came to a final, resolute, irrevocable decision: we’d ask Ms Ultrasound to write the sex on a piece of paper and – without us looking - put it in an envelope so we could decide later. Genius! (I thought of it). But at the scan, Ms Ultrasound said she couldn’t do that for some strange NHS-policy reason. So...on the spot we said: “Ok, we want to know.” 

So, without further ado, I can announce to the world that, without a shred of doubt, our child will be: a boy...or girl. Its little butt was in the way, wasn’t it? No undercarriage was sighted!

Week 19

Perhaps Pregnancy Brain is contagious. Perhaps it was just post-holiday dopey-ness. On my first day back at work I took a spoon into a meeting. I sat down and put my pad, my pen, and my spoon on the conference table, and then realised what I’d done. I’ve talked my way out of many situations in the past, but on this occasion my creativity failed me. “I’m not quite sure why I brought my spoon in here today”. Laughter prevailed.

Genes

We often pondered what our first born will be like. Blonde & blue-eyed? Very likely. Porky? Unlikely. Jas: “I think it will have a pointy nose, since both of us do.” (jokingly, I thought: “With a beak like mine, there is very little chance of our child having something that doesn’t resemble the foresail of a sloop.”). I’d even worked out a few percentages based on my recollections of high school genetics classes: there was at least a 75% chance it would be blue eyed; at least a 50% chance that it would have mid-digital hair; and if it ended up being dark skinned, there was a 100% chance that Jas would have a few stern questions to answer.

More names

Jas ordered some baby books to assist in our search – our quest – for suitable names. Aside from thousands of names to randomly peruse, the books provide some helpful hints on name selection, together with some interesting naming statistics and categories. I learnt that – in the UK - “Richard” made the top 25 names for about 100 years until the 1980’s. “Richard” is also listed in a category of typical “Bad-to-the-Bone” names. Obviously. Other very useful lists of names were those likely to make “Future Truck Drivers” (e.g. Mace and Vatoya) and “Names That Get Shortened” (i.e. names with three or more syllables, surprise, surprise).  One book guides those with plain surnames – that would be us, I guess – to go for bolder first names: enter “Jinx”, “Rambo” and “Schmoopie”. This could be fun.

Pregnancy Co-ordination

Pregnancy Brain gets a lot of publicity. But there seems to be another side effect that impacts basic motor skills and spatial awareness. One day Jas stuck a fingernail into her forehead. Why? Well, she was actually trying to run her hands through her hair, but missed by a few inches. She was naturally surprised when her fingers struck skin and bone when expecting the silky softness of her hair.

Jas' belly had also grown to a noticeable size, though not huge, but she was starting to have an inordinately difficult time standing up. Sometimes it was a bit like watching a lady bug that was stuck on its back trying to return to its feet. With lady bugs I like to watch and see how they end up doing it, but naturally assistance is offered with Jas...

Week 18


Jas mowed the lawn again. And it was a perfect job! Not a Cessna in sight.

A week’s holiday in Greece! Hurrah. It started with Jas entering McDonalds at Gatwick Airport at 5am. She had actually already had some breakfast before then, but we’ve learnt that pregnancy requires constant refuelling. And, she felt like she ‘needed’ an egg and bacon McMuffin. “Don’t do it”, I said, as though I was trying to talk her out of bungee jumping. She went in, with me hovering outside, the shit-food force field repelling me, preventing me from going near the entrance. I sidled off as Jas disappeared amongst the queues, and went to buy something edible for my breakfast. As I returned to the vicinity of the McDonalds entrance, Jas bolted out, looking very grey, paused to throw me her McMuffin and then ran to a toilet. I didn’t even get a chance to say “I told you so”. As it happened, Jas suddenly felt ill from standing in a crowded queue for too long (rather than the ambience and smell of a place that produced food with the taste and nutritional value of a week-old dog turd). She returned shortly after, a little less pallid, and downed the aforementioned muffin.

While we were away, Jas produced a personal best: one night she rose six times to piddle. Her bladder had been showing signs of becoming increasingly compressed, but this one night the seat of our Greek lavatory never had a chance to get cold. I feared that as the weeks marched on and the uterus grew to ever-fruity proportions, our bed will be resembling a beach again, and not for the biscuit crumbs...
Was I going out in sympathy? I don’t know. I prefer to think that the reason for putting my T-shirt on inside-out at the beach was due to its design – it looks pretty much the same either way. I just wanted my pocket on the inside, that’s all.  

Week 17

Jas: “Our bedroom smells of paper.”

Bedrooms odours are typically related to dirty clothes or to sheets that have been in contact with bodies for 40 hours a week. But not ours: those three harmless books sitting on my bedside table that had been unopened for several days were offensive odours factories! I was happy Jas wasn’t a librarian.

Pregnancy brain

Pregnancy brain: an excuse newly pregnant ladies use for the forgetfulness they always had? Perhaps. Jas had certainly muttered the phrase on a number of occasions recently. However, when we were walking to our second midwife appointment Jas suddenly stopped, looked at her feet, and announced that she had put on different shoes. I looked down, and she was indeed wearing two completely different styles of shoes. I stood there, trying to imagine myself picking up one of my shoes, slipping my foot in it, doing it up, and then picking up a non-matching shoe and putting it on the other foot, all with my eyes open, sober, without noticing that something was clearly amiss.

Step forward, Pregnancy Brain.

The next day, before she headed off to work, she noticed that her top was on backwards. I could see a pattern emerging. Note to self: do not let Jas anywhere near our suitcase when packing for our next holiday.

Back to the midwife appointment: a scanner was rubbed over Jas’ belly to monitor the bub’s heartbeat. After some probing, we finally heard it – hwoo, hwoo, hwoo - the whooshing sound of idling helicopter rotors. The little guy/girl had become an aeronautical engineer in the space of a few weeks. 

Week 16

Our 4 year old nephew speaks to Jas on the phone. He is well aware of a “new cousin” that is on his/her way. He recently asked: “Is it out yet?”

After so much inactivity and tiredness, Jas was moving about more, she returned to work, and enjoyed slowly increasing energy levels and getting more done. Importantly she was cooking dinner more often (hurrah!). One day I came home to a freshly mowed lawn: it took her a long while to complete cutting our little strip of green; she stopped a few times and was completely wrecked at the end of her herculean effort...and I have to say, it was the dodgiest lawn job she’d ever done! It was as though a twin-prop Cessna had done very low fly-bys over our garden. But that didn’t matter: it was a brilliant accomplishment for her after the past couple of months of illness.

Jas’ uterus was now the size of a small melon. Her belly was the size of a large one, as firm as pear and smooth as an apple. We took our basket of fruit for its first swim at local pool, where Jas could float some more.

Baby’s first book reading

My sister sent us the children’s classic: The Hungry Caterpillar. To Jas’ bare belly, I initiated our blueberry to the story (which is full of fruit, incidentally), reading and showing the pictures to the bump. Half way through reading the story Jas pulled her T-shirt over her stomach. I said: “Why did you do that? He can’t see the pictures now”. The belly started quivering with laughter. 

Week 15

Family holiday

We had a week away in Croatia. It was our first excursion beyond the hospital for quite a while. Our concern was that we wouldn’t be able to find the right food for the journey there, but we were well prepared: our on-board luggage consisted of one bag of clothes and two bags of food. 

The water in Croatia was incredible. I swam several times a day, paddling about and playing with the fish. Jas just wanted to go into the water to float. I realised that Jas seemed to have taken on the life of our unborn child: sleeping often, eating often, peeing often and floating about, just because she could. 

Baby dream

Knowing that the first few weeks of our newborn baby’s life would mean little time for ourselves, we’d started thinking of how we’d deal with the responsibility of a new dependent and the endless tasks of feeding and cleaning up poo and puke amongst the other day to day things we had to do. One night I had dream: I was mowing the lawn, and on top of the noisy mower was attached a baby carrier, with our son in it, so I could keep an eye on him while I carried out my garden chore. He was a few weeks old, little curls of hair, snugly installed in the heavily vibrating baby holder as I was cutting the grass. At one point in the dream I thought that this was probably not a good thing for the baby: I paused, looked down at the buzzing bub, and he smiled a contended little grin, so I continued mowing. Genius idea, eh?

Week 14


A little scare: we had to rush Jas to hospital to check that all was ok. A nurse promptly came in with a device that detected the heartbeat of the foetus...there was a tense period of total quiet as she moved it about Jas’ belly, and then suddenly a thumping little heartbeat filled the room. It was pumping so fast! It was an incredibly re-assuring sound. 

With a number of hospital trips in the last few weeks, we were getting to know the place well. We’ll be able to running guided tours of the maternity ward before long...

Jas was continually getting aches and cramps with her growing body and baby, but one day she had experienced a new, enjoyable sensation: bubbles. It was her first feeling of our little one and she was overjoyed. It was great news, though I thought: first it was two fingers at the ultrasound, now blowing raspberries.

The Second Trimester - Week 13


Jas was tired all the time: struggling with nausea, growing bigger organs, producing more blood, all in preparation for giving birth to a little person not yet the size of a mango. It gave me plenty of time to get things done...!

We had our first of many sojourns into Mothercare. We perused the imposing variety of strollers, all of them seemed to require serious engineering abilities to collapse and erect each of them. I was afraid to touch them: a number of them looked like Transformers that would re-arrange themselves and shoot me. My opinion of them all did alter slightly when I found one with a drink holder. Mmm, beer...

Week 12


The first scan! Our chance to see the little being that was causing upheaval in our lives already. Until this point Jas had spent two days in hospital, and I’d spent a whole week at home playing nurse (looking after Jas, that is, not – you know – dressing up).

After the scanning lady greased up Jas’ belly and positioned the ultrasound device, the little person suddenly came into view. It was awesome to see. I was amazed how much he/she moved! I thought it would be just floating about, immobile and unaware of the chaos outside of its bubble. But no - he didn’t stop wriggling about. I’d read that the foetus can sense the ultrasound waves; as the ultrasound device was moved around the belly, he/she did seem to be continually twisting to face away from the device, so we only saw his back no matter how much the device was repositioned. After a few minutes, he faced us (finally having enough of the noise?), and raised his hand in what seemed to be his first two-fingered salute. Just lovely: he didn’t have fully formed fingers yet, but he was already showing attitude.

Next in the check-up was a blood test. Jas nor I are fond of needles: in the blood-taking room Jas sat down and faced away from the nurse, not wanting to see the needle being used. Being her tower of strength, I stood next to her and held her hand tightly...and then sat down and faced away as well. The nurse was brilliant – Jas hardly felt the blood being taken, and neither of us fainted. Jas thanked the nurse profusely, and explained why she had to close her eyes while it was being done. The nurse laughed and said, “No problem, I had my eyes closed as well!”

Week 11

Free!

Jas left the house for the first time in several weeks. Previously, our large garden hedge had completely prevented her from venturing outdoors; not physically, of course – it hadn’t suddenly developed feet and moved closer to our door. It (apparently!) had an illness-inducing smell, one that Jas could detect even if she was sitting inside and a hedge-facing window was open.

So, during this slow first walk to the shops, Jas took her new favourite friend: a small bottle of lime essence. It was kind of like walking with someone who was slightly deranged, someone who could see things no-one else could, who was carrying a tiny bottle of gin. Jas would stop after a few steps, look, and then point at nothing in particular (a blank brick wall, for example) and announce that “it smelt”. Then the lime essence would be swiftly planted under her nostrils to mask the smell, and we would move on to a safer sniffing area. This was fine for the quiet walk in, but it did draw a few curious glances in the busy supermarket...

The next day, I was outside in the garden reading on the lawn in the sunshine. Inside, Jas had awoken and gingerly came down the steps, and waved at me from the doorway, Where It Was Safe. She then slowly poked her head outside, and sniffed the air. I felt like I was watching a clown fish wondering if there was any evil lurking in the unprotected open. She then cautiously stepped outside, staying close to the safety of the door, looking and sniffing about, wary of unsuspecting wafts of offending odours.

We’d started thinking of names, but not really coming up with any good ones: good ones that were not already used by friends and family; good ones that didn’t remind us of a kid at school who was a bit of a knob, like the guy at high school who ran into a classroom wall to see if he could put a hole in it with his head. For inspiration, we even started scanning film credits for ideas: “Rupert”, “Shakira”, “Berlin”...Oh, that’s where the film was made. Still, Paris & Siena have become popular, but nothing had grabbed us yet.

Week 10

Despair

Baked beans had become my safe haven: when Jas had no idea what would satisfy her stomach and I had little time to provide a meal, beans on toast were it. It was quick, I couldn’t stuff it up and was always edible amid the nausea.

One day Jas was having a particularly tough day and for lunch - in bed - I cooked her beans on toast. After a few minutes I looked in on her...the beans were untouched and she was crying, tears falling on the plate. I was shattered: I’d either messed it up somehow, or I’d just lost my meal-time lifeline. Or both. And Jas would still be hungry. As it happened, she didn’t have the energy to cut the toast. My despair turned to enormous relief: it wasn’t a good thing that Jas was so ill and listless and depressed, but toast cutting I could do! And all those tins of Heinz I’d lugged home and were filling the cupboard wouldn’t end up gathering dust.

We were watching a documentary on dinosaurs (Friday nights get wild during pregnancy) and we were amazed that the T. Rex had olfactory senses so powerful that it could triangulate the location of a rotting brontosaurus carcass 5 km away with pinpoint accuracy, AND know how long it had been dead. I thought, wow; imagine an animal with that sense of smell and was pregnant! It would be able to detect a frog's fart at 500 km.

Our little blueberry was now the size of a fig in a uterus the size of a grapefruit. Not quite sure why all of the baby literature compare pregnancy to fruit. I foresee a watermelon simile on the horizon.

Now, a fig is generally much smaller than a grapefruit. Why does he need all that space already? Was he doing a starfish in there? Perhaps it was a sign of things to come. Is he going to demand our bedroom once he is installed in the smaller spare room?

Jas had become a saliva factory. I’d never seen Jas expectorate before, but through necessity she quickly became an expert at it.  Chewing gum became a must-buy on the shopping list.

Things are looking up

Nausea, cramps, tiredness, saliva generation...none of them pleasant. But the boobs are bigger. Things are suddenly looking up. Well, for me, anyway. But...they are too tender to touch. Someone might as well give me a Ferrari without the keys.

Jas: “When is dinner?”
Me: “10 minutes.”
Jas: “I need it now.”

Week 9

The Smells Get Worse

"Have you been to the pool?" was a question I received after my daily supermarket reconnoitre. 
"No, these bags of food in my hands came from the supermarket...." 
"Hmm, ok. You smell of chlorine". Well, that's better than body odour, considering I wasn't able to use soap or deodorant. Maybe Jas could smell the water I'd used in the shower earlier...!? 

Jas' sense of smell had become even more freakily acute. She had a bionic nose. "Your magazine smells". My magazine smells!? Of paper, I guess? My page flicking had to be stopped in order to prevent the offending paper-smell wafting in her direction. Jas must have insight into what a dog experiences. The only way we become aware of the local bitch being on heat is when we hear the pained, faint howling of Henry the cocker spaniel downstairs howls. I felt that the sniffer dogs at the airport were at risk of losing their jobs to the local ladies in their first trimester.

Jas spent much of her time sleeping. What was the little blueberry doing? The little chap was only the size of a peanut, yet had demolished any ability of Jas to do anything. I began to get the feeling that this was all post-birth practice for me: spending the day preparing small meals during the day -  in between Jas' naps - and cleaning up puke.

One night Jas dreamt of pikelets...so I had to make them.

Housework. It was all down to me, hurrah. Moving a vacuum cleaner around the house and loading a smelly dishwasher became no-go zones for the hyperemesis inflicted.

Finally It Happened

"You smell rancid". No deodorant, no soap...it was inevitable. I couldn’t go near Jas. I wasn’t really surprised; I only hoped it was a view not shared by fellow passengers on my morning commute.

Week 8


The Most Frustrating Shopping Experience. Ever.

I didn't have much to get: coconut milk; swiss rolls; hot dogs; japanese rice crackers; soap that doesn't smell. Just a few regular things, obviously. I just had to nip down to the shops and return in time to feed Jas' impatiently random hunger.

Trying to do it quickly was not a good idea; starting with the most difficult item on the list certainly did not help things: "Soap that doesn't smell". This was needed because obviously, I did smell. My search encompassed three chemists and hundreds of scented soaps, all with names and labels that evoked tropical spa-like calmness. Madagaskar Sunset. Marrakech Sunrise. As much as I enjoyed our recent holiday to Marrakech, mint and donkey dung is not something I'd like to share in my shower. Shea butter and lavender. What the hell is shea butter?! Refreshing Aloe. That'd be "Retching Aloe" if Jas came near it. Ginseng and Guano. Isn't guano bat crap? As I searched in vain for a scent-less soap, I started making up my own: Bergamo & Bat Shit. Cucumber & Monkey Spunk  (mmm, creamy). Sage & Slug Slime. All you needed was an evocative name with a picture of the sea.

Soap search abandoned. Next the supermarket. Normally this was a brief affair, spent mostly picking regular items from the fresh fruit and vege section. Not now. Walking briskly past the bananas & broccoli, I went to where I would have thought the rice crackers would logically be. But do British supermarket planners have any concept of logical grouping? No. Were the rice crackers near the rice? No. Well, were they by the crackers...? Of course not, silly knob. Naturally it resides in the "World Food" section.

The First Trimester - Week 7

Nothing Is Normal

We were overjoyed at the news, of course. We had a light dizziness at the realisation that our family plans were starting to happen, that a little "us" was quickly forming and would slip into the world early next year and change our lives. We started reading about what was happening, how it was happening, what Jas should (and shouldn't!) be eating, birthing options...so much to absorb!

Our blueberry-sized bub actually started changing things for us pretty much immediately. Our joyful dizziness was promptly converted into nausea - "morning-sickness" - for Jas, nausea that was triggered by any movement and most smells. And to make it worse, Jas' sense of smell had suddenly become incredible. I thought this new ability was kind of cool - "Ooh, someone is cooking chips, yum!" But not Jas – especially when she picked up a disagreeable scent in within a mile's radius. She could detect so much...I couldn't smell a thing. "This place smells of tomatoes, it's making me sick".

Jas’ taste became as fickle as a spoilt cat. Preparing food became a kind of Russian roulette for me: would dinner induce dry-retching? I couldn’t anticipate the reaction. One day eggs were marvellous. The next: bleah. She wanted milk with breakfast every day...until she wanted apple juice instead. Our fridge quickly filled with stuff that was no longer tasty. Goodbye logic. My ability to provide a satisfying (i.e. digestible) meal was in the lap of the Hormone Gods.

Supermarket shopping: normally a structured affair of working to a pre-prepared list, aisle by aisle, selecting organic/healthy option/low fat items wherever possible. Much time was spent carefully checking ingredients on the back of curry jars. From our recent reading we had a list of healthy-pregnant-eating options:

YES - peaches, corn pasta, apples; NO - mangoes, sugar, red meat.

Morning sickness changed all this; eat what can be eaten:

VOMIT - Brown bread, vegetables, ginger; DIGEST - Icy pops, apples, cake. 

Our structured, almost anal, approach to supermarket shopping became something like shopping with someone who was excitably drunk; Jas was randomly dashing from aisle to aisle: "Ooh, Innocent fruit tube, what is that?", "Blueberry muffins, let's get those, I feel like those!"

Nothing was normal.

Jas’ hyper-sensitive smell was starting to mould my actions. 
"Are you wearing deodorant?!" 
"Why yes, it's the one you like". 'Hugo Boss Energise: When Hugo Attitude Meets Energy.' The Hugo Attitude had now met Jas' new hormone-powered whiffing ability. 
"Don't wear it, it makes me sick!" My saucy scent was now a sickening stench. 

So I spent a little more time cleaning the old armpits after that. But lo: 
“Did you just use the Nivea body wash?” 
“Er, yes, I just had a shower...” 
“Don’t please, it makes me sick!” 
Oh boy.

And then the nausea got worse. Much worse. Jas was house bound, needing help to do the simplest things, like making a sandwich. It had a name – hyperemesis. If normal morning sickness was like a cool winter breeze, hyperemesis was akin to a Carribean Hurricane.

Breakfast in bed was a necessity – she couldn’t get up without eating first: crackers and cornflakes were a must.  I started having dreams of lying on a beach...and would awake with crumbs in the bed!