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.”

No comments:

Post a Comment