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 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!