Week 30

Ten weeks to go! I’m quite looking forward to meeting the little person, to look into his eyes rather than prod his head/back/butt through Jas’ straining skin. We started asking ourselves questions more regularly: What will we have? What will the baby look like? What will he grow up to be? A sportsperson? An linguist? A truck-driver? How long should we breastfeed? I mean, how long should Jas breastfeed? Should we discipline our child with the wooden spoon like our parents did?  

Jas: “What do you think about circumcision?” Ask a man what he thinks about surgically removing a portion of a penis, and he is unlikely going to be able to think clearly about the pros and cons. I crossed my legs, winced a little, and said, “Er, not much....” If we have a little man popping out, I’m going to have to provide a more eloquent answer. What are the pros and cons? Does circumcision affect the baby at all? What do people do these days? What do hospitals do with all those foreskins? And do the Peruvians bury it with the placenta? *

We liked to think that the little one was responding to his external surroundings. When I spoke near the belly, internal prodding would begin, as though he wanted to get out and find where my voice was coming from. It was the same when other familiar voices spoke nearby: there would be renewed wriggling when he heard well-known tones. One day on the train Jas and bub were quietly sitting, until a baby on the train starting screaming. Immediately, blueberry started wriggling about, as if in response to the crying baby, as if he could sense another little one near and wanted to get out and help. Or play!

*Week 24

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.