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...