(New) Life Begins At 40: Month Seven
Month seven is the beginning of the third trimester, otherwise known as ‘there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but good G-d, this tunnel is long’.
There are some echoes of my early pregnancy, particularly a return to form as an emotional wreck. I cried reading the text of a baby blessing ceremony (justifiable, although I was at work); I cried watching First Dates; I cried during an argument with a hand puppet over breakfast. S has a young daughter from his previous marriage, and the hand puppets are mainly for her benefit. The hand puppets need to learn how to shut their traps at this sensitive time.
People are still telling me how neat my bump is, so I’d been congratulating myself on not getting too whale-like during pregnancy. Imagine my crash back to earth when I sat on S’s lap one evening. “Ouff!” he exclaimed. “This isn’t like is used to be,” he stuttered. “Can you get off please?” I shuffled off moodily before his face turned completely purple and then I spent the rest of the evening researching postnatal weight loss.
After a successful scan, we started baby shopping. S, a petrolhead, applied the same technique to buggy shopping as he does to car shopping. I sat down in the shop and enjoyed a nice cup of decaf tea while S discussed alloy wheels and suspension with the sales person. Expect to see our buggy on a forthcoming edition of Top Gear.
We started our antenatal course this month, the content of which has been comparable with Nightmare on Elm Street. Our admittedly lovely and informative teacher keeps showing us lifesize pictures of naked women giving birth, boobs akimbo and faces contorted in pain. I’m not sure this constitutes motivational speaking. I left the first two sessions shellshocked and wondering if it was too late to enlist a surrogate. I thought I was the only mum-to-be who was freaking out until I chatted with the others – everyone is terrified and wondering what they’ve let themselves in for. Bring on the horror show!
