It took me about four or five weeks to get from from discovering I was pregnant to saying the words “I am pregnant”.

Which is not to say I didn’t know. I did. I found out on May 11th, the day before my birthday, and on the first day of a two week mixture of holiday and work. I found out in a hotel room in San Francisco, the day before I had arranged to have a huge meal with friends involving a lot of cocktails (you can’t drink cocktails so much when pregnant, that much I knew) and lots of raw fish (ditto on the raw fish). For my birthday. I was also meant to do a 12k race a few days later.

And then I found out, the day before my birthday. It wasn’t at all expected, but it wasn’t bad news. It wasn’t planned, but it certainly wasn’t unwelcome. It was just a shock. It was not something we thought was going to happen. It just wasn’t.

The first magic pisstick that told me so was the biggest shock. When My Beloved returned to the hotel room bearing burritos I was so consumed with sobbing and shock I could only gesticulate at the en suite. He, being My Beloved, took it in his stride, suggesting we have our burritos, then process the information. Suddenly discovering that you’re incubating human life is no reason to waste a good burrito (he was right about this. On the matter of burrito etiquette he is rarely wrong).

We ate our burritos. I cried some more, then went to sleep. Then I urinated on another stick, it was just as unequivocal as the first one, I gibbered some more, then cried some more, then felt unwell, then went to sleep. You could copy and paste those last 15 words over and over again for the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, basically. But more of that later.

The next few days were a blur. It was going to be more than two weeks till I got home and could go to see the doctor (I had great faith in the fact that going to the doctor was going to do something, but, again, more on that later…), so I drifted through the holiday things and social engagements I’d been hard-planning for weeks, thinking of nothing but this new situation, and what it meant, and what it was going to mean.

And I couldn’t really tell anyone, because you just don’t, and I couldn’t let on that anything was amiss, because you can’t (it’s in the rules, apparently) and so I drifted on, being vacant in all dealings with the friends I’d come to see, vague and ineffectual in the work that I’d come to do, slow and sluggish in the race we’d come to run, and the rest of the time sleeping when I could, and feeling weirded out and generally unwell.

And I couldn’t say, even to my Beloved, the words “I am Pregnant”. I could say things like “I peed on sticks and they were positive”. Or “Can you pick up some of those vitamins that people might take in a pre-natal situation?” or “I don’t think people eat soft-boiled eggs when they’re pregnant.”.

But never could My Beloved make me put the words “I”, “am” and “pregnant” in the same sentence. I couldn’t make myself do it either. It was too much. If I said it out loud, it made it a fact, and if I accepted it as a fact, I didn’t know what I was going to do if it then went away.

As soon as we arrived back in the UK, I went straight to the doctor. I had been expecting wise words. A diagnosis. A prescription that would detail exactly how I should be feeling and behaving and reacting. And, just as a friend had warned me, when I walked in and said “I appear to be a little bit pregnant” (Yup - still couldn’t say it), all the doctor said was: “Ok!”, and handed over a card directing me to the midwifery centre who would deal with the rest.

And that was it.

So when I got home, I phoned to make an appointment with the midwife. I spoke to the receptionist for at least four minutes. According to My Beloved, who was in the room, I managed not to say the word ‘Pregnant’ once. Or “Baby”. Or “Expecting”. How I managed to make an appointment at all, I have no idea.

I’ve said it since, by the way. I’ve said it a good number of times by now. Acceptance, however, is a more difficult first step to take than I ever would have expected. It’s terrifying. But I eventually had to stand up and say it so I could get on with the next step.
That’s right: My name’s Anna, and I am pregnant.

The bad thing about freelancing (one of the bad things about freelancing, I can make you a full list, if you like) is that there’s no such thing as holiday.

Unless you live some kind of crazily organised life where you derive some kind of pleasure from filling out holiday forms, submitting them to yourself, and then approving or denying your own requests, depending on the kind of day you’re having that day, there is no such thing as ‘holiday’ time.

On the other hand, the GOOD thing about freelancing (or one of the good things, there are many, I can write you a list if you like) is that you can theoretically do it anywhere. So, theory has it: everywhere is a potential office. I could, in theory, go anywhere that had internet, discharge my work in as many hours in each day as it took, and spend the rest doing relaxing, calming, holiday things. So while there’s no such thing as a holiday, there’s also no reason why you can’t be on holiday AND work if you’re freelance enough to be mobile.

Which sounds brilliant.

In theory.

In practice, however, this is made impossible by The Internet Factor: the fact that everyone SAYS they have internet available – or, even more enticingly, ’complimentary wifi!” - which makes you think you’ll be able to work, but actually turns out to mean:

1) We’ve got the internet here in the office at hotel reception, haven’t we Dave? Therefore we are a ‘Hotel with internet’, right? Oh, I’ll just put that on the advert, it’s probably true.

2) Saying ‘Wifi’ makes us feel exciting and modern. We aren’t sure what it means, but it sounds very impressive. We think it will make important people like us more, and want to stay in our hotel.

3) Someone installed ‘the internet’ in a nearby house, and you can occasionally pick up a
signal in the East Wing of the hotel, if they’ve forgotten to put a password on it.

4) We HAVE internet at the hotel, provided by our TV/Phone provider. We only got the most basic package, though, so it is so slow you’d be better off walking to see the person you wanted to email, and just telling them whatever it was you had to say. Yes, even if they’re in Canada.

5) We actually do have the internet at the hotel. However, even though it comes bundled with the TV/Phone, we’ve discovered that people will pay £20 for 24 hours of it, so that’s what you’ll have to pay… before discovering that it’s so slow that you’d be better off etc etc Canada.

So what was meant to be a part holiday, part work, turns into a constant state of sitting in a hotel room, balancing at the end of the bed, waving your laptop around because you could have SWORN you got a wifi signal there two minutes ago, finding one, and then trying to get one tiny thing sent before… losing it all completely, and having to start from scratch.

This happened to me in the East Midlands last week. In a country hotel that was very pretty, and in lovely grounds (I believe) and a very picturesque little historic village (I noted, in a couple of dashes around it between sitting, swearing at my computer and then politely asking the front desk if they could possibly kick their internet box… again). I had worked like fury beforehand so that I’d only have a few hours of work to do in these two days, and was going to do a bit of holidayish relaxinging. In reality, the whole time was spent trying to do those very few hours. It wasn’t very relaxing. It was mainly the opposite.

Sometimes, I miss the time when I would shut down my computer, leave a desk, and walk out of a building for some days, or weeks on end, knowing that work wasn’t going to start again until the moment I stepped back through the doors.

But then I turn over and go back to sleep for half an hour, and remember not to miss it so much after all.
Everything has its plusses and minuses, doesn’t it?

Well, apart from hotel internet. That’s mainly minuses. That’s just whack*.

(more…)

In order to slip through spam filters and moderation checks, spam commenters have, of late, taken a turn for the decidedly earnest.

I see them, as the occasional one falls through a gap in the net and into my inbox.

Sometimes they are long and involved, making some passing reference to a word or two in the post above them, and then linking the commenter’s name brazenly to some dreadful product or service.

Other times they are short and complimentary, in the hope that the owner of the site will approve them because they are kind about the post, and not notice that they are linking back to some dreadful kind of pharmaceutical porn.

Sadly for the Spammers of Spammy Spamspam Ltd, I do always notice. I would, however, like to take the opportunity for posting such a glowing piece of complimentary comment as this:

“Merely want to say that this is invaluable, and moving. I found this very important. Thanks for taking your time to write this.”

Which was very, very nice of them to say.

And particularly as it was on a post called ‘Flappy flappy fish-hand’.
Which is many things, but invaluable, moving, or important, it is not.

This is what happens when someone empties an entire loaf of bread onto the beach in Brighton - no, wait, it was Hove, Actually - on a windy day.

Bear in mind these gulls are ENORMOUS. Small children were running for the hills. It was gull armageddon. Gullmageddon.
Save yourselves.

I had been very worried in the weeks approaching the first scan (the first twelve weeks I will come back to later, as it was driving me mad not to be able to write about it then, I just thought I should post some pictures in case anyone hasn’t picked up on the news yet). Very, very worried indeed. Nothing in particular had given me reason to be - I was just convinced that something had gone silently wrong and, as can happen, the 12-week scan was going to be the point at which I found out.

I was crying as soon as I lay down on the scanning table thing. Before, possibly. I can’t even remember. I was just crying. From rootless anxiety, nothing else. Still, it’s a kind of anxiety that no one in the world can persuade you is completely rootless. But more of that another post. And honestly: don’t go comforting me - it was seven weeks ago. I’m not worried about it now.

Then the ultrasound technician put her magic whoojamaflip on my stomach, and said “Your baby is just fine”. And then I cried a whole lot more, but in a happy way. Me crying at three different things in ten minutes was not unusual at this point in time, however. Not remotely. A day later, and I was crying as hard about the DVD player not working.

She swung the monitor round so we could see. And we saw. A small shape, kicking, and flipping and turning this way and that. I had always been under the impression that a foetus, at this point, just lay there and grew. And, when necessary, would lie still and happily pose for photos. The thing hanging out in my uterus had other ideas. It had no inclination to stay still at all. Least of all for pictures.

Regardless, at the end of the session (once it had been established that not only did the flipping thing inside me had two arms, two legs, and, luckily, a head, but that there was only one of them in there. Which was good, because, frankly, one is enough for now) they presented us with some photos. And then told us to give them a fiver for them, because, y’know, they’ve already proved it’s alive and well, if we want to get all sentimental about it later on, that’s not their department.

We did. Want to get all sentimental about it later on. About this, picture number one, in which you see my little parasite looking for all the world like a potato. Doesn’t JUST look like a potato to me, of course. Sit here and look at it with me, and I will point out the spinal chord, the dark fluttering heart, the legs, the arms, the fingers. On the potato.

I cannot deny that it looks like a potato to most everyone else. These pictures have always looked like potatoes to me, when other people have showed them to me. Like monochromatic blobs, dark shapes hovering over lighter shapes - the only sense being the sense that you’re told is there, rather than that you can see yourself.

I now realise that the pictures people were showing me were not the ones as I was looking at. When they showed them, they saw the little flipping live thing that they’d seen for the first time at that scan. They had been seeing what I now see when I look at these 12-week scan pictures. The not-a-potato potato.

Or, in the case of the third picture in the strip, when the little show-off turned to face the front, and stared straight down the ultrasound monitor at us, something else entirely.
It was a disarming moment.

Mainly because (tip your head to the left) it looks like an alien.

An ACTUAL, Area 51-style grey alien. With the long head, the huge eyes, the tiny body, the… well, it’s just an alien. A little, helpless, demanding, stomach-dwelling, potato-alien. My potato-alien. Ours.

If there is one thing I am proud of, apart from the two legs, two arms, one head thing (well done, little parasite, well done), it is that this child of My Beloved and I is showing strong early promise in the ‘comedy photo’ department. Good old genetics.

It is a beautiful summer, this summer, when it pulls its finger out and remembers that summer is meant to be a season of warm breezes and sunshine and hot days, mild nights and the occasional thunderstorms.

The other night, it was too hot in the house. We took a walk down to the seafront, a few streets away, where the wind would be more windy and the air would be more breathable.

It is summer. It is the seaside. The place is full of holidaymakers.

The holidaymakers, I suddenly remembered, as we walked down toward the beach, are all drunk. At least, the ones wandering around at 11.30pm are. I tend to forget this. I think because generally until about five months ago, if I was wandering about at that time of night I’d be mildly pissed too, so wouldn’t notice. But now, in my new parasite-induced puritan state, suddenly I notice everyone being drunk far more than ever before.

And everyone by the sea, as far as I could see, was cheerfully, holidayingly, drunk. There were some giggling drunks, and some cuddling drunks, and some quietly drinking tired drunks, sitting on the beach, looking out at the breaking waves.

On the bandstand, there were two happy, soppy-looking drunks. The bandstand is an ornate, Victorian, singularly romantic place, and these two, a man and a woman, caught in a tight embrace, seemed to be making the most of it. I think the male one was proposing. It certainly looked like the kind of thing someone might do at that moment, in the moonlight, on the bandstand, by the sea.

“OY!”
There was a shout from the other end walkway that leads the promenade to the bandstand. The embracing couple turned around, proposer and his love. It seemed the angry drunk, swaying and pointing at the end of the walkway, was addressing them. It also seemed that he wanted to fight them.

“COME ON ‘EN!!! I’LL TAKE YOU BOAF ON!”
He beckoned, apparently willing to fight both the lanky floppy-haired gentleman and his tiny tired soppy new fiancee, if they wanted to.

They didn’t seem to want to.

“OY! YOU WANT A BIT DO YOU?!?”

They did not seem to want a bit.

“I’LL FUCKING CREAM YOU! THE PAIR-A YUZ.”

Not wanting to get creamed, they seemed to be trying to think of a dignified and relaxed-looking way off a bandstand that’s 18-feet off the ground. Every drunk still possessing the power of rational thought within earshot (and my beloved, who was empathetically sober), stood to attention, ready to run to the aid of these poor romantic soon-to-be-martyrs.

Except there was no need.

The pair shuffled down the walkway toward the unreasonably aggressive proposal-heckler, and after a couple of awkward looking shoves on the monster’s part, and a couple of reasoning-looking lines from the romantic man, the confrontation ended. And not in violent death, either, like everyone expected. The Angry Drunk put his arms around the Romantic drunk and embraced him in a long, warm hug.

And then they parted, and went their separate ways. Silently, happily, slightly weavingly.

I do hope that that WAS a proposal, because if it was, it would be one of the more interesting proposal stories that get told. “And then someone threatened to kill us… and then we lived happily ever after.”

Me: “I mean, isn’t it just AMAZING? I’m incubating a thing that is 50% me, and 50% you. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it remarkable?”

My Beloved: “Yes. Although…”

Me: “Sorry? ‘Although’?!?”

My Beloved: “It be even MORE remarkable if it was 40% me, 40% you, and 20% goldfish. Or something.”

Me: “Brilliant. Thanks for that.”