Yes, it’s another pregnancy post. I promise I’ll think of something else to write about at some point, there’s just not much else on my brain this week.

The weirdest thing about this whole having a baby thing is not, as I expected it to be, the idea of actually having the baby (call me naive, but while I’m doing lots of preparing for it, I do tend to think that my body knows what it’s doing. It managed to get a baby up there and grow it successfully thus far. The baby has to come out somehow. And so it will). The weird bit is the ‘being a parent’ thing that comes after.

It struck me, the manifestation of the weird thing, while buying a second hand plate for toast and stuff at a car boot sale. “Someday” I thought “Someone will say ‘I used to eat toast off that plate’, referring to their childhood.” It might be Someones Favourite Plate. The only plate they will eat off. Or the plate they want to take away with them when they move out of home.

The things I buy for around the house now, because they are just things that we happen to need, or I happen to like, or match something else that I have… they’re not only part of my life: they’re dressing the set for someone else’s childhood. It makes everything I pick up feel different. I look at things in my hand that I’m about to buy and realise that one day, they might form a major part of someone’s first memory. And that’s only the kitchen cleavers. I’m kidding.
It’s also the knives.
No, I’m still kidding.

But then I start to expand that thought process to everything else. Every decision I take, the child will imagine is being made from place of infallible parent-ness, I presume. And I know now that it won’t be. It will just be me, or My Beloved, or both of us at once, making decisions in the same chaotic way that we always do. They will just be ‘the thing that we end up doing’ or ‘where we’ll go on holiday as it’s cheap and available with only a week’s planning’ or ‘the way that Christmas has panned out this year’. And yet to someone else, these will appear to be actual well-thought-through decisions that are real, and parenty, and thus unquestionable.
I find this hilarious.

It’s not that there’ll be someone else always around. That much I’m getting used to, with the idea that ‘we’ will suddenly not just mean My Beloved and I , or even Me, My Beloved and the cats, it will simply mean “Me, My Beloved and Doozer (and the cats)” instead.

It’s the fact that to Doozer, we will be parents. We will be the ultimate grown-ups.

Little does Doozer know that we’re not really grown-ups at all.
We’re just the future-nostalgia caretakers. Buyers of toast plates. Curators of made-up Christmas traditions.
And we just happen to be those ‘parent’ things at the same time.

At least, that’s what the official line is.

A nurse who hadn’t asked My Beloved his name the other day referred to him with great familiarity and only mild officiousness as ‘Daddy’ all the way through the appointment. “Is Daddy comfortable?”, “Can I get Daddy a glass of water?”, “Bye now, Daddy!”

That is the second most weird thing about being pregnant. Random women start referring to your partner as ‘Daddy’ in public, and you don’t say a word. I have a feeling that after that experience, he might say it is the weirdest.

I am home.

After seven weeks away (was it seven? Eight? Whatever, it was long) I am home.

Some things of note:

I think my sofa has got considerably deeper while I have been away
I can think of no other reason why it is so very difficult to get out of it now.

Watching nature documentaries has become harder
I am pretty sure there didn’t used to be so much bloody crying involved in watching documentaries about nature and animals and things. There is now quite a lot of crying. Mainly when one cute animal is hunting down, killing and eating another cute animal, then there is a seemingly endless amount of crying, because either way, one of the cute things is going to die - either of being eaten, or starving to death - and crying is the only possible outcome of that right now.

NB: I did try suggesting that perhaps the food chain could be rearranged so that things only killed and/or fed on things less cute than themselves, which might be less sad, but My Beloved suggested that some of the more unappealing dictators and philosophers had come up with similar theories, and things hadn’t ended very well for them, so I might not want to pursue that idea too firmly. Which, of course, made me cry.

Everyone has an opinion
I knew this already, of course, it’s one of the most noticeable and nicest and also most annoying things about being pregnant - everyone has an opinion, and everyone is convinced they are correct. That the thing that they bought, or the choice that they made, or the book that they followed or, well, whatever - is the best one. And that is nice, and really helpful, because they want to tell you about it.

But then sometimes (sometimes quite often) they are all very nice about it and preface giving you their opinion by telling you that you shouldn’t feel pressured or judged by all the opinions that people might throw at you on the web… before telling you what their way of doing things is, and how it is the very best way, nay, the ONLY way, and if you don’t agree then frankly they can’t help you, you’re wrong, possibly negligent and/or irresponsible (anyone who loved a baby would do exactly what they chose, no?) and perhaps you’re best left to those common internet advice throwers anyway.

It is the way of people who need to validate their choices by making them The Best Choice with no reasonable alternative.
And that is not very helpful after all.

Doozer gets hiccups. A lot
Sometimes, Doozer just gets hiccups for apparently no reason, sometimes Doozer appears to get hiccups because I’ve drunk something cold or eaten something hot. And while I was kind of getting used to cold drinks causing kicks or punches, the weirdness of something I imbibe giving SOMEONE ELSE hiccups is just too, too odd.

Anna, the Red Nosed Pregnant
Spicy food is only one of the allergies that have changed or increased during pregnancy. I’m also using an asthma inhaler for the first time ever, but that’s another story - the spicy food thing is far, far more distressing to me. I love spicy food. But now, I eat it, and ten minutes later, my nose goes red. Nothing else, just my nose. And a startling, glow-in-the-dark red at that. Like a drunk in a comic book. This is one of the physical symptoms they don’t warn you about. Not that they could, of course, because everyone is different.

No antihistamines, no nothing
Of course, I can’t take antihistamines for the allergy things, and I can’t take melatonin as I usually would for the horrible jetlag I am currently having. Why? Because every drug out there says “Do not use if pregnant”, or “ask your doctor before using if pregnant”. Why? Well, naturally, it’s quite difficult to get accurate research data on pregnant women.

Because you’d have to test on actual pregnant women. And “Would you mind risking irreparable harm to your unborn child to ensure that, somewhere down the line, a woman in Brighton could avoid a hot nose? Or, in fact, would you might risking that for anything at all?” is a difficult sell, research-wise. So I am currently not only drinking far less for a longer period than in living memory, I’m also taking far fewer prescription drugs. Apart from drugs that have something to do with gas, which we can talk about another time*.

(*Which we will never talk about. Ever.)

Being a better Pregnant
It is nice to be home. My Beloved is being very good at chastising me when I am being stubborn or ridiculously independent (which is often) and stopping me from doing things like trying to carry heavy suitcases upstairs by shouting helpful things like “You are a RUBBISH pregnant! Put that down! Leave it for me! Be a better Pregnant.” until I concede and happily go and sit on the sofa to have a cold drink and see if I can’t give myself two people’s hiccups at once.

Nothing else has happened
I went to Canada, it was interesting, educational, enjoyable and instructional.
I went to San Francisco, it was lovely, and busy, and beautiful and heart-filling.
And then I came home.
And now I am here, and, while still working, I am starting to read books, have classes, order nappies, put together weird bits of furniture, fold onesies and count down the weekends until new year when - there or thereabouts - we will stop being two people and two cats, and start being three people, one cat, and one quivering-furball-under-the-sofa instead.

It is very, very exciting.
And very, very good to be home.

(I still have jetlag, though).