Fits in your handbag

I realise that comparing foetuses to inanimate objects is meant to drive home just how big/small they are, but I’d rather not visualise a tube of lipstick with fingernails that swallows and moves about on its own in my uterus (consequently as big AS A GRAPEFRUIT, goodbye weekend breakfast). No thank you, helpful pregnancy newsletter - you can take that analogy right back to your editorial team and tell them where they can shove their tube of peach-fuzz-covered lipstick (in their uterus, apparently).

So at ten weeks, I think I’ve possibly processed the significance of what’s taking place. Gone are the hazy, intermittent conjectures of the first few weeks, and even the queasy foreboding of the last few. Someone at work finally jolted me from my protective shell of misery, simply by asking: Is this your first?

I had to roll that statement around in my fist a little, to appreciate its weight (the approximate heft of an apple). My first pregnancy, my first antenatal experience, my first foray into that brave new world where things stop being about Me or about Him or about Us for as long as it will take to integrate this new...

And that’s where I get stuck. New what? Attachment? Accoutrement? Thing That Will Be More Significant Than A Pet But Is Not Yet Anything? Cosmetic by Estee Ovaries?

I just don’t know.

But last night, I dreamt that a supermarket clerk was scanning my belly with that thing that scans bar codes? And I could see the little gaffer, and felt both elation (a baby!) and fear (a checkout?!).

So my subconscious seems to be topping me up where I fall short of complete awareness on this particular subject. I wish my analogies would hurry up and get here though.

Getting pregnant and giving birth are the two things that have always wigged me out. It’s why I had to turn off my mind in the same way I do when I book a plane ticket on an overseas flight. Once you commit, there’s no going back. It’s something we’ve both wanted since we met and fell in love, and no amount of fear is going to get in our way.