I know, it’s only 7 and a bit weeks so I don’t have to worry about breaking the big news just yet. And yet, obviously, I am fretting. Predominantly, I am worried about how to phrase it. Pregnancy seems to surrounded by such noxiously coy euphemisms that even announcing the fact is a potential minefield of clichés. The phrase I hate above all others is “I fell pregnant”, with its archaic connotations of fallen women and the unfortunately image of tripping headlong into parenthood – although I guess that’s exactly what we have done. I also loath ‘knocked up’ because the term will be forever linked with Seth Rogen’s smug, sweaty face in my mind. I hate ‘bun in the oven’ because it’s so twee – a Hallmark greeting card announcement, likewise ‘in the pudding club.’ There are few phrases more sickeningly precious than ‘the patter of tiny feet.’ ‘Eating for two’ just seems like a complacent justification for being a lard arse (no doubt I’ll be rethinking my aversion to that one once I am a lard arse.) I don’t mind ‘up the duff’ because it’s the kind of you can imagine Rita Tushingham saying in some quirky 1960s British comedy movie. That said, I can’t imagine the words actually coming out of my mouth. Probably best to stick to the basic ‘I’m pregnant’.
Then, the next problem is how to refer to the infant-to-be? I don’t even particularly like the word ‘baby’. I’m screwed.
Sunday 31 January 2010
Friday 29 January 2010
Ill-advised things that I did when I didn’t realise I was pregnant:
1Took half a valium
2 Drank a double vodka
3 Ate sushi
4 Ate street food from a fly-blown, filth-strewn gutter in South East Asia
5 Ate more sushi, this time from a street stall in a fly-blown, filth-strewn gutter in South East Asia
6 Drank wine that tasted like a combination of lighter fluid and jam (not much of this to be honest – even the most dedicated drinker must drawn the line somewhere).
7 Ate braised liver and grilled chicken’s hearts (yum)
8 Shellfish – let’s not even go there.
9 Bungy jumping
10 Paragliding
11 Rode on a Hello Kitty Ferris wheel perched precariously on top of a giant Asian super-mall – this might not sound scary but in fact it was – you feel that all the effort had gone into the cute! factor and very little into the engineering and maintenance.
12 Took an extremely long haul flight
Ok, so a couple of these aren’t true but you get the picture. I’m like the poster girl for irresponsible early pregnancy behaviour. I might as well have been snacking on used petri-dishes. Subsequently I have done my utmost to stick to the rules but every time I think I have it covered, I discover there is some other innocuous thing that puts my pregnancy in peril. Parma ham? Seriously? Ooops…
2 Drank a double vodka
3 Ate sushi
4 Ate street food from a fly-blown, filth-strewn gutter in South East Asia
5 Ate more sushi, this time from a street stall in a fly-blown, filth-strewn gutter in South East Asia
6 Drank wine that tasted like a combination of lighter fluid and jam (not much of this to be honest – even the most dedicated drinker must drawn the line somewhere).
7 Ate braised liver and grilled chicken’s hearts (yum)
8 Shellfish – let’s not even go there.
9 Bungy jumping
10 Paragliding
11 Rode on a Hello Kitty Ferris wheel perched precariously on top of a giant Asian super-mall – this might not sound scary but in fact it was – you feel that all the effort had gone into the cute! factor and very little into the engineering and maintenance.
12 Took an extremely long haul flight
Ok, so a couple of these aren’t true but you get the picture. I’m like the poster girl for irresponsible early pregnancy behaviour. I might as well have been snacking on used petri-dishes. Subsequently I have done my utmost to stick to the rules but every time I think I have it covered, I discover there is some other innocuous thing that puts my pregnancy in peril. Parma ham? Seriously? Ooops…
Sunday 24 January 2010
January 8th, 2010
The first indication that Something Is Up is not so much the elusive period (chalked up as a body clock anomaly or, more likely, a consequence of my complete inability to add up), as the fact that I keep falling over. Suddenly, I’m eating the pavement on a regular basis. I trip over plant pots, kerb stones and – several times a day – my own feet. We even get a discount from a guest house after I plough through their floral display and end up with my clogs waving in the breeze and my bum in the gutter. This makes some of our tougher mountain walks something of a challenge.
My theory is that my swollen boobs have disrupted my centre of gravity. I ask the husband – “Do they look bigger?” He gets that glazed, rabbit in the headlights look. This kind of a question is a minefield of potential wrong answers. “No” means he clearly doesn’t pay enough attention to my bangers to notice the difference. “Yes” and there’s always the risk that I’ll counter with something mad like “…so you think I’ve put on weight? Is that it? Is it?” In the end he says, very reasonably, that they maybe a little bigger, but of course, he’s not the one wearing them. I’ll say. If he was sporting these throbbing pillows of agony, you can bet we wouldn’t be anywhere near a mountain.
My theory is that my swollen boobs have disrupted my centre of gravity. I ask the husband – “Do they look bigger?” He gets that glazed, rabbit in the headlights look. This kind of a question is a minefield of potential wrong answers. “No” means he clearly doesn’t pay enough attention to my bangers to notice the difference. “Yes” and there’s always the risk that I’ll counter with something mad like “…so you think I’ve put on weight? Is that it? Is it?” In the end he says, very reasonably, that they maybe a little bigger, but of course, he’s not the one wearing them. I’ll say. If he was sporting these throbbing pillows of agony, you can bet we wouldn’t be anywhere near a mountain.
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