It's a miracle. Sing hosanna! I have finally stopped feeling sick after six… count 'em… six whole months. The feeling of being permanently moored to the deck of a dinghy has finally vanished. I am ecstatic. I am beginning to feel 'normal' again - whatever normal is when your front view is beginning to resemble a spacehopper. I am suddenly fuelled by a surge of energy and want to clean my home from top to bottom - surely some mistake - dusting every nook and cranny… “Out vile dirt!”
Anyway, I'm glad the whole Christmas lark is over. I felt so incredibly sick on Christmas day that I had to lie down as cooking a turkey was out of the question. The next day I felt too awful to visit the rellies so my partner went on his own. Bet they just thought I was making excuses… Next Christmas will be really exciting with a little person to share it with…
I have just phoned mum to ask her whether she got any stretch marks. Apparently they just look like red scratch marks while you're pregnant but then fade to silvery lines all over your tummy (not good with a bikini). The good news is that mum says she didn't get a single one. The bad news is that I'd just forked out for the world's most expensive pregnancy massage oil.
I am feeling hyper sensitive at the moment. I cannot watch or read anything on television that involves babies or children coming to harm. I just cry buckets. I'm wondering whether I should organise a sponsored blub-athon since I started weeping during The Simpsons the other night.
I am also starting to feel incredibly out of breath since my heart and lungs are having to do so much extra work. I am so happy to have lost that feeling of nausea but I shouldn't have counted my chickens because it now seems to have been replaced by acute heartburn. Every time I eat anything I get an unpleasant burning sensation just behind my breastbone. I seem to get through a whole pack of Rennies in one evening. Someone told me that there's an old wife's tale about women getting heartburn because their baby is very hairy. Great - I'm obviously about to give birth to an ape.
I still cannot feel my baby much and my midwife is getting rather concerned. She comes round often and we listen to the baby's heart together on the monitor - something I rather like, although it seems to be beating scarily fast. So I lay in the bath tonight and watched my bump for movement - nothing, nada, niente. Then I realised that my belly button had popped out and was jutting forward - the womb puts pressure from behind and out it comes. Not the most attractive thing to happen. Mind you, I've also got a little brown line growing down the centre of my stomach - the linea nigra - and that means there's not that long to go…
