Life's Swell

31 weeks

I am beginning to feel like a beach ball. Turn me on one side and you could easily roll me down a hill: one big round ball with little arms and legs waving about. My father says you can see me coming before I get round the corner. I am frightened that people are going to start calling me Alex "The Barrell" Gray.

I'm not just swelling at an alarming rate round the middle, my ankles are like slabs of meat with podgy little toes poking out. Apparently there's a term for this – "Cankles". The word attempts to capture the phenomenon of calves running straight into feet, ankles having completely disappeared. The fact that someone has actually come up with a name for it doesn't offer much comfort.

I've been suffering from "cankles" for a while but now the swelling has spread to my hands. Not only can I no longer wear my wedding ring, I am now also suffering, thanks to the swelling, from repetitive strain injury in my knuckles and wrists. People are going to think I'm an arthritic single mother. And it's pretty inconvenient for someone who does a lot of typing for a living.

What's the purpose of all this swelling? I can understand that BabyG needs plenty of cushioning around the belly but why hands and feet have to join in I have no idea. It's getting such an effort to lug this swollen body around that I am starting to entertain dark thoughts about stealing the little old lady across the road's mobility scooter that she rides to the shops in just to give my poor legs a break.

Remember Violet Beauregarde, from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory? She's the kid that blows up into a giant blueberry and has to be wheeled into the juicing room before she explodes. It's a story that's just a bit too close for comfort.

The World's Most Boring

There's no shortage of places to go to for advice when pregnant. In fact, there are at least a million books published on the subject, a million pages dedicated to the subject on the Internet and the stuff made of Old Wive's tales that you will hear about over and over again.

So one of the things you know years before your baby is even a twinkle in your eye is that you will undoubtedly suffer weird and wonderful food cravings. Expectant mothers wait and see whether it will be herrings with ice-cream, gherkins and jam, peanut butter with vanilla yoghurt or some such other wonderful concoction.

You can imagine my disappointment then to discover that I have the world's most boring food craving – fruit. Oh yes, apart from a brief interlude of wanting cheese and crisp sandwiches at around 10 weeks, I am obsessed with eating fruit. I can't get enough of the stuff. I spend at least half an hour each day preparing a mountainous fruit salad which doesn't last terribly long. And it's not like I'm craving some obscure fruit, just good old everyday supermarket-shelf fruit. I swear I must eat about ten pounds of the stuff every day.

So after watching last night's news bulletin on how what the mother eats during pregnancy affects their baby, I'm starting to worry that I am, in fact, going to give birth to a giant strawberry.

Sleep Academy

29 weeks

She's a clever thing, mother nature. Aside from the fact that I am managing to grow a whole human being inside of me (a bit mind-blowing in itself), mother nature has also put me on a mum-to-be training programme.

It started three months into the pregnancy: I began sleeping quite badly and only managing about one decent night in every four. Now, at nearly six-and-a-half months pregnant, it's gone down to about one decent night in every seven. By the ninth month I expect it to be around one decent night in every 30 days.

Unfortunately, Husband, by virtue of sharing the same bed and being somewhat of a light sleeper, has been thrust into the same sleep academy training programme as me whether he likes it or not, thanks to my thrashing around, kicking covers off, getting up at 2.30am and so on.

So what's mother nature up to? Well, getting us ready for when BabyG arrives, I think. Everyone knows that when the baby comes you get one decent night's sleep in well, every when-Grandma-offers-to-babysit-for-the-night. But even then, you're likely to be lying awake worrying that poor Grandma is being kept awake all night by your offspring.

So the things is, I'm not sure whether mother nature should have started her training sooner and perhaps put me on a more intensive course, because when BabyG actually gets here, realistically, we'll be getting about one decent night's sleep in every 18 years.

Ever Increasing Circles

It may seem odd, but you don't get bigger in pregnancy in the same way as you put on weight. You don't slowly change shape, the inches creeping up on you so that those who see you on a daily basis barely notice it happening. No siree. In my pregnancy I got to bed at night and wake up two inches bigger. It's as if BabyG sneaks out in the middle of night and loads up on cream cakes and and greasy fry-ups.
This morning, my mother's eyes flew wide open in alarm when she saw that Alex had gone to bed a certain size and had appeared the next morning an altogether different size. Husband, meanwhile, has been known to comment "Morning fat lass".
The thing is, I've still got three months to go. What am I going to look like if this rate of growth continues? Just how big am I going to get? And, more importantly – as it grows increasingly difficult to reach down to my feet – How The Hell Do I Get It Out?

Remember Me?

28 weeks

As my bump gets bigger (I'm now 28 weeks), I have had to get used to being upstaged by my own body. It reminds me of my wedding day when new husband and I were totally upstaged by a family of elephants during the official photos. Everybody stood dutifully around watching the photography, until some bright spark came down and told them that there was a family of elephants crossing the river in front of the lodge. You've never seen a place empty so fast. All that were left were me, new husband, the photographer and a plethora of abandoned G&Ts on the lawn.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the bump. Visitors, family mostly, fly immediately to the bump and engage in a meaningful but alas, totally one-sided, conversation. Then they prod, blow raspberries, kiss, stroke, and rub the bump. BabyG on the other hand, as readers of previous blogs will know, ignores them completely.

The thing is, to me this is still just my stomach. Albeit my stomach with something the size of a beach ball in it. I doubt anyone would have entertained the thought of blowing raspberries or kissing my stomach beforehand. And what's with the rubbing? Do they think there's a genie in there or something?
I stand and smile indulgently at this carry on, but sometimes I feel like saying, "Hi, remember me? I used to be somebody."