On фабрика звозд.

This time you spent the first twelve weeks ignoring the situation, beyond rather bad temperdly giving up the things you are supposed to be giving up and doggedly taking the pills you were supposed to be taking. There wasn’t even the distraction of the novelty of new sensations.

As a result you craved certain types of cheese almost solidly, the only respite being when you felt sick. Luckily, this was quite a lot of the time.

The first scan, of course, was a relief. One head, two arms and legs, complete with the correct number of hands and feet, and, praise be, a heartbeat.

But then your system went quiet. There was no dragging tiredness or nausea anymore to let you know something was going on, just a sudden increase in the amount of milk you were buying, an inexplicable hatred for peanuts, and a cautiously expanding waistline.

And it was starting to worry you. Not the fear for what might be wrong, but the fact that trying not to get too excited for so long so as not to let the fear take over had resulted in you having no particular interest in the proceedings.

Although the second scan was quite a blast. You can see bones, even. Mind you, you are not sure that seeing a small skull grinning back at you was quite the first treasured memory of you baby’s face you really wanted. It was nice to know, though, that the club foot which your Mother had kindly reminded you runs in the family has been avoided this time round.

But then it changed. Then it started kicking. Which, I am here to tell you, is nothing whatsoever like fluttering.

There was this programme you and B once watched in which a character was describing how he was freaked out by his partner’s pregnancy. He kept imagining, he said, that scene from alien where the creature fought itself, quite bloodily, out of its host’s stomach. He had a graphic little mime to accompany the description and everything. You had both always found this quite amusing, but now you suspect that the scene was written by a pregnant woman.

The thing about the kicking is that it isn’t just kicking. There is, of course, something very odd about seeing your stomach jump for reasons which are largely beyond your control. But it’s the wriggling, a sensation that has finally convinced you there is a small independent being crawling around in there that you find particularly disconcerting. And delightful.

You can only hope it doesn’t decide to eat its way out.

So anyway. There it is. You are pregnant. 22 weeks. It’s a boy. Due the end of June.