20 weeks
At 20 weeks, my baby is a banana! I wouldn't be surprised if I was actually having a banana, as I have certainly eaten more than my fair share of them since finding out I'm pregnant. Bananas are, of course, thinner than mangoes (19 weeks), so in my head it means the baby's gone anorexic, but eventually I'll accept it's all about length and not girth and shut up about the fruit and veg thing.
Apparently, at 20 weeks, I'm halfway through my pregnancy. Which would be somewhat of a milestone if it meant that I now have just as long to go as I have already been through, but, as with all pregnancy things, nothing is as it seems. In fact, for the first 2 weeks of my 'pregnancy' I wasn't actually pregnant at all, because pregnancy is counted from the first day of your last period. Confusing much?
A few interesting things happened this week. I finally plucked up the courage to weigh myself. I have put on 8.5lb since becoming pregnant, which is very average, despite feeling rather traumatic. I am the heaviest I have ever been (and I know, I have a long way still to go...) and I feel it! My legs are achingly heavy at the end of the day. The veins in my left leg particularly keep me awake at night in worry - are they on their way to varicose already?
As my bump is still quite small, a lot of this weight must have gone on my boobs, which are quite frankly, impressive. Last week while at work they threatened to escape my vest top and I couldn't help but squeak:
'My boobs are almost touching!'
'Touching what?' my bemused business partner asked.
'Each other!' I said, marvelling at the sight. I have never had cleavage in my life.
From now on, apparently I'm supposed to put on 1lb per week. I told my mum this while merrily stuffing my face over Easter lunch and she told me not to be so ridiculous, because that would mean I would end up putting on another 20lbs, which would make me clinically obese. When she had me and my sister, she apparently put on about half a stone in total and lost it all within three weeks.
I don't think my mum has read the baby books.
I indignantly Googled it in front of her and proved to her that in fact, I am RIGHT and that I could even put on 2lb a week should I feel like it and still be perfectly within the healthy limits. Her reply to this: 'Well, it was all different in my day.' Hmmm.
Bless my mum, but apparently 'in her day', no one needed pregnancy pillows or pregnancy anything really, she wore her normal clothes quite happily until she was about six months' gone, there was no need for prenatal yoga or any of that nonsense, you didn't even go to the doctor till you'd missed two periods (!!), women were TOUGHER godammit, and certainly NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND had a home birth. My mum has made her pregnancies sound like nothing more remarkable than having a bit of a cold, and I fear we may fall out before I come to full term, when I fully expect to be reclining in a wheelchair groaning about my 'condition'.
This week, I diagnosed myself, with the help of Dr Google, with Pelvic Girdle Pain. At first I thought I had a bit of sciatica (told my mum this and she told me that she got a 'touch of it' but not, of course, until she was overdue) but Dr Google said no, it was a unique pregnancy affliction, whereby your hips hurt because they are basically stretching apart. And they really are! It's so weird how your body can get wider without putting on any fat in the area - but for once the proof's not in the pudding (I've mostly gone off them) but in the fact it's now quite a struggle to yank my pyjamas above my thighs. Sniff.
Anyway Dr Google prescribed a exercise ball, and so this has been added to the list of random new things in my home, along with the pregnancy pillow, a Lush massage bar designed for pregnant women, some soothing leg cream and a new yoga mat. The yoga mat was technically unnecessary as I already had one but matches the exercise ball. So y'know. I have been bouncing about on my exercise ball quite happily and think it may even play a role in the birth.
I suppose, more than anything else, this pregnancy lark has taught me how utterly vain I am. It's all me me me at the moment - how I'm feeling, what I look like... I feel a bit ashamed, but I find myself preoccupied with all the physical twinges and changes and not thinking much about the baby itself.
I hope that after the next scan (mine's a bit late, at nearly 22 weeks) I will stop worrying about the fact that I just look podgy really, not pregnant, and instead focus on the poor wee mite who's busy drinking its own amniotic fluid and learning how to breathe and forming its first poo and growing teeth buds and doing all sorts of miraculous things like that.
And I thought I was having a hard time. As O said, it's a good thing we don't remember anything that happens to us when in the womb...