Itchy and scratchy

The morning sickness has for the most part subsided now, it seems, which is a huge relief to everybody. Or at least it would be, if it hadn't been usurped by the dark horse of unbearable pregnancy symptoms: itchiness.

I remember when I was about 12 years old, I lay topless in the sun for too long (I don't know why - I'm not blessed with a Mediterranean complexion, and this sort of behaviour was out of character for me even then) and was rewarded with a severely sunburnt tummy. Naively, I dealt with this by going for a nice hot bath immediately. By the time I got out of the bath, my tummy's skin was a raging inferno of irritation which brought me as close to insanity as I can remember being. I genuinely remember thinking that this must be what fitting feels like as I vigorously rubbed at least three layers of skin from my poor belly with the towel, in a frenzy suitably accompanied by my own screaming and wailing.

So I do have some sympathy with my wife, who for a week or so now has been suffering the same symptoms, but constantly, and far less discerning about which area of her they focus on. As usual, all I can offer is sympathy and a description of it on the internet, neither of which are very helpful really.

They don't warn you about this one. Knowledgeable people tell us it's nothing to worry about when it happens this early in the pregnancy. But try telling that to the poor lady who spends her nights filing her nails on her own legs instead of sleeping. The only hope is that it will soon stop. I wonder if these trials are biology's way of ensuring parental joy when the baby finally comes out and stops causing all this trouble.

Although apparently it's common for it to cause trouble afterwards as well. I sincerely hope ours doesn't.

Pregnant women can't lift

I may have mentioned that we're moving house soon. As is the nature of these things, we still don't know exactly when this will happen, but are assured that it is imminent. Based on this information, I can only conclude that we will have to move house before finding out when we have done it.

This is really only quite tenuously linked to my wife's pregnancy. It all just adds to the general atmosphere of quiet panic which flavours what will, in retrospect, I am sure, be the happiest and most life changing period of our lives.

One aspect in which the two events are linked is my wife's inability to undergo strenuous activity on account of her condition. It just so happens that all of the strong people we know are either incapacitated or in another country. Thus it has fallen upon me to be uncharacteristically decisive and manly, confidently asserting that I will do everything. People discover unfeasible reserves of might in life threatening situations, so I'm sure I can carry a double bed.

Consequently, I have spent most of this week (off work) putting all our possessions in boxes and carrying the boxes to other places, in a fragile attempt to appear organised and under control about the whole business. All of these illusions were comprehensively shattered about half an hour ago when something in or relating to my spine appears to have snapped quite angrily, and now prevents me from sitting up within ten minutes, let alone carrying a bed.

All of which, as I've said, has very little to do with the pregnancy. I just wanted to have a moan really.

Midwifery is a funny word, isn't it?

We went to see a midwife today. I'm not sure whether to refer to her as "a", "the" or "our" midwife. I'm sure consistency and familiarity are preferred in these things, and she seemed like a nice enough sort, so the chances are we'll be sticking with her, and she with us. Although if we ever actually get to move house and there's an alternative around the corner, it might seem silly not to reconsider. And even if we don't, calling her "ours" seems a bit possessive or something.

I've said quite a lot there about something completely meaningless. Sorry about that.

Anyway. Our midwife was very generous in various ways. She was generous with her questions, and now knows exactly which diseases every member of my wife's extended family has ever suffered (not many, I was relieved to hear, having not previously been so generous myself in this respect). She was generous with her little roll of tape, using about a metre of it to stick some cotton wool to my wife's arm after extracting three separate vials of blood from it (generosity works both ways, you see). She was generous to me, alleviating the awkward silence which abruptly descended upon us as soon as my wife left the room to wee on a stick, by also leaving the room, ostensibly to get me a little leaflet produced by somebody on behalf of dads to be in need of something to look at while their wife is out of the room weeing on a stick. But most of all, she was generous with the reams and reams of stuff she gave us to read, look at, worry about, get free nappies with, and generally be weighed down by on the way home.

All of which will be incredibly helpful, I am sure, if we manage to read a significant fraction of it before the baby is actually born. If I sound ungrateful, that's just the fear talking. One thing I've realised is that the only way to cope with the mounting number of small but persistent things to be afraid of, is to regularly explain to people that I'm a bit scared. That way, by next March, when my nervous breakdown is in full swing, people will say "Bless him - he's been a bit scared since last August, you know." Aware of and comforted by this sympathy, I will in fact no longer be scared of anything - and will perform perfectly each of my paternal duties and obligations. So all this moaning now is a kind of pre-emptive strike.

If not for all of our prior worries and difficulties, this trip to meet our midwife would have been the first medical attention attracted by our pregnancy, which seems a bit odd over two months in. Mind you, the pace quickens as standard from here on in. We have two more scans to look forward to (conducted, I believe, from the outside from now on, which will be beneficial to my wife's comfort), as well as at least eight further rendezvouses (what's the plural of rendezvous?) with our midwife (who is generous with her time).

Now. I don't want to get all political about this. But it would be remiss of me to fail to point out that all of this attention is free of charge on the NHS, not to mention the coupons and promises of allowances and benefits to which we are - to our great relief - entitled upon successful completion of the pregnancy. So all of those reprehensible capitalist idiots in America seeking to cling on to this one of their countless unfair advantages by attacking one of the UK's last surviving beacons to the principle of fairness and compassion can, well, just shut up really.

As a reasonable person, whose sense of empathy extends beyond my own bank statement, I did not need to be personally involved with the NHS to understand what a magnificent - albeit sometimes flawed - institution it is. Without it we would undoubtedly be plunged into debt purely by trying to safely produce a child, and it would be to the benefit of someone who already has a lot of money, but wants more of it. I'm glad we're not having our baby in America.

P.S. My Grandma was a midwife, so while I'm being all emotive I'll dedicate this to her.

Scantastic

I think this will be the most scanned baby in the long and illustrious history of maternity. On 14th September, we're going for our twelve week scan. It will be our fourth. Fancy that.

All is well - the mysterious area of blood is still lurking ominously (you used to get fined £1.50 for that in McDonalds), but we are assured that it is no real threat. Baby him/herself is progressing nicely. At scan number one it was dwarfed by its own yolk sack, which I'm sure you'll understand can be quite embarrassing. By scan number two it was winning the battle with the yolk sack, and had advanced to an impressive 8mm.

Now, we laugh at scan number two's pathetic 8mm. My wife is now incubating an 18mm monster, whose heart was easily discernible, pumping away at 160bpm or something. It's not actually a monster. More of a broad bean really. Which is considerably more baby shaped than the blueberry of which we were previously the proud parents to be.

All this scanning raises an interesting question. If talking to a pregnant belly familiarises baby with the comforting, nurturing tones of a parent's voice, then is our unprecedentedly well documented broad bean destined for a life of vain camera hogging? Have we unwittingly produced an attention seeker? I hope not.

I intended to add a picture of our latest scan to this. This hasn't happened yet because, quite ironically, we need to scan it in first, and I can't be bothered. But I will.

Morning sickness

I can't wait until my wife doesn't have morning sickness anymore. Apparently it's like being really hungover for three months, except you don't get to have the preceding fun. It sounds rubbish. And it doesn't even necessarily end after three months. We refuse to face up to this possibility.

And I'm no help whatsoever. When my wife feels dizzy, bloated and literally sick and tired, all day, almost every day, the best I can offer in terms of respite are words similar to "Oh. Oh dear. Anything I can do to help? No. Sure? OK. What can I get you? Feeling better yet? No? Oh. Oh dear. I well want a cigarette." This doesn't seem to make her feel much better.

Sometimes I gallantly rush to the nearest shop to stock up magazines and chocolate and other romantic, sympathetic things of that nature. Trouble is, I end up eating most of the chocolate and I resent paying £4.70 for a well-bound collection of adverts for special cream that makes fifty year old women look 49 or something. And, if I display too much of this mainly useless gallantry, then baby might have to do without clothes or cots or nappies. Also, chocolates and magazines are a bit of a cliche. And I like to think I'm too discerning to have married a woman who is easily impressed by cliches.

By the way, none of this is supposed to reflect badly on my wife, who is increasingly my hero. I'm just feeling a bit useless. I wish I had one or more of the following: more imagination when on a spontaneous sympathy shopping trip; magical healing powers; a time machine, enabling us to skip to trimester number two.

Cravings

I'm fascinated by the cravings pregnant women get. I keep asking my wife if she's got any yet. I think it's starting to annoy her. And she hasn't yet, that she's aware of. She did really want a Mr Whippy the other day, but she thinks that's just because Mr Whippys are really nice. We went on quite a long and ultimately fruitless expedition in search of one. I hope our failure wasn't some sort of omen.

I wonder if fathers to be get sympathy cravings. About half an hour ago I was struck by sudden thoughts of sushi, and would have rather enjoyed eating some. Is this what cravings feel like?

Of course, the more likely explanation is that I had sushi for lunch and had just done a burp, leading to what I have previously termed a "food memory". But I suppose we'll never know.

One thing is certain: my sympathy belly is developing nicely.

I used to joke that my first two children would be named Smorgasbord and Juxtaposition because they were my two favourite words.

My blog's a Daddy blog

The wife is pregnant, and I think that what I am going to do is to use this previously redundant blog to talk about life as a Daddy to be. I'm not sure how this is going to pan out - I may have nothing to say, I may be unable or unwilling to express it, or I may express sentiment which is unentertaining, uninformative and unimpressive. This is quite likely. However I'll try to be honest, eloquent and amusing and maybe someone will read it and be glad that they did.

The pregnancy is currently somewhere around the six or seven week mark, which I believe makes my progeny about the size of a blueberry. We found out that we were expecting two weeks and two days ago. This is the second time we have found ourselves in this position.

Some background

The first time was last September and it ended in tears after about two weeks (of us knowing about it). I'm not even sure of the medical terminology, but I think it was a missed miscarriage, followed by a week of basically waiting for the failed remains to drop out. That is not a pleasant sentence, so imagine how enjoyable an experience it was. And I am aware now as I was then that this must all have been much, much worse for my wife than it was for me. Ultimately, nothing happened in that week, other than the shedding of a lot of tears, and the guilty resumption of smoking, so my wife then had to go back to the hospital for a D & C, also known as a scrape, which leaves little to the imagination.

The physical and particularly emotional pain that my wife went through during and after this was extreme and long lasting. My own experience was of confusion and bewilderment. In two weeks I had gone from shock and fear through glee and pride to paternal determination and focus. This was as steep an emotional slope as I have ever struggled up, only for it all to be torn away in one unexpected moment.

I would like to say at this point that I'm really not one for self gratifying claims to emotional torment (I'm English), and I feel uncomfortable trying to put all this into words. Furthermore, I'm well aware that many other people have suffered the same and much worse. But I'm hoping it will help me, my wife, and anyone else going through this sort of thing who feels, as we did at times, that they're the only ones. If, like me, you tend to cringe at shameless expression of this nature, then I sympathise, but shall nevertheless continue.

This time

It was my wife's birthday, and also the day before our first wedding anniversary. To celebrate these occasions, and to alleviate some of the stress of imminently moving house (still hasn't happened), we went for lunch with some friends and family. The previous night, we had been to our local pub to drink a lot of beer with some friends before returning home so that I - according to tradition - could fall asleep on the sofa while everyone pointed and laughed at me.

They claim that they don't, but I would. Thus, I assume that they are lying.

So when, just before leaving for lunch, my wife told me she felt a bit funny and had a strange feeling that she might be pregnant, I calmly assured her that she was merely hungover and would feel perfectly normal after a cigarette. After lunch, a pregnancy test disagreed quite strongly with me.

Smoking

Yes. We have both been smokers for many years. During this time neither of us has ever really wanted to quit, and we have both always quite enjoyed it as a frequent and satisfying hobby, despite being very well informed thank you about the considerable health risks. We summoned all our resolve and determination to quit during our short-lived first pregnancy, but wasted no time in taking up the habit when that ended in disaster. It felt at the time like the only consolation available, and we grabbed it eagerly. This tiny drop of relief in an ocean of sorrow (apologies for all nauseating metaphors) made us feel very, very guilty.

You may well be thinking that of course we should feel guilty because smoking is bad for you and may even have played a role in the miscarriage, and you are absolutely right, but have obviously never quit smoking. Or had a miscarriage.

We have, of course, quit again now, and it occurred to me the other day that if we can successfully make that sacrifice for our baby, then we should fear no other challenge presented to us by parenting. Probably quite naive, I know, but I was quite proud of myself at the time.

This time (continued)

In view of our prior disaster, we have been generally shitting ourselves about something going wrong this time. With this in mind, we persuaded our doctor to persuade our hospital to give us an early scan, at 5-6 weeks. This was last week, and imagine our relief upon seeing the 3mm blob indulging in some sort of blurry pulsation which apparently constitutes a heartbeat. Having missed the one, doom-laden scan involved in our first pregnancy, I was obviously overjoyed to be here for this, altogether more happy effort. All was as it should be, we were told.

I have deliberately ended that sentence in an ominous fashion.

Not again

After learning about our first pregnancy, it did not take me long to become overwhelmed by feelings of paternal pride. I was surprised and a bit worried to discover that this didn't happen this time around. I'm sure that this was because of my fear of another miscarriage. Of course I hadn't taken any conscious decision to adopt this guarded, frigid mindset, but it makes sense to me. This probably explains why my overriding reaction when it seemed to be happening again was more detached bewilderment than devastation.

Last Friday, I arrived home from work to find our dog alone in the house. My wife works from home and so is usually there when I get in. nevertheless I was unconcerned enough to have a poo before picking up the phone to see where she was, at which point she walked in the front door with her mum.

I had only seen that look on her face once before, and immediately knew what had happened.

She had been unable to contact me at work that afternoon when she had started bleeding heavily. She had phoned her doctor, who had given her a number for the maternity ward at the hospital. She phoned them and explained the situation, to which they replied that there was nothing they could do, and suggested another ward. She phoned this ward, who were equally helpful. Her only remaining option was to get her mum to take her to A&E. After a two hour wait there, she was seen by an apparently heartless doctor, who seemed frustrated and angered by her tearful inefficiency in communicating her symptoms to him. He offered the popular refrain that there was nothing he could do, but booked her in for a scan FOUR DAYS LATER.

Guilty confusion

I defy anyone to cope well with the situation we faced for the next three days. We found that we could only manage by assuming the worst. My wife's symptoms suggested this anyway. By Sunday we were starting to console ourselves to another failed pregnancy. We would forget the whole thing ever happened. We would be selfish, and concentrate on ourselves, with no worries about being sensible, responsible or healthy. We could start smoking again.

By Monday evening my wife's pregnancy symptoms - having apparently faded during the previous three days - were returning. What if, by some miracle, everything was OK. This would be incredible. But it would also mean that we had been massively premature in consoling ourselves with these selfish promises. With the scan the next morning, we were faced with the ridiculous worry that we might feel relieved if it was bad news, or even somehow disappointed if it was good news.

Phew

We needn't have worried. As the nice lady put the thing up there to do the scan, she inhaled to speak, and we braced ourselves for the inevitable, familiar sorrow, tinged with the shameful possibility of relief, only to look at each other, bemused, when she described the baby and its heartbeat, bigger and stronger than a week ago.

We were relieved. Because - and I could immediately tell that my wife agreed with me - there was no disappointment, only delight at the unexpected reprieve for little blueberry. We were back on course. This was this morning so I'll adopt the present tense now I think - we're back on course. We're back to being parents to be. And, far from being disappointed, the paternal pride which had been so conspicuous by its absence is now upon me.

The worst either of us feel is embarrassment at the fuss and upset we've shared with people over the last few days. I only hope they can understand the confused state we were plunged into.

I could easily just be saying all this. But I'm not.

Going forward

There are still worries. There was bleeding which - although far less serious than we feared - does mean that the baby is at a slight risk. My wife's nausea and fatigue are back in full swing. We will in all probability never smoke again, and it will be a long time before I have the epiphany which makes me happy about this. Most of all, I'm worried because I'm going to be a dad.

I've caught up now on what's happened so far. I plan to comment upon these worries and anything else I deem relevant or interesting, albeit hopefully more briefly, so watch this space.