Good news and bad news.

Don't panic - the bad news doesn't relate directly to mother or baby, who are both in rude health as far as we know. However we have all been very upset by a big change in our circumstances, which I don't really want to talk about, but feel like I should.

Last week we came to the very difficult decision to have our dog, Frankie, rehomed. He has always been hard work on account of his boisterous, energetic nature. And he has always found it very difficult to make friends with any other animals (apart from humans), not least our cats. They understandably found his presence quite inconvenient, to the point where one of them once tried to blind him, and very nearly succeeded. Frankie, it turned out, is not one for forgiving and forgetting.

We had hoped that moving house would somehow break his bad habits. But no. This was new territory and it was up for grabs. I refuse to describe him as an aggressive dog, but you don't have to be malicious to be dangerous. After a couple of weeks of rapidly decreasing authority over him we arrived, tired, stressed and bruised, at the realisation that something had to give. So Frankie is currently at the doggy hotel waiting for his new family to find him. The lady who runs the kennels did her best to assure us that Frankie won't pine for us, and that we have done the right thing for all concerned. But this was still the most upset I have been in a long time.

We know we have made the right decision and I'm not trying to justify anything here, because we don't need to. But this was not an easy choice, and had nothing to do with our convenience or happiness, because it certainly doesn't feel like we have achieved either. Rather - and this is what makes the situation relevant to this blog - we have made our first truly difficult, but responsible parental decision. I think we have started to learn the lesson that you have to risk making yourself unpopular, and you have to risk making yourself cry to keep your child safe at all costs. I think we are becoming grown ups.

Which doesn't exactly bring me to the good news, but it's about time for some, so here it is: my wife had a scan for medical reasons last week. It wasn't a fun one, during which you just look at the baby and coo and point and then take a photo home. But the nice lady doing the scanning did her best to manufacture that situation, sneaking in a look inside the bump and revealing that, to the best of her knowledge (which seems to translate as "probably"), it contained a girl. We are having either a girl or a very modest boy. Well, no son of mine...etc, so we are assuming that this tentative gender diagnosis is correct.

As my description of this news as "good" implies, we are very happy about this. For the record, I thought it was going to be a girl, and a small part of this happiness derives simply from being right. But I do like the idea of being the father of a daughter. Mainly, just knowing (or probably knowing) makes it all seem more real. Which is nice. We have chosen a name, but revelations of it thus far have met with a slightly upsetting mixed reception, so I'm being shy about it now.

In other news: Cessation of sickness, itchiness and smoking continue successfully, and my wife falls asleep at precisely half past nine every evening.

Ding dong, the itch has gone.

It's been a busy time for we expectant ones. We moved house, which we have been well aware we were about to do for quite some time, and yet it all seemed to come as a bit of a surprise. I hope I'm not saying the same thing about having a baby in six months' time. I think that, on some level, I never really believed that it would finally happen. I hope I'm not saying the same thing about having a baby in six months' time.

Of course, moving house when you are pregnant is probably not recommended by life coaches. The physical strain is an obvious issue, which we overcame through a combination of me not moaning about my back anymore and a lot of help from some friends and relatives. (You know who you are: thanks again.) Thus my wife pulled her weight, but not any muscles. And nobody's conscience was troubled by any threat to the health of she or the baby.

Then there's the stress. Moving house consistently features in lists of very stressful things to do, and with good reason. Once all the stuff has been transported from one place to another (in our case via a third, independent place, just for a laugh), you have to perform dazzling calculations in your mind concerning the order in which to unpack, decorate, get new furniture which suits the architectural authenticity of the new house, and arrange for that carpet to be banished from your house - and preferably this earthly domain - to be replaced by something altogether more palatable and easier to clean when the dog pisses all over it. Any assistance you may need from third parties with any of this will be promised within two weeks, and confirmed a week later to be available in about six months.

These activities must be carefully balanced against the relentless need to phone every person you have ever spoken to in order to obtain a form to fill in so they know that the payments you make to them for whatever it was you originally spoke to them about will now be originating from a different address. This is very important to most of them and should really have been done several years ago.

And then there is the ongoing need to segregate the dog and cats, their magical moment of spontaneous harmony not having happened yet, despite us really hoping that it would. The new surroundings are, of course, incompatible with any sensible form of segregation.

All of which makes me very reluctant to associate with hormones any unusually heightened emotions that may or may not have been displayed recently. Besides, that particular association (which I am not making) only applies to the first trimester, which is now trailing in our wake.

I admit I was sceptical about the promise of any unpleasant symptoms abruptly disappearing upon the stroke of week 13, but it does seem to be coming true. The morning sickness which seemed to have gone long ago, but persistently turned out not to have done, has now actually gone. Touch wood. And best of all, the ridiculous itching - which was really beginning to threaten the future of my wife's skin, not to mention her sanity - has disappeared like some sort of Keyser-Soze-in-the-Usual-Suspects character. Seriously - this was a blight on my wife's life which left her crying herself to sleep, and which I honestly feared would continue indefinitely. I cannot adequately describe the relief I felt when she calmly mentioned that it had stopped, by the way. I probably appeared less excited when she told me she was pregnant.

Appeared.

So. The moral of this story is that the passing of one hardship can overcome the presence of many.

Or: stressed? Tired? Just be grateful your wife's not itchy anymore.