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.