I am still diseased! It’s been two weeks and I am still diseased! I can’t go out of the house for more than two or three hours without feeling like I’ve moved three days in the wrong direction. I have to go back to work in four days and I am still ill and I am FED UP.

Lousy @&%*(%^# virus.

Last night:

Me: When you next go shopping at Sainsbury’s can you please buy me some Covent Garden Soup Co. Smoked Haddock Chowder? {blah blah about how it’s a nice filling breakfast and doesn’t contain any of the things I’m not supposed to eat}

This morning:

Him: Ok, I think we should get something to eat before we head out.
Me: Something moist would be nice… can I have some smoked haddock chowder please
Him: …
Me: …
Him: How about a mince pie. I’ll soak it in water for you.

I exercised my first pregnancy tyranny late last night when Him made the mistake of asking me to look for things online that I wanted to cook. One thing led to another and - well, let’s just say Him is thankful for the local 24-hour Tesco.

I don’t normally have a particular yen for chicken nuggets and chips but good gracious they hit the spot. Except I still want some Chinese red bean pancakes.

In other news, Isabella Oliver and Seraphine have given me some absolutely lovely Christmas presents (which, alas, have had to be paid for). I thoroughly thoroughly love my baby belly, which at nearly twenty weeks must surely no longer inspire comments like “that’s not a baby bump. If that’s a baby bump I’m having triplets”, but instead looks completely and unmistakeably Pregnant.

I just want to reassure Him that my last post was indeed tongue-in-cheek pregnancy paranoia, notwithstanding the fact that, despite recognition that the vast majority of babies develop and are born without incident, it is all too easy to get yourself mired in worry about whether the baby is going to be healthy.

Well, I haven’t made a habit of worrying in years, and I’m not about to start now. So onward we go, doing the best we can and leaving the rest up to God.

Him is often the target of good-natured teasing on this blog - it was, after all, never intended to be a soul-baring exercise, and much of what I love and live for isn’t recorded here for posterity. Which is why I don’t say enough on here about how incredible he is. Well, for once I’m going to, because I am in awe of how much of yourself you give and continue selflessly to give, with nary a word of complaint. You just do, you are just there, and I can never thank God enough for the blessing that you are. I love you.

I took a turn for the worse last night after thinking that I was very much on the mend and having prematurely ventured out earlier in the day to the heaving mass that is post-Christmas Birmingham.

Struggling to breathe can be fairly traumatic at any point, but it takes on a whole new dimension when there is someone inside you whose life is equally wholly dependent on your continuing to carry out this basic activity. Him whisked me off to the NHS Walk-In Centre when I got thoroughly upset and paranoid about the little one because everything had gotten clogged up and I couldn’t stop my heart racing, couldn’t hear properly, and nearly blacked out when getting up from the bed.

So that’s where I spent a couple of lightheaded and trembly hours on Boxing Day night, before we finally got to see a nurse and she reassured us after a battery of checks that the devil cold hadn’t turned into a devil of a bacterial infection and that although she didn’t have a doppler with which to ease my paranoia and she wasn’t certain that the Piriton I’d been taking to try and manage my overproductive nasal cavities was a-ok to take during pregnancy, although she was sure that my doctors wouldn’t have told me to take it if it weren’t, she was sure that the baby was fine but my, that’s a lovely bump and didn’t it look bigger than a 19-week one.

I’m ok this morning. Levity is very important in putting some perspective on distress, and while I’m calm and rational now last night was a very different kettle of fish. Which is why I thought I’d end this particular post by reflecting that when the nurse commented on my it-is-a-nineteen-week-bump bump my mind immediately flicked to the fear that baby was now suffering from macrosomia because the glucose they’d found in my pee during my last antenatal visit had turned into full-blown gestational diabetes.

Me: I’m sorry I’m such a snotty, phlegmy farty mess right now. Sigh. What happened to your glam and pretty wife, eh?
Him: What glam and pretty wife?
Me: …

And so you have it, the story of my life.

In other news, before I became bed-bound with a nasty virulent strain of {insert choice expletive here - mine today is maggoty} cold, I have been thoroughly enjoying being pregnant. I’ll save the maternal musings for my next post when I can summon up more strength though. Right now it’s more fluids and the sofa for me. Merry Christmas to you all.