Woe is me

I've woken up today feeling like I am going to be sick everywhere.  Every single odour that's crossed my nose in the 51 minutes I've been awake thus far has made me want to vomit.  I only have a short commute to work (about half an hour of walking plus a ten minute train ride), however I have a strong suspicion I'm not going to make it there today without retching my guts up - hopefully in a bush, not on a fellow commuter.

I just feel absolutely terrible all of the bloody time.  I've even gone off my food - apart from the occasional 30 seconds where I'm suddenly so ravenous I think I'm going to die (or vomit).

What I'm basically trying to say, I think, is that so far, pregnancy gets the thumbs down.

Throwing babies into bathwater

One of my favourite weekend pleasures is a good hot bath with a cup of tea and a pile of cookery books to leaf through.  I thus started my Sunday morning running steaming hot water into the tub and then, out of nowhere, a feeling of deep panic arose that in a very hot bath, I might boil the bean.  Is a lovely hot bath yet another thing I'm going to have to scratch off the agenda for the next nine eight months?  A quick google suggested that it's alright to have a soak so long as it's possible to climb into the water without turning bright pink and shrieking madly, which is apparently at a temperature of less than 36 degrees celsius.  I'm not sure my turkey thermometer is an appropriate device for measuring the temperature of bathwater, so my fellow beanmaker dipped his elbow into the water and declared the temperature appropriate.  I plunged excitedly into a lukewarm tub, felt cold and sorry for myself for 15 minutes and then clambered back out, grumbling.

I'm also feeling irritable because though the nausea, cramps and sore boobs seem to be on hold today, I am instead suffering (like all good hypochondriacs) from a rather dull, constant feeling of mild unwellness and as a result, am bored by the idea of just about anything I can possibly think of doing.  I feel full yet hungry at the same time and I just want to crawl into bed and wait for tomorrow.  Except tomorrow is Monday, and I definitely don't want that.

Today, it seems, I am determined to be annoyed by everything (except for my lovely hoovering husband).  It seems I am also determined to intend to indulge in it fully.

Pregnant? Me?

Since discovering last Sunday evening that I have a bun in the proverbial, I have been asked if I am pregnant precisely 4 times (including my dad, which was weird) and probed as to whether I'm thinking of bearing children countless others.  I can't imagine why this is suddenly happening but I need to come up with a convincing red herring of a response, and fast, because presumably everyone who's asked me thus far is, despite my negative response, now well aware of the fact that I'm up the duff.

Some of these people were nosey buggers at the wedding I went to yesterday, which was the first occasion at which I had the trouble of trying very hard not to look pregnant.  The first problem lay my discovery that, contrary to my prior belief, elderflower cordial does not look in the least bit like champagne.  I thus had to pretend I was using it to balance out the three glasses of bubbly I'd just necked before meeting the person I was currently speaking to.  The second problem lay, obviously, with the food: the only other consumables at the reception (it was an afternoon do) were sandwiches, cakes and scones.  I can't eat any of that (gluten intolerance), so I ended up eating a teacup of clotted cream and blackberry jam...

...except I did also eat a thing on the DEFINITELY NEVER EAT THIS WHEN YOU'RE PREGNANT list because a friend took pity on me and offered me the rose-pink beef from her little rye bread canapé and I'd been grumbling so much about how hungry I was that I just couldn't turn it down because I thought it would look suspicious.  I've spent the full 24 hours since worrying about whether I've poisoned my undeveloped bean.  I'm just too bloody English for my own good.

Anyhow, despite in no way having my head around this whole thing and being (as of today) 6 weeks gone, I seem to have embraced the role of Indignant Pregnant Woman with some gusto.  When I was annoyed because my plane was delayed; I was unable to find anything I could eat in Heathrow arrivals at 10pm when I was absolutely ravenous; when I was "forced" to queue for 10 minutes at the cash machine; and when I sat next to a chap on the Tube who reeked to the point of making me wretch but I didn't want to move for fear of offending him (see above re: being English) so I sat next to him for 20 bloody minutes... what was my response?  FFS!  DON'T THEY KNOW I'M PREGNANT??

I can see now that on one very selfish, self-indulgent and very superficial level at least, I'm starting to rather enjoy this.

So the torture begins...

D and I went out to our local Greek restaurant for dinner last night.  Talk about a foodie's worst nightmare: it was hard enough choosing things off the menu taking my gluten-freeness into consideration but now?  Now it seems like the choice has shrunk to almost nothing.  There's feta in everything, for starters, and when my lamb souvlaki turned up it was cooked to perfection, beautifully pink in the middle.  I had to swap it with D's dried up pork.

As my best friend pointed out in one of her amazingly supportive emails this week, you have to really like someone to want to swap your truly delicious plate of food with them.  I've potentially got another 8 months till I meet the bean and can work out if I like him or her enough to sacrifice a plate of lovely pink lamb.  If I wasn't as psychologically sound as I'm pleased so say I am, I'd start compiling a list immediately of all the shit the bean's going to owe me on his or her arrival.  So far: 6 boiled eggs and a lamb kebab.