Okay so it’s still very early days here (6 weeks in) - but this pregnancy is already very different from my last one.
With Dexter my little bump emerged gracefully around 18 weeks in, I only had minor sickness and was able to cope with it discreetly, and my hair and nails looked beautiful. I felt positively swan-like and loved every second of it.
Carrying Dexter (and a huge Christmas dinner) at 18 weeks
With this pregnancy I’m already spotting a hefty pot-belly (I’m seriously hoping this is water retention / baby and not too many baked potatoes) and I’m regularly slumped over the toilet with my hair shoved up in a crude ponytail. The headaches are coming thick and fast and blurring my vision, and I’m exhausted all the time. It’s like having a perpetual hangover.
I’m crying at adverts - not just charity ones either, the Persil ad had me welling up the other day! And I’m incredibly clumsy - I’ve fallen out of bed twice already and almost knocked myself out by walking into a glass door yesterday. It’s as if there is a small child in my brain operating my body via a Playstation controller.
Of course, only having carried one baby to full term so far, I’m no pregnancy expert. I know all the books are telling me that every pregnancy is different and it would be the mother of all assumptions to assume this baby is a girl - but this is exactly what I’m doing. It’s this or octuplets and I don’t want to think too deeply about that!
Yep, I’m convinced that the little clump of cells, no bigger than an orange seed, is a little mini-me. I’m reliably informed by the SMA website that her “umbilical cord has formed and established the circulation between the placenta and the embryo. The little heart is flickering now and four tiny limb buds are appearing” - well judging by the state her mummy is in, I think she’s probably already throwing a diva strop and making herself at home in my tummy. Give it another 10 weeks and I’ll play her a bit of One Direction to confirm my prediction.
When I was in my early days with Dexie I wrote a post about a few ridiculous websites that trade on a mummy-to-be’s preoccupation with her bump. These weird websites claim to see into the future and can tell you the sex of your baby and what he or she will look like. Funnily enough, despite me taking the proverbial out of these sites, they were actually pretty accurate.
The Chinese Gender Prediction Chart was in fact spot on that I was carrying a little man. And the cherubic little fella grinning at us courtesy of MorphThing does actually look eerily like a 6 month old Dexter. Just look at this…
Well naturally I decided to give it a go again. The Chinese Gender Prediction Chart (with its ‘laughable-in-its-irony’ 50% accuracy) confirms that I have a little princess on board. And look how beautiful she is!
Despite using several different photo combinations, the result doesn’t vary much. I’m not sure I’d want it to as she looks lovely. Her eyes are darker than Dex’s, she has a fuller mouth, and very sweet plump cheeks. She’s also around 5 or 6 years old (I hope she isn’t quite so old when the midwife passes her to me for the first time - that would eff’ing well hurt).
So there you go! I’m off to get stuck into a baby name book! Until next time…
