This weekend we passed a major milestone on our pregnancy journey.
On Sunday our little bump turned 6 months old. Now you may be thinking, and one of my friends even said today ‘Wow hasn’t that gone quickly?’ and for other people, I guess it has but for us, it seems to be going quite slowly.
For those who don’t know, 6 months means we’ve entered the third and final trimester. We’ve gone through the sickie, worrying first trimester, we’ve dodged the hormone-filled landmines and aching muscles of the second trimester and now we’re on to the third and final three months.
This is the one where the reality kicks in that he could come along at any moment. The packed hospital bag in the porch could be getting wheeled out and we could be whisking our way to the hospital – and parenthood. In so many ways I can’t wait until he’s here but just as much I want him to ‘cook’ for another few months.
The reality is that when you’re pregnant things can sometimes go slowly. You buy another top, you paint, you put up a shelf and still, it feels like you’re waiting. Now, I don’t want to wish my life away but unfortunately, I’m a fairly impatient person.
Watching him grow from a lentil to a beef tomato up to weighing as much as a cauliflower has been fun but slow. However, it’s a stark reminder that the best things come to those who wait.
With the second trimester now in the rear-view mirror, I can say that it was a mixture of fun, fights and food. Fun because there’s nothing like watching your wife’s belly move when your baby boy kicks and you can even watch it happen, fights because hormones are a bitch and sometimes it’s not even your fault and food because J (and me ‘sympathy eating’) wants to eat everything in sight.
So now that we’re in the third trimester things have started to change. We’ve become a lot more aware of what we’re doing and saying as he can hear us in there, so we’ve started a swear jar. Everyone knows I have a mouth like a sailor but not many people know that my wife does too. Note to my in-laws: She never swears, honest…
We’re just trying to prepare ourselves for his arrival and if we can practice not swearing when we’re at home then all the better. I mean, he’s picking up sounds already and I don’t want him to pick up naughty words (that’s what his Uncle Kevin and Auntie Charlotte are for). So the loss of 10p a time is either going to be a great incentive to curb my bad language around him or a horrific loss that will see me having to sell my body.
I’m only 50p down in the first two days so it’s not a bad start.