I am finally starting to feel like I am going to be holding a baby in my arms by Christmas. It's taken a long time to start believing it. I am still a total bag of nerves, worrying about every tiny thing, but I've started looking to a happy future instead of worrying about coping with another miscarriage. I'm still trying to take things a day at a time.
I guess it's a good sign, but I have developed morning sickness for the first time ever. I never usually get morning sickness in pregnancy. Maybe I'll have 2 or 3 days of feeling slightly queasy but that is about all. It was typical that my first ever, proper bout of morning sickness fell on the day I had a half hour taxi ride to hospital, followed by an hour and a half bus ride home.
I quite like the long journey to hospital. I don't get car sick, I never get travel sick - but then again, I don't usually get morning sickness either. All morning before my appointment I was feeling more and more queasy. Taking my girls for their morning walk to the shops, I spent a lot of time taking deep breaths and trying not to cause an environmental disaster across the pavement.
By the time I was due to catch my taxi I must have looked positively green. To make matters worse, the taxi driver was one I know well from my journeys to work in the morning. I know many of the drivers by now and if I ask to go anywhere but the school when I get in the car then they get a little confused and look at me like I've asked to go to Mars.
I spent 20 minutes avoiding answering his probing questions about why I was going to hospital - after all, it was no one's business but mine - but eventually I knew I was close to barf-point. If he'd taken the right turning I could probably have made it but when he told me he was lost I had to beg him to stop the car.
I've been trying to keep things under wraps until 12 weeks but eventually I had to tell him the truth. I told him I was pregnant, it was early and I didn't have a good track record for making it past the first trimester. Luckily he was very understanding, took the rest of the journey slow and stopped whenever I needed him to. I gave him an extra tip and told him it was 'hush money', to keep it quiet, which made him laugh.
I just about avoided any projectile incidents that day, but without a doubt I have proper, full-on morning sickness this time around. As much as I hate, hate, HATE feeling and being sick I am relieved to have something concrete to remind myself that there's a little waving baby growing steadily and looking forward to joining the world sometime in December.
