Elastic waistband

Well I am finally starting to look like a pregnant woman.

And about time too!

I was starting to get worried people at work, watching me consume large amounts of food every two hours (at least), were simply beginning to think I was channelling Toni Collette: the Muriel’s Wedding version, not United States of Tara one.

I am eating a lot. Mostly it is good things, as we are healthy ordinarily anyway. We have a veggie garden out the front with everything from herbs and peas to broccoli and citrus (not yet fruiting, but soon).

I remember my appetite being crazy in the first trimester, and while it’s nowhere near as extreme as back then, I do feel it’s returned with about 75% vengeance now.

We went to relatives for dinner last night. There was roast chicken, approximately 345 vegetables and gravy, all followed by meringue nests with fruit salad.

On the way out, they gave us four marzipan tarts they did not like. It’s marzipan, are they nuts? I adore the stuff.

Anyway, we get home to put the little mister to bed and we have a cup of tea. I would say within less than two minutes, I had eaten three of the tarts before sheepishly asking Trace if she wanted one.

I will often get to the end of dinner, and quite a large dinner, and inexplicably drift towards the pantry to fix myself one or two bowls of cereal. It is crazy.

So, obviously, my belly is popping out, but I think (I hope) it has a decidedly pregnancy-inspired rotundness.

Initially, I made the stupid assumption that some clothes I had pre-pregnancy that were on the hipster side, and sat low on the belly anyway, would be fine to wear even as my belly grew.

I think that was back in the days when I was convinced I would be one of those Posh or Nicole Richie pregnant ladies: essentially a toothpick with an apricot belly. Fat nowhere else.

It was really hot today, spring’s first blush, and I put on shorts that fit the above category. I could just get the button done up, but they were painful and they bunched uncomfortably toward the zipper, a zipper that about 10 minutes later gave up trying to play along with my charade and eventually burst.

They were my oldest, most favourite pair of denim shorts. I had literally had them for about 15 years. And your body changes with age, a lot, in that time, but I could always count on them to fit perfectly. Old reliable.

As I tried to unzip the broken zipper, the little metal tab that had opened and shut that faithful, ingenious fastener more than a thousand times in its life, gave a last gasping snap as it came free in my hands. Broken.

I was shattered. Then I was confused and then I was scared as to how to extricate myself from already-tightly fitting shorts that had been zippered up when the zipper broke.

Somehow, I managed to peel them off, but I will leave it up to your imagination if my knickers came on or off at the same time.

Other than hilarious sartorial adventures, no movement from the baby that I can discern as yet. There have been tiny little lumpy feelings, like a pulse in my abdomen or like food moving through intestines. But who knows? That could actually be my pulse or digestion...

This week is enormous for me. This Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the day we lost the baby.

It is also the day we have our 18-week full morphology (anatomy) scan.

The coincidences continue.