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.

Coincidence much?

I remember being really struck by a particular book when I was in my teens.

Sure, there was Shakespeare and George Orwell and Harper Lee, but one of the most memorable was a bizarre little paperback with a light blue cover all about coincidence.

It was a dog-eared collection of anecdotes from around the world about the unexplained phenomenon. Some called it fate, the book’s intro said, others thought it more mystical than that, but the stories of coincidence it contained proved that whatever it was, it was real and quite jaw-dropping.

I think I found it for 50 cents in a second-hand shop somewhere random. The ominous lightning strike on its cover appealed to my teenage mind. Back then, I probably thought it was edgy and hoped mum would think I was into the occult.

There were all sorts of stories of a long-lost family heirloom that is suddenly found after a relative’s favourite flower grows in the exact spot where it’s buried; or the twin feeling the other twin’s pain at the same moment, on the other side of the world; or of certain meaningful things happening on key dates, centuries later, auspicious and freaky.

In the years since, I do pay particular attention to those moments that happen in life...like someone popping into your thoughts minutes before they ring you on the phone, dreaming about something a few days before it happens and things like that.

With this pregnancy – see, there is a link in here somewhere – I know how real coincidence is in my life, but I am not sure of its meaning. Or even if it has one.

By some random eventuality, the embryo that is now the baby I am carrying was implanted in me on the very same date as our little boy’s was in Tracey, four years ago.

To the day.

There is no way we could have orchestrated that or manipulated that if we tried by lining up cycles and doctor’s visits and hospital theatre schedules and chance.

I am due on my partner’s birthday.

I found out today that our OBGYN is taking a week off right around my due date. The number three came up a lot early in my pregnancy. I was in theatre three, we sat at table three the night we had our embryo transfer to celebrate with dinner out and our little boy is three. It prompted T to surmise that I would probably go past my due date and give birth on the 3rd of the 3rd.

Our OBGYN is due back from his leave on the 3rd of the 3rd.

Over the weekend, we realised another freaky coincidence.

Our 18-week scan – the one we are counting down to so desperately – is on September 22. They day we lost our baby last year.

Tracey said to me “Do you think it’s trying to tell us something, that everything will be ok this time?”

I don't know what in tarnation "it" is, but sweet lord, I hope that's what it's saying!