I think it's moving.

Either that, or my digestive system has started behaving very strangely and moving large lumps of undigested dinners and intestinal gases around at odd times, and giving them the odd shake for good measure. Seeing as I haven't needed to fart any extra, I'm putting it down to the evil alien spawn. As an experiment I played some Tchaikovsky to my stomach on Friday night and either the spawn or my chip butties seemed to enjoy it immensely. Or hated it - I suppose it could have been thrashing around in agonies screaming "Aaaargh! Turn it off!" but hey. It's my stomach, dude. You're not the boss of me. (Yet?)

I'm finding now that if I eat Anything At All, or need a wee, I have a rather round belly. And apparently everyone is now allowed to comment on whether I have got fat or not, and if I ever dare to breathe out or relax my stomach muscles for a microsecond there's another "Ooh, are you starting to show now? There's a bit of a bump there, oh yes," remark. I had no idea people were looking at my gut that much, but from the interest shown you'd think there was a bloody sweepstake going (if I find out there is, there's going to be trouble if I don't get a cut).

When I laughed at the Husband for hitting his head on the cooker hood again (every time! You'd honestly think some primitive instinct would kick in and make him duck), in a menacing tone of voice he told me, "In four and a half months, when you're in pain, I will be laughing at you." I said that they would throw him out of the room. He replied "I can still look through the window, and I will point and laugh even more loudly, so you can hear me."

Boobs are definitely a bit bigger. A lot of my bras are really just decoration now, there is no actual containing going on. However much I may have wanted larger norks in the past, I've changed my mind - they totally get in the way, my t-shirts are riding up, and I can't run with them. Oh and they are too heavy. The Husband keeps 'measuring' for me and, unsurprisingly, seems very happy. The nips look a lot better now though, the whole Zinger Tower burger effect seems to have calmed down and they're going back to the colour they should have been. Sorry, but people need to know these things.

Belly: not really any bigger. If I need a wee (which I have to admit, I seem to rather more than normal) then in the right light, you might possibly think there was a bumpiness going on, and it feels about as hard as when you've had a Christmas dinner. Other times (post wee) I would say I just look like I've only just finished my tea. But starting to feel a bit bloaty. Could be spawn. Could be Fig Rolls.

I have sustained an injury.

How? you may ask. Well, my PC died. So I took it round to poor Mr. Baker to fix it.. so far no drama. Until he asked me where the key for the PC case was... and thus began the trials. PCs and I don't get on, which is why I did both them and myself a favour and stopped working in IT. I wasn't even aware that my PC needed a key, let alone remember where it was. So I called the Husband at work, to see if he recalled seeing one anywhere. No, he didn't. No, he couldn't remember if there was one in the box it came in. No, he couldn't remember if we'd kept the box. No, he wasn't sure, had we kept the box, if it was in the loft. I got the message - I was on my own.

After a fruitless search in desk drawers and tins, I came to the conclusion that if a key existed, it was in the box. Which was possibly in the loft. Now I don't go into the loft, ever. It is a cold place full of spiders and pipes and dust. The most I have done is stick my head above the top rung of the ladder just so I knew what it looked like. But, hey, I'm a modern chickie, I can do stuff like go into lofts if the occasion calls for it. First things first - step ladder.

By now I'm getting fed up. Off I go to the garage, to retrieve the step ladder. It's cold and dark and raining outside, and in the garage (also full of spiders) we have one ladder-shaped space where the ladder was but is no longer. Now I'm really pissed off. OK, the shed at the bottom of the garden. I stomp off to put back the key for the garage and get the key for the shed. Then I stomp off down the garden, trip over the step in the darkness and end up face down on the path, in the rain, in pain. And to top it all off, no ladder in shed. So my ever-decreasing circle now includes 1. a dead PC. 2. a missing ladder. 3. a bloody, swollen knee, bruised hip, scratched hands and wet clothing.

Back in the house I did manage to open the loft hatch by balancing on the very top post of the bannister above the staircase, but then the pain of my knee and Common Sense bellowing through a megaphone managed to get through and I gave up. In a flash of enlightenment I knew that this whole thing could only be the Husband's fault. I sent him a text (when he failed to answer his phone about a hundred times) telling him that I was severely injured and it was all his fault. It was only when he rang me about half an hour later sounding rather panicked, that I realised he might have been thinking "severely injured pregnant wife" meant rather more than my grazed knee.

I am banned from the loft now.

Right then, where were we?

Still not getting fat, which is good. All clothes are fitting as normal.(Apart from bras, but more on that another time). The husband keeps telling me I have a pod, but I put this down to chip butties for tea on Friday, and a chinese takeaway last night. He in fact spent the other night going "I did that. I put that in there. Ha ha ha" in a self-satisfied, rather preening tone of voice. We'll see who's laughing in 5 months' time. Oh shit - it won't be me though, will it?

Oh yes - I got through the midwife visit OK, I had bought posh biscuits from Marks and made her a cuppa, which she didn't see as attempts at bribery despite the warnings from my friend at work. She turned up with a padawan midwife in tow and they spent the time asking about my medical history and writing stuff down in the book they gave me. I was told not to take the antihistamines I'm usually on, I lied barefacedly and promised I hadn't been and wouldn't do. Bollocks to that. There was also lots of "don't eat this.. don't eat that.." but then she told me that I was alright to drink alcohol (despite me telling her that I'm really not a big drinker and I can take it or leave it) as long as it was in moderation, ie, don't get shitfaced. So make your bloody mind up woman. I'm not to take the tablets I've been on for years which I'm very uncomfortable without, and for which there is no conclusive proof that they're harmful in pregnancy but there's also none to say they're OK, but alcohol (which there is a lot of proof about - syndromes and nasty-sounding stuff) is fine. W-w-w-what-everrr. I really get the impression that people don't actually fully understand what the hell is happening to a pregnant woman, and they are making it up as they go along. She gave me a prime example of this herself: in the 70s (ie, when I was being born), mothers were expressly told to eat liver (for the protein content) and drink Guinness (for the iron). Now they've decided that liver and Guinness are Bad. Give it another 30 years and they'll have changed their minds again.

Then she asked me where I wanted to give birth... Now up til this point it had sort of occurred to me that giving actual birth might be a vague possibility, way off in the future, but not the kind of thing I really need to worry about right now. The two of them were chatting about it like it was a given. Hmmm.

One good thing though - I didn't get any shit off them for wanting to bottlefeed. They didn't give a stuff. We're going to get on just fine.

The pram/pushchair thingmy turned up as well (Thank you ebay woman, I take back all the pikey comments from earlier). We took it round to the Mother in Law's, and spent an afternoon learning how to put the bloody thing together. Well, I say we, I mean the Husband was happily clipping things on and turning cogs and what have you, I drank tea and watched Dick van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder with the Mother in Law's friend. Then I was told I "had to learn" so I sulkily watched as he demonstrated (the Husband, not DvD) how to attach a seating jobby to the frame. "It's your go now." I clambered around, pushed things on and stood back smugly.
The seating jobby, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum, pivoted backwards, catapulted over and ended with a solid-sounding crunch 180 degrees from where it should have been according to the picture in the instructions. I found the whole thing wonderfully hilarious, but when I finally picked myself off the floor and looked up, there was the Husband, Mother in Law, Stepfather in Law and Mother in Law's friend all looking aghast at me. The husband murmured "Must remember to buy a crash helmet for it."

Oh by the way, we've heard it, and it's still in there. I had to have an antenatal check, which just means you wee on a flimsy little plastic strip (not as easy as I thought it was going to be - as soon as the wee hit it, it sprayed off and back on my hand. Lovely) and they hold it up against a tiny paint chart to see if you're Diabetic or have Proteins or if your wee is Lemon Chiffon or Spring Breeze, then they take your blood pressure (which I think is something they do just for the look of it) and then they put a microphone thing on my stomach (more cold blue jelly again here). She couldn't find it at first, but then after a couple of pops and screeches like on the proximity detector the Marines have in Aliens, there was a very determined POW-POW-POW-POW. Then the sound of my lunch going past.

Ok, I've sussed out how this works now. I show any interest in baby stuff - I throw up.

Exhibit A: One of the women at work is knitting me some baby stuff. I got to choose the patterns and buy the wool, and it was all pretty good fun, I can honestly admit that I was feeling quite happy about it all.
Exhibit B: Someone has offered us a brand new cot and all the gubbins that go in it for a song
Exhibit C: We can have my sister-in-law's car seat which was a spare for her grandchild
Exhibit D: The Mother in Law bought us a very sweet baby bouncer thingmy

Consequence: I was re-enacting that scene from The Exorcist at 10.30pm Sunday night. For God's sake, I was sick out of my nose.

I have learnt my lesson.