Ok, yes I know it's been a while - so much to tell you! Well, not that much really, just thought I'd start off positive.

I'm now 30 weeks into this fun-a-palooza, which means I'm 6.8 months apparently. All of a sudden I seem to have got massive - almost every person I meet asks me when I'm due, so I can no longer pretend that it's not obvious. It's all sticking out at the front, so I now look like one of those African fertility dolls. I can't bend over very easily so I have to do squats every time I want to pick something up from the floor, although once I'm down I can't see what I want to pick up any more because my belly gets in the way. I haven't seen my pubes for a few weeks now either.

Of course we have had Christmas since I last blogged, so this could very easily be down to the 2 full Christmas dinners (one Christmas Eve, one Christmas Day), 1 large buffet (Boxing Day - thank you Other-Sister-in-Law) and 1 New Year's Eve smorgasbord (cheers Mr. & Mrs. B) that I have consumed over the last fortnight, not to mention the mince pies, Christmas cake, stollen, chocolates, crisps, leftover turkey sandwiches and pickles (mmm - almost better than Christmas dinner itself), cheese and biscuits and nuts that also got stuffed into my face every day while I was off work. Well, what else are you supposed to do at Christmas? I was on my own from Boxing Day as the husband had to go back to work, so I did what I most enjoy about Christmas, and that's Lying On The Sofa Watching Telly And Scoffing. To quieten the healthy voice of reason that was screaming at me when I had leftover Christmas pudding and cream for lunch one day, I reminded myself that this is going to be the very last Christmas where I can get to do this stuff. God knows what it'll be like from now on, but it'll never be the same again. I thought it only fitting to give it a proper send-off.

...Hmm perhaps just an ounce or two of this rotundness may well be food rather than spawn then...

So anyway, do you want to know about the 4d scan or not? How about we start off with them cancelling my appointment the day before we were due to go? As I've said, we were meant to go on Christmas Eve Eve (a Saturday), thus we'd invited the Mums over for dinner on Christmas Eve with the intention of giving them a nice Christmas screening of their new grandchild. Both the husband and I were off on the Friday, so we had gone food shopping for the meal (full 3 course turkey dinner with a fine selection of beers, wines and spirits (and Schloer for me), coffee and mince pies and Christmas cake and mints to be served in the lounge afterwards), done a bit of last-minute present-buying in town and came home full of Christmas spirit and feeling very pleased with ourselves. Really we ought to have known better. We're the sort of couple that if for a microsecond we fail to be sceptical or cynical about any tiny little thing, it will turn around and bite us on the arse immediately. We'd slipped here and were really looking forward to meeting the spawn face-to-face and finding out what flavour it was.

One answerphone message later and this was all out of the window. A rather blase voice told us that their scanner had broken, so we couldn't come along tomorrow as booked, but we could call them back and re-book it if we liked, for after Christmas. I called them back, and got their answerphone. I called 3 more times over the next 3 hours and got the answerphone each time. We assumed that they had cleared off home early for Christmas, so the messages I was leaving got stroppier and more furious each time. Finally someone did call us back - she was the owner I think, and she clearly hadn't listened to her messages because I don't think she'd have dared ring me back ever again. We had to rebook for the Friday after Christmas, which meant we were having the Mums over the next day for nothing more than dinner now (which me being antisocial and lazy I probably wouldn't have bothered with if we hadn't had the floorshow planned) but she did offer us a DVD of the scan for free (saving us quite a bit of money) which we grumpily agreed to.

Fast-forward to the scan - what an odd little place it was, looking like a little shop in a row of little shops in the middle of nowhere. We got there much earlier than our appointment, there being about 60% less traffic than we'd thought there was going to be. The lady (not the one I'd spoken to) made us a nice cup of tea while we waited for the sonographer to drag his arse into work, and then in we went. I'm au fait with this blue jelly and belly out business now, but he squirted tons of it on me, it was actually piled up there was so much. Anyway, the scan starts off as a normal ultrasound and then they select bits to switch in and out of 4d for, he explained that for a good scan they needed the spawn in a certain position with some fluid in front of its face so the camera can focus more easily. Spawn got top marks for hearing and obeying this straight away.

The sonographer asked us if we wanted to know the sex of the baby, I said "Oh yes please" and he started laughing. "Erm - it's fairly obvious" he replied. The husband and I were gawping at the big screen with not a clue - so not that obvious then. Mr. Sonographer then started pointing out what I'd thought was a strange shaped head as an enormous pair of bollocks and a willy. "Ohhh!" we both rather gormlessly said, and I was ridiculously pleased (this is the point where I can pretend that I KNEW it was a boy all along). The rest of the scan (it took about half an hour) was spent looking at his face (4d makes it look a bit lumpy, but the lad is quite clearly his father's son - phew, got away with that one then) and occasionally filming his bits so we can all have a good laugh on his 18th birthday. I have to say I watched it all rather breathlessly, it was very very strange to have a face to picture when I think about this thing squirming around inside me now.

We've shown the DVD to the Mums, who were thrilled - the Husband's mum just kept saying how much he looked like the Husband and what a pretty baby he was, my mum couldn't believe that she'd lived to see such futuristic technology in her lifetime and nearly had kittens when Spawn did massive yawns to show how bored he was of the whole thing, and to Mr. & Mrs. B, who were exceedingly complimentary and didn't once let on how bored of all the baby talk they were, I take my hat off to them.