Mid-pregnancy notes

• At 20 weeks, I'm still feeling tired but not as fatigued as in my first trimester when I was coming home, going straight to bed, only surfacing for the dinner my wonderful husband made (despite his long day in the office too), and then going back to bed again.
  
  
• I'm craving just apple juice and fruit. Sometimes at work I go through two large M&S fruit bowls a day - expensive but it's what I'm craving. Odd, since before my pregnancy I hardly ate any fruit, being a savoury girl. I'm also eating more vegetables and carbohydrates in general and far less protein than I'm used to, which again is odd as pre-pregnancy I was a protein-a-holic. Having said that, I can still chomp on beef all day long if I am given the chance.
  
  
• Until 19 weeks, the baby was still an abstract object inside of me and it didn't really feel real until I started to feel its movements - just tiny, dull tap tap taps at the moment, but signs of life nonetheless. I've noticed the baby is particularly active after a glass of ice cold milk, which I've been drinking twice a day since I've become pregnant.
  
  
• I'm drinking not a drop of alcohol but am drinking a mug of coffee a day and a can of cola every so often for sanity. I'm not beating myself up for eating pre-packed salad leaves or soft-rind cheeses (albeit pasteurised) occasionally but I'm trying to avoid the usual suspects - it's only 9 months of deprivation after all.
  
  
• Our October trip to Japan last year marked the early weeks of my pregnancy. I was so nauseous in Tokyo and Kyoto, that I couldn't even bring myself to blog about our trip properly. I certainly struggled to enjoy the food there and still now I can't quite stomach Japanese food - once my favourite "food group"! You may have noticed we no longer eat out at Japanese restaurants.
  
  
• All this time, we have visualised the baby as a boy. Not because we wanted a boy as opposed to a girl, but that is just the pattern we slipped into. Despite this, by my 18th week I had a hunch, deep down, that the baby would be a girl. I did a frivolous Chinese Gender Predictor test online, which took my age and the month I conceived and predicted I would have a girl. This was confirmed in the 20 week scan, but I still slip up and think of "she" as a "he".
  
  
• We had our boy and girl names chosen even before we conceived - both Indian names beginning with R. Our surname is English so the Indian first name makes it a perfect combination. Neither M nor I have middle names so the baby will have just the one name (which is good, because we're too lazy to decide on more names).
  
  
• The worrying never stops - each twinge, or lack of, I take note of, and, until the 20 week scan at least, I still felt my breasts for tenderness to prove the pregnancy was still viable. It didn't help that in my so-called "blooming" second trimester, I no longer have the usual pregnancy symptoms of nausea and extreme fatigue or even spots.
  
  
• My stomach feels like a brick and is rock hard. And I think I'm finally past the "just fat" stage and am looking properly pregnant now.
  
  
• I am walking around like an elephant. I feel sorry for our downstairs neighbours (well, not that sorry - they are horrible people) as I am thud thud thudding all over the flat and simply can't help it. Another reason I'm anxious to move into our new house.
  
  
• I'm very protective of the bump. I don't like anyone touching it apart from my mum and my husband and I find myself shielding it in crowds. If someone bumps into it then I feel an instinctive surge of anger.
  
  
• The most worrying moments so far in this pregnancy were my nuchal scan and nuchal blood tests (which ended up being fine with a risk factor of 1:6560) and bleeding at 16 weeks (which ended up being due to an infection affecting my cervix, unrelated to the baby). My colleague, who is pregnant with her second child, says the worrying will never stop even when the baby is born, so I may as well get used to it!
  
  
• As I've commented in the previous post, I've never been a broody person - I've never yearned for a child, so it should feel entirely strange having another heart beat and a new life growing inside of me. But in fact it feels entirely natural in reality. I'm surprised at how normal this is all feeling. Of course, I'm only halfway there. I expect as the baby grows bigger and stronger and I become better able to feel it kicking and moving around inside of me then it will feel odd. Watch this space...