Pregnant? Who, me?

I always thought the moment I find out I’m pregnant would be the way of so many other women. I’d be sitting next to my husband, holding the home pregnancy test and our eyes would meet as the pink lines surfaced and would result in an all-night love fest. Not quite. I found out I was pregnant by going to do the doctor complaining about my growing stomach and ‘period-like cramping’, and begging her to refer me to an IVF specialist. It turns out I’d overlooked the (very small and limited) signs and effectively missed most of the first trimester of my pregnancy. The funny thing about that? I’d spent the previous two months shelling out hundreds of dollars having fertility acupuncture and taking Chinese medicine trying to get pregnant, while I was actually already pregnant!

I'm now into my 21st week and while everything’s going well, I’ve found out that a pregnancy can really bring about changes in people. My mother and my best girlfriends won’t stop crying or shopping for the baby (they tell me it’s out of joy but I’m starting to wonder), but I’ve got to say that the best part of my pregnancy, apart from bonding with my very large stomach, is watching my husband Lee become a father. From the get-go when I came home to present him with the positive pregnancy test (which he actually thought was a USB drive until I set him straight - but that’s another story), he’s been a dream and while he’s always been nothing short of the perfect husband, he’s stepped things up a notch in his quest to become the perfect father as well. Fathering book upon fathering book has begun appearing in our home as Lee reads up on how to change nappies and give baby a bath. He trawls through websites to find not the coolest products, but the safest, and he puts in overtime at work so that I’ll be able to afford to take more time off work to be with our baby. I’ve got a craving for Chinotto at 11pm on a rainy night? No problem – he promptly disappears and returns dripping wet half an hour later with a bottle of Italy’s finest in one hand. But what I love most is how special he makes me feel. He tells me my body is beautiful every day and looks at me in way that suggests he’s not just seeing me, his wife, but also seeing me as the mother of his child. It might sound a bit trite, but I’ve never felt more beautiful in my life.
 
The most bizarre thing I’ve discovered about pregnancy? How you effectively become public property for people, even strangers to comment on. Like Franki (Cosmopolitan Pregnancy’s very pregnant editor), I have two brothers who now insist on calling me Fatty and making pig noises whenever I sit down to yet again eat something, and that’s no problem because hey, that’s what brothers do. No, I’m talking about having a meal in a restaurant with other patrons coming up to you to tell you if you’re having a boy or a girl, or shouting ‘Hey yummy mummy!’ at you from bus stops. Lately, I’m getting a lot of ‘Oh my God, you’re so huuuuuge! Are you having twins?’ because I’m only five months pregnant and my belly looks like it belongs to someone who’s at least seven months pregnant. I’ve had men tell me how to breastfeed on busy street corners (the secret is in the latching on, apparently) and a woman in a restaurant berate me when I admitted I was going to find out the sex of my baby (How could you do that? You’ll ruin the surprise and your pregnancy won’t be special anymore!) First of all, it’s still a surprise because I don’t know what it is. I’m just getting my surprise a few months early, and I’m pretty certain that my pregnancy, just like any other woman’s pregnancy is going to remain special. Now if I only I could find a way to stop my mother crying…