Tess

February

Week 13 and a few days. Hey, passion fruit. I saw you yesterday. Actually saw you. It was the most extraordinary moment of my life, and, yes, slightly Sigourney Weaver in Alien. They put some jelly and then a probe on my stomach, and looked around for a bit, and then turned the screen towards me, and there you were! People claim you can’t really tell what you’re looking at, but I could. I could, I swear. I saw your arms and your legs and your head. And, most important of all, I saw your tiny heart, pulsating away.

Now this one is exciting … it says you can feel me – when I put my hands on my belly, it says you can feel it. I can’t feel you, of course, not yet, but you can feel me. That’s enormous news, baby mine. I feel like I want to read to you now – poems, not newspapers. We’ll start with my favourites: Philip Larkin and Roger McGough and Mary Oliver – and play you music – Bach and Elgar for culture and Oasis and Nina Simone for fun – and just talk to you, and keep my hands on my stomach all the time so you know I’m here. I have spent twenty years waking up to the Today Show on Radio 4 – shouting at the politicians refusing to answer questions while I get dressed – but I can’t listen to it any more, and I’m trying not to use my stern and fishwifey voice around you. The world is a dark and dismal place, baby mine, and I don’t want you hearing about it if you’re up and listening. I don’t want you ever to hear anything bad at all. And there hardly seems to be any good news. I’m just hypersensitive. I cried at an advert last night. For frozen food. Everything makes me cry. Refugee crises, muggings, depression in the housing market. It makes me scared and sad. I’m shutting it all out. I want an absurdly, impossibly wonderful world for you – rainbows and unicorns and perpetual sunshine. Cue Louis Armstrong’s gravelly tones. I want to protect you from anything bad.

You’re coming along in there, lovely. Cooking nicely. Your funny head has the start of ears in the ultrasound picture, but you’ve still got your eye patches on. There’s a nose getting more obvious too. I hope you don’t have mine. I never liked mine – it has a bump and the nostrils are too big. My granddad had a great nose. It might be even cuter on a girl. What’s not cute on this girl right now is what is allegedly my bump. For something the size of a passion fruit, you are certainly demanding some room in there. I wouldn’t mind, except that the reorganization of my vital organs that you’ve caused isn’t giving me the kind of bump famous and lucky people get – all neat and limited to their tummy region. I’ve got boobs like zeppelins, a muffin top, thunder thighs and nothing you could in all honesty call a bump. It’s more of a slurry heap, making me wider and not at all cuter. It all just popped out with no warning. I woke up one morning and looked like Jabba the Hutt in the bathroom mirror. No warning.

I am spending an unhealthy amount of time staring at my stomach, looking in dread for stretch marks … so far so good. It wouldn’t be your fault, of course, but I’d rather not.

Holly – that’s my best friend, and your godmother – she came with me. I was going to be big and brave and go alone but she got wind of it and went mad. She took the afternoon off to come. She cried too. She squeezed my hand so tightly while they were looking for you and then she cried when we saw you.

I think I need to tell your father. He needs to know, right? There’s no guidebook on how to do this. I need to figure out how to make it work with him so it’s best for you.

Your granny is back. God, it’s weird to think of her as Granny. Iris is the granny. She’ll be your great-grandmother. Blimey. Donna – she’ll be Granny. She came back from Goa, to be with us. And it was wonderful that she did. We’re so different in so many ways, me and her. It’s still a bit strange, living with her, like halls at uni in the first term – a bit best behaviour and feeling our way. Careful of each other. But I’m so moved by her being here. I didn’t know I needed her. I’ve spent years conspicuously not needing her, and now I do, and somehow she just knew. And I can’t help linking that – me and her – to me and you … it’s like I understand something now that I didn’t – that I couldn’t – before. So you’ve given me a gift, before you’re even born.