My baby is a sailor

Endless seasickness is an unpleasant prospect, but that is exactly what poor Chiharu has been going through. She has hot flushes, collapses asleep with tiredness, feels ill and dizzy and starving all at once. Nothing much seems to placate it. We've tried sea sickness acupressure bands, ginger tea, lemon and honey drinks, apples. Nashi seem to help.
Chiharu knows she as to eat, but has no idea what she wants. She craved sashimi (raw fish), but after an amazing dinner of sushi and sashimi, dining out at Sachi (thank you Sarah and David!), her cravings for fish have gone entirely. At the moment it's hard to find anything she wants to eat. We go shopping at the supermarket together in the evenings, hoping that the food will jump out at her to be eaten.


The baby has started to show, it has made a wee bulge above Chiharu's hips. It's thrilling to consider that our child growing inside her, and quite bizarre as well. Quite literally, her stomach has been dislodged by an animal that is growing inbetween her intestines and her bladder. Nature is more shocking in its variety and ingenuity than anything contrivance human imagination can create. A baby growing out of a person's stomach? Incredible! No wonder the ancient Aztecs thought babies were born of corn kernels ingested by adult women and growth within them.
(Note: Chiharu got shy about the photo after all. I thought that show it was awfully brave of her!)

When I was young, I mistakenly thought babies were made when a man kissed a woman and they shared an orange pip. If she swallowed it, a baby would grow in her stomach, so I was led to believe. I'm  not sure if I ever did believe the story, but I always preferred it to those grotesque biology videos we had to watch. Remember those videos with the male scientist's voice, explaining with muted excitement, how fascinating it was to see millions of slimy tadpoles racing each other. The climatic moment of a tadpole being subsumed by a gigantic pulsing orb haunted me for years.Only now does it amaze.

10 weeks down, just thirty left

Image from http://www.millan.info/blog/img/posts/10weeks.jpg

10 weeks already. Time is flying by, and the reality is still only just sinking in. We think Chiharu is about 10 weeks' pregnant, although we won't be sure until her blood test results come back.

At 10 weeks, the baby is the size of a fingernail, about 3.5cm long. It weighs around 9gms, and has bendable elbows and wrists. The eyelids have grown and fused closed, and will only open in week 26.

http://www.millan.info/blog/img/posts/10weeks.jpg

It's incredible to think the baby has grown so much already.

Idyllic conception

Hot summer sun, cool seas washing on bleached beach sands, undersized snapper snapped in the hand of your missus who's grinning at you in little more than a floral frock and a wet towel - the perfect bach weekend by the sea.  

And the beginning of their demise. While our baby's journey has been started by our first summer holiday, so will our perfect summers be ended by its arrival. 


Last summer, we had only each other to care about, to smile at, to laugh with. What an amazing time we had! Magic. However, in the balance of life, like all beautiful, joyous experiences, there is a real and incontrovertible consequence.


We conceived. A child is in its embryo, and on its way. It is soon to dive on into this world of suffering and joy, ready for us to nuture it for twenty years.I'm very excited at the prospect, and occasionally apprehensive. Twenty years! Occasionally I find myself considering the consequences of that fleeting summer of perfection.  

Soon our chance of carefree summer holidays will be gone, our trips away changed, transformed to become -


Baby-swinger weekends away. Instead of carefree camping, we will join other infant encumbered parents, holidaying together in bugproof places, sharing in sleepless nights and sympathy, promiscuously passing around our offspring in the hope of having a chance to get away for a quick snuggle by the sea, a good fish, a snooze in the sun, some moments of freedom lived.

Looking back at the photo above, I guess my wife already knew. That's the biggest wink she's ever given me.