Absence...

I've been absent longer than I intended to. It has been a rather trying and heartbreaking couple of weeks.

The day after I had my scan, my father urged me to IMMEDIATELY tell some of the people he was absolutely busting to tell, including my granddad. Which I did, and that was all very lovely.

The next day, my grandfather had a massive stroke while driving his car home. He was taken to hospital, I went up to see him, gasping for breath, looking tiny and on the way out, for three days, then had to return home. He died a week after the stroke.

It just goes to show time waits for nothing. Here I am with a burgeoning new life to shout about, while at the same time someone very dear is slipping away. And while everyone wisely says that at least he got to know that he was going to be a great-grandfather, that's not the point. Because he never will be, now. He will never get to hold my baby in his arms, nor will he or she ever reach up and grab his nose or his glasses. He'll never even get to smile at me fondly as I swell with child and waddle past. I'm probably looking at this from an almost entirely selfish point of view, but it hurts. He was my last surviving grandparent and now he too has gone.

While I've been grappling with that, the bump (which we're now going to call Giuseppe - only while it's a bump!) is still doing what babies do. I am beginning to look distinctly podgy, although not, so far, actually pregnant. Just like I have been eating a lot of cake, which is of course true. I am still quite tired, but not dead tired like I was. In a couple of weeks, I get to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time.

The world carries on, bereavements and pregnancies being only a tiny part of what must come to pass. While I believe (perhaps you should ask my husband on this one) I have escaped the excesses of pregnant hormonal behaviour, I have found plenty to make me angry. We are planning to move house and have found somewhere we would like to go to. My references have been refused basically because I am pregnant. !!! Words cannot describe the fury. Being an honest sort, when it said are your circumstances changing I said I would be going on maternity leave. Apparently, there is 'no guarantee' that I will return to work. So two married people, in their late 20s/30s, with full-time jobs they have held for more than three years, cannot rent in their own right, we have to have my dad acting as a guarantor. I felt about 12.

I suspect the maternity process will bring up far more iniquities than I had imagined.

Voila!

And there it is, the little teeny baby.

We're really having a baby!

I didn't really quite believe it until today. Mixing among the other couples waiting to be scanned at the JR, I felt a bit like a fraud. Some of them were quite obviously pregnant. Several had brought small children. There was a huge mix of people, ranging from people who looked a bit older than us, to younger mums (one of whose bottom was busting its way out of her low slung velour trackie bs), to one couple I can only describe (freely succumbing to my own prejudices) as the scummiest the council estates of Oxford can offer, complete with missing, black and rotten teeth, greasy hair and multiple piercings. Mmmm.

Anyway, it wasn't until our name was called and a sonographer called Jagdeep briskly swept us into a room, matter of factly told me to drop my keks and lift my shirt (ooh-er missus) and applied some of that lovely gel just like in the movies.

And then, suddenly, on the screen, there was our baby. And it looked like an actual baby too, not just an amorphous blob, but a teeny tiny person complete with head, visible nose, arms and legs, and fluttering heart. It was really there. I really am pregnant after all, not just swollen with pie and extra lazy. I was almost surprised to see it there, especially considering the weird dreams I have been having (a story for another time) and it was demonstrably alive. Although it did seem to be having a little relax, as while the heartbeat was clearly visible, a bit of coughing and motion wouldn't get it to move. Sleepy baby. Just like it's mum at the moment.

It feels real now, and so exciting. I've been desperate for this scan for ages, to reinforce the fact I really am pregnant, and to give me the go-ahead to shout it from the roof-tops. Which I now intend to do.

I'll post the pix tomorrow once I've got them scanned in.

Money, money, money

My husband and I are not well-off. This has never been a problem, as we have enough money to eat, live in Oxford, and go to the odd gig and neither of us has particularly expensive tastes. We are also fortunate enough to both do jobs that we love (I'm a journalist, he's an archaeologist), and like most jobs that people do because they love them, the pay is fairly pitiful.

That said, we're a long way from the breadline. We don't earn nearly enough to qualify for any kind of state assistance and tax breaks, and I think I can comfortably say that we earn rather more than vast swathes of the population even in wealthy Oxford (in fairness, I am talking about the single mums on council estates, but I'm trying to get some perspective).

Like I said, this has never bothered me - I don't need a lot of money, and we had enough. Until recently, when I realised I had spectacularly over-estimated the amount of maternity pay I would be entitled to. Demonstrating perhaps that even the well-educated can be impressively dense, until last night I was under the illusion that for the first six months of maternity leave, I would get 90% of my full pay. Er, make that six WEEKS.

SIX WEEKS? That's insane, how on earth is anyone supposed to manage on the 123 quid a week statutory pay after that? This is particularly pertinent as we really have to move to somewhere with a kitchen that does not form icicles inside the windows on cold days, and with a shower that doesn't have tiling paint flaking off as you wash. I've found the place we want to move to and it's perfect and lovely and ticks pretty much all my boxes, for only 100 quid more a month than we currently pay. I had been counting on getting 90% of my pay for a while, and cutting back on stuff to save for the time when I only got statutory pay. This makes things much more problematic. Now I have to figure out how to budget for this, or decide if we're going to have to move from one shoebox to another shoebox with a nicer bathroom but in a much less pleasant location.

I'm going to miss food.