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.