I haven’t written a great deal about being pregnant. I’ve even had a hard time recording occasional moments in my pregnancy diary, mostly because my pregnancy has been uncomplicated and pedestrian, and hasn’t impacted on my life to a great extent. Finding out that we were having a boy, feeling the baby kick for the first time – they were all rather emotional moments, but few and far between. Apart from a few weeks of feeling nauseous between the first and second trimester, I have proceeded placidly about my business, getting slightly larger each week and finding it difficult to find the motivation to read my various pregnancy books. The actual birth seemed a rather distant event.

This week marks my official entry into the third trimester, and I am suddenly rather alarmed. My reading has progressed beyond pregnancy to the “you are now at home with a tiny helpless creature who relies on you for everything” stage and I am trying to prevent myself hyperventilating all over the place. I don’t feel ready to be taking care of an infant in a mere three months time. I still find it hard to reconcile the wriggling little inhabitant of my midsection with an actual, honest to goodness baby that will appear in our lives. In three months. THREE MONTHS. Three months before our holiday to New Zealand we had an excel spreadsheet of all our accommodation and plans. We do not have an excel spreadsheet for this baby. I think perhaps we need one. How can I have a baby without a spreadsheet?

I find the birth the least alarming part of the whole procedure – I’m a little nervous about it, and I don’t expect it will be particularly pleasant, but it won’t go on forever, and you get a baby at the end of it. And then you can clutch the baby and collapse into a howling pit of anxiety, or at least that’s the way a small part of me is picturing it at the moment.

I feel large now, the glimpses of myself I first see in the mirror always a bit of a shock. My back is starting to ache and whenever my bladder is full the baby seems to kick me in it with unerring aim. I keep experiencing random and intense bouts of nausea, and am grateful when they happen to occur somewhere near a bathroom. I’m less than happy when they occur while driving, and next time, I am promising myself, next time I will pull over the minute I start to feel even slightly sick. For the good of my clothes, and the upholstery.