Here are the plus sides to being pregnant:
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Bigger boobs (many a night I've shoved socks in my bra and paraded around the bedroom trying to fathom whether I could pass as Pammy Anderson – well now they've tripled in size for real! My husband Ben keeps worryingly asking me 'What happens to them afterwards? Do they just get absorbed back into your body and turn into a random piece of flab?')
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People give you a seat on the tube
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You have an excuse not to go to the hardcore Insanity workout with your colleague at lunchtime
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You can sort of eat what you want (although I'm convinced Ben has been living vicariously through me - he's on a fitness drive so he sits there eating fish and salad and orders me macaroni cheese, pizza and a plate of biscuits)
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If you can't be arsed to go out to meet anyone you have a great excuse!
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No hangovers
Downsides to being pregnant:
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You forget how to walk properly and form a waddle
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Your ankles start to look like this
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If you lie down on the couch don't expect to get up again without having to do a side roll onto the floor
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You might not be doing that hardcore exercise but your body still aches in random places (like your ribs?!)
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Your nice clothes don't fit anymore and you have to wear tents
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Those giant boobs you're now so proud of look like someone's doodled on them with a blue sharpie pen because they’re so veiny
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You can't get pissed
All in all I've been pretty lucky with my pregnancy journey so far (I have a friend who has been puking since the day she found out - and was hospitalised and on a drip for four days because of it!) but still, my symptoms and those of many other women in similar conditions pale into insignificance compared to the woes currently suffered by Ben.
Here are some examples of his issues
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We went to see Taylor Swift in Hyde Park recently. And by 10pm, while I was contentedly dancing away (‘mum dancing’ seems to have befallen me even before I've popped a kid out) all I heard from him was "My feet and ankles are killing me, I need to go home soon, when's she bloody finished?"
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In bed the other night he looked at me sadly and said "You won't ever forget that I'm the O.B will you?" - after asking him what the hell he was on about I learnt that the "O.B" meant "Original baby"
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When he's had a hard day at work and is on the couch he starts whimpering that he needs a cup of tea or that he needs me to bring him his iPhone charger because he 'physically can't move' (cue me rolling off the couch sideways because I can't get up any other way)
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He demands a fan to sit beside his head at all times in the house because 'it's too hot outside'
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If I have an ache, he has a much bigger one
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He's even found a name for his new illness. 'I'm suffering from couvade' he told me in a French accent recently 'it's French for 'we're pregnant'. And he's shown me links to studies that prove men really do suffer pregnancy symptoms in sympathy with their partners "Fathers-to-be endure cramps, back pain, mood swings, food cravings, morning sickness, extreme tiredness, depression, irritability, fainting and toothache, researchers have found"
Yet while on the one hand he's trying to garner sympathy for his plight, there's another part of him in denial it's even happening at all. So determined is he that life will not change once we've had the baby, that he's already planned his list of 'fun stuff' that will prove he's not a 'baby bore'.
So far he's decided to:
Go on a stag do in Greece 10 days before I'm due to give birth
Go to a wedding three days after said birth is meant to happen
Book a party house for New Year - for him, me and a load of friends (oh and the baby I guess)
Go skiing
Go to the Burning Man festival
Then there's the discussion about having to buy a new car. We have a mini with a boot the size of a pea so we obviously need to change it. So he's currently looking at two door sports cars.
Oh and we've started to kit out the nursery. But so far all he's ordered is a sofa bed for people to stay on (who the hell will want to sleep in a room with our baby I don't know) and it's been covered in blue velvet. Really-not-at-all-baby-sick-proof blue luxury velvet.