Basic Facts:
- Baby now the size of an Avocado - but as mum quite rightly pointed out, if it was an Israeli avocado it would be a hell of a lot bigger than the ones we get here!
- Baby is moving A LOT, and I can now feel it, more than just fluttering but not yet full-on kicking.
- Heard the heart beat for the first time today, was very strong, so much so that the Midwife commented "That's very strong for 16 weeks and 3 days!", she was very precise about other things too.
- I am now getting to a dangerously high emotional state, but more of that below.

So we are now well into Month Four (16 weeks and 3 days), and have been feeling the baby move around for about 2 weeks now. I am growing quite a lot as, I am told, is the little one inside me. The sharp twinges I have just started feeling are even more than the fluttering which is a bit like when you are nervous and your tummy does a little butterfly flip.

From my point of view my tummy looks huge looking down on it, but I am pretty certain that from the front it is pretty non existent and from the side I just look, well.. fat...so the fact that two people have now given their seat up for me on the train I can only put down to the way I rub my tummy in a often futile attempt to 'look pregnant'…as was the situation on Monday morning:

I was going in for a half eight meeting, yes on Monday morning - I KNOW!? And the train was absolutely packed so I was standing up. And after two stops of me getting increasingly grumpy and absently doing the tummy rubbing thing, a nice young lady stood up and offered me her seat, well I was a little astonished, and caught off guard I sat down mumbling something like " umm, your very kind...umm". I then spent the next ten minutes biting my lip trying not to burst into tears like a complete moron! These sudden and very guttural emotions are still taking me by surprise, but I managed to only let a few stray tears seep out. I managed to finally thank the young woman as she was leaving the train at Kew, she was of course very nice about it, but I'm sure she thought I was the rudest pregnant person ever!

Anyway, here’s to a slightly less stressful week next week with my crazy late nights working in town becoming a vague distant memory and the kitchen sink draining as it is supposed to! Oh yeah and I’ll be 33, which of course is just so much better than 32.(that’s what I’m telling myself anyway, so shush, no comment…as I believe it!)

Going into the 2nd Trimester, for the 1st time...

Our unborn child, it's similarity to the Roswell alien is NOT freakin' me out - HONEST!

As I am now 14/15 weeks into my second pregnancy (no kids yet) and am finally past that nauseous/exhausted/paranoid phase for the first time, and I suddenly have the energy and wherewithal to do anything more than the bare minimum, I wanted to create a place where my thoughts could be caught for posterity and shared with those people I cared about. As those who know me already understand, I am generally not so good at sharing my thoughts and feelings out loud, and felt this would be an ideal 'new world' forum for doing such a thing. That said, perhaps this blog should come with a warning - "Hormones on Board"!?

At the top of this page, you can see the image of our unborn child, and although this one looks a tad alien-esk...the actual experience itself of seeing our child moving around for the first time was like nothing I ever thought it would or could be, I was more nervous leading up to the week 12 scan than I was before speaking at a conference of 200 people or singing a song that I had not rehearsed and did not even know the lyrics to, in a school concert when I was 14! I was almost crying with the fright of it all. I could not even look at the monitor until I saw the look of utter joy in Matty's (husband/light of my life/best friend) face, and even then my initial thought was, is that from the woman before me? Surely that's not mine? BUT IT WAS, it was out little baby Yelland, wiggling about and kicking its legs as if it was trying to say 'hiya!' - Oh what relief, what joy, what insurmountable happiness, that has not so much ebbed away in the following weeks, but become a normality, and that, after weeks/months of verging on the petrified-worrying, is what it means to be in the blissful throws of pregnancy. I am so glad we made it, as I know are all our friends and family.

I will not dwell on the continued hormonal imbalances that plague (well Matt more than me) our lives...nor will I bang on about my continued smelling issues and inability to eat a full meal, as these are insignificant and I must remember that! What matters is that there is a little life growing inside of me, and in six months time we are going to be parents, and we are equally looking forward to and dreading this change in our lives, and Matt swings from saying things like “I am never going to be able to put our baby to bed” to “this was your idea!!”…