Six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks...we waited for the nausea to become a crippling misery of sickness...nine weeks, ten weeks, eleven weeks...still just a vague queasiness...twelve weeks, thirteen weeks, fourteen weeks and we finally accepted with relief (and a little envy on my part) that not all pregnancies involve eleven weeks of retching, vomiting and despair. After the initial bleeding scare, Sally's pregnancy was to be a low maintenance one, and with a eight-month-old baby Luna to look after, this was no bad thing. Fifteen weeks, sixteen weeks, seventeen weeks...
Luna though of course, being a baby, was on the high maintenance end of the scale, and required every bit of attention that two mummies could provide. She had developed a strong attraction to all objects small and swallow-hazardy, an uncanny ability to smear yoghurt into into everything within a two-metre radius of the dining table, and a deep love of "milky" - such that I spent hours and hours and hours trapped under a sleepy, sucky bundle of now rather big baby.
So Sally might have had an easy time of it, but lost amidst the nappies and lullabies and bootees and board books, she missed out a bit - on the tummy rubs and pampering and excitement of a first pregnancy. And perhaps I - not having had chance to get to know the little bump so well - missed out a bit too. Eighteen weeks, nineteen weeks, twenty weeks...and that little bump that was really starting to show...