An alien planet

Still waiting. Still massive.

Over the weekend my friends put on a lovely baby shower for me and bought some beautiful things for the baby:

Such a lucky girl she is.

I had a long chat with my pregnant little sister in Switzerland. I was struck by how different our pregnancies are. She’s carrying baby boy number three – his eldest sibling just three years old. Sis is in the process of moving onto and renovating a dairy farm in rural Le Noirmont, and says what with that and looking after two lively little boys, she sometimes forgets she’s pregnant with her third.

Cut to me in my flat in Surrey – sitting around Googling the significance of every twinge in my parts and conducting daily analysis of my boobs and bump for evidence of stretch marks (two so far, left breast, relatively minor). I think about nothing other than the pregnancy.

I think about the fact that I get to show someone things for the very first time in their life, and how strange, peculiar and awesome everything will seem to her (awesome in an archaic sense, not in a ‘Bill and Ted’s Totally Bodacious Adventure’ sense).

Our humble flat alone will be a completely alien planet to her. Her mind a blank slate, being emblazoned with the shapes and colours of earth. As her little eyes start to focus and she becomes more alert, I think about her first abstract views of our world.

The faces of her bedfellows:

Mummy:

And Daddy:

And then her world will expand a little further:

And further still:

Already a veritable metropolis of the weird and wonderful – and we haven’t even gone out in the pram yet.

We feel so privileged to be her tour guides. We’re ready and waiting to start!