I am tired and I am hungry. It feels like there’s no limit to how much I could sleep. There are, of course, clear limits to how much I can actually sleep, since I do need to work and take care of the household. Interestingly the tiredness really only hits me when I slow down. As long as I am moving, kept busy, I don’t feel it too much. Then I finish eating dinner and just sit for 5 minutes, and I can barely keep awake.

The pregnancy is clearly messing with my blood sugar and digestion. I have to eat every three hours or so, but often when I feel that I absolutely must eat something RIGHT NOW, when I go to the kitchen to actually get food, the only thing I want is a yoghurt or perhaps an apple. The thought of actually eating real food is almost revolting. So the signal of hunger arises from low blood sugar, not from lack of energy.

My blood pressure also seems to be swinging wildly, and standing still for long stretches of time is not good. Several mornings now, while standing on the train – only 11 minutes – I’ve been close to fainting due to low blood pressure. It’s the worst combination: standing still, and being slightly too hot because we’re effectively indoors but with outdoor clothes.

My least favourite pregnancy complaint thus far: gassy stomach. Very uncomfortable, sometimes really painfully so. I fart like a champion. Because of this I find it hard to fit into my clothes at times, even though I haven’t gained much weight yet, so I feel a lot more pregnant than I really am.

Speaking of which… Whenever I think of the English word (farting) I cannot help but remember a business trip, back in 2004 or so. This was while I was living and working in London. There were four of us, visiting a few companies in Stockholm over two days: myself, a colleague, my boss, and my boss’s boss. As our taxi left the airport, one of the others spotted a sign for “Utfart”, meaning Exit in Swedish. And they found it hilarious. So hilarious that for the next two, they would shout “utfart!” to each other about once every half hour. It got old after about 3 repetitions, but not for them. Educated intelligent adults, with jobs entailing significant responsibility over much money – and with a sense of humour at the level of an 8-year-old. And they’ve forever ruined the word utfart for me.