Looking down and seeing a big belly and nothing else… I’m getting used to that, as well as the sensation of heaviness and bulkiness. What still surprises me is how the rest of the body has changed. Everything is rounder and fleshier: what used to be skinny and knobby, where every tendon and vein stood out, is now smooth and rounded. I’m not sure if it’s fat tissue or water, but it isn’t what I’m used to seeing. My feet don’t look like my feet, and my hands don’t look the same either, nor do most other previously-bony body parts.

My grandmother would have been happy to see this… she always used to encourage me to eat more, telling me how my face looked “skinny as a goat’s footprint”. (That sounds a lot better in Estonian, by the way: “nägu nagu kitsejälg”.)

I find it interesting to observe how radically my metabolism has changed. I am now eating about as much as I did before the pregnancy. Yet now I am gaining weight, almost faster than I’d like to, whereas previously I didn’t manage to gain a single kilo in almost a year. All due to the magical power of hormones.

Despite all the stories about how pregnancy feels awful, I feel great. During the first few months I was expected to feel sick, but didn’t. In the last trimester I’m supposed to feel swollen and achy and tired, but don’t. The hip and back pains are gone, after some help from a physiotherapist and a lot of help from the big V. I just have to be a bit careful with some movements, and not sit still in a bad position too long – but that applies to every body. The weekend in Edinburgh was an exquisite reminder of just how good that pillow is!

I’m also feeling a bit less out of breath now, since I started eating iron supplements (last week). Apparently my iron levels were low. The blood tests to detect that, by the way, gave me my life’s most impressive bruise. The whole crease of the elbow, plus 10cm both downstream and upstream along the veins, was dark purple for over a week.

Blump’s kicking keeps reaching new extremes. I remember, there was a time when it was barely detectable… Now Blump sometimes kicks so hard and so much that the whole belly is moving, and I find that I cannot concentrate on what I’m doing. I get the temptation to tell Blump, “Mother is working right now… go play somewhere else.” I wonder if all babies are so active.

An unanticipated advantage of being pregnant is that I no longer walk faster than most people around me. I’m now about as fast as the average tourist near Westminster, or a shopper on Oxford Street. Navigating the crowds is far less unpleasant when I don’t have to weave between lots of slow people, but can just go with the flow.