I feel fat.

1. There are folds in my belly when I sit down.

2. Parts of my belly are hidden from view when I look down.

Well, both the hunger and the tiredness have now subsided somewhat.

Last week both were distractingly strong. I was so sleepy that I actually almost nodded off during the Java course I was attending, several times. Eyelids getting so heavy that it was a physical effort to keep them up – and if I had been anywhere other than a small classroom, I really would have just put my head down on the desk and fallen asleep. But I thought the teacher might not appreciate that. So I guess I just looked really groggy.

Most of that seems to have passed now. I still eat a lot but the hunger is no longer all-consuming. And it’s nice to be able to do something in the evenings, and not just collapse in the sofa. I’ve even started reading a book again.

Hunger leads to eating. Eating leads to weight gain. Weight gain leads to clothes not fitting.

After three weeks of struggling to feed my ravenous hunger, I’ve gained about 4 kg. Well, maybe some of it came a bit earlier, before the hunger came to its peak, but I believe most of it is the result of a few weeks of intense eating.

Those 4 kg appear have gone straight to the waistline, adding roughly 10 cm. As a result, none of my clothes fit around the waist anymore. First they generally became a bit tight. Then the ones that used to sit rather loosely, low on the hips, became tight. Then even those became uncomfortably tight. There’s one woolly skirt that might make it through another week or so, if I move the buttons out a bit.

Yesterday evening I accepted the inevitable fact that I really have nothing to wear any more, and went out for some emergency shopping. The waistline isn’t going to stop expand any time soon, so I needed clothes that would expand with it. Elastic waists, drawstrings, etc. But that sort of thing turned out surprisingly hard to find… elasticated waists really aren’t the in thing right now. Most elasticated things fell into one of two categories: way too casual (skirts in flower-patterned jersey, which I wouldn’t want to wear to work) or ridiculously unstylish (black shapeless trousers with no details). Stretchy things are aimed at teenagers and at women who’ve stopped caring about how they look.

I found some halfway decent skirts in the end. With a bit of work they might even look good. The long simple charcoal one will get a large handful of tiny silk roses – something to keep me busy this weekend. The wide brown skirt in heavy viscose might get some golden pearls, or maybe some sequins along the edges and corners.

No trousers, though. (Sweatpants don’t count. I refuse to wear sweatpants. I’m not that desperate yet.) It might get easier when it gets warmer: drawstring trousers in linen have been popular for a few years, and will hopefully be around this summer as well. And dresses, yes, that’s it. I foresee lots of dresses this summer.

It was a bit of a shock to be trying on clothes in size 14 though… I’ve never worn anything larger than a 10, and mostly 8s. But on the other hand, it was nice not to have to dig around for the smallest size possible, only to discover that even that sits like a sack, and go home with empty hands. I might even try to keep some of this weight afterwards!

The hunger that first alerted me to my pregnancy continues and and has grown to absurd proportions.

When it comes on at full strength, it is deafening, driving out all other thought other than itself. It is so insistent that I cannot think about anything except that I MUST. HAVE. FOOD. RIGHT. NOW. On the days when I have gone out to buy a sandwich for my second lunch, I have found myself wondering, on the way back, whether it is really necessary to wait until I’m all the way back in the office… perhaps I could tear into the sandwich right there and then, in the street. It feels like I have been starving for many days, whereas in fact about two, possibly two and a half hours have passed since I last ate.

I eat four full meals a day – breakfast, lunch, another lunch, dinner. In fact if you count all the snacks as well, I probably eat about eight times a day. Or actually, to be more precise, I eat pretty much all the time. Not only am I hungry, but my blood sugar level seems to be doing funny things. I need injections of sugar quite frequently, so I eat lots of fruit.

Pre-breakfast snack (a yoghurt or some dry cereal)
Breakfast (double sandwich, orange juice)
Fruit
Mid-morning snack (banana / yoghurt / müllerice / cereal bar)
Lunch
Fruit
Afternoon snack
Another lunch
Fruit
Dinner
Late evening snack

No cravings, thus far. A strong preference for dairy, fruit and vegetables, even more marked than usual – if that’s possible after 15 years of vegetarian living. I used to eat seafood occasionally, maybe once every one or two weeks, and fish maybe once a month. I haven’t wanted any fish at all in the past few weeks. Yoghurt in particular feels very good. When I am hungry but have a feeling that I don’t really want to eat, if you see what I mean, a yoghurt awakens the appetite very nicely. Raw fruit and veg likewise. Carrots… fruit juice… mmm.

On the other hand I have lost all taste for high-calorie snacks: sweets, chocolate, chips, cakes. I had been trying to gain weight for a while through regular consumption of chocolate croissants and cakes. The weight gain effort was rather unsuccessful in the end, but it gave me a habit of afternoon cakes. That is now completely gone. I tried potato chips the other day, didn’t like the taste at all, and gave up after two of them.

I haven’t felt any real nausea either, for which I am very grateful. I do feel an almost constant low-level queasiness, but that’s probably due to this constant eating and the fluctuations in blood sugar. Sharp juicy fruits, such as mandarins, seem to help.

Just about a week ago, I discovered I am pregnant. I’m very happy about this, but still getting used to the idea.

In retrospect, of course, it is pretty obvious… Two weeks of tiredness and lack of energy might not be a clear enough sign on its own. Add to that tender breasts, and the message should be clearer. Still it didn’t click for me. Only when I found myself ravenously hungry did I seriously start to wonder whether I might be pregnant.

But since I’d been hoping for a pregnancy for the last three years, and spent the last year or so going from one test to another, regularly getting stuck by needles, while doctors were trying to figure out why my body wasn’t behaving the way it should, I became somewhat cautious and sceptical about such things. I didn’t dare to put forward what would normally be the most obvious explanation, because it is no longer obvious.

I always used to feel that my body was working well, and any signals were true. Body says it’s hungry – feed it. Body says it’s tired – rest. Body says this food doesn’t feel good – don’t eat it. But it becomes difficult to know how much I can trust the signals of my body, when I’ve been munching pills for months, just to get the body to do the right thing. And it becomes difficult to separate signal from noise. Is it my body speaking, or is it the pills? I’d just started on a new medication that was supposed to knock some sense into my hormone system, and it seemed likely that any sensations of being off-balance and not-quite-normal would be due to side effects from that medication.

After the fact, the signal is clear, and the noise was minimal. I just wasn’t listening properly. It is good to know that the signals are still reliable. And I have to admit, despite my general aversion to and distrust of pills and medication, they’ve exceeded my expectations this time.