No scuba diving for me.

New mums have told me that the second trimester (the middle 3 months of pregnancy for those not in with the antenatal lingo) is the best. You’re not trying to keep a big secret, you’re showing and yet not big enough to be overly uncomfortable. Birth and all the other scary stuff is just far enough round the corner to not be too real yet. You’re at the stage where you can just enjoy being pregnant.

For us, it is very similar. The shock of December isn’t so raw, it’s still painful but the pain is dulled. I don’t cry so randomly,  I can watch programmes with babies in and I’ve started wearing mascara again. The scariness of birth and beyond is on the horizon, but it’s not yet tangible. On average every day is slightly easier, but we are waiting for the turning point on the graph, the change in seasons, where days stop getting lighter and lighter and start getting darker and darker again. Until then we are just getting on with the busyness of life. Even trying to enjoy it.

We have had so much support, so thank you to those who have messaged, prayed, invited us for lunches, sent us letters or cards, spent time with us, baked for us and just made us laugh. Carrying on from my last post, I was completely taken aback a week or so ago when my year 10s entered my classroom carrying gifts: a big bunch of flowers and four large boxes of chocolates (and a sausage roll from a boy, which I said I thought he better keep). I don’t expect presents, but for these children who had spent their own money, it was their way of showing they cared when they didn’t know what to say. I did well up. But I still gave them homework.

I was asked to meet with the health and safety person at school, who then wrote up a report on me. It was slightly devastating to read that I won’t be participating in any school related scuba diving or radioactive material handling over the next few months – I’ve had to change a few of my lesson plans. It’s also been written in black and white (well black on white) that I am to avoid all ‘stress inducing activities’. I’m a secondary school teacher in a core, understaffed department of a large Ofsted expecting academy, so that should be interesting. I might get the words printed on a big plaque and nailed to my classroom door.

God has reminded me that life is a gift, not something we are owed. At first I felt  more sorry for myself, like a spoilt teenager who doesn’t get the phone that everyone else has. But if I truly believe that life is a gift, then I shouldn’t expect it or feel a sense of injustice when the gift I’ve been given is different to that I thought I was getting. I’m not saying I’m not scared, grieving, or that sometimes I just want to shout until it all goes away, but I am slowly becoming less sorry for myself and in turn able to notice the things I have been given. The friends, family, the tiny life inside me, the eternal assurance.

Next week we will find out if ‘it’ is a boy or girl, and then we have the fun of starting to think of names. It’s just a shame my sister just named her puppy a name excruciatingly close to my favourite girls name! I guess great minds think alike…