BEFORE I BEGIN this week’s dissertation which centres around the first baby kicks of my pregnancy, I’d like to reply to a couple of pressing questions from readers. These are not any ordinary readers, you understand. They belong to that harmless yet baffling coterie who persist in reading this column even though it gives them chronic indigestion, high blood pressure, a cholesterol level no amount of low-fat spread served up by Gloria Hunniford could tackle and (possibly, although I wouldn’t wish this on anyone) piles.
In other words, they enjoy it about as much as I enjoy a vigorous bout of post-iron tablet vomiting. And yet their Saturday morning just isn’t complete without reading this column and then sending me hilariously-worded e-mails to complain about the fact that they can’t abide this column. As though I somehow appear weekly in their living rooms, brandishing a gun which I then point at their heads forcing them to read this page. (I do that only to my mother, to be fair.)
Dear Masochist No 1: In answer to your question, no I don't think I am the only woman in the history of this planet to ever have gotten pregnant. I will, however, defend to the death the likelihood that I am the only one to have a triple craving for watching endless episodes of Come Dine With Me, mainlining Solero icepops and having my feet stroked with a fork applied using medium to strong pressure. (I only mention the Soleros because when I went on about pickles before Christmas, Branston sent me jars of the stuff. In the same article, I could be found coveting some rather fetching Tiffany diamonds I'd seen in Brown Thomas. I'm just saying.)
Dear Masochist No 2: Yes, for your information I very much intend to continue droning on about my pregnancy in this space because – oh, do keep up, people – I am jammy enough to get paid to write a personal column about my life.
And let’s face it, you don’t get more personal than revelations about the egg which, for reasons unknown to those in the scientific community, split in two a few days after I conceived while we were on holiday in India last August, with the result that for almost the last six months I’ve been carrying around two identical beings in my ever-expanding uterus. Personal? You ain’t read nothing yet.
So are we absolutely clear on this? For the next while, I definitely expect to be talking buggies, breastfeeding, baby sleep guru Gina Ford (I’m a fan) and baby stair gates (I’m not a fan. Gates of hell, more like). I’ll be going on about French justice minister Rachida Dati (if that’s what a Caesarean does for you, I’ll have two please) and whether it’s appropriate to bring an ice box full of Soleros into the delivery “suite”. Ha! Suite. I love the way they make it sound like the Four Seasons when in my head it looks increasingly like Guantánamo Bay.
Now, we’ve sorted that out, I’ll just give you a little time to turn the page with a suitable exclamation of disgust and self-righteousness. Go on. Scram.
* * *
My sister-in-law-in-waiting, who also conceived a baby in India last year, gave birth to her first child last Saturday and while the new Portadown girl is the perfect vision of sweetness, the fact remains her mother innocently commandeered the name I had chosen for any possible girl child of my own.
Even back in the days when I was swearing blind to myself, and anyone else who would listen, that I expected to remain child-free, I had a secret name for my first-born. Now lovely India Adams is in the world, my own India will never be and I’ve got to find two sets of names, pronto.
Luckily, I got the perfect book for Christmas, 40,001 Best Baby Names, so should I be planning to rear architects or doctors, I know from the handy lists provided what to call them. (Deandra or Rafael for the architects, Philip or Lydia for the doctors). The truth is we're actually planning to rear children who will grow up to be contestants on reality TV shows, so we're veering more towards Shania and Briony for girls, Wayne and Shayne for boys, at the moment.
Myself and my boyfriend were lying in bed discussing the merits of Brian and Ryan – I thought this would sound excellent on Big Brother 30– when IT finally happened. Tap, tap, tap. TAP. TAP. Tap. Morse code coming from the very core of me. The even more magical thing about this much-longed-for moment was that because of the way we were lying, he felt the same kicks too, at the same time. Tap, tappity, tap. TAP. Did you feel that? Gulp! Squeeze my finger when you feel anything, I instructed him, hardly believing it was happening. Tap, tap. Squeeze! We lay there feeling them make their presence felt for 20 minutes before I changed position, moving away from him, to make a tentative exploration of my belly.
But the kicking stopped when I moved, so we went back into position which is when I heard him say, "Er, sorry but I think it might actually be me". I didn't understand, lost as I was in my own version of Squeeze's Up The Junction– "late evenings by the fire with little kicks inside her". "I think," he said, interrupting Glenn Tilbrook's vocals and sounding as sheepish as a spring lamb, "that I'm having involuntary spasms in my thigh and because it's resting on your belly we, ah, might have thought it was the babies."
Which is how I discovered those first little kicks inside me were actually my boyfriend’s twitchy thigh. The real kicks came a few days later. It wasn’t the same.