I think I can now confirm (sort of.  Almost.  I mean, I think this is what I’m feeling) that the Wee One is moving around in there.  Like, officially.  In fact, I’m pretty sure s/he just punched me three times in the last few seconds.  It is SO WEIRD!

And now the cat is out of the bag.  For a start, my mother has now given my more conservative relatives the happy news (thankfully, they were so excited about the prospect of knitting tiny clothes for the Wee One that they have so far overlooked the whole sperm donor scenario).  And secondly, some of the more observant of my students have started to notice my enormous bloated midsection, leading one to claim today that she had “heard from someone” that I was pregnant.

I was a aghast that one of the twenty-odd people at work to whom I had entrusted my confidence would blurt it out to a sixteen year old, but it turned out that this was in fact a ruse on the part of said sixteen year old to get me to admit the truth, which she had suspected upon observation of my “rounded” figure.

Ladies and gentlemen, not only have I been conned into admitting the truth by a wily Year 11, but I am also now officially “round.”  As in, that is my actual shape.

I have to admit I’m kind of enjoying looking like a heifer (or to use the Daily Mail term, “flaunting my pregnancy curves”) and at least the fact that everyone now knows means I no longer have to hide under a huge cardigan, or have people think I’m a work-shy glutton when I run off to the canteen for the fourth time that morning.

Anyway, the questions the Year 11s asked were enlightening, if nothing else.  I had been terrified they would start quizzing me about whether I was married, but instead they were more interested in what the baby’s birthday would be, with one young ‘un musing “Miss, your baby will be really lucky!”  I beamed with pride, naturally thinking this was because it had the wondrous me as a mother, and then the boy piped up “Its birthday will be in July.  That is SO the best time for a birthday!”

I agreed wholeheartedly, adding that my birthday was in July too, then a girl came out with “But Miss, what would you do if the baby was born on YOUR BIRTHDAY????”

Puzzled, I answered probably nothing, before realising that sharing my birthday with a mewling tot would mean that I would never again have an opportunity to have a quiet drink with friends in a restaurant of my own choosing, and would instead have to put up with children’s parties full of squawking brats demanding party bags every year on MY OWN BIRTHDAY.  The only day when everyone joins in celebration, homage and general worship of me.  Perhaps the Year 11s were right to point out this glaring example of poor timing on my part.

Then one of the boys decided to lower the tone by asking “what would happen if the baby had a really small head and huge shoulders, and it got stuck.”  At that point I decided it was definitely time to change the subject.