Where's My Glow?

You heard me, where is it? I was promised Glow. Get pregnant, get past the icky first bit and *bam* you'll Glow. Well I've passed it and now I'm bloody well over it. I don't look pregnant yet and my expanding tum could easily be attributed to either having just finished a big meal or putting on a few Christmas kilos a couple of weeks early. And the pimples? Don't even get me started on how spotty my face has become. I can see the look of delight in school children's faces as they see mine and think "a human dot to dot drawing, awesome!".

I'm now 17 weeks pregnant with "Tricky" and whilst I was prepared to feel awful for the first trimester it was all with the constant reassurance that pretty soon I would start to feel a bit better, start to enjoy being pregnant and LOOK PRETTY! Sure I was told the horror stories about friends of friends who were sick the entire time, but it was always followed with a "but they were different and I'm sure that won't happen to you", accompanied with the obligatory pitiful smile.

But I've gotten ahead of myself, lets go back to where it all began. Well not where it all began because that's too much information - and yes I'm looking glaringly at certain members of hubby's family right now.

I found out I was pregnant at what I though was 4 weeks but after a trip to the doctor turned out to be 8. I'd heard of this happening to people and had always thought "surely you'd know?!" and convinced myself that these women were morons who had no idea what their bodies were doing from one day to the next. You know the ones - the type that wake up with a baby on the bed and say "I just thought I was getting fat". Well turns out I'm one of those morons. This was quite some relief though because the thought of having to wait sooo long before telling people was already eating me up inside and as if by magic I now had 4 weeks less to wait! High fives all round!

The following ten weeks were full of constant nausea which I believe doctors call 'moring sickness', limiting it to just one small portion of your day, just so that the human race doesn't die out. Morning? How about all friggin day sickness. Its like a hangover that doesn't go away ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, without the fun shenanigans the night before to compensate in some small way. I only threw up once the whole time I felt like this, and luckily this was at the bus stop one morning in full view of about one hundred motorists as they drove by all smug in their non-vomit filled cars whilst hubby rubbed my back (obviously in shock that I had actually thrown up after threatening multiple times a day to do so for what seemed like ages now) told me the bus was coming, and did I want to catch the next one instead?

But it was the constant tiredness that really threw me. I'm the type of person who likes to sleep in and thinks whoever invented the Nanna Nap should be up for sainthood, but come on, sleeping for 12 hours straight and then being completely exhausted after only an hour or two of doing practically nothing? How do women with high powered jobs do this? And how on earth do women have more than one child? Is there some memory impairing hormone that is excreted the moment you give birth so that the icky first three months is wiped from our brains? (I'll get back to you on this one if we have another one).

I know the Glow exists, I'm sure I've seen it - or was that just in the movies? Perhaps I'll get it when my bump is noticeable? Maybe that's the key to the Glow? Or maybe its just a bit of bullshit invented to make pregnant women feel better about have little furnaces churning away inside them- "no, I'm not Glowing, that's just sweat on my brow".