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Three teens and a baby: A pregnant pause before all hell breaks loose

Liz Fraser, who has 3 teenage children and a baby on the way - Andrew Crowley
Liz Fraser, who has 3 teenage children and a baby on the way - Andrew Crowley

The term ‘pregnant pause’ was invented for the last few weeks before giving birth

Though ‘pause’ doesn’t quite do it justice. ‘Pregnant inhale-in-terror-and-choke-on- own-saliva’ would have done just as well. 

The days crawl by more slowly than a heavily pregnant woman trying, understandably, to run for the hills, and simultaneously so fast you can’t believe how quickly the whole nine months have gone by.

All this, mixed with an internal siren of screaming awareness that your life is going to be smashed into a billion exhausted pieces - any moment now. 

It feels like being underwater, in slow motion, at hyper-speed, in a tumble-dryer, carrying a Fabergé hippopotamus. As relaxing times go, it’s not the best.

In my previous three pregnancies, I found these last weeks a strange period of intense reflection

In my previous three pregnancies, I found these last weeks a strange period of intense reflection - largely to help pass the endless days of hauling my belly around like a giant, kicking water-balloon, but also to avoid looking at my actual reflection, which by now resembles nothing even vaguely like the me I once knew (and I’m feeling more and more certain by the heart-burn-filled minute that I will never see again).  

Most of all, though, I am reflecting on my relationships, with everyone and everything in my life and how they are about to change. My parents, my partner, my work, my friends, my self… and my older children. 

They have been incredible throughout this pregnancy, and I’ve been amazed but how well they’ve taken to the idea of having a baby sister, now that they’re all teenagers and far more interested in their mates, and Netflix. Sharing a house with nappies and colic is probably not high on their list of things they expected, or wanted, to be doing at this point in their lives. 

And they have all handled it in their own way. My eldest daughter, 20 and away at University, has wanted to know all the way through how I am, how the bump is, and texts to ask me about it all as often as lectures (and hangovers) allow. 

'My middle daughter, at 17, was ecstatic about having a new sibling, but where my bump was concerned I believe the words ‘gross’, ‘bluergh’ and ‘yuk’ cropped up' - Credit: John Dowland/ Getty Images Fee
'My middle daughter, at 17, was ecstatic about having a new sibling, but where my bump was concerned I believe the words ‘gross’, ‘bluergh’ and ‘yuk’ cropped up' Credit: John Dowland/ Getty Images Fee

My middle daughter, at 17, was ecstatic about having a new sibling, but where my bump was concerned I believe the words ‘gross’, ‘bluergh’ and ‘yuk’ cropped up. Reading between the blurred lines, I think she was not too keen on the idea of there being a human inside me, and, quite frankly, I’m never that keen on touching anyone else’s pregnant bumps either, so I completely respect her wish not to come hand-to-bump with her sister, for now. 

My son has perhaps surprised me the most. At 14 years-old, six feet tall and well and truly in the Too Cool For School stage of guitar-strumming and hair-gelling, he has asked to touch and feel his sister kicking and thrashing about more than anyone, and seems totally enthralled. 

When she gets hiccups, he will sit with me for ages, feeling her hopping about. I never expected this, and it makes me pretty happy, relieved and excited about how well he might bond with her. 

The imminence of her arrival has suddenly stirred a lot of deeply buried memories in me about how much easier it is to have a baby inside, than out

The imminence of her arrival has suddenly stirred a lot of deeply buried memories in me about how much easier it is to have a baby inside, than out. Having cursed almost every minute of my pre-term labour pains, heartburn, backache, headaches and inability to run, now I want the baby to stay in as long as possible to give me the freedom to do such madcap things as walk up escalators, and pop out of the house without trying to pack a pram, changing bag and 500kgs of baby paraphernalia. 

I’m spending a lot of time in a local hipster café - not only because the coffee is exquisite but because it has a small, beautiful room upstairs. Anything small and upstairs will be Out Of Bounds for MONTHS, after the baby comes and ends my days of freedom. 

These long, slow, fast, strange days of being a mother of three. Before that becomes four...

Next week: It's almost time to meet the baby