‘My baby has started kicking and it’s freaking me out’

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I’m not sure why this latest development is such a shock to me. I’ve been well aware of my pregnancy from around 4 weeks and now I’m 26 weeks in. And yet… the fact my baby has started kicking is freaking me out.

This isn’t one of those situations like Sonia from EastEnders when one minute I’m playing my trumpet with all the joys of a carefree teen and the next minute I’m giving birth to a surprise baby on the sofa with the help of the Slater family (sorry, but I love bit of soap nostalgia).

I’m also well aware that babies kick during pregnancy. Part and parcel of the deal, isn’t it? Yet now it’s happening to my body, I am so on edge – because now everything feels so real. There is no denying the small human life that is almost fully grown in my tummy.

‘Even when my belly began to grow, I would stand in the mirror and marvel at the size of it’

At first the kicks felt like gentle flutters, like butterflies in your tummy. Then they started to feel like popping. That or it was just the dreaded trapped wind rearing it’s ugly head again (head to last week’s column for context).

But now they’re unmistakable. Big kicks that sometimes make my tummy bulge out like I’m smuggling ferrets under my t-shirt. My baby boy seems to love to kick late at night and first thing in the morning, which is probably good practice for the terrible sleep I’m sure to have. He loves a little can-can style kick when I drink something sugary or ice cold. I treated myself to an ice coffee the other day and baby boy went wild in my tummy like he’d popped a pill at a ’90s rave…

It’s now so real that he’s going to be here in just a few months. When I first found out I was pregnant, my little baby was the size of a pea. Barely a dot in my tummy. I still had a relatively flat stomach (lockdown weight gain aside) and even though I had my head down a toilet most days due to morning sickness, it was still easy to forget I was technically growing a human.

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Even when my belly began to grow, I would stand in the mirror and marvel at the size of it. Pushing it out and cradling it like you do for a laugh with bloat after a giant Nandos.

But with the kicks, he’s real. So real. The evidence of my imminent motherhood practically somersaulting around in my tummy. I’m so excited to meet him but now, I’m also terrified. Terrified when I brush past something, in case I’ve hurt him. Worried when he starts manically kicking in case it’s because he’s stressed out. Bursting into tears when I very nearly tripped up the pavement on my way to Tesco and thought about what could have been if I’d landed flat on my face.

As Ross once said in Friends ahead of the birth of his son Ben: “I always knew I was having a baby. I just never realised the baby was having me.”

‘My bump has grown so much since the picture – but I’m still scared I’m not ready for motherhood’

And that’s really it in a nutshell. I’m going to be a mum and I’m so scared I’m not ready. I still haven’t painted my kitchen cabinets, I still haven’t bought some nice looking plants for my bathroom and I still sack off hoovering my house until there’s so much fluff, it looks like the wood floor is carpet.

I’ve read so many things about pregnancy and yet I still feel I have no idea how to raise a baby. But this baby is very nearly fully cooked and with every kick, it’s like I’m seconds away from the oven timer pinging.

This by no means takes away from how excited I am to meet him. But it feels like it’s all come around so quickly. One minute I’m seeing those two lines on the pregnancy stick and the next minute I’m counting down the weeks until I welcome a baby into this world.

But does anyone ever feel ready? Does any first time mum ever feel completely mentally prepared for when their baby starts to move around and the realisation that soon they’ll be a parent finally hit home?

I’m hoping the answer is either a) no or b) not many. Otherwise I’ll look a right tit.

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