I'm pregnant. Now what?

I get out of the shower and take a peek at the stick sitting near the toilet.   Pregnancy test reads positive.  My husband is still in bed and the house is silent.   In the stillness I apply post-shower body lotion, adding a little extra to my tummy as an afterthought. 

In my memory of that morning, I recall vividly the silence as I made my way upstairs to wake Thom with the news.  Life seemed surreal and suddenly so fresh as if I was walking up the stairs for the first time.

Thom is happy.  He wipes the sleep from his eyes and bounces out of bed.  I feel like I'm watching it all unfold as an observer. Despite our plans and protection-free sex, I struggle to define how I feel. 

On the way to work I stare out the window like a zombie.  I feel like crying at times for joy, and other times for sheer amazement that being pregnant is even possible. Other times still, for fear.  Can I do it? Can I be a mother? Unforunatley only time can tell me.  Either way its happening.  After I took the test, I sometimes wanted to rush the 9 months along, wishing them away before they even begun.  At other times, I'm paralysed in terror.

For the rest of this week I have been seeing people in a different way.  Every person crammed around me on the tube, each sweaty suit-clad man plowing down the pavement to work, every old woman struggling to cross the road - all of them have been a baby.  All of them started off like this. Small, indetectible even, inside the body of someone like me.  It's a staggering thought.

On my commute in, the train stops.  It's 8am and all the commuters peel away from newspapers or open one weary eye to look around disapprovingly at no-one in particular.  After a few minutes, the conductor announces that we are stuck in delays because of a fatality on the track.  Groans and moans all around as people drag out mobile phones to explain their lateness.  I well up with tears at the thought.  Is it the hormones?  Is it the thought of a tiny life growing inside?  Either way, I am different.  A man across the carriage looks at me strangely as a snivvel into my sleeve.  Although I don't care about him, what will I tell others?  How will I explain any differences they see?  How soon to tell?

And so begins the many millions of questions I am to answer....