Josa’s pregnancy diary - week 16-18

We fly to Rome, to stay on the Tuscan coast for ten days – our first flight abroad with the children. They are very excited. Landing is a nightmare. I cannot work out if I am going to be sick or faint – I clutch one of those flimsy bags miserably. Queuing for passport control, I break into uncontrollable sobs. Kindly Italian policemen, for whom reproduction holds no embarrassment, help me into a wheelchair and fetch a bottle of chilled aqua minerale. It occurs to me that throwing a pregnant wobbly is a good way of distracting attention from smuggling activities.

I spend a lot of time on the beach, ignoring the usual advice to avoid any kind of suntan. It just makes me feel so good, and the children are in bliss in the sea. To lie on my front to read, I dig a small pit in the sand to accommodate the increasingly hard, little bump. The baby is seven inches long now, apparently. I sleep luxuriously in the afternoons, I have never minded the heat. Thoby finds my changing shape wildly attractive, I am glad to say. The cold white wine looks so tempting that I take a sip. Yuk!