Anastasia and her husband Nick have been married for 3 years and are expecting their first baby. Anastasia, who is 33, is a freelance writer and lives in London. She’s just 10 weeks into pregnancy and this is her diary of events so far

Once the initial glow is over, I start to notice the little changes and the reality of pregnancy kicks in. Although I don’t throw up, I feel as if I have flu every day, all day. Nothing tastes very good and I am constantly eating, attempting to bite into that mysterious food that will make me feel better. Nothing ever does. Undaunted, I keep shovelling in the carbohydrates, and think about what I’ll eat for my next meal as I chew away. Scary.

I start to feel fat immediately, mainly because I am so incredibly fatigued that the thought of sticking to my four-times-a-week gym routine is unfathomable. As someone who has been athletic since I was a kid, not doing any exercise at all is a big adjustment. And yet it doesn’t bother me enough to hoist my body out of bed and attempt a twenty-minute stroll, as all the books suggest. If I’m not working or eating, all I can do is sleep. Nick diagnoses me with tse-tse fly disease (sleeping sickness) and I don’t even have the energy to laugh.

Speaking of laughing, I’m not doing much of that at all these days and I feel guilty about it. Since it wasn’t an easy road for us to get pregnant, I thought I’d be extra-grateful and not let anything get me down once we made it. Well, it seems that hormones overrule the brain, because I have found that my tolerance level for anything, everything, and everyone is down from a previously sunny 8.5 to a 1. I seem to be mildly annoyed all the time. Although I am happy, I can’t seem to control this negative attitude that has enveloped me. Late buses make me crazy, people smoking near me receive dirty looks designed to stop them in their tracks. I am on a rampage. When I literally scream at Nick for not closing the bathroom door properly, I realise that I have to calm it down.

New heights (depths?) of worry

I guess I’m also reacting to the undercurrent of fear that something could still go wrong. I feel getting this far has been such a long haul that I cannot imagine losing this baby and starting all over again. Time has never passed so slowly as it has done in these first few weeks of pregnancy. But every day that goes by, I remind myself that my chances of miscarriage go down and down, and I am grateful. Since I know the exact day I conceived, every Thursday I congratulate myself for being one more week pregnant, striving to reach the big ‘12’ I marked in my diary.

Then I hear some news that really shakes me and I hate myself for the way I react. A good friend in America miscarried at 20 weeks. My first thought was sorrow for her and then fear for me. How could that happen at 20 weeks? I thought the only danger was in the first 12 weeks! I’ve been shooting for the 12-week mark and planning to celebrate that milestone. Do I have to revise my expectations now? And what a horrible friend am I to turn someone else’s tragedy into my own selfish worry?

A good long talk with my glass-is-half-full mother grounds me immensely. Although she is not a clairvoyant, she is so positive that our baby will be born healthy, she almost has me believing it too. I know in my heart that all the worry in the world can’t change things, so I make a conscious effort to direct my energy in a more positive way and just assume everything will be OK. But the worry bug has a way of creeping back into my head, especially when I am trying to fall asleep.

Goodbye body

Meanwhile I lose my waist. Overnight. My figure is an hourglass shape and my small waist was probably the best thing about my body. Now that it’s not small anymore, I feel like a tree trunk. There is no bump to explain my sudden loss of shape, I simply don’t fit into any of my clothes anymore and I look like a shapeless blob. One of my many new books shows a model going through her pregnancy week by week, with a naked photograph of her body side-on. By week 12 the book smugly reports that she has not gained a single ounce.

This information drives my curiosity and competitive spirit beyond the fear of the scales. I have always avoided weighing myself, simply because it causes me too much anxiety. I have never had a weight problem, aside from the one I, like most women, have created in my own mind. The fact that I’m 5’10” also means I weigh more than the average girl and I have always dreaded the actual number, no matter how ‘normal’ it might be for my height. Anyway, this damned woman in the book seduces me straight to our very dusty bathroom scales and I gingerly step on. Well. It seems to me I have gained ten pounds already. Ten pounds in as many weeks! To be fair, I’m not exactly sure what I weighed before I got pregnant, but I vaguely remember a number that seemed to be TEN POUNDS under what this scale reads. Oh my God. Suddenly I feel like a failure, a whale, a pregnant woman too fat to be featured in a book about healthy pregnancy. I vow to go to the gym. Tomorrow.