Hold My Girl

Chapter 7

November
17 Weeks

I can totally understand why people say the second trimester is the one where you can forget you're pregnant because there are times when I wake up and get ready for work and it isn't till I'm dressed and making breakfast that I remember I am growing a tiny human inside me. Which is bizarre to think that something so important can be so easily forgotten, if only for a few moments. Until the baby starts kicking I think it'll be easy to forget about, now that the morning sickness has gone.

I am avoiding my Mum and Dad. I mean they live 400 miles away in Scotland so it's not like I'm going to bump into them down the corner shop. But I have been avoiding all FaceTime and Skype calls much to my mothers annoyance. Despite the fact you can still barely tell I am pregnant, my mum would know. Call it mothers intuition, I don't know, she would just know straight away. So phone calls and texts will have to be sufficient for now. Or at least until I build up the courage to tell them. I am running out of time and burying my head in the sand wont help but I just cant bring myself to do it. I can feel my trousers getting tighter, there still isn't much of a bump but my clothes are getting tighter and I know in only a few weeks it will start to become noticeable. I was successfully managing to keep the bloatedness and roundness of my stomach under loose fitting jumpers (praise be for knitwear!) but I couldn't keep it hidden for long.

I don't know how to broach the subject with my parents. It had taken all my courage telling Harry, I don't think I can bare the disappointment in my fathers eyes when I tell them I've gotten myself pregnant by a man I am not in a relationship with. Probably every fathers worst nightmare. I know in the end they would be supportive. They were my parents after all and I was giving them a grandchild. However the initial disappointment and assumption that I'd ruined my life was something I didn't want to deal with. Then I don't know how to deal with the aftermath. My parents telling me I should move home to be closer to them would be inevitable and moving back to Scotland wasn't something I was going to consider., which would end in another argument.

I had always had a great relationship with both my parents. I had a happy childhood. My mum had always stayed at home to raise me and my dad had gone out to bring in the money that kept us in a fairly nice house, kept me in all the latest fashion trends, and enough left over to go on lovely holidays together. All in all it was a great childhood and even as I grew up and started to rebel, my parents were pretty understanding with any of the stupid shit I tried to pull which resulted in me being a relatively decent teenager and turning into a semi-stable, well rounded adult. Even when I got in to my twenties and wanted to leave our small little home town in central Scotland they didn't try to stop me. They armed me with as much knowledge and experience as two parents could and let me go and 'find myself' or whatever dumb shit I called it at the time. Then they were totally supportive when I found a decent job and decided to stay. But I don't think this pregnancy falls under the same bracket. I don't think they'll be as understanding this time around.

"Did you find out the gender?" Allison asked me the following Tuesday. Hawaii Michael had whisked her away on a romantic weekend all weekend, which meant I hadn't seen her since the night we appeared on Harry's doorstep. Therefore I hadn't updated her, on the scan, more than a few texts and a picture of the newest scan image.

I shook my head as we sat wrapped up in blankets with the fire burning in the background casting a beautiful orange glow around the living room. The evenings were getting darker as the weeks crept closer to Christmas and I loved nothing more than coming home from work, lighting a few candles, putting the fire on and inevitably falling asleep on the couch.

I shook my head. "Baby wouldn't sit still for long enough. The sonographer said she didn't want to guess in case she was wrong because she really couldn't say either way"