Twelve weeks doesn’t seem so long in normal time. But when you struggle to lift your head off the pillow each morning through a combination of sheer exhaustion and nausea, your clothes start to strangle your expanding belly and your every thought is taken over by the anxiety that everything is ok, it can seem like the longest time of your life.

From the moment I found out I had a bun (or at this point, grain of rice) in the oven my life changed forever. 3,000 Clearblues later and the reality set in that I was on the rocky road of early pregnancy.

I imagine it’s like being in Big Brother. The rest of the world is carrying on around you, many (with most sense) completely unaware of what’s happening to you, but your world becomes much narrower and your ability to think about anything else slowly wanes.

You battle daily with bouts of extreme exhaustion even when all you’ve done it put the washing on. (No joke, it did require a short nap). You cope with the waves of morning sickness which defies its description and creeps up on you whenever it fancies. And despite the thing growing inside you resembling nothing more than a baked bean you worry about it all the time like it was the most beautiful, precious and loved baked bean to ever exist.

Then I began to slowly and cautiously breath a teeny tiny sigh of relief for reaching that important first milestone of 12 weeks and I went to see my baked bean on a big screen. (Ok it was a computer screen in the ultrasound scanning room, but it was the best movie I’ve ever seen).

My beautiful bean now had arms, legs, a head even. My heart truly swelled with pride as my 5cm foetus waved at me as I lay with cold gunk on my belly and some strange man poked and prodded at me. It has a heartbeat, it has limbs, it bounced around my insides like it was on a fairground ride. I walked away clutching my belly and the pictures ignoring the fact that my body was ready to give way again to all those wonderful symptoms because it was all worth it.

Then I remembered that I had (all being well) another 6 months to get through filled with growing anxiety and trepidation. This is going to be the longest 6 months of my life...