Tears

You get warned pretty early on about the hormones that come with pregnancy. I mean, there's all sorts of weird stuff that can happen ("you're trying to tell me I could leak milk when a baby cries when I'm only like 14 weeks pregnant?!"), but all the websites and books are up on the tears. Did you know that chemically, a new mum is likely to spend the fourth day of her babies life in tears?

I've always been partial to getting teary eyed whenever I hear someone sing. It doesn't have to be good singing, just being able to see someone really giving it their best, and I'm done for.

But during pregnancy, not too much changed. I mean, I teared up watching Bondi Vet, but I do that a lot normally. I teared up in a few of the MasterChef eliminations but that's because I get fond of sweet people. I teared up when I read that one of the admin girls called me 'sweetheart' in my birthday card, but that's because come on, how sweet?!

I really cried when I was 10 weeks pregnant and had to give myself my first blood thinning needle and it hurt and we had people coming for dinner in an hour and no food in the messy house and I was hungry and didn't know what I wanted.

I really cried when I was 20 weeks pregnant and listening to Bon Iver on my drive home from work. And again at 25 weeks while listening to the same CD on the same drive. You'd think I would have learnt my lesson after the first time, but instead I repeated the process, letting all the tears fall on the steering wheel and down the front of my singlet, parked out the front of the house rather than in the carport so that the dogs wouldn't see me and get upset too.

Since the arrival of baby, I've not yet hit that point. I shed half a tear on our worst night yet as I apologised to my husband for seducing him in to having a baby. I shed half a tear when I stuffed up my pancake that I'd been thinking about since 10am and it was almost 3pm and I hadn't eaten anything and when would I remember that I need to halve all of the ingredients in my recipe so that I don't end up with sticky glue paste in a scanpan. And I shed half a tear when I checked up on the baby five minutes after putting her down  and saw I hadn't wrapped her tightly enough and she'd wriggled an arm free and got her blanket half over her head. Cue negligent parent freakout and a moment of standing in shocked silence after the immediate 'ohmygod' and rewrap.

Fingers crossed that's as bad as I get.