What To Do In The 1st Trimester Of Pregnancy

More rundown of the restrictions your beloved will now be suffering.

What To Do In The 1st Trimester Of Pregnancy

• Passive smoking. OK, so she has given up smoking. It was a struggle, and she has only stabbed you twice in the three days since, but she has done it, and you are proud of her. Then you read somewhere that she must give up passive smoking as well. Eh? Should she go around with a fire extinguisher, just in case? Or never leave the house at all?
• Environmental factors. 'Before conceiving' writes Dr Miriam Stoppard, 'make sure you avoid X-rays, hot saunas and pollutants such as dioxins and PCBs (found in many garden and household products).' Christ almighty! was my first thought when I read that. Only the previous week my girlfriend had had her leg X-rayed after she had slipped in a pool of weedkiller in some Turkish baths. 
• Pate. Don't eat this. Can cause liver damage in babies. Don't even smell it (smelling = passive eating).
• Unpasteurized cheese. Gives them listeria (do all French babies have listeria?).
• High temperatures. Can damage foetus if maintained for several days. Avoid illness, saunas, piping hot baths, the Kalahari desert.
• Cat. If you stroke it, baby gets toxoplasmosis. Instead, throw can of Whiskas at its head. Ten points for a direct hit.
• Drugs. No, sorry. 
• Barbecued food. Store raw meat separately. Don't assume that if meat is charred on the outside it will be cooked properly on the inside. Wear a placard around your neck with the words 'I AM PREGNANT' written on it in marker pen and ring a large bell to make sure everyone knows you're coming. 
• Herbal teas. Steer clear of cohosh, pennyroyal, and mugwort. You do already? Very wise. 
• Seafood. Beware of sushi. Might have tapeworms! Beware of oysters. Full of bacteria! Beware of fish fingers. Taste like cardboard!
• Soft-boiled eggs. No, Salmonella. Also, may really be dinosaur eggs and could hatch and destroy world as we know it. (Salmonella slightly more likely.) 

Above all:

• Avoid stress, say the experts. There is only one way to do this. Ignore all experts.

By contrast, the following are guaranteed safe and carry no risk at all of anything.

• Biscuits (max. two packets a day).
• Daytime TV (EXCEPT repeats of 'Bergerac').
• Arguments with loved one (non-violent). 
• Unprotected sex (safer now than it will ever be). 

So where is it, this baby? For all her other physical symptoms the mother-to-be won't yet be' showing', as elderly female relatives would say. But it's not the baby's fault that it isn't big enough yet. At conception you would need a powerful microscope to see it. By two months it is the size (and indeed shape) of a broad bean. By three months it's as big as a squash ball. By four months it's a largish potato. By five months it's a TV remote control That's good growing, by any standards.

Meanwhile, you continue to wonder whether it's a girl or a boy. Are you going to have a boy who will play football for England? Or are you going to have a girl who will play football for England? Curiously it's all down to you, the father. As habitues of pub quizzes know, you produce sperm with 23 chromosomes. Twenty-two of them need not concern us here.

They regulate height, weight, colour of eyes and likelihood of playing football for England. It's the last chromosome, the sex chromosome, that makes the difference. An egg fertilised by a sperm with an X chromosome will grow up to be a girl. If it's a sperm with a Y chromosome it'll be a boy. And here's what else we know. To find out more, you can check out What To Do In The 1st Trimester Of Pregnancy.