Introducing myself

Ciao
My temporary name -until my parents agree on something more suitable- is XY Sergioson Polselli. I'm an Italo-Vichingo, living in Pavia Italy, and I've been around for little more than 22 weeks by now. People have just started noticing my existence (which explains why even strangers cast an x-ray look upon my mother's belly when they see her), although many have known about me for 10 weeks or so. The notice of my existence coincides with the moment when my mother stopped existing as an individual and became my shelter, my carer and my supply for food and oxygen. I'll come back to that later. First I'll talk a bit about me...for after all, that's what this blog is all about!
As I've kept silent for such a long time, I've got so many things to tell you that I don't know where to begin. Maybe I'll start with a photo so you can get to know me:
You can see one of my earliest photos here on the side. It was taken when I was 6 cm long (head-to-butt) and looked more or less like any other fetus of my age. On the photo you can see that I still had a lot of space to move and exercise. In those good old days I enjoyed turning and dancing and waving my arms around. My mother sensed it as "butterflies" in the stomach when she was lying down and concentrating on the belly. Now I've more than trippled in size, but the space hasn't grown adequately, so now my movements are more restricted and I'm constantly touching the inner walls of my present home. My mother seems to be extremely happy about it (and also my father, who holds his hands over my mother's belly hours on end, waiting eagerly for me to kickbox her uterine from the inside) -but she doesn't know what is to come. My likes are known to late-night partying in the last trimester, so there will be more to keep her awake than the constant urge to urinate or the blocked nose! I will update you on this when the time comes!

As I keep growing, my mum's belly grows as well. For the first 20 weeks it was impossible for people outside my mother's body to notice that I was around. Those who knew that she was carrying me, examined my mother's belly disappointedly day after day and some even tended to touch her belly as if to look for a hidden growth on her abdomen. But there was no pregnancy visible -or touchable for a long time, only the sensation that she was putting on a little weight. My mum kept using her old clothes, and as she always runs the three flights of stairs at work (something that maybe she shouldn't be doing anymore) there were rumours of a phantom-pregnancy.
But for the last two weeks her belly has started a pizza-dough-like growth, and has in short time outgrown a large majority of her trousers. She has had to go with my father to a specialized shop to buy elastic trousers and other "comfortable" things to accomodate me and her expanding belly. All this growth also means that the pregnancy has become far more visible, although still descrete - much to the satisfaction of all the aunts at work, who eagerly follow every detail of the pregnancy. As a consequence of the growth, people have started addressing my mum's belly directly when they talk to her -taking her non-existence as an individual person a step further. When people meet her, they fix her belly and say
"How are you?".
Maybe the expect the belly to speek up, but as I still am not able to communicate directly, my mum has to answer for me
"We're fine"
she says -for that's what we are most of the time. Then people go on questioning how old I am (in weeks and days), how big I am (initially from head-to butt, but more recently it's the femur lenght and estimated weight that are of more interest), if there are any recent photos of me, when they will be able to see me in person, if I have a name, what is my sex, and so on. Some people have even assigned themselves as some kind of belly-guards, taking all measures to give me an extra protection, as if my mother was an irresponsible person that kept awake during the night trying to find out new ways to give herself problems during the pregnancy. There is a constant flood of advices from all directions, spanning everything from do's and don'ts to genetical councelling, all based on the human history of experience and problems during pregnancy.
But my mother doesn't seem to care too much about all this and happily gives answers to all questions asked and accepts any advice or order from the belly-guard volenteers. But I suspect that she has her own method to filter the information and the advices. She has always been a bit stubborn and independent.

I thought of telling you a bit about the earlier days in my life. For even if some of you have seen my parents (and maybe even the growing belly) recently, not all of you have, and maybe for some of you, this blog is the first knowledge you have of my existence!
My parents are the etruscan Sergio Polselli from Arezzo Italy and the viking Rut Valgardsdottir from Akureyri, Iceland. My mother is a biologists, and she tells me that this mix will mean that whereas my Y-chromosome is of italian origin, my mitochondrial DNA is of icelandic origin and the rest of my DNA is a mix of the two. My parents are not the only ones wondering what will come out of such a cocktail -there are many theories, but you will have to wait until the end of the year or the beginning of the next to know the real results.
My parents got married last year (you can see their photo here on the side) and already then they had been hoping for some time that I would be created. When finally my mother got a positive pregnancy test, early one morning in May, she didn't know whether to laugh or to cry! She opted for a mix of both, and not being able to express herself in any human language known to her, she completely confused my father that had to try to decifre her body language and the emotional mumble that she managed to communicate to him. But he is very good at the decifring business, and when my mother had calmed down they just sat embracing eachother in a happy blizz for what seemed eternity. They still haven't got rid of the smile that materialized on their face that morning.

For more than a month my parents kept me a secret, which was not an easy task, and didn't reveal my exisitence to the world (except to my doctor and midwife) until they had seen me in the first ultrasound by the end of June.
This first ultrasound was quite emotional for my parents. I was only 6 cm long, but was already moving alot around, turning and kicking and waving my hands as if I was trying to fly, putting on a little show for my parents. 10 days later they had another opportunity to see me, as there was another ultrasound, this time to measure the transnuchal lucency which hadn't been done the first time. This time the vision was no less emotional for my parents, and as they got the whole show that I put on, on a video-casette, they have had the chance to revisit the show many times since. Here is how I looked in 3D on this second ultrasound. I look a little bit like an alien, but you can see that I know how to dance an amniotic-rumba with style!

So far my existence has been easy for my parents. I didn't cause any nausea at all in the first trimester, and the only food that my mother couldn't eat in the beginning were pizzas, but that has long since passed. There haven't been any cravings so far, although my mother (la furba), sometimes pretends that she really really needs some chocolate/icecream/french fries or whatever she would like to have that moment, just so as to pass the control-point that my father has for her for the intake of such food.

As -so far- I take little space, my mother almost forgets that I'm there from time to time. In the very beginning of the pregnancy my mother felt a bit tired, but since then, she has felt more energetic she has for years, suprising even herself. She frequently goes swimming with my father, which for me is fantastic -probably resembles flying free in space, for those of you that have tried. It was also a good way for both of us to cool a bit down during the warmest period of the summer -when the mercury column reached 40°C and even the mosquitos didn't bother to flap their wings.
As my parents decided not to do the amniocentesi (as my TN-measure was so good, although that doesn't exclude anything), they didn't know if I was a he or a she until the 20 weeks-ultrasound, where I revealed my gender to them in an explicit way.
I'm a boy!!!
Now my parents are starting the looking-for-a-name journey, which is not so easy when the one to be named is an italo-viking! Until they have found me a name, I will call myself XY Sergioson Polselli.