Appropriately enough for a travel special, I find myself on a journey. No flights or boarding passes. No hotels or street markets. But, all being well, I’ll end up with a hell of a souvenir. A keepsake. Because, increasingly, it looks as though, sometime soon, I’ll be having a baby. Which means that, as I write, I’m travelling from being one person to being two; from being me as I know myself to being the mother I have never met. Oh God.
Anyway, my tummy is as big as my existential crisis. Apart from the fact (as if that weren’t enough) that when you are pregnant your middle expands to accommodate the house your body has built for your baby, the tiny mite is skimming off your body’s stockpile of skin-lubricating omegas to do things like make a brain. And eyes. You have become a second-class citizen in your own — stretched — skin. And you begrudge that baby not a jot.
So I am busy, morning and night, with Mama Mio’s Tummy Rub Oil, an unguent so packed with organic oils, vitamin E and omegas that it will labour through to the skin cells to help you stretch and ping back afterwards. I realise that ‘pinging’ may be a triumph of hope over inexperience. But no stretch marks yet. And so, onwards…
Mama Mio The Tummy Rub Oil, £27 (mamamio.co.uk)