hehe Thank you all for your comments below. Cazzie, you're slow off the mark ;)

It's nearly six weeks now, my baby is the size of a raisin (they always measure it in foods), and has a heartbeat. How cool is that?! There's a tiny person inside me. In a week or two it'll have its own blood type - that's something I have to watch out for; my blood type is O-, and if baby's blood type is positive, there's a chance my immune system may react against it. However, we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

My writing is also going very well - I have just over 15,000 words now, and I think they're rather good words. Whilst this month is more about quantity than quality, I'd still like to end up with something a little bit good!

I'm catching up with the Canberra writers again tomorrow, even though I can't stay for the write-in as I don't have a laptop. But it's good to get together and kick around ideas and stuff.

Here is a short extract from somewhere in the middle of my "novel":

Her wanderings that morning were aimless, indecisive. She simply felt that any direction was better than none at all. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low, dark and menacing. She tried to keep moving quickly, but was frequently distracted, and forced off-course. A rat-surrounded corpse would make her hesitate and change direction, or a blocked street might send her retracing her footsteps to find another way around. In one place, an entire section of the street had given way and only a flooded hole lay at her feet. Before long Susan had lost her bearings, her sore muscles and tired mind only adding to her confusion. Only when she stopped for a moment and saw a droplet fall to the ground at my feet did she become aware that she'd been crying.

It was at that moment that she looked up, her eyes seeking further ahead than simply the next laboured step. She had reached the suburbs, where once houses had stood in neat rows, painted cheerful colours, with well-tended gardens. The houses had long-since been burnt; only charred black piles of wreckage remained. But the gardens remained. Overgrown, untended, but there still. Susan wept and silently thanked those with the foresight to grow vegetables, fruit trees, and herbs. The quality was poor; vegetables were choked by weeds, fruit had been feasted on by birds and insects. But it was food, it was fresh, the two runaways could eat.