Bugger… the chaos fairies are at it again.

Tuesday:

I collected the new pushchair from my parents, the traffic gods smiled on me, two and a half hours each way… smashing! Going down the accidents were anti-clockwise and coming back, clockwise. Even at 4.30 at the tunnel there was no queue. I sat in the garden with them, we had lunch and there was nothing I had to do… unlike here at home where I start to think about all the things I haven’t done an need to do.

A small disaster strikes. The parents have a hedge either side of the drive and it’s getting bigger and bigger, like cars… They don’t trim it back as much as they used to and I got the angle wrong, trying to avoid the soft leaved yellow bushes one side because they hide a flint wall and instead recreating the sounds of fingernails down blackboard with the razor sharp holly twigs and the side of Mr BC’s car on the other. Oops.

Get home.

It’s scratched.

Confess.

Luckily at the nth hour remember the industrial car polishes and cleaning kit I happen to have in my car. The scratches polish out and peace and happiness is restored. Mr BC is pleased in a kind of reverse way because of the effort I have put into repairing the damage… oh yes and the fact I succeeded has helped too.

Just for good measure I remove the three huge bird poohs on the bonnet. It takes fifteen minutes. Clearly whatever pigeons produce is one of the chief components in the glue used to fix the wings on aeroplanes. Blimey!

Wednesday:

I am paying the price for being completely hyper and full of beans yesterday, I suspect.

Not a good night’s sleep, I took the truss off to drive down there and forgot to put it on. One whole day with no truss doth not a happy, pain free BC make.

Arse.

Slept badly and by 8.30 Wednesday morning I was in the bath. It helped but I was somnambulant all day. I know it’s just because I was full of beans on Tuesday. Doing my homework for antinatal on Thursday Mr Cat decides that although it is absolutely boiling hot there is only one place he should be, on my lap.

He jumps onto the table and makes a beeline for my water glass I grab it just as he steps onto my laptop which is between my lap and him. It flips up and I manage to catch it, pouring the water over the keyboard in the process. The dash, five, six and control keys promptly cease to function… along with, just now, the delete button.

Arse.

I put the glass back on the table so I can dry the keyboard and the lapping sound alerts me to the fact he has climbed onto the table and is now drinking the water out of my glass. I tell him he is a royal pain in the jacksy and he realises it too, disappearing until teatime.

Mind numbingly tired and later - we’re talking 10 am - a friend dropped by for coffee and it was all I could do to hold a conversation! As soon as she’d left I retired to bed to catch up on some more Zeds. Muffin is now full of beans but I’m still knackered. I made supper and set the timer to beep when it was time to put it in the oven… forgot.

Balls.

Still it will cook for 20 minutes or so before Mr BC gets home.

Thursday:

I have antinatal followed by dinner with two friends. Despite wondering how in the name of heaven will I stay awake I manage to do so. Perhaps it’s the large lunch I make to ensure I don’t get the bonk. That may help, or a good night’s sleep on Wednesday night perhaps.

Can’t bend down - feels like I have a log across me - can’t breathe much either… maybe Chewie knows something I don’t maybe the baby will arrive soon. I hope so although not next week as we will probably have to go to Wales again.

Friday:

Have just had a very nice relaxing foot twiddle from the reflexology woman, also finished my last anti-natal class yesterday. Do I feel in control and prepared?

No.

What I HAVE learned is that nothing will really prepare me for this, that it’s my baby and as such will be different from any other baby and that all I can really do is go with the flow and do what I feel to be right at the time… during the birth and afterwards.

So I’m going to have a water birth if I can as that way there are many more positions for labour open to me which I will be able to maintain, with the support of the water, which I won’t be able to maintain outside it relaxin ain’t great for knackered accruciate ligaments.

The water will support me and my bump and also as somebody who is very relaxed and at home in water I should have access to more endorphins etc. The pool softens the tissues around your vagina, so pool births are less likely to result in tearing and if they do the tearing will not be so bad. This is particularly pertinent for me, see below.

I will have entonox and if need be if I get to about 7 or 8 cm and it’s going too slowly I’ll get out of the sodding pool and have an epidural.

Which leads me onto this morning’s news…

Had my “36 week” appointment with the midwife (it’s week 37 naturally and my “week 38″ is also in week 39). Muffin is head down.

Hoorah.

BUT he’s also occipito-posterior or OP as in his spine to my spine.

Oops.

The worst scenario really. It means he’s presenting the largest, widest most difficult to push out area of his head to the opening.

So. A recipe for a long, drawn out, protracted, painful labour… and one with an almost given forceps - that’s when they haul it out with the salad tongs - or ventouse - when they use a suction pump - and severe perennial tearing although if they do forceps they’re likely to cut me anyway. They prepare the mother for a long labour, suck it and see. Sometimes the baby turns as the cervix dilates. Although one in three don’t and end up with a Ceasarian.

Balls.

So the way I see it, if it’s still not turned at the onset of labour I’d rather just go straight to the C section rather than getting completely knackered for 48 hours and THEN having a C section anyway.

Shit.

My arse is going to rip.

Shit.

It’s going to hurt more than normal.

Shit.

It’s going to go on longer.

Shit.

And then after hours and hours, when I’m completely exhausted, if they don’t deliver it with salad tongs it’s probably going to end up in a C section anyway.

Shit, shit, shit.

I won’t be able to lift it, I won’t be able to drive for six weeks, I will have a scar which will make the contractions of the uterus brought on by breast feeding that little bit extra special.

Eeeeesh!

Alternatively, if I manage to deliver it upside down it will cause me severe backache - that’s going to be a real laugh with the SPD - which will probably be long term and chronic after my pregnancy.

…And we’ll probably have to go to sodding Wales again next week.

Utter bollocks.

Those of you that do prayer, just pray for a bit of extra strength for me will you? I’m no stranger to pain and I can take quite a lot but the point is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to endure something that makes the severest pain available to lady kind - normal labour - into a walk in the park by comparison. I don’t want to completely destroy my reproductive equipment with the first baby…

Fucking ouch!

I guess that makes this a “let this cup pass from my lips” moment. Not the labour but the fucking painful, even for labour, with added special tearing, scenario.

It must feel a bit like this to go to the chair, you know it’s coming and you just have to bite the bullet and do it.

This isn’t anything major, or life threatening, it’s just the prospect of some increased pain, an uncomfortable little knot in the fabric of reality. I really should get a grip.

Oh well. Time to go empty the remnants of my last meal out of my bra. Ryvita tits are scritchy.

Sigh…

I’m such a pansy.

The trip to Mum and Dad in-law was a great success. I think they were struggling and our arrival may have pepped them up. We stayed three days until Mum in-law came out of hospital at which point we saw her settled in, made her an omelette for lunch and then we came home. The fact abroad brother thanked us for going down there - as well as Mum in-law, herself, made me feel we had really done some good so although it was a schlep, I’m really glad we went.

Meanwhile we are attending anti-natal classes. I’m doing two sets. But Mr BC is only doing one. We’re only doing two because our first choice ones were on consecutive Thursdays and working, as he does, for the dark lords of the Sith, Mr BC would never be allowed out for something so trivial on two valuable school days.

This is the company which sends memos round about how you must wear a jacket and tie in the corporate meeting rooms (Mr BC has a green and white pin-striped effort especially for this) and how you mustn’t have internal meetings on important work time. Yes they have all their partners meetings at 8.30 in the morning or at the weekends or on Friday nights at 6 o’clock because they really are that boring there is nothing but work in their lives. Really useful for people like Mr BC who work mostly from home, live 110 miles from the office and only go in there a couple of times a week, too.

But I digress.

I am getting to the point where I’m quite excited about meeting my son but also very aware that there is something quite large, inside me, which has to get out through a very small hole. Hoping to have a water birth if I can but I will have to have an antibiotic drip for at least 4 hours before the baby is born which might make that a tad tricky.

Ah we will see…

Mr BC is very quiet at the moment, not sure if it’s because of his Mum, the fact he is about to become a father and has decidedly cold feet about the whole thing or just volume of work - there seems to be a lot and coupled with the fact being a dad means he will have to work for longer before he retires it might account for the quietness. It must be like looking at a life sentence. I wish I could help, I wish I could be the next JK Rowling or Quentin Blake or Dr Seuss and make so much money we could buy his parents a house where ever they wanted and he would never have to work again except when he wanted to.

There have been no jokes and no play.

I think I will try to do some hoovering this afternoon. He knows I loathe and detest hoovering and that I do it because I love him rather than because I want a tidy house (I do want a tidy house but it’s not as high on my list of priorities as it is on his). Anyway, it’s a way of showing him I care and god knows it needs it after all the effort Mr Cat has put into single handedly - or should that be pawedly - attempting to re-carpet the stairs in tabby and white.

The guys flooring the loft chipped the paint on the wall, too so I can touch that up while I’m at it. A small statement of reassurance which, if it is cold feet, or down to me, may help.

I know many men are not that bothered about having kids before it happens, even if they enjoy it once it does but I’m keenly aware that if he doesn’t enjoy being a dad this will actually be the end of our marriage. He did this for me because he knew things had changed after the miscarriage. It may be asking too much and stupidly by the time I realised the extent of his private reluctance I was already pregnant. There is nothing I can do except hope. I’m not sure talking will help because until the Muffin arrives there will be no concrete answer and to voice the uncertainty may only make it harder for both of us especially if I’m right and we do both know what’s wrong.

There’s no way out of this now and the reality of what could happen is pretty stark.

…

Oh well. No good sitting here.

———–

Later on: stop press:

House hoovered, dents in walls touched up the wrong colour, to the huge amusement of Mr BC who returned home with his sense of humour restored and was able to produce the touch up pot with the correct colour paint in it immediately… from a completely different place to the one I’d been looking in, too, naturally.

He took ages to come home because all the roads were knackered and of course, being a woman and a pregnant one at that, I’d convinced myself he’d never return at all by that time. A little leaking while I hoovered then.

He arrives.

I give him a hug.

He squints at me.

“You’ve been crying…”

Already from his obvious concern I can tell that everything is ok and that we are fine. So I react with humour.

I tell him I have but that’s just the hormones messing with my ass… I can do this confident that he will give me an opening to tell him what’s wrong.

“I hope you’ve not changed your mind, we can’t put this baby back you know.” He tells me cheerfully. Letting me know what he thinks it might be that’s bothering me.

I tell him that no I am delighted about the baby and want it dearly but I’m worried I might have knackered my smashing marriage by having one.

“Ah!” He says, beaming cheerfully. “So you are having a marriage-saving clean. Well, it’s not going to work, I’ve been home nearly five minutes already and even though it should be clear to you that I am desperate for a cup of tea, the kettle isn’t on.”

Equilibrium restored. He may well be nervous and it’s possible he may have opted for fatherhood out of love for his missus rather than desire to be a dad but he’s clearly quite at peace with his decision. He’s taken the afternoon off and gone to have a look at loft ladders in our local DIY stores.

Every day he tells me he loves me, in a thousand different ways, even though he seldom actually says the words. I’m probably hyper sensitive, which means it IS the hormones… I guess it’s not so long before I pop and they are probably all over the shop!

Phew.

I take the pot of the wrong coloured paint back to our shed. There’s been a heavy shower but right now the sky is blue, the sun is out and everything is glistening with raindrops and light. Mr Cat is lying on his back on the lawn with his legs in the air sunning his tummy. He rolls over to greet me and then rolls back, anxious to catch some more sun. The grass is soaked and so is the fur on his back.

Hmm… all’s right with the world.

Yes today has been a GOOD one.

Slept well, including one stint of a whole four hours without waking up and headed out to aqua-natal. It was a given we were all having coffee after - brilliant, I haven’t been able to persuade anyone to do that before so it’s obviously improved over the 3 weeks I’ve missed.

During our lengthy chat - very nice and sociable - one woman said I could get free re-usable nappies from the council, I rang and sure enough I am now the proud owner of 4 brand-new medium sized Motherese Rikki outer pants, 4 little pants made by someone else but they look pretty good, 12 terry cloth foldy things to go inside them, 600 biodegradeable liners (!) and a nappy pail. So combined with the stuff I already have that’s another item ticked on the must have list.

Even better, with the ones I have already bought at a car boot - used once, sterilised by the seller and then twice more by me - I now have the prerequisite 24 sets of nappies with a blessed 4 of the terry cloths in hand so yes, I’ve also sorted my muslin squares. All this stuff would be about £230 or more new and I’ve spent the grand total of £7 for £188’s worth and scored the rest absolutely free.

Booyacka!

I guess the moral of this story is that help comes from the most unexpected of places.  Who’d have thought that if you want some free nappies, the thing to do was ask your local council.

I’ve also managed to get rid of the giant computer which was cluttering up my office… god bless Freecycle and all who sail in her! I’ve got at least five takers on that one and I’m very pleased as it means I will have a new place to start storing my boxes of packed stuff ahead of our smashing attic floor-o-rama.

On to my next topic.

Dreams.

I dreamt a lot the other night. I can’t remember all of them but a couple spring to mind, one because it was possibly the bizarrest thing I’ve ever dreamt and the other because I remembered it. I wear a couple of those bead bangles, a brown one - tiger’s eye, a whatever volcanic glass is called (can’t remember) and amethyst. I dreamt I lost them the other day and found them… wait for it…

Yes…

Up my arse!

I had to pull them out and wash them off before I could put them back on.

How fricking odd is that?

I also dreamed some very good looking and most buff hunk wanted to shag me but all I wanted was to shag Mr BC. Mr BC didn’t want to shag me though, which is par for the course, he doesn’t at the moment, I freak him out. He is clearly not into shagging truckers. It’s that kind of wank seance thing, too where you feel like the baby is watching. Even so, he was clearly happy when I told him about it and that despite feeling a bit of nooky would be nice I only wanted it with him.

That said, of course, although I’d kind of like a bit of bedroom action er… on paper, so to speak, when it actually comes to it (phnar phnar) I feel less in the mood for sex than I ever have in my life. I ache too much, if you’ve ever tried to have a shag after some major surgery or at least, when some bit of your bod is really hurting, you’ll know you think it sounds like a great idea until you try and then find it’s not really all it’s cracked (gnurk) up to be.

Sorry. Channelling Finbarr Saunders there.

Yes they are. A brief hiaitus, I promised, a fermata, small pause… and a week passed… and another…

I’m sorry but I’m having a bit of a why me? Week. Be warned the adult content ie swearing warning system, is switched on.

I’m sure everyone else’s lives are the same as mine, you plan stuff and something goes wrong and you have to do that instead. I’m sure that’s what life is… it’s just that I live under the impression that sometimes, other people’s lives do actually go the way they plan. Especially the ORGANISED ones. The way it looks from here, in the pit of disorganised pandemonium, naturally, they plan, they book, it happens and all is peachy.

When I emulate them, I plan, I book, something else happens, I cancel and all is tits up. No wonder everyone thinks I’m so fucking good in a crisis! My whole life comprises one crisis after another and if they’re not my own, I seem to have this uncanny knack of getting sucked into other people’s.

Sigh.

You know what’s coming don’t you.

Yeh. SOMETHING has happened to the woman THINGS happen to. A family crisis.

So I’ve been trying to sort out the final bits of baby stuff as it’s 36 weeks next week and you never know! Trouble is, SPD being tricky some days, shopping is a trial, plus I can only just squeeze into my car without the aid of swarfega - well actually I can squeeze in it’s getting out I can’t do and if it would stop fucking raining for ONE day when I have to go somewhere I’d take the lid off and all I’d have to do is stand up. Yesterday? Warm. Bright sun. Today, pissing with rain because I have physio. Sigh. But I digress.

Stuff. That’s where I was. Yeh, well, I’m ordering it all off the internet which means, ideally, I need to be at home for at least 7 days after I place each order to ensure I’ll be there to receive it.

Post is fine, it sits in the depot round the corner until I go collect it but with couriers they tend to try once and then bugger off. If you’re lucky they keep it for three days before sending it back to whoever sent it to you but even if you arrive home in time you still have to slog off to their depot, usually about 50 miles away, to pick it up.

Clearly if you’re not home for seven straight working days for two months or more, ordering off the internet turns into a game of courier chicken.  At the moment the couriers are winning.

Sigh.

Two months of visiting strange beds with insufficient or just plain different pillows and I’ve had my fill. It’s not been good for the SPD at night although thank heavens it’s eased off during the day and after four whole nights in my own bed, it’s been much better the last couple of nights, too.

I crave a whole weekend at home. Was off to a 40th birthday this weekend, the last of the once in a life time, I’ve got to do these things standing between me and calm before baby. Then it was a case of 3 blessed weeks without having to go anywhere to order the last bunch of stuff, plan, sort the nursery, pack up my office and generally sort everything out. No nights away looming, no going anywhere, just Mr BC and me in our little pod.

I’ve been looking forward to it.

So what happens? Yep, Mum in-Law - who lives six hours away - has fallen and broken her leg. It’s pretty grim, she’ll be in hospital for a week so we’ve binned the 40th birthday in favour of whizzing down to Wales for a few days to help her settle in when she comes out. That’s more working days away though (slightly panicky timbre in BC’s voice here). We’d have to be a special kind of shitty to even think of not going, though. They are lovely and they genuinely need our help.

It’s a 6 hour drive though.

6 hours. That’s a lot of pee breaks.

We’re going on Saturday after my first anti-natal class. Tuesday we come home. Mr BC has meetings the length and breadth of the country. If we can find a station, he’ll drop me off and I’ll get a train to Birmingham where I can go shopping - now there’s a thought - and as the last one is there, he can pick me up on his way back, seeing as that’s where he’ll end up. That would be good and if I can find a commodious bed shop possibly even restful…

We’ll have to go back to Wales again though. I think possibly in week 38 which is getting really, uncomfortably close to the wire… Doubts surround the straight 7 working days then… still the day shopping in Brum might sort that.

Poor Mum (in-law), it’s not her fault and at least it’s happened now between the chronic SPD and actual scheduled poppage so in theory I might actually be able to be of some practicable use to them! In fact, if Muffin arrives when due - which I did - then she’ll be up and about and on the mend by that time and we can rest easy in our own chaotic time knowing she and Dad are ok.

On the up side. Since it’s happened to my own Dad, before, at least I can reassure them and think of things that might be useful to take down there, a non slip bathmat, a plastic patio chair for the shower (with wet exes round the legs so they don’t scratch the bath). Some books for her to read or maybe some puzzle books, crosswords and stuff like that for her to do.

It’s a bit of a worry though and people keep telling me I need to take it easy and relax. In fact if I hear that one more time I’m going to do somebody an injury!

Sometimes, duty calls. They need our help. It’s just a bit of a worry they need us now… especially as I’m sure it’s breech, I have a number of minor but significant if ignored complications and I’ve heard things about the Welsh NHS that would make your blood curdle…

On the unrelated up side. We got a major purchase out of the way yesterday. We had identified a pushchair/travel system we wanted but it was £500! I kid you not! However, I found a second hand one which had only been used for about 7 months on Ebay. Usually on Ebay the second hand ones go for about £450 - hardly worth it. However, if you can find a pick up only one, they usually go for less, in this case for £200.

It belonged to somebody just down the road from my parents - who turned out to know them. Ok so if I lived near the Wirrel I’d have got one for less BUT my Mum and Dad, who were intent on buying us a pushchair, took delivery and paid for it, bless em! I’m so pleased to have got it for £200 - it’s still too much but at least I’ve saved them a bit of cash as they were intent on buying it for us new!

The woman dropped it off last night - so although I have to go schlepping down there to collect it I’ve successfully given them scope to feel indulgent and generous without costing them too much (wish I could have got it for £150 though, I hate my parents spending that much money).

The £500 price for a new one covers a car seat as well but the girl told my Mum that I should forget that and buy the bog standard mothercare one which fits. Which car seat have I managed to blag, free?

Drum roll… wait for it…

Yes! The bog standard mothercare one. So potentially, they’ve scored us the whole £500 system for £200!

Result!

So things are ok, if a little more hectic than I need or want them to be - more hectic than they are when I’m not pregnant and going at life like a bull in a china shop, frankly. Never mind, when the baby comes. It will feel like fucking peace at last after all this!

Oh yes. Everything has an up side if you look for it.

Yep, off for a week to Alsace. Can’t wait, should be brilliant, food wine (in extreme moderation - ah well, you can’t have everything) and lots of picturesque countryside with the lovely husband.

And I can walk at the moment, too!

Radio silence for a week.

A bientot!