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.

A meh day.

Ragged.

Last week, well on Sunday and Monday, the Muffin turned. No longer was he lying diagonally across me, with all his weight on the dodgy bit of pelvis he was upside down, the correct way and pain-wise, all was peachy. Hell on Monday I even cut the hedge…

Tuesday… the great conundrum… shall I go swimming or borrow my friend’s hot tub for an hour or two? Seeing as I feel so goddamn good, I’ll swim.

Noooo! That’s the wrong answer! Stupid, stupid, STUPID!

I go swimming, it’s lanes. There are two. Fast and slow. It’s a lie. They are splashy crawl and breast stroke. There is NO difference in speed. Both are fast.

Damn.

I get in and do 15 lengths of backstroke. I have to go faster than I want to because it’s very full and I am holding people up if I don’t keep pace - a pace I’d usually have no trouble with, I might add.

When I get out, I learn two things.

1. SPD and kicking. Absolute no-no! Whatever they say, breast stroke legs probably would be better.

2. At some point in the proceedings, the Muffin has retreated to the bottom again.

3. I can hardly walk to the changing rooms.

Nooooooooooo!

Night comes, pain comes, sleep - or at least deep sleep - doesn’t. I wake up feeling like shit and as if I haven’t slept.

Never mind. I have cheered myself up no end by having a haircut. For the next 24 hours or so I will look like a smart well turned out female. That’s good as for the most part I feel like there are actually three sexes, man, woman and pregnant. It’s great to feel womanly again.

This afternoon… not so great. I had a doctor’s appointment but the SPD smarting a tad I decided to eschew the bike and take my car. I jemmy myself into it, turn the key and what happens. Short of a sad metallic sigh, nothing. The battery is flat. It picks now, for the first time in about three years to die on me.

Arse.

I get out, lock it, admonish it for being a little bleeder and go get my bike. Luckily there is still time. I flee up the hill, or at least, creep up using the granny ring, all the while wheezing like an asthmatic pensioner with a 50 a day high tar fag habit. Just get there on time. Ask the doctor all my questions. She reassures me about the scary ones but there is no easy answer to the SPD. I will be in pain… for the next 9 weeks at least and for anything up to 6 months after the birth possibly ever, depending on whether it knits back right or wrong… oooh a post partum visit to the chiropractor essential I think..

She confirms my suspicions about the Muffin’s unusual diagonal position. Head on the left at the bottom, feet kind of half way up on the right. Unfortunately, the fact he tried two days upright and slipped back after the swimming is most likely to be less to do with the backstroke and more to do with his being comfy like that and therefore, disinclined to move to a less pain-inducing position.

Bugger.

Sometimes, even when life is great, it kind of sucks!

Yes.

Well, at least you won’t have to guess what this post is about. Not too much anyway. It’s about organisation or the fact that achieving a smooth running life actually appears to bear no relation whatsoever to the amount of effort you put into organising it.

I used to watch a comedy TV show called Red Dwarf which is set four million years into the future. One episode is all about luck. The the heroes discover that luck is actually a virus and come across a phial of the stuff.

Yeh, well I reckon organisational skills are kind of similar. Mine only work when I’m planning what I need to do and ordering other people to do the nitty gritty - ie in a job - the minute I personally get involved the wheels fall off big time.

Let me explain…

Once again, I have become an unwitting victim to the pointless tweaking of reality to make life just that little bit more complicated for the rest of us - especially those of us plagued by the bloody chaos fairies the way I am - by the organised tidy bastards. In this case the ones who dick with the clocks, solely, I am certain, to punish disorganised people like me for not being automata such as they.

Why is being organised such a big deal? Why is it in this day and age of equality for all that being organised is considered the holy grail of personal traits ahead of everything else. I don’t punish these anally retentive smeg ends for having OCD and an imagination bypass so what have they got against people like me?

Ok, I’m not organised - I try to be, you know, the way Canute tried to stop the tide - but I’m fighting a losing battle. When I do try to organise my life, you’d be amazed at the lengths I go to to ensure everything runs smoothly and you’d be even more amazed at how consistently I still manage to lurch spectacularly from one crisis to another in a state of perpetual chaos…

Except at work where, by din’t of planning what needs to be done, when and by not actually tainting the process by being directly involved, I was known for my ruthless efficiency.

Sighs…

As you know, I’m pregnant. I am also vague. That doesn’t mean I lack self discipline, it doesn’t mean I can’t - or don’t try to - organise myself, it just means it’s a lot harder for me than it is for any of you. That doesn’t make me dumber or less worthy than anyone else it just makes me different.

So. Every year here in Britain they fuck with the clocks. Twice. First they put them forward in spring, so we get more daylight, then they put them back in winter so it gets dark an hour later. Whatever they say, nobody actually knows why. The official reason given each year is that it’s done so that the kids get to be outside in daylight on their way to school in winter.

Sorry but that’s cock and bull for a start.

It might have been true once but not in my lifetime, not when you have to be in your classroom for registration at 8.30 am and they don’t release you until 4.00 pm.

In the depths of winter here in Blighty, even in the South, it gets light at about half past eight and dark at four so when you’re going to school in deepest, darkest winter you actually do both journeys in twilight and see no daylight, outside break times, at all. So that explodes that theory then.

Trust me, I went to school for 13 years. I know.

On Saturday night, the clocks went back so all of a sudden on Sunday morning, when I woke up, the time that had been 8 am yesterday was 9 am today.

That meant it was time to go round house, checking each and every single piece of electrical equipment, either to move the clock onwards an hour or to press the button to confirm that yes, I notice it has gone forward automatically and yes, I would like to keep it that way.

The most important thing, of course, was my Compaq iPAQ.

This is the machine by which I live and die. I know my limitations, especially at the moment. I’m far too vague to actually remember when and where the legion of health professionals watching over my pregnancy have arranged to see me and that’s why I have an iPAQ to do it for me. I set it to beep at me before each appointment in good time.

Good time being however long I will need to get ready and get to wherever I have to go with whatever equipment, samples etc they require and not be late.

Having turned on the iPAQ on Sunday morning and clicked “yes” on the “all the clocks have changed do you want me to go forward an hour?” button I went to bed on Sunday confident that anything I had scheduled for Monday would not be missed.

Conscious that I had a doctor’s appointment which I’d cancelled and rearranged 3 times, I checked the time and date of that before turning the light out. Wednesday. Good. I relaxed into my cosy covers and slipped gratefully into the land of nod.

Spool forwards to Monday morning and you can imagine how delighted I am when at 10 am, while I am happily hoovering the hall in my pyjamas, the beeper goes on my iPAQ to tell me I have a physiotherapy appointment at 9.30.

Shit!

It would be physio, these appointments are like fricking unicorn poop.

I check the clock on the iPAQ and sure enough it says 10.00. Even the sodding diary knows it’s 10 but the fricking beeper attached to the diary, the beeper I’m relying on, is still running on Grenwich Bloody Mean Fricking Bastard Time.

Yes. It thinks it’s giving me an ample half hour warning to cycle a couple of miles to my local hospital and not miss my appointment… half an hour ago.

Arse.

I ring. Yes. I’ve missed it. I get the next available appointment. 23rd April. Yes that’s right, 3 week’s time.

Balls.

So I’d lay bets a lot of you are more organised then me and your lives run more smoothly BUT. Do you go to the lengths of chaos management I do? I’d bet you don’t. Surely, setting alarms to beep when you have to, get up, again when you have to get ready, when you have to leave and then, finally when you are meant to be somewhere has got to be approaching the outer limits of tidy personesque OCD.

It probably goes beyond… yeh, I’ll bet the most unimaginative anally retentive Bauhaus furnished flat dwelling robotoid doesn’t even do that.

But I’ll also bet, if they do, that the sodding things don’t malfunction like some thousand year old droid with silicone brain rot. And if they do, when they tell other people their plight is met with sympathy and deemed by all to be a very unlucky fault in the machine not, as with me, regarded as a fault in the owner (and greeted with a lecture about being more organised and not checking the machine properly or doing a soft reboot etc etc).

In short. It WORKS for them… and not for me.

Why?

Because they have the virus and I don’t. It’s the only logical reason.

…Bastards!

But in less pain!  Hoorah!

Yesterday was excruciating.  Today it’s back to manageable levels.  I could still sleep for 1000 years but at least I wouldn’t wake up whimpering like a great jessie every time I turned over!  It’s very rare for it to hurt at night, which is where the physio exercises are kicking in I reckon.

Also, I didn’t have time to do my exercises before church and they do tend to set everything straight to start the day, so to speak.

The friend I met in church yesterday also had SPD and was very sympathetic… but I was horrified to discover she got it after she had given birth.  So it looks like I’ll be enduring at least a year of it by the time I’ve stopped breast feeding and my hormones have returned to normal.

Arse!

Not helped by the fact the baby appears to be lying sideways and leaning heavily on my pelvic bone at the front… which is the bit that’s hurting.

I really should shut up about this!  After all, it’s a totally straightforward pregnancy, nothing dire is wrong, no life threatening conditions diagnosed and Muffin is fine… it just smarts like fuck.   More than a bone graft.  A lot more… and at least with the bone graft I was on pain killers… 14 a day, three different types, to be precise.

Then again, the upside is that at the rate I’m going, I won’t bloody notice when I go into labour and if I do, it’ll hardly hurt more.  I dunno if anyone else has noticed this but I find that once pain passes a certain level you can’t react any more however much worse it gets… it’s like you reach reactional capacity.  You swear, get more tired, a bit more bad tempered maybe but that’s all…

Not looking forward to trying to be cheerful and walk miles round the shops with my in-laws next week though.  It’s definitely softened my stiff upper lip and sapped my jollity stamina.  Oh well.  31 weeks yesterday… only another two and a half/three months to go…

However, an invaluable exercise to aid sleep is to get into a very simple yoga position which, sadly, I can’t remember the name of, just before you go to bed.  This will often spread concentrated pain over a larger area making it much duller and easier to deal with and all importantly, sleep through.  Anyway.  Here’s a description.

1.  Lie on your back with your arms by your sides and your knees bent.

2.  Put your feet close in, with your heels say… about 3 inches from your buttocks.  Don’t flop your knees out sideways, keep them sticking up straight in front of you.  Relax.  If you’re doing it right you’ll find it causes your pelvis to tilt and the spine in the small of your back to straighten.  It’s a nice gentle stretch for your lower vertebrae and sacrum.

3.  Lie like this for a few minutes and take some deep breaths.

I find that if I do that in bed, once I turn back onto my side again, the sharp pains at the front have gone.  Whether this is because it kind of resets everything or because it causes the Muffin to subside backwards a bit, I don’t know.  However since it helps, I don’t really care.

Anyone reading this who decides to a comment to the effect that I shouldn’t be lying on my back after 28 weeks should expect a thoroughly abusive reply.

Hello everyone. Just to warn you the “Not while you’re eating” and “Adult content tags” are switched on with a vengeance for this one because basically, it’s a monumental rant, followed by another one!

Woke up this morning ratty and fed up and wrote this.

More pissed off than the most pissed off pissed off thing.

1. I’m a wanker. I cut my fucking thumb. It seeps, it oozes it can’t get wet and I, who could already only achieve seven tenths of bugger all can now achieve fuck all without it stinging, bleeding and generally being a pain in the arse. Which reminds me, it makes wiping my arse nigh on impossible too.

2. Every little thing that should be simple is a monumental phaff. Every simple thing goes wrong, yeh, sometimes in an amusing way but I am running out of humour fast. Give me a fucking break. Just for one day.

3. I am tired because I haven’t slept because I had to go to the loo seven fucking times last night, partly because I needed to pee but mainly because I was in so much sodding pain I had to get up and walk about.

4. I have experienced pain so bad I couldn’t subsequently remember it (many people tell me labour will be like this). Tearing all the ligaments in one knee. I’ve had re-constructive knee surgery which, I can tell you is fucking painful, people. Carrying a baby should NOT hurt more than that. After the knee surgery I was taking 14 different pain killing pills each day. I can’t take painkillers because I’m pregnant so this pain, which is worse, comes as is - although my god I’m going to ask the sodding doctor.

5. I have three more arsing, bastard, sodding, fucking months of this agony to go.

6. I can’t walk because it hurts so I am going practically demented from lack of exercise by the time Muffin finally pops.

7. I have to wear a truss and it’s fucking uncomfortable it rides up taking my pants up with it.. yes tubi-grip has given me the hungriest arse in Britain. I am for ever yanking my pants (that’s my pants in the British my nickers sense) out of it.

8. Everyone else’s babies are kicking round their ribs, midriff etc. Mine has not kicked higher than four inches below my belly button. Theirs are moving around. Mine is lying at the bottom bracing himself and trying to push my pelvis apart… and it’s sodding working! He’s going to break the fucking thing at this rate.

9. How in the name of heaven am I going to cope with labour after three months of concerted agonising pain and no sleep? Even though with the truss and the physio it is better than it was.

10. Like tights, maternity clothes come in two sizes. Those which are too small and those which are so big they require me to use every safety pin in Britain to keep them up.

11. I have sinus and a runny nose - yet another of the joys of being pregnant - and I have had sinus and a runny nose for the last three fucking months. Another thing that aches then. My fucking face.

So. The main points again…

I’m fed to the back teeth of my trousers falling down the whole time.

I’m tired.

I hurt.

I am the size of a whale and the only guarantee I have is that I’m going to get bigger.

I am pissed off.

I left my hat at a friend’s house and won’t see them until after the winter - cf sinusitis section - it was the only thing that was working.

Ok so it’s later on and now I’m a bit less ratty.

I had a blood test, I had to drink lucozaide an hour before. I remembered. BUT I forgot to take my notes along. Normally no notes means no blood test but I rang Mr BC, explained what had happened and asked if he could drive up to the surgery to drop off the notes. He said he would. Having heard that the notes, though absent, were coming, the nurse was happy to take the blood anyway. Good because they had to be done this week and there wouldn’t be an appointment left if I didn’t get them done now.

I was fed up, in pain, pissed off with myself and practically in tears of frustration and impotent rage before I even started. Jeez, how do people deal with the early stages of dementia? The frustration must drive them into the arms of oblivion far faster than any aspect of the actual disease, itself.

I don’t think I’ve found being me this irritating since I was about 4 and trying to draw like a grown up. Actually, the complete frustration of just existing drove me bloody barking when I was 4. No wonder I had adhd.

Bloods done, I waited for Mr BC and the notes, oustide. He handed them over with one of his small smiles - all love and indulgence how does he do it - and my heart did a small somersault in time. He didn’t wait because I was on my bike. I handed them over to the nurse. Result. Blood tests sorted as they should be.

“Don’t stress. It’s not going to help you or baby.” Said the nurse but kindly, not in an annoying way. I realised I must look as flaky as I feel.

Cycled home via the supermarket to get a couple of things, nearly in tears of anger, pain, frustration and general pissed off ness oh yes and of course from churning rampant hormones. A light dawns.

Cure for blues = retail therapy.

So I stopped in the high street outside the lingerie shop. I need new bras, I have the four tit thing going on. Went in and asked for a 36G. She didn’t have one but she said she did have some feeding bras in a 38F. They were cut generously on the cup and small on the back, she said. Worth trying. I did it fits. I bought it. It was so comfy I wore it home. It feels better to have bosoms again, rather than dugs.

Having arrived home I set about making a cup of tea for Mr BC because he has been so kind. He came down and was funny and smily and still kind. I explained I was hormonal and he hugged me in a sort of long suffering male way which made us both laugh. He promised to deliver my latest art commission on the way to a meeting so I didn’t have to queue 40 minutes to post it. Hoorah! He has been such a poppet. He works six days a week and I sit around wimpering and doing bugger all and he just smiles and makes jokes and looks after me. Without him I would be cast adrift on a dark sea. It would be crap.

You see being pregnant is stressy. It’s stressy because most of it seems to be about organising things; organising the house to accommodate a baby, organising the stuff you need for the little chap’s day to day needs, organising being in the right place on the right week for the right appointment, test or scan, organising getting there on time. Organising getting onto the waiting list for anit-natal classes in time, I thought I had, I haven’t, I’ll be having them too late - about 3 weeks before my due date.

The stressiest thing about it, though, it that there are only ever a finite number of places/appointments etc and in order to book them so they happen in the right places, at the right time, I have to go up against inhuman, normal, real people who are a lot more organised than me.

Being pregnant is stressy for me because in order to arrange to do certain things in certain weeks I have to know when each of those weeks are. I have a table but every time I count the weeks up I get a different date (because my IQ may well be one point off genius level but I still I have bastard discalcula). I am hanging onto the get here by X date and do this by Y date side of things by my fingernails and all those organised feckers are breezing it.

Bastards!

Yes. It’s true. I can’t organise a piss up in a brewery at the best of times but especially not at a time when I can’t remember my own name without sodding cue cards. I know, I’ve done that joke 100 times but it stays because it’s true.

Being pregnant is stressy because I am a vague, disorganised person suffering from a phenomenon which famously turns the most ruthlessly organised of its victims to clueless putty. Being pregnant is stressy because I am struggling to remember what day it is and now, on top of all of that. It smarts and I mean smarts. A lot.

It’s not like my knee. It’s not for ever and I’ll get a little boy at the end of it… and I’m no stranger to pain so why the fuck can’t I cope? Why the frustration, the tears and the impotent rage over this temporary pain if I can cope with the knee surgery? Oh well I am sure once my thumb’s healed up and I can, wash my right hand, do the washing up (yeh, I wear gloves, I sweat inside the gloves, it gets wet and it starts to ooze) have a shower normally and go back to wiping my bum with my right hand, I’ll be a little less ragged…