Please note, the not while you’re eating tab is switched on. Those who are a bit prissy about bodily functions and stuff should leave now.

Yes, today I am going to talk about a night terror so horrific I can hardly type the words…

Are you quaking in your shoes? I know I am.

Here goes.

When I go to the bog in the night, which, being a pregnant lady is practically a hobby for me, I don’t usually turn on the light. I live in a town so there is quite enough light coming through the windows for me to see my way to the bathroom, have a wee and come back without danger of waking Mr BC or Mr Cat, both of whom are light sensitive and once woken tend to stay awake, the one tossing and turning, the other noisily galloping about, after I’ve been.

Neither is conducive to a good night’s sleep and anyway, if they don’t wake me up, the light does. Wee in the dark and it’s all done in a kind of dreamy doze… I never really regain consciousness and go straight back to sleep when I get back to bed.

Since I’ve been pregnant though, another evil has reared it’s ugly head.

(Insert psycho music here. I’m not computer savvy enough to do it for you so you’ll have to imagine it in. )

You see, all these hormones have put my poor bowels in a quandary. Where before you could set your watch by them, these last 7 months or so, I’ve been very irregular. I still do fourteen poohs a week it’s just that there are occasions when I do them all on the same day! So sometimes, I blunder into the darkened bathroom at night and suddenly. It happens.

THE NIGHT POOH

Stealthily, without warning it creeps up on me and I am left to wipe - in a situation when I really do need to see - in the dark.

Worse, there is no dozing back to sleep and erasing the horror from my memory because clearly, having wiped a lot, I then have to go over to the other side of the room and turn the light on to check that I’ve wiped enough.

…And that wakes me up.

Mmm… it’s a tough life. *

* That was irony.

I will be away from my computer for the week, now, but maybe next time, I’ll tell you about Dick Dastardly and the Sharp Poohs… where other children had monsters under the bed, we had…

I’m sure you are all looking forward to that!

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.

I could sleep for a thousand years…

Yep I’m fucking knackered today. Several missions on the go…

Mission one, should I decide to accept it… bake some edible biscuits. This is proving far harder than it has any right to be. My mother’s biscuits are so fab that I decided I would get the recipe. After all, most mums and babies seem to meet for coffee or tea so I thought that one, I could bake some biscuits which were made with low GI sugar and two, home baked must be more healthy than bought.

I have made rosemary and almond biscuits and two batches of melting moments. None of them bear the remotest resemblance to the things I eat at my mother’s house. To quote Mr BC.

“They’re ok but I wouldn’t eat them for pleasure.”

Spot on.

The only way I’m going to succeed here is to watch my mother making them, so I can see what the dough should look and taste like before I stick them in the oven.

Mission two, make a ratatouille - ok I’m on very firm ground with that one, it’s coming on fine.

Mission three, clean the house. Done. Mwa ha ha haargh… oh sorry did the smug waves knock you out.

Mission four. My father in law has written a book, more a repository for all his memories and stories than anything because he has forgotten so many of the stories his parents told him and realises a lot of this important social and family history will be lost if he doesn’t. Now THIS I am looking forward to. He writes well and the stories I’ve heard are fascinating, amusing or both.

Mission five. Keep upping the number of reps on the physio exercises. The SPD is getting very painful now and you know how when you break a bone the pain makes you really, really tired… well I guess I’m suffering from a dash of that, on top of the fact that pregnancy makes you tired anyway it leaves me wiped most of the time. Bear in mind this is our first weekend home with nobody else here, just hanging out, in seven and the last until the three weekends before Muffin is due.

Idiots? Yes, we are but people keep being 40 and having parties, there’s a wedding, there’s somebody who lives abroad visiting with his wife - we haven’t seen him in 3 years and we haven’t even met her… it’s stuff we want to do but it is tiring the way a whole load of once-every-10-years-if-that style events have cropped up at once, now.

Oh well…

It being Easter Day, today, I went up the hill to the Cathedral to do the God thing. It starts at 10.30 but it was snowing and the snow was up to my ankles.

So knackered and sleepy I spent too long in bed and nearly missed it, at 10.10 I realised what the time was and managed to get dressed, washed, clean my teeth and throw enough cereal down to keep my Muffin-induced ravening maw in check for an hour or two.

Weebled my way up the hill - can’t WAIT until the Muffin inside is outside and I can start to recover from the SPD (I expect I’ll be banging on about rock hard breasts and sore nipples endlessly by then, I’m a born whinger so there’s bound to be something).

Just squeaked it! Got there in time to be wished happy Easter and handed an order of service by a sidesman as the all-stand-the-choir-are-coming-in bell rang.

Found a good seat though, the advantage of being on my own, of course. There are odd seats much closer to the front than there are groups because British people in groups sitting in a row of seats always leave a one or two seat buffer between themselves and the next party.  As I headed over the man on the end of my row moved three seats in!  Result!  Should I need to wee I could waddle off to the loo without disrupting anyone else’s holy thoughts - these services take a while and I only have a short range.

They did Dvorak’s Mass in D. Very nice. Also did the Halleluja Chorus (from Handel’s Messiah) while everyone was taking communion. Splendid, a bit of baroque to improve Muffin’s brain.

Had to nip out for a wee but only once. It turned out the lady behind me - also nipping out to put lunch on - was from my exercise class so we had a nice chat. Asked the sidesman by the door if there was a loo in the cathedral but it was behind the orchestra so fearing entanglements with double basses and other expensive and highly breakable instruments - not to mention things which would make a lot of noise when knocked over. I nipped over the road to the publics…

“I bet that was a relief!” Said the sidesman cheerfully as I came back in.

“It certainly was!” I told him.

The Muffin is lying very low this morning which made leaning forward to pseudo kneel difficult, it made him kick and wriggle and I didn’t want to squish him so I just bowed my head. Actually sitting was hard work but of the three, sit, stand, kneel it was the easier option. I have a kind of period pains thing going on at the moment, mainly, I suspect because low means low. Muffin is RIGHT at the bottom where, frankly, there isn’t really room for him.

The recessional hymn was “Thine be the Glory” sung to a tune called Maccabeus - another Handel classic - which is especially great to sing with a full orchestra plus tympani going in the background. Enjoyed that. Hugely amused by one of the hmm… not sure what you call them, something posher than servers in a cathedral but essentially, that’s what they are.

He was the guy with the incense. Incense is used for high days and holidays in the Church of England. It’s like a small bar-be-queue. A guy fills a pot with charcoal and adds powder over the top which gives off a very pleasant scent as it burns, yep, God’s holy joss stick… with knobs on.

It’s meant to signify your prayers going up to heaven but I reckon it’s left over from days when the great unwashed really were and in order to stay upright and conscious the priests needed something to cover the all pervading stench of the congregation. These were times when the average joe really hummed and nobody wanted to know the words.

The whole shebang is securely fastened in a thing about the size of a teapot which hangs on three chains which are joined to a handle and the tout ensemble is called - technical term here - a “Thurible”. People, you know I couldn’t make a word like that up. It has holes in the top to let the draught in to keep the charcoal briquettes alight and to let out the fancy flavoured smoke. Obviously the more you swing it about, the more fiercely the charcoal burns and the more fancy flavouring you get.

The bloke in charge of it was enthusiastic enough today but when we launched into the last hymn he proceeded to do a series of full, fast loops in the instrumental break between verses. Alone I might have been but I couldn’t help laughing. He was giving it some serious welly, red in the face with the effort and clearly enjoying himself immensely. He was handling it with the deft assurance of the true professional but I couldn’t help noticing that one wrong move and any of his unfortunate colleagues processing alongside, in front or behind him could have ended up out cold. Wisely, they kept well clear.

Glad I went, it was a very relaxing service. Very enjoyable.

And Muffin will be a lard arse

12.30. Hungry. Lunch time 30 minutes and counting. Will just catch up on my blogs first though.

14.46. Shit! Still reading my blogs but have now transformed into a ravening, slavvering beast.

14.47. I have lost control and will now walk into the kitchen and eat everything that isn’t nailed down. Cheese, cold meats and a boiled egg. Can’t be arsed to make a salad but if I’m lucky I may trough an apple.

Dammit all, they reckon you influence your baby’s diet in the last weeks. Eat healthily and eschew dodgy comfort foods and the small one will naturally enjoy the healthy flavours it tasted while in the womb… why is it that now, of all times, suddenly all I can want to eat are things like chocolate fudge, biscuits and cake?

Arse.

Going to make some tablet.

Maybe I’ll try a smoothie as well.

Today I am compiling a list of the basics we will need to accommodate the Muffin’s arrival.  Normally I wouldn’t do something like this but Mr BC is very busy at work and is looking thin lipped and stressed so he needs to be reassured that I’ve got everything in hand…

So the list… an Excel spreadsheet no less.  Mwah ha ha haargh!  How can I be such a techno spud when I haven’t passed a maths exam since I was 9?

Meanwhile some strange little box has appeared on my blog and I’ve spent the last hour or so trying to work out how to make it go away, not before I’d ad blocked it and disabled it for all time though.  Damn…  An unblock button on Adblock would be just peachy.

Well… back to the list.