In honour of yesterday’s post I have added a new warning category.  “Complete freak out”.  Yes for my loonier dump the crap moments I will now turn that category on as well as the “Adult Content” ie swearing and “Not while you’re eating” ie grim personal details about bodily functions coming soon, categories.

So.  After a long conversation with my Mum about how she hated being pregnant because it was frustrating annoying and painful, about how she administers stupid fingertip cuts that you can’t get wet with the annoying flappy bit of skin with her vegetable peeler on a semi-professional basis and how bloody annoying the organised people who ruin everything for the rest of us are (more on that story in a moment) I feel much better.

She also told me that in her day, the midwife came to see you every two weeks and your slot would be say… Tuesdays at 9.00 and would always be the same. Oh for such a simplistic approach these days.

As for the organised people… well I mean those people who even though they are pregnant still manage to hoist in that e-mailing the NCT woman, asking to go on the waiting list for antenatal classes and giving her your phone number, name, town of residence and e-mail address isn’t enough!

Sigh.

Looking at it, she did ask for my address so she could put me on the waiting list… but somehow I didn’t quite hoist in that I’d not go on without it and then Christmas loomed on the horizon and I got into my usual scrooge hissy fit/total panic and forgot about it until February. By that time, the organised women had got in and booked all the places.

Oh well.

Ballsed that one up then.

Not that I can do much about it.  And don’t give me any shit about complaining.  I do know I’m a complete pussy.

The other thing is that it would be nice if I could just ring up and book all the appointments I need right through from the point when I knew the pregnancy was viable. But you can only book a month in advance which, again, means that if you don’t get in on the first couple of days bookings open, you miss your slot.

Then there’s the scans, two and a half hours on hold waiting to book after they’d been closed for 9 days over Christmas and New Year only to be cut off.

Oh how I long for the days when they did the organising, slotted you in at a time convenient for them and you complied. The NHS is the worst of both, you are still given a slot at their convenience and have little scope to negotiate but you also have to remember to ring and book. Because it’s time critical I do get a little stressed I guess but yesterday was the first time I’ve had a full-on barking loop.

Then there’s guilt/socialising. You see, all my friends are older then me and they’re all being 40 and having huge parties in the months before the baby pops. We’ve even got two weddings to go to for god’s sake! We’ve not had a wedding in years and now, this year, when they’re going to be sodding tricky to get to, two! I’ve been invited on a hen weekend for the first time ever and the odds are I won’t be able to go.

The long and the short of it is, we are due on 1st June and we have the last three weekends in May left free (in case it comes early).

Every other weekend between now and then is already booked up. Even for us, that’s busy. Indeed we have one shot at buying the prams, cot, baby bath, changing station and general gubbins we need and it’s this coming weekend. After that, if we both want to go together and try the stuff out Mr BC will have to take a day off. At weekends there’s nothing. Nada, zilch.

Shit! Not the restful pregnancy we’d planned then. No wonder I lost my marbles yesterday!

We had planned to take a storage pod and get rid of some of the glass around the house and the things there won’t be room for if 1) Mr BC moves into my studio and 2) Mr BC’s office/our sitting room becomes Muffin’s bedroom/my studio.

We’ve packed everything up into boxes but so far, not had time to go down and open the pod. As we don’t have a weekend free I have no idea when we’re going to do this now… a little paternity leave a couple of days before the event I guess. Our hall is full of boxes. My office is full of boxes. There’s no room for any more and I can only lift about three of them.

Oops.

Still on the up side, we’ve solved the spare room problem so the rellies wanting to stay crisis is over. We’ll still try to persuade as many as possible to stay in the B&B opposite but at least we don’t get the whole minefield about whether they can afford to, whether they’ll be prepared to let us pay etc etc. So our sitting room/Mr BC’s office will become a bedroom/studio – small one’s bedroom, my studio – and Mr BC will move his office down to the building in the garden where my studio is now. Then this time next year, we’ll move.

Are other people this crap, I wonder?

Today’s action packed agenda includes rearranging the kitchen cupboards which is exactly as boring as it sounds – but needs done and will make Mr BC happy – and sketching out the first stages of a George. Which will be great because it’s only six letters but because his sister is Millie-Lucy I get to do him on a large piece of paper – lots of room for manoeuvre!

Perhaps I should also pencil in time for a brief fantasy about eating the contents of the fiat in this here photo. I took the picture in Bruges on our wee stress break a week or two ago and it’s actually meant to be a Valentine’s day heart, not the huge chocolate arse you might mistake it for at first glance! Although obviously, to me, flirting with the idea it’s an arse is much funnier – even if that makes the idea of eating it rather less alluring.

Enjoy…