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.