After a long time of testing the baby in closed laboratory conditions in an undisclosed location (or “a uterus”)(or rather “my uterus”), it suddenly came to light that the baby was ready to be released from its ‘alpha’ testing phase. So we launched it.

Doozer was born, at home, at 7.21 on the 11th of January. He weighed, at birth, something around 7lb. Maybe 7lb2ish. We don’t know for sure, because the last bit of Doozer-launching happened a bit too unexpectedly and quickly for them to send the second midwife out. The second midwife, apparently, is the one in charge of ‘bringing the scales’.

This is him about an hour after he was born:

And this is him the day after - by which I mean ‘today’ - with me:

about 18 hours after he was born.

According to both the midwife and the gp, I do not look like someone who gave birth yesterday. I’m not entirely sure what they were expecting: an unwashed panicking harridan dripping blood, but if they were, I at least managed to look, for the duration of those visits, not like that.

This is, I admit, a better picture of me (who you’ve met before) than Doozer (who you haven’t), but it does at least show a little of how proud I am of him right now.

Ah yes. And he hasn’t quite got a name yet. Not that we were expecting him to fly out of my mimsy with a name badge saying “HELLO MY NAME IS …[NAME]… HOW CAN I HELP?” (though that would have been useful), just that we have been sitting and calling him by the remaining names on the shortlist trying to decide what suits him best. Maybe tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I may write down what the labour/birth was like. People often write these things down to be helpful and informative to other people. I just want to remember it. I do not think my story will be particularly helpful or informative. It might be rather more ’sweary and undignified’, but frankly, there’s only so much you can do with the raw material of persuading a fully formed human being to emerge from a place somewhat smaller than itself.

Anyway.
Doozer arrived.

We are, as should be expected, completely and utterly in love with him.

The midwife and the gp did their home visits today. They in turn said that he was a model of perfection and, what’s more, had the most adorable nose ever recorded in medical history.
Or maybe they didn’t say that. Whatever, that’s certainly what I heard them say, even if they didn’t actually say it.
(I’m almost 100% they probably did, though)

I am sitting waiting for my baby to decide he is ready to emerge, singing a little waiting song.
It is mainly a very patient little song, but with an occasional few bars of “OH COME ON, LA LA LA, I’M TOTALLY READY AND BORED OF WAITING NOW, DOO BE DOO BE DOO.” every few verses, just to keep things lively and interesting.

It is completely normal that he hasn’t arrived yet, of course. As I have mentioned, the estimated due date thing is really more of a four week window, and first babies are almost always in the second half of that window, and he’ll come when he’s good and ready and OH COME ON, LA LA LA, I’M TOTALLY READY AND BORED OF WAITING NOW, DOO BE DOO BE DOO.
See?

Mainly, I am tired. Physically tired of being pregnant, and emotionally tired of it too. Tired of talking about being pregnant, and of hearing well-intentioned cautionary tales about pregnancy and birth, and of worrying about whether I am making things difficult for people socially or emotionally, just by being pregnant, and frankly, I just want to hide. Not in a bad way, just in a ‘retreating into a nice warm cave like a polar bear’ way.
Which is, frankly, an entirely normal thing for me in winter anyway, it is just magnified. By about a billion.

When it comes to persuading the baby that this is a perfectly good time to come out, there have been several different theories posited, some about eating, some drinking, some exercise, some alternative therapy related and some, well, ‘other’.

The most intriguing, though are these:

a) THE MOON!
I just got an email from one of the wonderful lovely women in my NCT birthing class, suggesting that lots more people go into labour during a full moon than not. Because of amniotic fluid acting like the tides of the ocean, etc. And, it being a full moon tomorrow, that consequently, we would all suddenly be exploding with baby on the same day.
I mean, it’s a lovely idea, though if THAT powerful, you would imagine labour wards would take these things into account, close the doors and go on holiday to the caribbean for 27 days out of the month.

b) BE PREPARED
Is not, apparently just the boy scout’s marching song, it is also what you have to do in order to persuade a baby to be borned. It was suggested to me that perhaps some kind of psychological block could be behind the non-appearance of baby. Is there, it was suggested, any work left over to do? A room that needed cleaning? A tiny piece of DIY that needed finishing? No… no, I said, no, I didn’t think so. My birthing room is ready, my bag is packed in the slim chance I have to go to hospital after all, everything for Doozer is organised and arranged in the corner of our bedroom.
Did we have a car? Did it need MOTing? Were there outstanding bills? No, no and no.

Was there, came the next question, perhaps someone in my extended family who was due to die soon?
Not that I could think of, I said.
And if there was (in my opinion) and they seemed to be taking their time about it (in my opinion), what, (in their opinion) I should do in order to rectify the problem? To sort out this interesting ‘one in, one out’ policy?

The answer I will keep to myself.
For reasons of legal propriety.

Still, it did make me think.

Perhaps I will go quiet now. Completely quiet.
I’m sure you’re not all checking in daily to see whether I happen to be liveblogging labour or not, but just in case you are, I think I might just turn off the internet for a few days to sleep and prepare. After all, the thing about having a blog, and a twitter account, and a flickr account, and another half-dozen things that need updating means that I do ALWAYS feel like there’s something I should be doing…

So I may just need not to worry about those for a week or so.
So, y’know, don’t be surprised if I’ve gone quiet. Don’t feel the need to ask about whether it’s because I’m in labour, or conjecture on whether Doozer’s arrived or not. When he does, my blog will be one of the first places that it gets announced.
Until then, I may be quiet. Or I may not. Depends how I feel tomorrow, or the day after, or however long this takes.

But until then, I may just go offline and sleep instead.
And prepare. And NOT KILL ANYONE, AT ALL.
Honest, guvnor.

*Signs off, and retreats to a nice warm cave*

My mother brought down some very old schoolbooks containing - well, mainly me trying to write the letter ‘J’ the right way around, but ALSO - some stories and pictures and other early examples of my narrative genius. Or rather, lack, thereof. I posted another example here. I have never been any good at fiction, really.

Or perhaps I have. Perhaps the immensely tragic tale below - possibly my first official piece of published writing - represents the pinnacle of my fiction-writing ability. Which is good, if sad. Because this is good, but sad. SO SAD.

Ahem:

Just in case you can’t see that picture, transcribed:

THE BALLOON PRINCESS
Once there was a princess who loved balloons. She got lots of balloons. One day she had so many that she flew away: but she was a sensible princess. She let the balloons down and then she never had balloons again.

by Joanna Pickard
Class 5

(Class 5 would make me about 6, six and a half)

1) Yes, yes, my full name is Joanna, let’s move on.
2) THIS IS THE SADDEST STORY EVER TOLD. Well I think it is, anyway. Because:
a) It could have had such scope. There was room for such possibility.
b) The princess had all the balloons she could ever have wanted (and she REALLY wanted balloons, she loved them, you know).
c) She could have flown away! Gone to space! floated around the world! And what did she do? She let the balloons down.

It might as well be called ‘Little Girl, Don’t Bother Having Dreams’.

I want to grab the little girl who wrote this and hug her SO HARD. And then give her balloons. Lots of balloons. Enough balloons to fly away.

(It is now two days past my due date and no, since you ask, I have not had a baby yet.)

Doozer was due yesterday. He didn’t come.

This is FINE, obviously. I’m not grumpy.
Or tired.
Or impatient.
Or so bored of hoisting myself off the sofa and up the stairs to the bathroom that I have recently been going to bed hours early, because at least that’s on the same floor at the toilet.
Or listless, or anxious, or overthinky about everything.
It’s not like I’m ANY of those things, or even ALL OF THEM AT ONCE.

Oh no, wait, I am.

I am partly just so excited for it all to start happening, partly wanting just to get to the moment when we get to meet him, and hold him, and partly wanting to get to the - not scary, but certainlyintimidating, like someone saying “At some point in the next couple of weeks, you’re going to have to run a marathon. I’m not going to tell you when, though, I’m just going to walk up to you with a starters pistol, shoot it, and then you have to start running” - labour and birth bit, so we can just DO that, and stop waiting.

Waiting waiting waiting.

I’m very bad at waiting. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before. Really terribly, terribly bad.

The due date came, and went, and I felt a bit flat. As much as I rationally know that a due date is pretty much an arbitrary thing, it’s still the thing that we’ve been talking about, working towards and seeing written on the front of every medical note for the last 8 months, so watching it come and go was somewhat deflating.

Today I went for a session of reflexology, some part of me hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would squeeze my toe and the baby would fly out, like some massively more impressive version of pulling someone’s finger to make them fart. It didn’t work. Or not yet, anyway.

Excellently, yesterday, on my due date, we had agreed to go to the theatre in the evening, believing that if anything was going to drive Doozer out it was the prospect of having to sit through a musical if he didn’t come.
But still, no Doozer.
One day, will will have words about that.

So I am finding things to do. Blogging. I need to do that more, though I’m scared of sounding whiny. I will find other things to write about that are about NOTHING TO DO WITH BABIES AT ALL. That is what I will do tomorrow. Also, tea and cake with the other enormous pregnants of my NCT group. And a film, I think. And some relaxing. I hear that is meant to be what I am doing right now.

And not being very good at it.
And not giving myself a bad time for being very good at it.
And not being very good at not giving myself a hard time for things.
See? I’m keeping myself busy after all.

12 things I want to do in ‘12

1) Have a baby.
This one’s a bit inevitable, I think. I’m two days off my due date.

2) Write more
I always want to write more. I mean, I do little else, practically speaking. But more. I want to do it more. I want to do it effortlessly and productively, words running from my fingers like little letter-filled drips from a leaky tap.

3) Write better
I am pleased with some of the things I’ve done in 2011, of course. But I still feel like I haven’t written the thing I meant to write. I want to write that thing, this year. Even if it’s only a sentence. I feel like I’ll know when I have written it.

4) Get my brain working in non-linear ways and squiggly tangents again
I’m hoping that sleep deprivation will help with this. I’m hoping sleep deprivation will be useful for something, at least.

5) Learn how to make ginger thins.
They’re a very good biscuit.

6) Not move house
If we can help it. If we can get to the end of this year without moving, it will be the longest period I’ve spent in one house for 17 years. So if we manage not to move house, country, city or anything else due to exciting changing-life circumstances, that would be remarkable in itself. But I won’t hold my breath.

7) Take photos. Lots of photos.
And set myself (small, manageable) projects.

8) Get good - or at least passable - at being a person with a baby.
I am also hoping this is inevitable. But you cannot be too sure. As long as Doozer is healthy and happy, then I think that I will - we will - be passable people-with-a-baby. Anything better than that is a) a bonus and b) probably a matter of opinion.

9) Wear the same dress on my birthday this year as I wore on my birthday last year.
We shall see.

10) Win the lottery.
Yes, yes, 10.1) PLAY the lottery.

11) Be better at being in touch with people. And emails. And video calls. And all of that
Same as last year, then. No but this year I will. I WILL.

12) Be nicer. And more patient. And calmer. And happier.
To be fair, this was a last minute substitution. It was GOING to be “Seriously: I need to learn how to make ginger thins”, because let’s face it, they’re a really, really good biscuit. But I thought it sounded trite, so I should do the other stuff instead. OH NO WAIT I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING!

12) Learn how to make a really good homemade ice cream sandwich. Every bit of it from scratch.
And all that ‘nicer/patient/calmer/happier/more forgiving’ stuff as well, obvs. I just tend to think that if I had a good ice cream sandwich in my life, all that other business would follow naturally. Also: ginger thins.

In the last few weeks of 2011, I made a thing, for Doozer’s room. I wasn’t sture what it was going to be when I started, I just started doing small squares of tiny cross stitch, like this:

Which eventually turned into a border, as soon as I could work out how many big whatever it was I was doing should be:

I worked it out, one stitch at a time, and, while doing it, thought about Doozer and what life will be like when he gets here, and what he might grow up to be like. I think that’s why people do these things, traditionally, isn’t it? In order to spend time meditating and thinking about someone, or something? I never realised that before. It is a nice thing to do. Even if you’re making it up as you go along. Maybe even more so then.

After slowly beavering away on it on and off in the evenings, when not working or staring at my laptop trying to be working but feeling all brain-tired instead, it turned into a finished thing. I finished it just before new year. It had turned into an elephant.

And now it is finished. So Doozer can arrive.
You hear that, Doozer?
YOU CAN ARRIVE NOW, YOUR ELEPHANT IS DONE.

Thank you.

I managed one camping trip in 2011. It was a week or so after I discovered I was pregnant. We were in California.

I’d (blimey, how much have I detailed of this already? I can’t remember. I have memory issues at the moment. Apparently the small beautiful parasite still living in my abdomen is somehow eating my brain) I’d found out I was pregnant the day before my birthday. A birthday when I had, no less, arranged to see lots of my favourite San Francisco friends for a meal entirely composed of cocktails and raw fish. And couldn’t tell any of them why I was sitting there looking hungry, sober, sleepy and shellshocked. A few days after I found out, we ran a 12k race. Yes, slowly, but I’m still unbearably smug about it.

And then we went camping. I never want to forget it, that’s the only reason I’m writing it down.

We took the tent and camping gear that we’d left at a friends house when we moved from San Francisco, knowing we were more likely to camp there before anywhere else. I’d booked a campsite on a beach a couple of hours up the coast from the city. Right on the beach, basically. So close you could go to sleep to the sound of the waves and the smell of everybody’s firepit embers. It was practically the most perfect romantic thing I had ever imagined, in theory, and I had been thinking about it for months.

And suddenly, it all felt different. And weird. I was in one of my favourite places in the world, and all I could think about doing was getting home to go to see my GP (I’m not sure why. Because I thought she would say something wise and useful, I think. Which, of course, she didn’t. She said “If you say so” and then sent me off to see the midwives. That’s what they do).

So the whole thing seemed removed from what I expected it to be anyway.
And then it rained. Torrentially.
Torrents of rain. Hard, and constant, and cold and apparently unending, it rained. It started tipping down when we turned off the freeway and into the river valley that leads to the sea. It didn’t stop. The closer we got to the sea, the more it rained.

It poured as we parked the car and sat there, trying to figure out whether to try waiting for a lull in the rain to put the tent up. And we decided we should. And so did. And then, after picking the most sensible tree-shaded corner of the pitch, put the tent up, blew up the air mattress and crawled inside it faster than we’d ever previously managed.

And then we lay there, in grey afternoon light, napping and listening to the Pacific get poured through a sieve onto the tent roof on top of us.

And then feeling it, as it slowly soaked through a vulnerable spot where the top sheet was touching the lining and started pooling at the bottom of the tent.

The nearest town with a shop big enough to speak of was half an hour’s drive away.

Together we went and sullenly ploged around the small shop that seemed to serve as chemist, post office and holiday goods emporium. They had, it turned out, sod all of any use.

It was at this moment that I turned into McGyver. Or, for those not of the right age bracket to remember the reference, to “a person who was going to be able to fix complicated technical problems with only some ripped clothing, a ball of string and some sticky tape”. We bought the only potentially useful things they had: coincidentally, some cheap disposable rain ponchos, a ball of string, and a roll of duct tape.

Together we rigged up some complex canopy, strung from the apex of the tent and six different branches. Theory was, it would catch the rain and divert it away from the tent and safely onto the ground downstream of where we were sleeping. It was not attractive. It was shoddy and looked like it all might collapse at any second.

And, magically, it worked. The rain kept on falling, and the tent stayed dry. All the way through the next day, the rain fell, as we lay in the tent, reading and sleeping and listening to the water hitting the beach that we’d intended to have long romantic walks along.

Our second night there, the rain eased off for a long enough time to make us think that it was going to stop completely (it wasn’t, of course) and decide to have the dinner cooked on the firepit.
It stopped raining, in fact, for exactly long enough to light the fire.
But only just.
We took it in turns to stand over the barbecue, holding an umbrella over the fire and the food. When, eventually the food was ready, we opened the boot of the rental car and had a picnic sitting in the trunk because it was the only place dry enough to eat. To eat food that was a little soggy, that is.

The third day we were there - the day we were leaving - the sun came out. Of course. It looked like this:

And then, mainly because I had to go and catch a flight to another city to do work for a few days, we packed up and left.

And that was my favourite bit of 2011. Or one of them. The one that is currently playing in my head and making me feel better about all the chaos and panic and amazing mess that is to come.
So please excuse my soppiness, and self-indulgence. I just didn’t want 2011 to slip too far away, and head too far into the next bit without remembering this.
There were a lot of good, memorable bits in 2011 for me.
But the wettest camping trip that ever existed is the one I don’t want to forget.

I’m going to drop the pregnadvency stuff after this, for several reasons, the main being a) it’s now after Crimble and I had no time pre-crimble to do 24 of them, which would have been a sensible amount, but also because b) I have no idea how long this is going to go on, so I might as well stop numbering stuff and just write stuff instead.

As I mentioned before, the thing they don’t tell you when going into pregnancy, the thing that no one really mentions, is that the due date is not really as firm an estimate as they pretend.

The due date is the point at the end of 40 weeks when you might be ‘done’. But then again, some babies are done at 38 weeks, and some are done at 42. Some might be done past 42, but after that the medicals don’t like them still being in there, so they reach in and get them out for you, so 42 weeks pregnant is (pretty much) the only definite number in the mix.

Everything else is very, very vague. The ‘due date’ is not a bus schedule.
It’s not even the most likely date, not in and of itself.
It’s a date in the middle of a four week window when your baby may possibly arrive.
This is vague.

I’m bad at vague. Which is surprising for someone who is very good at BEING vague. I am just not so great with large life situations being vague. I don’t like life being vague at me. I really don’t like it at all. And it’s happened quite a lot in the last few years, which is why I’m so confident in saying “I really don’t like it”.

I am also very, very bad at waiting. I’m bad at vague, and I’m bad at waiting. I am - particularly when I don’t know when the thing I am waiting for is going to arrive, some of the people who know and love me best would say – ‘horrific’ at waiting.

It’s like (and not physically, obviously, I’m not comparing the physical sensation, just the idea) - it’s like someone saying that “at some point over the next four weeks, you’re going to break your leg”. No indication of when, or how, or how badly it will hurt, just that at SOME point over the next four weeks, your leg will definitely be broken. This is the kind of thing designed to drive most people mad, isn’t it? It’s certainly the kind of thing designed to drive me mad.

And so it is not unlikely to suggest that IF someone told me that “at some point in the next four weeks - not saying when, or how - you WILL break your leg”, I would quickly go mad to the point of sitting with a large hammer, attempting to break my own leg so at least I didn’t have to do any waiting on vagueness.

But I’m not doing that, obviously. There is no hammer I can take to this leg.
I mean, yes, I’m eating my spicy food a little more spicy than usual, I’m being more dedicated about walking daily than maybe I was last week, and I’m drinking tea that tastes of leaves and dirt, and I may or may not be eating an entire pineapple a day (which hurts, by the way)(and yes, I am remembering to take the skin off) - but the basic fact is, Doozer will come when he’s ready. And if he’s not ready to arrive, he won’t arrive, no matter how excited I am to meet him, and no matter how strongly I detest the waiting.

Which is fine. I will be patient if it means that everyone will be healthy and comfortable and nothing will be unduly rushed. But it doesn’t mean I will like waiting. And it doesn’t mean I will like the vagueness. No. No, I will not.

*Sits patiently, twitching only a little.*

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

That is all.

Doozer has still not arrived (I probably would have mentioned that first, to be honest, before the Christmas thing, sorry Jesus) but appears to have *maybe* (I’m not sure) engaged, which means he’s moved down my abdomen finally in preparation for arriving at some point. At least, I assume that’s what’s happened. Some indications say so, the internet (of course) says the opposite, because it is the internet and therefore useless. We’ll see.

ANYWAY: point is, it’s Christmas. The last Christmas in a while where we get to lie in as long as we damn well pleased and do very little all day. By next year, there will be one member of the family stumbling around, shouting random syllables and threatening to pull over the tree. And for once it won’t be me. A ha ha ha ha ha. Etc.

But that wasn’t the point of this post. The point of this post is: Happy Christmas, everyone. You’re all lovely. Thank you for still being here, internet.

Known Knowns
- It is December 21rd.
- While I am freelance, and therefore have no ‘maternity leave’ as such, the people I’ve been working for exclusively for most of this year have me until the 23rd December. It would have been longer, but they’re mostly away next week, so Friday it is. That’s two days from now. After that I’m officially ‘on a maternity break’, which is kind of like being freelance, but with less work, less running after work, and more panicking about when the work will return.
- The baby is due on January 4th.
- If the baby doesn’t come for two weeks after that date (so before January 18th), they’ll induce labour. So whatever happens, I’ll have a baby in the next four weeks.
- I am not scared of labour.
- It is Christmas at the weekend.
- Doozer is not yet “engaged” (This means his head is not yet settled in the birth position in my pelvis)
- My pelvis bones are coming apart and clicking like crazy.
- If “nesting” means obsessively cleaning out cupboards, then I am not yet nesting.
- The weather isn’t very nice.
- We have still not decided on a name. We have a shortlist of three, though, so we’re getting there. The decision can wait until we meet Doozer.
- “Doozer” is not on the shortlist.

Known Unknowns
- I am now 38 weeks, which is officially full term. I could have given birth at home from last week, but from now until four weeks from now, I could give birth any time and it would be considered full term.
(Honestly, they tell you at the beginning that pregnancy is 40 weeks long, and you mentally process that and work things out, and then, as the time approaches, they suddenly say “Yeah: OR 38 weeks… Or 42. I mean, whatever, right?” THIS IS SHONKY BEHAVIOUR.)
- While Doozer is due on January 4th, I have actually decided he should come next week. The 29th. That’s a nice date. It’s a nice number. It’s a prime. I also like ‘11 as a year. That’s also a good number. 2011 is also a prime.
- Doozer could engage any time between now and the beginning of labour. For some people it happens in their 36th week, for others, it happens as labour begins.
- I do not know what will happen when I am “not working” and “not having anything to do but wait”. Although I hope it will involve finishing this pregnadvency calendar.
- I do not know when I will start taking work on again, though at the moment am planning for early February. (Don’t say anything. Trust me, I have had to be talked down from ‘the second week of January’. The panic is strong in this one). I don’t know how that will be.
- There are known ways of inducing labour and encouraging it naturally to start. It is unknown how well they will work if Doozer doesn’t feel like coming out anyway. It is also unknown how much we want to talk about those ways.
- I know, technically, how labour happens and how it all begins. I’ve read a lot, and been to classes, although everything I’ve learnt keeps slipping out of my head. Regardless, I have no idea what the physical sensation will be like, and how I’ll know when it’s starting.
- I am not scared of labour. I’m scared of not knowing whether I’m going into labour or not.
- True fact: waters breaking - like you see in films and on tv, is not generally the first sign of labour. The majority of the time is happens during the process, when labour’s well established. I can’t believe that sitcoms lied to me about this.

I am not very good with not knowing things.
So if Doozer is reading this (I know he can hear, so I will read this bit out loud just in case he can’t see through my eyes): the 29th. The 29th is a very good date to be born.

The unknown unknowns
- I don’t know what these are.

This is more of an actual asking for advice than anything else.

I know, unusual. Usually I’m all: I don’t want your advice, I will do it MYSELF, thank you. I am stubborn and annoying like that. But the fact is that:

a) I like you and trust you, you’re nice people. And most of you seem eminently sensible. And even those that don’t seem eminently sensible are nice, and probably know something useful.

b) The amount of STUFF out there is quite, quite dizzying. The amount of recommendations and anti-recommendations and suggestions and condemnations and such are brain-melting.

c) People know stuff that I don’t know. It is not a terrible thing to ask for help or advice every now and again.

So here I am, asking a question. If you have had a baby, or know people who have who have passed on essential advice to you regarding stuff, please pass that on. Tell me, if there was ONE THING (or maybe a couple of things, but let’s not go insane) that you are really glad that you had, or were given, or handed-down, or shoplifted, or whatever, can you tell me what it was?

A toy? A book? A book for you? A book for them? A decoration? A piece of practical equipment? An item of clothing? A thing?

Let me know, and if I can find it somewhere - if you have a link to the thing you mean all the brillianter - and I will put it on my wishlist thing: (Which is here, by the way. Just saying, like…) and hopefully get it at some point.

(Please bear in mind that if you look at the wishlist thing, it represents other things that I have been recommended, or that I intend to buy at some point in the near future, not the sum total of everything I already have. We already have quite a LOT of stuff, bought, given and handed down, but I’m sure we’ll cover that in the comments…)

So yes. Please help and advise me, people who know more than I do: if there is one THING that one should go into parenthood having, or just one one thing that you or someone close to you is grateful for having at the time, what was that thing?

There was one day last week when I wanted nothing more than my duvet. My Beloved tried to get me out of bed every way he could think. Bribery, cajoling, promises of treats and fried breakfasts and threats of bedsores and sleepless nights if I didn’t get up.

I wouldn’t get up.

Quite apart from the fact that I can sleep about 17 hours a day at the moment (or could, until a few nights ago, when a weird kind of insomnia started to kick in), I realised, most of the way through my day in bed, that I was basically hiding.

The only way, I thought, I could easily be persuaded to get up would be if someone turned up with two tickets to a holiday where I could go and lie on a sun lounger, next to a swimming pool, and read books and do nothing else. And not pack my bump.

So there I was. Lying in bed wanting two things that were impossible: to
a) Hide from it all or
b) Run away.

And that is before we even get into the hilariousness of me trying to run ANYWHERE right now. Let alone “away from my own uterus”.

I think this is natural. It was not about not wanting the stuff that is coming. Nor was it about not being excited to meet Doozer, when he arrives (and I am, I’m so excited I might burst). It was about being overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, by the soonness of it all, the inevitability of it all.

At some point when I my stomach suddenly expanded to a reasonably large and round size, somewhere around 25 weeks pregnant or so, I remember looking down at it, and thinking “Oh! That is my stomach! Oh! It’s going to get bigger. AND OH, HE THEN HAS TO GET OUT OF THERE SOMEHOW!…” - and this was basically an extension of that small panic.

Except bigger. Far bigger.
And including all the other things there are to worry about at this point. The possibility of things going wrong with the birth that we heard all about in birthing classes. The possibility of something damaging the baby in the process. The fact that I have no idea how it will feel when it starts, no matter how much I read, or how many classes I attend or people I talk to, I have literally no idea how it wil feel when it begins, how long the labour will last, what will happen - until I get in such a tizzy trying to consider all of those things that I can no longer remember when to call the midwife, or what I’m meant to do or…. And that’s why I wanted to go to bed and not get up. Or run away and hide.

I think this is natural. It’s pretty natural for me, anyway. The desire to run away or hide from something isn’t new, or restricted to this. It’s just what happens. Or rather, it’s just what happened last week.

So I lay in bed and was scared. And I thought through all the worst possible things that could happen, and the most terrible outcomes of any particular situation, and I pulled the duvet over my head and let these things race around my brain.

And then the next day I got up. And everything was ok.

There are a lot of scary things about what’s happening. There’s no point in ignoring them, but there’s no point in obsessing about them either. Not endlessly. I process things slowly - and, I admit, mainly process things by hiding under duvets - but the processing bit has to happen in order to feel calm and prepared and ok about the enormous stuff.

I have learnt a lot during this whole pregnancy thing. But this was one of the most important.
It doesn’t mean I’ll want to run away or hide any less in the future, or course, but at least I’ll know that if I can’t do those things, if those things are completely impossible, I can at least do one thing.

I can go to bed.
And that will solve EVERYTHING.

No, wait, that wasn’t the lesson. Oh, well, it was something like that, anyway. I’ll go to bed and think it through properly.

[I continue to be completely brilliant at deciding to do blog series of things while also having lots of work to do: in this case, the rush of work that will take me up to Christmas and then disappear for what I assume I should call a 'maternity break' (meaning a space of time in which no money appears, before I panic about that and start working again as soon as I can). Never mind. I will catch up with my little blog series thing over the next few days. They are all planned out in my head anyway]

The week after I discovered I was pregnant, I had a manicure and pedicure.
I was around six weeks pregnant at the time.

This is not, in itself, an interesting story. I mean, it’s quite a nice story, I was in San Francisco, I had it done with my friend R, who I was dying to tell but couldn’t, and I had never in my life had a mani-pedi before, so it was all nice story, but not, in itself, interesting.

However, here’s the interesting bit: I have not had a pedicure since.

Ok, I admit that, in itself, this is also not very interesting.

HOWEVER: not having a pedicure since, I haven’t taken the polish off one of my toenails, either. On my big toe. And therefore, I know this…

My big toenail on my left foot is, when cut very short, 13mm long. It was painted when I was about six weeks pregnant, and, at time of writing, when I am 37 weeks pregnant (officially full-term enough to have the baby at home) there are still a full 3mm of nail polish left at the top of the nail.

THEREFORE: It takes longer to grow one entire adult toenail than it takes to grow an entire new human.
There y’go.
Science.

A little icky and certainly slatternly for scientific research, I admit, but I don’t care. It is SCIENCE.

You’re welcome.

In fact, just a story that I found in an old schoolbook that My Little Mother brought to our family pre-Christmas weekend last week. It has nothing at all to do with being pregnant, I just wanted to post it.

This is a story I wrote when I was about 6, as far as I can gather. It raises some interesting points.

One beautiful day I was walking by the sea in May 12th and this viking walked by and I said “Stop who are you!” and he said “I am a viking.” “How do you do” I said and a little rabbit said “he is a viking and vikings are bad So he is bad.” So next day I went down with a little sword to kill him. First I got a little sword and then I killed him. The End.

1) Firstly, you will have noticed that tiny Anna is not shy about killing people.

2) Those of you who have been around a while might recognise that this is not a one-off. Six-year-old Anna was apparently quite gung-ho. Usually in the case of justifiable political assassination, but also, as we see here, random slayings on the say-so of small rabbits.

3) I think more questions should be asked about the presence of the rabbit in this whole story. Clearly this was not merely an innocent bystanding role. Little Anna was perfectly happy to make the acquaintance of the Viking before the small rabbit got involved. So the small rabbit was the agitator in this situation. I’m not accusing the rabbit of anything, I’m just saying that if it came to court, there could be a case made that the Rabbit had some kind of problem with vikings and that little Anna was merely the weapon in this grudge match. Just saying.

4) I wish any Viking readers to know that while I may have been swayable to anti-viking sentiment of small rabbits, but I am now as accepting of Viking readers as I am of all other readers.

5) For the record, May 12th is my birthday. So it was a particularly good time to go walking by the sea on. I mean ‘in’.

6) I think someone should look into the “little sword” laws. They’re clearly too easy to get hold of for 6-year-old girls.

Other than that, I am very proud of this story.
Apart from the rabid anti-Viking sentiment, and the blind trust placed in small agitator rabbits, I think I am a very strong, proactive character in this story. Unlike another story that I found in the same stack of books, but I will save that for a separate post.

Vikings, my apologies. And on behalf of my six-year-old self: you might want to watch your back. The rabbits are after you.