It’s not that I’m bored, I really worried when I started leave that I wouldn’t know how to fill my days, and in truth I can’t tell you how I have been filling them.  There has been no specific goal, except to let work go (achieved that goal about 20 minutes after I walked out of the office – Go me!), and get plenty of rest in.  So far, so good, my feet and ankles (while still very much of the cankle variety) aren’t half as swollen as they were, my hips don’t hurt as much.  I am significantly larger than I was when I finished work (my sister has a photo of me at 32 weeks, and one at 39 and the difference is astonishing, if I had known how whale like I would feel at 39 weeks, I would not have ever mentioned animals in the whale family at 32 weeks, hippo’s maybe, but not whales).

I know this is a boring post, it’s just for me to look back and remember what I was doing and how I was feeling before a bomb explodes in the centre of our lives and John can never watch Saturday Kitchen again.

I had a few ideas as to what I could do to fill the time, I was going to finally complete the rosetta stone Spanish set we have, I was going to take my brand new and completely brilliant camera on the Parkland walk and practice, I was going to paint some walls… somewhere… but in truth everything has been overtaken by this bone crushing tiredness.  The closer you get to D.Day the less decent sleep you have (sleep, wee, sleep, wee, can’t sleep, wee again, is the baby moving? Yes, let’s wee some more in celebration, sleep? Not so much) so the day is overtaken by how much I can get done before my eyes lose focus and I have to take a nap.  I hear of women who actually get an amazing burst of energy towards the end of their third trimester, I am not that woman.

My mum came to stay for a fortnight, which was hugely, enormously, massively helpful.  John has been working like a crazy person, so I would have gone completely mental if she hadn’t been here.  And did you know you can clean almost anything in your house using only lemons?  I did not know that, but I do now, also, our flat smells almost entirely of lemons.  We didn’t do very much apart from think about the next surface that needed lemonising, and go for lunch.  I have been for a LOT of lunches over the last few weeks, Crouch End has never seemed so rich in lunch possibilities.  We also ventured to Muswell Hill, wherein Mum discovered a particularly good charity shop and literally had to be removed, against her will, when I pointed out she had picked up every single item they had, considered it, and had started from the beginning again.

I have had my hair done, so I now have a good couple of months before I have to think about that again.  My hair is ludicrous at the moment, massive, thick and unable to be contained by product alone.  I’m probably one of the few women who will be glad when it starts to fall out again.

And now we stare down the barrel of 40 weeks, three days until my due date and no sign so far that this baby is doing anything except getting more bloody comfortable.  I hear about other people who never made it to their due date, who gave birth a few days before and were home with their babies for D.Day.  I am also not that woman.  John was convinced that it was going to be this week, but I think we’re in for a bit of a wait yet, someone just seems far too comfortable wriggling and elbowing me to even think about an arduous journey out into the world.  I have felt zero Braxton hicks, I have had no bloody show.  While we’re on that subject (glorious and disgusting as it is), can I say how sad it is that John had to learn about such a disturbing thing if I WAS NOT GOING TO HAVE ONE?! That’s almost a cruel joke!  If I do have one, I plan on wrapping it up and preserving it to show everyone who visits us.  That little treat will be served at around the point that I have had enough and require you to leave, sorry folks!  You’ve outstayed your welcome, have the image of some blood stained mucus burned into your memory to prove it

Last weekend, John and I wandered into… Crouch End (oh the suspense…) and bumped into a colleague of his who is getting married in six weeks.  He and his fiance had just left the gym and were stood in the sun, toned, sweat glistening, looking every bit like two people at the top of their physical game and about to be photographed by a professional for all eternity.  They looked at me with a slightly glazed and faintly disgusted look in their eye.  I wanted to say “no!  You’ve got it wrong!  This time last year I was just like you!  I went to a spin class ON MY ACTUAL LEGAL WEDDING DAY!  I haven’t always looked this… swollen!”, they politely asked when I was due, they made a joke about how I looked like I was ‘ready to pop!’, and then they went home to weigh spinach out and have weak sex after a dry chicken breast.

I waddled down the high street, confident that someday I too will be so weak from exercise, so exhausted from measuring my abs in the morning, so determined to make it through 30 minutes of cardio that I buy a fancy running stroller and take the baby along on my eternal quest for physical perfection.

Then I ate a burger, some chips and a chocolate brownie.  I am nothing if not in total denial.

So last week was my birthday, and my last day at work, which I should probably write about because they were both lovely, if I restrict this blog to whining only I will have to rename it N8girlMOANS.com.

First a shout out to The Haberdashery, which is where John bought my birthday cake.  He tells me it was the single most expensive birthday cake anyone has ever bought, which I think means it was at least £1000, but God it was yummy, elderflower sponge with rose icing.  Even Amelie had a slice and she’s only 2, clearly she’s a 2 year old with amazing taste for cake.  It did sink a little in the car on the way to my sister in law’s but we’ll blame the car for that… what?  We can’t blame the car because THE CAR IS MADE OF PERFECTION?  Well then we’ll have to blame John.

SMILEY WINKY FACE.

My last day at work was a very surreal experience.  I had spent the previous three weeks doing my job, while writing hand over documents and organising meetings to introduce the partners I work with to the people who will be taking over from me.  So when I turned up last week there was nothing to do, I was all wrapped up!  It was also the last day of a week long Ofsted inspection, and the college was riddled with anxiety.  The corridors were lined with people pulling out their own hair while standing underneath brand new posters advertising all the wonderful! Ways! We can help! You! Lovely! Students! 

The result was a little less wonderful than hoped (oh man, if I could write about this with anonymity…. but I can’t so we’ll leave it there), so by 2pm most of the college were in the pub.  I was given some beautiful leaving gifts, an enormous card and a big chocolate birthday cake (which I will confess to sending to John’s office to cheer up the troops there, there’s only so much sitting on my arse eating chocolate that I can justify).  The boys in the office took me to lunch and made as much of a fuss as they could considering they are boys and would much rather be talking about formula 1 than babies.  It was nice though, it was actually a nicer leaving day considering I have only worked for them for one year, than my last leaving day, which was happening after 8 years, but I think that’s the difference between a job where you see the same people most days, and consultancy, where no one recognises you despite near constant email exchanges.

I left pretty early, the naughtiness of an afternoon in the pub just doesn’t translate when it’s an orange juice you’re holding rather than a sneaky gin and tonic.

My birthday was lovely.  It was as much fun as anyone could reasonably expect at 750 weeks pregnant.  My lovely sister in law made a fuss and cooked dinner for six of us, and there was much talk of poo, a topic I have come to expect now, my poo, baby poo, labour poo, I mean really I can’t believe I ever talked about anything else.  What else IS there apart from poo?  It’s a subject that you can never truly exhaust.  I bet you think about poo a lot, even though you don’t realise it. 

Poo; it unites us all.

So now I am on maternity leave, and it’s a very strange feeling indeed.  I’m not working from home, I’m not studying anything, I’m not poorly, but I am meant to be resting, that is the whole purpose of this time.  To be honest, I’m knackered all the time now, apart from about two hours when I first get up, so it’s a welcome relief not to be traipsing around London being STARED AT.  I nearly punched someone last week, what are you LOOKING AT?!  I am pregnant, I will not literally explode on you, look away!  People who stare at pregnant women can generally be slotted into the following categories:

Woman who have not have children (curiosity)

Woman who have had children (sympathy/pity)

Men (disgust/possibly perverts)

I wish to be stared at by none of these people, so maternity leave is welcome. 

I had to have a heart monitor fitted for 24 hours this week, which did not involve me being naked in front of anyone, I’m sure you’re incredibly relieved about that. I know I was after the ECG trauma where a fat sweaty man lurched over me and said “and your bra love”, while I tried not to cry.  I’ve had heart palpitations for months now, and while I don’t actually think they’re anything to worry about, we’re just making sure. 

What I’m more worried about is how at about 10pm every night I want to cry, and I frequently do, while talking to John about… I don’t know, sausages or something equally as trivial.  Yesterday I made pesto (apparently it’s incredibly easy and we should all be making our own pesto instead of buying it readymade, what ‘they’ don’t tell you is it will also bankrupt you), only the recipe I chose seems to be for industrial quantities and I found myself, at 10pm last night, crying as I explained to John that I have made enough pesto for 150 people.

Now if you’re reading this and you knew me at school, then this will not surprise you, as I was a legendarily overly dramatic drama queen who wailed for no reason at all on a daily basis (I say no reason, the reason was FOR ATTENTION), however, this hasn’t been the case for quite some time now, I’m really not a person who cries easily.  When the insane crying started John wasn’t sure what to do with me, he’d sort of panic and crush me in a big hug, rocking me like a Romanian orphan off of Blue Peter in the early 90’s.  Now he’s used to it, I get a pat on the knee and he puts on his Listening Face and eventually I pull myself together, it’s probably better that way, I ruin far fewer of his t.shirts.

Five weeks to go everyone.  Poo.

I took Monday off and stayed home to mainly lie about on the sofa and think about how I don’t fit into any of my shoes and I have a wedding to go to two weeks before my due date.  Dr Beautiful had actually specifically said to us that staying home and hiding in bed was not the way to react to Sunday’s events, but since when have beautiful people been good doctors?  Is it possible to both style your hair so it flops over your delicate blue eyes just so, AND become a physician worth listening to?  I’m not sure!  The last truly amazing doctor who cut me open and pulled my insides about was charismatic yes, but he couldn’t style his hair for toffee.  I found this reassuring.  It indicated that his mind was on More Important Things Than Hair.  Would you want David Beckham to wield a scalpel near your uterus?  Neither would I. 

Anyway, I had a conversation with someone I work with who pointed out that I only get to do this once. This particular baby will only come along this one time, and there’s no taking back how I handle it.  This lady actually suffered the incomparable loss of a premature baby girl a few years ago, so I do not take her advice lightly.  In this spirit, I brought my maternity leave forward, I’m going to finish next week, friday March 9^th, my 31^st birthday.  Since I made this decision I feel like a weight has lifted off my shoulders.  I will be 34 weeks pregnant and although part of my brain feels like this may be an incredibly indulgent time period to give myself, I plan on just taking care of myself, and my baby.  I am not listening to the part of my brain which apparently likes the hour I spend being pushed about on the tube at 7.30am every day. I am going to take walks, nap, cook batches of food to put in the freezer,  write a novel, start a small business, cure cancer and get a haircut (only four of those are true). 

By the time I gently breathe out this baby, surrounded by candle light, essential oils and chanting Tibetan monks, I will be so relaxed he or she should come out clutching their degree certificate and asking if I would like ice in my gin and tonic.

At about three o’clock we were walking along the high street and decided to get some bits for the week from Waitrose.  We always disagree over which supermarket to go to, John likes Waitrose because it is a Terribly Civilised Supermarket, I like Sainsbury’s because it’s cheaper, yesterday John won (this is rare).  We’d been in the fruit and veg section for about three minutes when suddenly I became overwhelmingly dizzy.  I sat down on some overpriced cos lettuce and waited for it to pass, which it did not do.  I decided to persevere with the shopping though, so carried on like a idiotic martyr valiant soldier.  All the while John giving me this look that said both “I am uncomfortable with the fact that you are unwell and we are inexplicably still in Waitrose”, and “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck”.

We walked home,  during which I insisted on carrying some shopping.  I’m not sure why, I do know that while I was pleased to be displaying outward signs capability, I was actually a bit scared, so carrying some of the shopping, in hindsight, was a bit daft.  We’d been back home for about ten minutes and I was still dizzy, nauseous and running hot and cold, so John insisted on calling the midwifery team at the Whittington.  Of course, being Sunday there was no one in the ante-natal clinic, so he was put straight through to the labour ward. 

There’s something about being put through to a labour ward when you’re so pregnant you need help hauling your continent sized arse off the sofa that made me feel a little bit…. unprepared… I started going through a check list in my head, it ran something like this:

Have I washed all the baby clothes, sheets and blankets?  Yes!

Have I got a car seat to bring the baby home in?  Yes!

Did we buy the little toy owl to hang over the car set that was so cute we couldn’t leave it in the shop?  Yes!

Have I packed ANY kind of hospital bag in case of early delivery?  No!

As always, my priorities are BANG ON.

So on the advice of the midwife John spoke to, we went to the hospital to get checked out, without so much as a spare pair of pants or a tracker bar.

As we walked through the doors to labour ward, where neither of us have been, John squeezed my hand and said, “just prepare yourself, there might be some screaming…”.  There actually wasn’t, I think I heard a baby crying but I definitely did not hear any women screaming for mercy from a benevolent God.  Result!

We were sent across to maternal triage, where we saw a lovely midwife straight away.  She was incredibly reassuring, my blood pressure was fine, my pulse was fine, the baby’s heartbeat was galloping exactly as it should and there was a lot of kicking through the entire examination, which pleased everyone.  There was a bit of a wait for a Doctor, so we were provided with entertainment in the form of a fourth year medical student who came to take a history.  He was very… thorough.  I felt bad for him, his hands shook the entire time he was with us, a total of 45 minutes.  If every history takes this long to take it’s no wonder NHS waiting lists are so long.  He asked about any and all past operations, so I told him all about the time I had a toenail removed when I was 14.  He appreciated that, although made an executive decision not to bother telling the doctor, a questionable choice I felt.

Then in he walked, the Whittington McDreamy.  Floppy hair, blue eyes, 700 feet tall, wide shoulders, affable but professional personality, married so clearly devoted, essentially perfection with a stethoscope.  He sat on the bed with me, he held my wrist, he stared deep into my eyes when I talked.   I went bright red, even my chest went red, I’m pretty sure the baby went red, I glanced across at John and luckily he was bright red too.  We exchanged a glance that said “it’s fine, go ahead, I fancy him too, may be best man win”, our child is so lucky to have us as mature, sensible parents.  Dr McDreamy diagnosed a case of slight anaemia and dehydration, exacerbated by walking into hot shops and out into a cold day, repeat until you feel dizzy, terrifying Waitrose staff and your husband.

John and I have learned two things from this:

1.  We need to work on our communication when in stressful situations.  We were very bad yesterday.  John tends to say “how do you feel now?” every three minutes, because what he’s really asking is “how do you feel?  Why do you feel like that?  How long are you going to feel like that for and when will everything be ok again?”.  My response is always either “fine”, or “the same”, which actually means “I don’t know if I’m ok, STOP ASKING”.  We have some work to do in this area, but it’s good to know that now as opposed to when I’m contracting every three minutes, during which we could actually kill each other.

2.  We both fancy a really good looking doctor, and we both simultaneously hope he is both at my delivery, and also nowhere near my delivery.  He’s a very good doctor, but I’m going to have a whole other reason to not want to poop if he’s within two miles of me.

But I can’t have that.  So here are ten things which are great about being pregnant, if it takes me ALL DAY TO THINK OF THEM.

1.  People offer me seats on the tube all the time now.  I’m going to miss that.  All I have to do is stand in the middle and look pregnant, which is remarkably easy when you reach the 8 month mark.  People actually apologise now as they get up, and it’s nice to see that kind of consideration around. 
2. Getting dressed used to involve standing in the mirror, tipping my head to the side and analysing exactly how fat I thought I looked, which, by the way, seems so ridiculous now I want to go back in time and stab myself to death.  And I really agonised over what to wear, because it really bothered me.  Now my wardrobe is about 10% of the size, so selecting clothes is a stunningly efficient affair!  Choose which colour leggings to wear, choose which long top to throw over them, accessorise, walk out the door.  Some people live this dream all the time, It has taken me actually making a new person to do it.
3. (WARNING:  This one is soppy)  I can’t quite believe it’s a baby, I mean if I manage to give birth to an actual baby I’m not going to lie to you, I’ll be quite surprised.  It’s difficult when you’ve never done it before to imagine that your expanding girth houses an actual person, but feeling him or her move (and it’s not gentle anymore, this kid rolls him or herself from one side of my stomach to the other and it HURTS sometimes) is fairly mind blowing thing.  We have little chats and I get quite excited about the thought of finally meeting him or her.
4. I still clean the flat, I still cook the dinner, but there’s no pressure to DO anything.  Being pregnant is the most amazing ‘get out of jail free’ card you can have.  Just say you’re tired as you heave yourself off the sofa and BAM, whatever it was, you don’t have to do it anymore.
5. Food.  Do I have to continue?  I am eating very healthily, because that’s very important to me, but you know, if there’s a chocolate muffin on offer, I’m going to say yes please, and I do not feel guilty.  Can you imagine what it’s like not to feel guilty about eating, after almost 30 years of worrying every single time you eat?  And I know it’s not going to last, but it’s LIBERATING.  Last year I was on a pre-wedding nazi diet, and now I can cook again!  And  I cook a lot, blueberry muffins, chicken and cashew nut stirfry with lime, gammon and sweet potatoes, sausages with puy lentils, lamb ragu, roast chicken, spaghetti bolognaise, baked thai chicken rice, God what else am I cooking?  I don’t care, but you get the point, it’s AMAZING.  FOOD IS BRILLIANT.  And I am enjoying it while it lasts, because in May, the nazi diet rides again!  This time, with free sleep deprivation!  I bet you can’t WAIT for those posts!
6. I quit the gym.  And you know, they made it really easy!  I called and said “I would like to quit the gym”, they said why?  I said “I’m pregnant and I can’t spin”, they said ok, and the deed was done.  Now I get to stick to gentle exercise like walking, and yoga.  AND I DO NOT FEEL GUILTY.  I’m sensing a pattern of much less guilt here, I’m about to become a mum, shouldn’t there be MORE guilt in my life now?  No!  What the hell? I haven’t had a drink since last August, I refuse to feel guilty about anything. So yeah, THREE CHEERS FOR NO CARDIO!  WOOOO!
7. No Hangovers! I get legendarily bad hangovers, I puke and I turn grey, I can’t stand up, I lose whole days to lying on my bed feeling like death.  Once I stayed in bed all day, eating old onion bhajis, that’s right, OLD onion bhajis, but it worked, so I couldn’t argue.  Anyway, since the baby, NO HANGOVERS!  It’s like magic, I mean yes, I now know what my flat smells like when people get drunk and crash on the sofa, because I  no longer have immunity through smelling worse myself.  But that’s ok!  Because the people on the sofa want to die, and I do not.
8. I finish work soon, three weeks today in fact.  When I found out I was pregnant I couldn’t continue with the re-training I was doing in order to follow what I really want to do with my life.  I went full time at work because I wasn’t studying anymore so that we can save money for when I’m not working and that meant I had to give up the voluntary work I was doing with Cruse.  I can’t tell you how sad this has made me.  I find my job incredibly frustrating, it was only meant to be something that paid the bills in order for me to study, so to be doing it five days a week has been really difficult.  I can’t wait to not have to do it anymore.  Who knows what the future holds, but at this point just three more weeks of this particular job feels very nice indeed.
9. (WARNING:  Another soppy one)  It’s amazing how expecting a baby changes your relationship.  Mine didn’t really need changing, we were newly married and very happy indeed when this happened.  But I don’t think I’m being unfair to say that John found this pregnancy quite difficult to get his head around in the beginning.  He had a new job to deal with at the same time, I was pretty miserable and it didn’t feel like a happy thing had happened.  To watch him go from that to where he is with it now, how excited he is, the look on his face when the baby moves, the way he talks to him or her, the way he interacts with other people’s children and babies now, the enthusiasm with which he embraced the ante-natal classes, has been a revelation.  I always knew he would be an amazing dad, but to actually witness it happening has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.  We, the baby and I, are incredibly lucky to have this man in our lives.
10. Ok, I’m struggling now, I just need one more thing and then I have ten whole things to go over and over, so I can convince myself that it’s all true, and I’m really enjoying this.  Oh!  My hair!  My hair is really nice at the moment, and my nails, they’re pretty nice too.

So there you have it!  Pregnancy:  It does not suck completely.  Just a lot of the time, but there are TEN WHOLE REASONS to be cheerful about it.  And I have almost convinced myself they’re all true.

I go to bed, all propped up with pillows, having been to a very relaxing yoga class.  I don’t watch TV for an hour before I try and sleep, you know, in case an old episode of ‘Six Feet Under’ is just so exciting it revs up my brain for no less than eight hours.  But nothing works, I just lie there, and roll over, and roll over again, and all the time I am painfully aware that I am not asleep.  John is asleep, and I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  I am not asleep.  And so it continues, until the alarm goes off while I am staring at the ceiling, blood shot eyes resolutely open, exhausted by the sheer stress of Still. Not. Being. Asleep.  This morning John went into the kitchen to make the lunches, when he came back I was sat on the end of the bed, holding a hairbrush, sobbing, I had no idea what I was meant to be doing with the hairbrush.

And I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking ‘you just wait until you have that baby, you know NOTHING about sleep deprivation yet’.  I know you’re thinking this because two people felt it was necessary to say this to me this morning, and right now those people are on the mental bonfire I am building, along with the three people who thought it would be helpful to tell me I look tired.  I’m planning on setting fire to them all later.

I have passed the point of gentle hysteria, and am in full blown “I hate you” mode.  I don’t care who you are, I still hate you.  Why?  Because I should be in bed.  I should be sleeping.  The other week I had to visit a centre for mentally disturbed ex-offenders.  I don’t think they are mentally disturbed, I think they probably just hadn’t slept in a really long time. 

Take The Cadbury Lady.  I ‘liked’ Cadbury’s on facebook while John was building a giant chocolate thumb, with people dressed as purple, regular sized Oompa Loompa’s (that is his actual job).  But I think I may have to unlike them, because she’s clearly insane.

Today she wrote ‘We are super especially excited about it being Tuesday today because it’s pancake day!  Have a splendiddlyumptious day!’.

Now.

Seriously.

Let’s talk Cadbury lady, sit down with me, put the syringe full of e numbers down.

HOW CAN YOU BE ‘SUPER ESPECIALLY EXCITED’ THAT IT’S TUESDAY?!  First of all, that implies you are ordinarily merely excited that it’s Tuesday.  We all know that Tuesday is a shit day.  It’s not even half way through the week.  You have no reason to be excited that it’s Tuesday unless it is your birthday, AND you have the day off, AND you just won euro millions.  Anything less than that and Tuesday is just the day of the week that comes after Monday.  Chill out about Tuesday.

Also, ‘splendiddlyumptious’?  NO.  I will not be having a splendiddlyumptious day, do you know why?  Because that is not a thing you can have.  It’s a made up word, YOU MADE UP A WORD.

I would also like to string up a certain person in my office who uses at least 50 words, where 5 will do.  Take a question he posed this morning:

“Have you looked at, considered, and replied to that email from X about Y, or do I have to sit down, consider, pay attention to and sensibly formulate a reply to it?”

By the time he got to the second use of the word ‘consider’, I had started screaming inside my head.  When he finally reached the end of the sentence I couldn’t have given a stuff what on earth he was talking about, so I just said yes.  Still not sure if I have done it, but then, there’s a very good chance he might not actually exist.

Would you put photographs of your baby on the internet?

I LOVE looking at other people’s babies, on facebook, on instagram, on their blogs.  It’s a wonderful way of keeping up to date with all the changes they go through, especially when you live a distance away and can’t see them as often as you would like. 

There are five people in my team at work, four of us are having or have recently had babies.  (We suspect a chair in the building has voodoo powers, the head of our department would like to find it and set fire to it.  He’s not bitter.)  One of the four sent us a link, after his baby son was born, to his website, where he posts photos and videos, and we watched and marvelled at this tiny person blinking into the light.  But this started a conversation about privacy.  How secure was this website?  Who could see these videos?  And one person made the point that it doesn’t matter how secure it is, once it’s out there, it’s there forever, and your child, a person in their own right, has no say in the images that have been projected of them across the internet.

Also, weirdos live in the internet.  Weirdos who do not care for your baby’s funny faces.  Weirdos who would wish to exploit your child’s image for reasons I do not care to think about.

What is my responsibility as my child’s mother?  Is it to share his or her beautiful face with my family and friends through incredibly useful and powerful social networking?  Is it to respect the fact that my child may one day look through the images I have used without his or her permission, and decide that actually, it is not ok that their privacy (an implicit human right) was violated, no matter how popular facebook was in oh so long ago 2012?  Do I just use my blog as a way to share my baby with people?  Open a facebook album?  Ignore all of that and just limit it to the odd instagram.

Is it all actually harmless?  Am I thinking about this too much?  If facebook had been around in the 80’s and we could all look through the photographs our parents might have posted of us, would we be delighted or horrified? 

A girl I went to school with recently posted a photograph of her half naked toddler on the potty, it was part of a triumphant status update about her daughter’s potty training.  Personally, I found it far too much of an intrusion into the very private world of a two year old girl.  I don’t know where that image is going to go in the next 20 years, but a part of me couldn’t help but think about a 22 year old girl walking into a job interview where her prospective employer, googling her name for information, has discovered her sitting naked on a potty as a small child.  What other images she may have posted of herself in later years is her own business, she can make her own mistakes, but should her mother be making those mistakes on her behalf?  Already?  When this girl has no control over it?

I’m not judging anyone else’s decision; it’s an incredibly personal thing.  We have to have these conversations as parents and decide what we want to do.  But I don’t think it’s something that we should just accept as part of life now.  There may be implications we don’t know about yet and there’s only so much of this that you can take back.

I can’t decide how much is harmless and how much is potentially damaging.  One thing I know is that it definitely is not  necessary.  My loved ones will see my baby if they care enough, I will email photo after photo if you would like me too, I will send so many to your phone that it will splutter and die, but do I need to put them on a website?

I do however completely understand how much easier it makes life.  Why send an email to 30 people when you can post one photo on facebook and show pretty much everyone you’ve ever met?  There’s the added gratification of all the comments you get, and you can’t tell me that a list of people telling you how beautiful that photograph/baby is isn’t one of the biggest reasons people post such pictures.  We all get off on compliments and of course we’re looking for them when we plaster the internet with images of ourselves and our children.  To make a stand and say my kid will not appear on the internet because of me is an enormously difficult thing to stick to.  I must admit that even while writing this there is a voice in my head saying ‘but you have to announce the birth… and that surely requires a photo… and why not put it on facebook if you’re going to put it here…’ and there you have my confliction.  Of course I want my child to be celebrated, but where is the line between celebrated and exposed?  If I write ‘there will NEVER be a photo of my child on a website’, and then of course, I see my child and I cannot resist showing off to the world, then I’ve set myself up to be a hypocrite before I have even given birth.

Then there are the friends and family who I have no control over, and who may wish to post many photos of my child on their social networking accounts.  Who am I to stop them?  They are my child’s aunts/uncles/grandparents/godparents/cousins, don’t they have the right to show off the newest member of the family?

I may bow out of this debate altogether.  If my child asks me one day why their baby pictures are not on the internet I will explain that while I believed them to be the most beautiful baby that ever breathed, I just didn’t believe it was my god given right to expose them to scrutiny.  My job as a mother will be to protect my child, from hunger, from cold, and just maybe, from the internet.

I can’t see you being happy to be totally naked, but it’s fine if you are so it’s your choice

That’s what I was thinking, just letting it all hang out, boobs akimbo, it’s really not me… But then for skin to skin contact afterwards I’ll probably just whip it off so what’s the point?

It’s up to you though, whatever you’re comfortable with

Yeah… maybe I’ll take one so I have the option… Oh god, the thing is I just have this scene in my head; I’m in the pool, you’re outside it, I’m leaning on you and you can see straight down my back… and then suddenly… without any warning… there’s a poo

A poo?

Yes!  That’s why we have to pack a sieve!  The hospital says we have to take our own sieve!  In case there’s a poo!

Oh right

And I CANNOT BEAR the thought of pooing in front of people, I just CAN’T DO IT

Ok… How about, and this is just an idea, how about I run you a warm bath, and you get into it, then I sit with you in the bathroom while you have a poo

What?

I can do it after you if you’d like, and then we’re even, then we’ve both poo’d in front of each other, so by the time it happens during the birth, IF it happens, it’s no big deal, you’ll be over it.

I can’t… Are you… Is this… Are you suggesting I have a rehearsal poo?  You are in fact actually thinking that me pooing, in the bath, in our bathroom, in front of you, might make me feel better?

But I said I would do it too!  And then we’re even!

I can’t speak to you anymore

So that’s a no then?

That’s a no.

I frequently wake up on my back, numb hands up around my head and two pillows on my face.  My first instinct is to lie on my right hand side, having gone to sleep like this for years, so I do, only to have something wrench me from sleep moments later like a bad one night stand;  ’you’re sleeping the wrong way!  You’re doing it WRONG!  You’re a terrible mother!’.  So I flip over, holding my tummy as I go because if I just flip over and pretend like my stomach is not an entirely separate being then the muscles down my sides join in with the screaming of my hands.  I re-arrange the pillows, I place my hands by my sides flexing as much as possible to try and regain feeling. 

Meanwhile the baby thinks there’s a party going on, it’s all amped up from all the sleeping.  If you watch my stomach at night now it ripples and stretches, there is quite literally a little person in there who thinks it seems like SO MUCH FUN on The Outside!  MAMA’S AWAKE?!  SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK! 

But eventually it’s quiet again, and I have ticked off all the sleeping rules in my head.

That’s when I realise I need a wee.

In other news, we bought the changing bag.  I bought it from oioi, an Australian brand that sells itself on the promise of being sophisticated (military bags aside).  We ordered the Grey Dot Hobo. 

No, amnesiac spies won’t use it, neither will cowboys, it is in fact named after a homeless person!  And that sound you can hear is John weeping over the body of his dead storksak dreams, but it’s simple and does the job without being overly feminised or crazy expensive.  The hobo wins.

One of the loveliest gifts was a weekend away, generously given by our best man and his gorgeous wife and daughter, at their favourite B&B.   For the forseeable future, our weekends are all booked up with baby related things, which is what happens when you sign up for an INSANE amount of ante-natal classes.  I did not realise just how much talk of mucus plugs went on in these classes, otherwise believe me, I’d have stayed at home watching the Kardashians for a lot of them.  We also really want to see as many friends and family as possible before we have a baby who rules our lives like a minature Stalin and removes all ability to leave the house.  So we decided to take the weekend away in January, because otherwise it would have become one of those things that we can never do.  Like climbing Everest, backpacking around India, having sex, or being nice to each other.

We went to The Pear Tree Inn in Melksham, and ever so nice it was too.  We arrived at about 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, checked in to our beautiful, cosy room, and did what all childless couples on a weekend away in blissful seclusion usually do; we watched Jurassic Park and took a lovely nap.  I don’t think there’s much going on in Melksham, I’m not being negative, I was just there on a Saturday night and not once did I feel that me and my basketball belly should check out the local action, what with no one’s lights being on. 

Nearby though is the village of Lacock, which is attacked to Lacock Abbey.  I cannot tell you how excited John was when he  realised we were close to somewhere where Harry Potter was filmed.  It’s about how excited I would be if I could go to Isla Nublar (which someone suggested I name my child, and I have not discounted yet).  We went and walked around, and got really cold, and walked around a bit more, and I needed a wee, but there were no toilets, so we walked around a bit more, and I needed a wee a bit more, and there were photos of Harry Potter, and John liked it, and then we left.

But the nap in the cosy room, that was really lovely.