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.

Just in case your first reaction to this was, ‘While I think this design is entirely sensible, and not at all stupid/mildly offensive, I have a question!  What if the war isn’t in a jungle?  What if it’s in a desert?”  Don’t panic weirdo!  They’ve thought of that too:

These are the Military Satchel with Camouflage Lining from OiOi. 

All I can say is thank you.  I had NO IDEA that I was supposed to be considering how I would disguise my changing bag in a warzone, no idea, they just don’t teach you these things in NCT!  Well that is something that is going on the feedback form at the end of the course.

Now I’m not an idiot, I know that nothing can actually ward off stretchmarks, that it’s all in the genes.  If your mum had or didn’t have them, then chances are you’ll be the same.  I know that many a cosmetic and drug company make literally billions of pounds every year selling the dream of a stretch mark and wrinkle free body.  I also know that I already have stretchmarks, I have a few faint ones on my boobs from puberty, and a few on my thighs from too fast weight loss.  You can’t really see any of these unless I grab your face, push it up against my body and say “HERE! HERE THEY ARE!”, so by and large they don’t bother me.

Last night John was putting on the oil and I noticed him just pour a little extra onto his fingers and pay one section at the side a little extra attention.  I looked at him, he said “well, maybe…”, I removed his hand and there it was, an ugly red welt about three inches long next to a smaller one.  I lost it, a reaction which was totally unexpected, I had been quite stoic when considering stretch marks, if it happens it happens, what are you going to do?!  They’re battle scars, war wounds, life etched onto your skin, be proud of them, they’re physical proof that you have lived.  But in that moment, looking at what felt like an acre of skin, scarred by an angry red line, and knowing that I still have 12 weeks to go, I was devastated.  I felt for a second, after a day of constant weeing, aching and heartburn, like I was never going to make it out of this alive.

So I cried, and John listened, as my tears fell and mingled with almond and lemon oil, and every tiny fear that I have held down came pouring out.  Fears that I never even knew I had because everytime they threaten to come to the surface I push them back down.  They are apparently as follows:

• Ending up with a stomach like a road map, you’ve seen them, they’re not pleasant.
• Never losing the weight, ever, ending up in elasticated jogging bottoms, XXL t.shirts and ugly shoes, FOREVER.
• That there is something wrong with the baby, something they can’t see on a scan.

I berated myself for the first two, it is after all a most superficial and ridiculous thing to be that upset about stretchmarks when you have hit the fertility jackpot the way we have, and if I’m honest, I think the stretchmark was just a catalyst for me to have a big cry after a crappy day.  I also think that the second fear is crazy because why would I let that happen to me?  Jogging bottoms?  XXL t.shirts?  Why would I allow myself to become that person?  I have essentially painted my future as greasy haired trailer trash, discounting the very important facts that 1.  I wash my hair, always have, 2)  I don’t even wear jogging bottoms to do exercise, and 3)  our NCT classes are in MUSWELL HILL, that alone removes all chance of me living in a trailer, they just don’t do trailers in Muswell Hill, they do Jude Law.

The third one though, that’s the fear, that’s the one that keeps me awake and stops me allowing myself to dream of a rose tinted future.  What if this baby isn’t the giggling, dribbling delight we dream he or she will be? What if, for reasons far beyond my control, there is something wrong? 

And that’s when I stopped, that’s when I shut it all down, because what can we do except hope for the best?  I take the supplements, I eat the fuit and vegetables, I don’t drink or smoke, I do yoga, I get plenty of rest, we talk to the baby and plan for ways he or she might be soothed, I listen to the hypnobirthing CD and take the NCT classes, there is nothing else to be done.  Problems that we cannot foresee are not in our hands. 

Of course, the next thing I did was pull myself together and have a closer look at the offending stretchmark, the nasty little that had started all this off, only to find it had BLOODY VANISHED.  I must have scratched myself somehow and I hadn’t noticed, but here I sit 12 hours later and it still hasn’t come back.  So all that drama and all those tears, and it wasn’t even real!  I feel cheated, I almost want it to come back to justify the mess it had made of my brain.  Still, it turns out stretchmarks have a positive side – free therapy.

There were a lot of young single folks out to celebrate, there were also two families, each with a two year old and a ten month old, and somewhere in the middle sat John and I, literally between our old life and our new life, feeling pulled by both, not a little confused.  The families were in chaos, two year olds climbing on and off seats, needing to be stimulated, challenging and questioning their parents.  The ten month olds clinging and reaching, just old enough to know that there was something beyond their parent’s arms.  Conversation was almost impossible, and I really felt for the mums and dads as they tried to join in with everyone else, just a couple of drinks and a bite to eat seemed a logistical disaster.  Not that these children and babies weren’t a joy in their own way, they brought a lot of life and laughter to the afternoon. 

When the families had left, someone across the table looked at us and said ‘does it make you excited?!’.  I thought for a second, the evening was just getting started for those around me, wine bottles and other afternoon detritus was scattered along the table, more people were turning up to change the night from a quiet afternoon in the pub to a full on party.  I was confused, it felt like my connection to these people was fading away, I was headed full steam ahead to destination ‘we’ve got to be home for bathtime’ and all I wanted was to be the girl with the streaked mascara nipping out the back for a marlboro light.  I tried to glance at John, but neither of us could look at each other, the answer to the question evaded us, we simply couldn’t say what we were thinking, that no, it doesn’t make us excited, it makes us terrified that this grand experiment is doomed to fail.

We left the pub feeling overwhelmed, and then we realised, we were looking at this all the wrong way!  We were two first time parents with no idea what we were doing, watching established families with toddlers and ten month olds trying to wrangle a day out, we had gone from zero to terrible twos in a couple of hours!  This was no way to look at it, we needed to remember that parenthood may be the biggest change in your life, but you don’t give birth one day and have to choose primary schools the next, we needed to remember to take it one step at a time. 

John looked at me, ‘we need to see a baby’, he said, ‘we need to see happy, new parents, with a small happy baby, we need to call Jules and Martin’.  We quickly picked up the phone and called them, we tried to dial down the tremors in our voices as we asked, super casual like, if they were about and fancied a little visit, as we were in the area…  We were in luck, they had just got home and if we got there quickly we would be in time for bathtime.  WE DROVE LIKE THE WIND.  If anything was going to calm us down, bath time with new baby Matthew would sort us out.  

This is usually the bit where I tell you about how we got there and Matthew had gone rogue, that Jules and Martin were screaming and throwing things at each other, that within minutes of our arrival I threw myself out of the window while John put his head in the oven. 

Well not this time my friends, this time we got lucky.

When we got there the flat was warm and calm, the baby was being fed and cuddled near the christmas tree.  Jules and Martin welcomed us  in and we happily sat and chatted about all things baby until it was bathtime for Matthew.  Bathtime was a dream, he gurgled and giggled, he splashed and played, Jules and Martin were, basically, the happiest people in the whole world, and John and I let out huge, sighs of relief.  Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be ok.  Matthew’s chubby cheeks and gummy smiles were exactly what we needed.

Which is a very long way of saying we ordered the travel system.  Because Jules and Martin are The Happiest People In All The Land, we copied them, and bought the 2012 uppababy VISTA travel system, in black naturally. Stockists for Uppababy are actually quite thin on the ground but we bought it from Groovystyle, which I think we can all agree, is the world’s worst name for a baby equipment website.  Babies are many things, they are not groovy. 

The VISTA system won Which? Best Buy of 2011, which means not only are we buying a slice of someone else’s happiness, but we’re being very sensible, everyone’s a winner.

While having a look around Groovystyle (groovy is one of those words which makes me want to pronounce it with too many ooo’s, which in turn makes me feel like Phil Collins, which in turn makes me want to self harm) I found a moses basket I like, FINALLY!  And because I was on an ordering roll, I went for it.  I ordered the Izziwotnot Moses Basket in dark whicker.  A random choice perhaps, but the description claims it is ‘reminiscent of fresh snow, or fluffy clouds’, which is adorable.

Most importantly, no where, NO WHERE, does it say ‘Winnie the Pooh’, and that, hands down, won me over.

Just for future reference, just in case you felt like those sentences were somewhere near your mouth and you are somewhere near me, I feel I should make you aware that THIS IS UNHELPFUL. It’s like you’ve come across a car accident, and there’s someone hanging out of an upside down vehicle, their right leg is missing and they’re weak with blood loss. You could be supportive and assist them, but instead, you choose to tut and mutter ‘just you wait until you try to use the underground with one leg, then you’ll be in trouble”.

If you have asked me how I am, and I have chosen to give you a truthful response, EVEN IF YOU THINK I AM BEING DRAMATIC, it is not appropriate to essentially tell me that I know nothing, and I have worse ahead, even if that is in fact the truth, which I have no doubt that it is. Is it your place to point that out to me? Is it your place to visibly judge me? To decide that you know better about how I am dealing with this? Or should you just keep that to yourself and tell me that you’re sorry I feel this way?

Clue: That’s what you should do, that right there, the shutting up and the keeping of your opinion to yourself, if I have told you I am miserable, you just tell me to hang in there and if you MUST say anything else, you say that it will get BETTER, NOT WORSE.

Pregnancy update: Woo hoo! My back is officially rubbish. I have never had a bad back, I have had pain in my back for different reasons, but not actual back pain. In the last week it has become apparent that I cannot walk for longer than five minutes without excruciating back pain, like someone has tied an elastic band around my spine and is pulling it tighter and tighter. I have only worn sensible, ugly shoes for a week and apparently that makes zero difference. I am hoping that yoga and aqua-natal help, but at this point, it might be easier to cut out my spine, if this continues for the next 14 weeks, I might have to.

Heart palpitations, what the effing ef are they about? Having never heard more than the soft thud of my expertly working heart for the last 30 years, suddenly it will start beating up against my chest like a whiny child, “pay me more ATTENTION, why aren’t you LISTENING to me? I will THUD and BEAT and make you feel SHOCKING until you realise just how important I am, HEAR ME”.

But I mean who am I to say that I feel terrible and I can’t wait for my body behave normally again? Who am I to tell you that this is pretty miserable, when you know that I have SO MUCH WORSE TO COME.

In other news, my absolute favourite thing that anyone said to me this weekend was John, on Sunday morning, when he leaned over and said softly in my ear, “it’s ok baby, if there were a person in my penis I probably wouldn’t want to have sex”.

I hadn’t ever thought of it like that before.

On Saturday the ladies at Birthing Matters ran a baby first aid course, two and a half hours of people racing through their normal 12 hour first aid course so that we expectant and new parents would know what to do if our childen swallowed something they shouldn’t.  Like Lego.  You see, that’s not funny, because kids DO swallow lego, one new mum however simply couldn’t understand how this might be possible, why would her child choke on lego?  What possible explanation could there be for lego being dangerous.  Which meant the rest of us had to sit through a ten minute explanation of how lego is solid.  And quite small.  And has no holes in it.  So when swallowed by a tiny person it gets stuck in a tiny windpipe.  And cuts off the air supply.  And that means the tiny body doesn’t get any oxygen.  And tiny vital organs fail.  And then the kid dies.

Seriously.

The same woman asked what type of water to put on a burn, hot or cold.  Because in her head, when her kid burns himself on something, she’s a bit worried that a cold tap won’t suffice and she should leave her child screaming while she waits for the kettle to boil, you know, so she can chuck the water over him.

But the best was yet to come, while covering allergic reactions, she asked if we were going to be shown how to perform a tracheotomy.  The procedure you’ve seen on ER, during which the SURGEON opens a patients throat in order to provide an airway when all attempts to intubate them through the mouth have failed.  There was a collective gasp in the room when she asked this, which only surprised me because we’d all been so good at holding back our gasps during her other INSANE questions.  The woman next to her leaned over and told her she was not allowed to babysit her son anymore, and then the man next to me remarked that there was clearly no need for him to be carrying around this hollowed out ballpoint pen anymore.

So yeah, I’m still worried that I’m not going to be the world’s greatest mother, but you bet your arse I am reassured that I’m not going to be the world’s worst one either.  Now if you’ll excuse this post being brief, there’s a kidnapped child in my spare room that needs water.