I wish these things could name themselves

Heaven knows he's miserable now

For the time being I have a snoring baby in a front-facing carrier, and although we’re indoors and still in our outdoors clothes, I thought I’d let him wake up on his own while I pottered about online.

This morning I fed him and changed him and got him ready for our very first postnatal class, which took place in a massive house about twenty minutes on foot from where we live. I thought I’d be freaked out at having to spend time at a posh woman’s house with posh mums, but it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone was very friendly and we all had so much to say that the class ran over by about a half hour.

I decided right away that even though she seemed a bit shy, I wanted to make friends with Morag because who wouldn’t want a friend named Morag? But after my positive first group experience, and topping this with an impromptu lunch with one of the other mums at a local cafe, I got to thinking: why stop there? I think I could probably befriend everyone in the class, so long as they had an hour to spare and a bus pass.

Gosh, when did I get so brave? It’s really out of necessity though. My new friend Effy said that by three months there’s no question about whether or not you should leave the house, as by then your baby needs so much stimulation and so little sleep that it will be impossible to entertain him at home all day on your own. So I guess it’s a good thing I’m finally starting to join in with this little community of first-time mothers.

All the things I used to be judge-y about and think were really lame are actually . . . well, probably really lame. But this is the world I belong to now, and if you don’t embrace it and get on with things, then you will have to be that cool, cynical person all by yourself in your lonely little flat with nobody to laugh about it with.

I am becoming very adept at these five minute posts. Sorry, but it’s quantity over quality until someone else is equipped to settle this screaming kid of mine. Bye!

Stealth update

Our boy turned six weeks old on Sunday. Supposedly this is about the time he will start to settle, if not in himself then at least into a routine. We shall see.

This weekend was brilliant, against all odds (I was sick and sleep deprived). We became really brave and took Hartley to an exhibit at the Photographers' Gallery in their new location off Oxford Street, which necessitated a trip on the underground and of course many stops along the way so mummy could buy soap and try on clothes and get caught up in all the fabulously expensive baby gear most stores have on offer (we conceded and bought him a wee American Apparel hoodie in navy, which he’ll be able to fit for the next ten minutes, and a few more sensible items at H&M).

In retrospect, the trip was a bit overly ambitious maybe, and we were like the walking dead by the time we got back to Muswell Hill (Hartley in disarray being carried in Daddy’s arms, scrap the baby carrier and warm layers, let’s just get home already), but at least I finally got to experience the joy of public breastfeeding, which we did over lunch, in a private change room at the department store and on the bus ride home. It wasn’t too mortifying, and the loud sucking noises caused an amusing stir among certain nosy onlookers.

And somehow, after a Sunday diet of pain au chocolat and chocolate and cheese puffs and more chocolate and pasta and chocolate sponge, I managed to drop another .5 lbs. I’m already nearly back to my pre-pregnancy weight with nary a stretch mark to be seen, so in truth, this childbirth experience was not without its mercies. I say this, but I’m still unable to put down my infant for more than ten minutes without paying a terrible price. Hence: hello and goodbye.

A real boy

Bruce is currently out on his first independent excursion with our son, which means that for the first time in six weeks I have the place all to myself. They’re only going down to the comic shop, so in lieu of inviting scads of local teenagers on Facebook to come over and trash the place, I’ve opted for the simpler pleasures of writing and sipping a hot cup of coffee. I’m sure there are other, better activities I could be engaged in that require both hands and the absence of screaming (showering, cleaning, sleeping, eating a messy curry) but I’m a creature of habit, so.

The day before last, Bruce took some banked time off work and we went out to have Hartley’s hearing tested (passed!) and also to register his birth. Lately we’ve been taking him out for entire afternoons, and so long as he is in his front-facing baby carrier, we’re able to board busses, browse the shops along the high streets, sit down to lunch and return home with nary a peep out of him.

He picked the registrar’s office in Islington (the furthest he’s been from home, in other words) to spark a debate about our little agreement, however, and Bruce and I regarded our screaming bundle in mute astonishment as he exercised his little lungs in the chilly air and passersby scanned our faces for telltale signs of a deviant or neglectful parent.

I always imagined that when my kid lost his shit in public, my Super Mummy persona would emerge and I would intuitively jump into action, which I was mostly right about, except the actions mainly involved grinning and shrugging and digging around impotently in the change bag for some magical hush potion, none of which solved the problem. Luckily he managed to calm himself down by the time we reached the bus stop, but it will be a dark day in North London when it’s for real and I am alone with him on some form of packed public transport during rush hour. Because he can really belt it out when he puts his mind to it.

Look at me here, an adult alone and in possession of two or more sex toys, a television and a cupboard full of hot drinks and what am I doing? Writing about the baby. It really is an all-consuming role, though, this parenting thing, and some days I wake up and wonder if I will ever again be able to eat breakfast and take a shower in the same morning, or watch an entire episode of Big Love without turning to Bruce and giving him the Is that the baby? look or, hell, go out for an afternoon or evening on my own.

But by then he’s already squirming and grunting and indicating that I should feed him or pick him up or change him already for heaven’s sake and I don’t have long to ponder these things. Though I finally understand what it was my mother was trying to protect me from all those livelong teenaged years. How on earth do teenage mums and single parents do this? Don’t answer that, I’m just being silly. I’ve come down with the flu again, which will add another challenge to the week ahead, as though I needed one.

Bruce just called to say that he was minutes from home, so I guess that’s time. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to write here again, though I suppose half the fun of having a blog is finding the time to write in it, yes?

Bruce bet me 50 quid this wouldn't work

What shall I spend it on?

Hartley: One Month

I can’t believe that it’s been a whole month since the three of us began this terrifying, wonderful journey.

If you’d told me back in December that, within a few short days of meeting the little human whose gestation caused me months of sickness and pain, I would discover a new and intense kind of love that would have me jump out the emergency exit of a plane at 60,000 feet without a parachute if I thought that it would save him from harm, I might have been a bit dubious.

But here we are, high above the earth without the customary safety features, and I finally understand that nobody is born with a maternal instinct, or perhaps all women are, but it is not something you can teach a person or prepare for yourself because it will not kick in until it has something (someone) to kick in for. And I’m holding on for dear life, except this time it’s not my own – it’s his, and I would fashion him a parachute from my own skin if we suddenly went plummeting towards the earth and there was no other way to save him.

Quite often as he’s falling asleep, he will throw his arms out stiffly and bring them trembling back to his body with a whimper, as though he is falling from a great height. I try not to visualise a thousand perils, an infinity of ways the earth could take him from us. I try to harden my heart, because it is much too soft now, almost liquid, and while it takes the impression of every hiccup, every sigh, every discontented chuckle and near-smile, it also traps the debris of imagined catastrophe, of extradimensional grief.

Fear and joy are two sides of the same heart, though, and he has brought us so much joy. He is the inventor of ‘rooty tooty’ and the Anaconda song (sung to ‘I Want Candy’); his soiled nappies and pouty-lipped wailing the cause for celebration and laughter; his wonderment fodder for our own renewed perception of the world, which has never seemed so incandescent, so furiously moving, so mutable and transient.

Our arms have found new ways of holding, of handling and doing - our bodies the very means of transport, of shelter and sustenance. From ourselves this incredible thing has emerged, and into him we continue to pour our entire selves, because he is here and we love him and can do nothing else.

Parenthood does not get worse before it gets better – it’s worse the moment you take off, and then over time, somehow, it does, mercifully, get better.

It has been one month since I first held your warm, solid, shivering body against mine and saw your strange, beautiful face through a fog of fear and exhaustion, Hartley (my darling, my insatiable anaconda), and you’ve grown more beautiful each and every day since. I love you very much.

Milestones

Hartley turned 4 weeks old today, and we are so proud of our little mite: for sleeping through a 3-hour-long shopping trip on Saturday - one that included three bus rides (and two quick jogs to catch said buses), a stop for lunch and several stuffy shops, including a spontaneous trek along the Broadway for coffee, jewelry and a much-needed bag of Percy Pigs.

I also managed to take him out for the first time on my own this afternoon, though I had plenty of assistance from Amy, who helped me dress him in his awful new winter clothes that he hates, got him buckled into the baby bjorn, saved me from perilous sidewalk slush and pot-holes, and generally settled us in for a brunch at the noisiest, kid-friendly restaurant this side of North London. Bless him, he didn't make a single peep, even though a much older baby one table over kept shrieking at irregular intervals, and seemingly for his own amusement.

This week, he has learned how to spend periods of time awake and content, and will either focus on elements of his environment, like our faces or his cot mobile, or listen intently to music we play him (Cat Power was an instant favourite). And although it's rare at this age, I swear that sometimes when he meets my gaze, he breaks out into a full-on, non-gas-induced baby smile. He was holding his own head up and sucking his tiny thumb at one week though, so I wouldn't be surprised.

It's a cliche to be sure, though I can't help but think that he is the most beautiful baby I have ever laid eyes on. Thank goodness for that, because he still does his fair share of screaming when he's not building his public reputation as a complete angel.

First in a series of one-finger-typed posts

Taking care of a fussy infant is seriously hard work - taking care of a fussy infant when you have a flu is seriously much harder though.

Some of you from the old journal may recall the harrowing tale of my brief stint as assistant to the tyrannical producer of a Hollywood film. I've been reminded of this undistinguished period the last few days simply because it dawned on me that the needs of my newborn son are only slightly more discernible than those belonging to that Worst Ever Employer, and his mood vastly less predictable. And if you ever find yourself comparing your child to the man who once threw a gold-plated pen at your head suddenly and without warning then you have my sympathies and I won't try and talk you down, as that ledge you're currently teetering on probably feels a lot more secure than the nursery you likely just fled from moments ago.

Yesterday, I finally managed to eat my lunch at four, scarfing it down within the precious few minutes between feeding him and when he noticed my nipple was no longer in his mouth, which, let me tell you, is cause for great hysterics in these parts. Sometimes he will fall asleep mid-feed and come unlatched and I can sneak off to relieve my aching bladder or refill my water bottle. If I take any longer than two minutes though, from the bedroom will emanate the most outraged squawk - one that directly translates as: HEY! YOU WITH THE CRACKED, SHREDDED NIPPLES! GET YOUR ASS BACK IN HERE, I WASN'T FINISHED WITH THOSE!

Because he is only small, he often forgets that actually, yes, he was finished feeding and so I have to latch him back on as you can't really argue with that kind of logic - the kind of logic that shatters glass and wakes the dead and temporarily deafens the neighbourhood dogs if you let it continue building its argument for too long.

As I've explained to people who have never given birth to such an inconsolable creature as Hartley, caring for him is a little like holding your finger on the trigger of a live grenade that you are not allowed to throw (though the council of Haringey might be a bit more lax about these things)- no matter how exhausted you are, no matter how much your arms ache from all the rocking and holding and winding and carrying, you can't for a second let go of that trigger or the consequences will be devastating.

And the only way to diffuse that bomb for a even short while is to plug it with breast tissue until it stops fussing and falls asleep. Even then, you must lie very still and try not to breathe too loudly, like so...

The Kindness of Strangers, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wail

They say that babies don’t come with a manual, but that isn’t entirely accurate. After a few sleepless nights and senseless worrying about completely normal infant behaviour (sleeplessness, crying for seemingly no reason) I begged Bruce to order us What to Expect in the First Year. I suspect it will serve much the same purpose as that initial pregnancy bible, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which I only referenced in times of extreme uncertainty or distress. It didn’t always help, but it does give you a momentary sense of purpose, and the fleeting impression that you’re in control - even mothers need security blankets, see.

My sister-in-law is over and I’m stealing a few moments to check emails, drink a cup of decaf and do a few basic things hands-free before they are once more filled with infant need. Starting Monday, the two of us will be left to our own devices when Bruce goes back to work, and rather than panic about it, I’m just going to go with the flow and do what I’ve been doing all along – feeding, changing, settling and then co-sleeping away those hours of down time when he needs nothing else except rest.

Last night at some ungodly hour, I tore open the poppers on the legs of a new little sleeper our neighbour gave us as a gift recently, and a massive black spider scurried out from inside it and across the covers. Rather than lose my shit as I’m wont to do around spiders, I scooped it up in a soiled baby vest, crushed it and tossed a shirt over the minor massacre, reaching instead for the adorable ducky vest that my excellent internet friend Lass sent through the mail (thanks Lass!) (Well I wasn’t going to put him in the spider sleeper, as it will henceforth be known - at least to me, and until I’ve washed it a few dozen times to be sure there are no remnants of spider or microscopic spider eggs).

*Also in the package from our kind Lass was an incredibly cool little bib that will come in handy when he’s older and onto solids, and some lovely burp cloths for when I’m able to fit back into the tops I actually care about (having breasts isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, especially when they have the potential to win you the wet t-shirt contest you didn’t intend to enter).

I’m still amazed at how something as uncommon as a new baby - especially in the virile, ever-multiplying district of Muswell Hill - can inspire kindness in the most unlikely of people: namely neighbours we’ve never met or ones who’ve expressed no prior interest in knowing us.

But then it’s not until you’ve had one that suddenly, all the things that once pissed you off about crying, weird-looking potato-headed little people start to become the very things you grin your face off about, such as when you’re in a restaurant and someone’s offspring suddenly bursts out into a chorus of Waaaaah, waaaaah, waaaahs. Even in the middle of the night, there’s no denying that this is the happiest, most life-affirming sound you will ever know.

*photos to follow when His Sleeplessness properly wakes from his fitful nap

Getting to grips

You know how sometimes you go to a fair and see a ride and think to yourself, Hey, that doesn’t look so bad – in fact, it looks pretty tame and you get on and the ride starts up and it’s everything you thought it would be; that is until it suddenly shoots about a hundred feet into the air and tilts at a crazy angle that makes you feel as though the worn out old seatbelt could at any moment tear away from your hips and you’ll go spiralling over the heads of those poor sods queuing up for that other ride about twenty kilometers yonder and just then it starts to undulate in such a way that your stomach isn’t sure if it wants to explode or implode or maybe jump ship out your ass and you’re like, Actually, MOTHEROFCHRISTGETMEOFFATHISFUCKINGTHING! except that you should have thought of that earlier, because now it’s much too late and you know you’re going to have to suffer this horror for at least another five minutes?

Except that parenthood lasts a wee bit longer than five minutes, and involves something very small and vulnerable that you can’t help but love with your whole entire being, and he’s on the ride too except fortunately for him he hasn’t the wherewithal to retain bad memories and will root around on your chin, the edge of a cushion, a duvet cover or whatever because he hasn’t figured out yet that only mummies and not faces or inanimate objects have nipples, and for this reason you need to make sure that you stay firmly in the seated position because otherwise neither of you will make it through this thing alive.

Bruce and my dad have nipped out to Mothercare for a few essentials, and both our mothers are out there in the other room with our sleeping infant, who seems to have become more unsettled by this whole Being Alive in the World condition than he was last week. He refuses to nap until you feed him and then joggle him around a bit and then feed him again and then change him and then give him some gripe water and then joggle him around some more and then sacrifice a chicken when the moon is in the seventh house and then feed him – every two to three hours. But then he sleeps like an angel.

This mixture of love and concern, joy and sinking despair can be very overwhelming when you’re onto a third day where none of you have slept and you find yourself sniping at the very people who are there to help take him off your hands and your husband is stumbling around like the living dead and trying to get you to have a nap instead of chewing your fingers into little stubs or possibly saying something that will forever fracture the delicate relationship you’ve managed to foster with your parents who, might you add, have not yet clarified whether they’ll definitely help finance a whole year of maternity leave or whether that was just something they said and maybe even meant but only in the moment. Not quite yet.

Then this tiny mite starts to cry and I feel my stomach sink a little bit but I’m up like a hero and taking him into my arms and he roots around on my cheek and my chin and my nose for a nipple, stabbing his little face at me like a tiny anaconda and going Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah until I have him lying on his side in bed next to me, my boob out and in his face, and he tenses up and makes two fists which he pulls back like an angry little man winding up as if to say Why, I oughta . . . except that instead he stabs around at my breast with his whole face until his mouth finds a good latch and he gives an almighty suck that makes both of us go quiet.

And then there’s no denying that it’s all worth it somehow. I’m not sure why, but that’s the honest truth. Motherhood is so much harder than I thought it would be, and so much better too.

Batteries not excluded

Thanks to all of you who stuck it out for so long when things went silent here. I apologise in advance for the paucity in both words and depiction, as the experience of labour and ensuing baby-ness is more than I can adequately describe.

I had my first contraction at 8 p.m. on Friday 9th January (my due date!) and finally delivered our son on the 11th of January at 11:46 a.m.

My ‘natural childbirth’ scenario was deftly revised after 19 hours of difficult contractions, when my extensive list of birth plan thou shalt nots went swiftly out the window and I heard myself whining pitifully at the new midwife on staff, But Comfort said I could have both the Pethidine and the epidural! Thereafter I was sucking back as many different kinds of pills, gas, air and injections as the antenatal and labour wards had on offer.

Towards the end, it came down to whether or not my labour was progressing quickly enough for a truly natural childbirth, and even though staff and family maintained an optimistic outlook, doctors and midwives were meanwhile confabbing about the possibility of having to conduct the dreaded ‘c’ word, which is something no first-time mother should ever have to consider.

But my next internal determined that baby seemed to be quite happy where he was for the time being; meanwhile I was 9 cm along and so was instructed to push. It took only seven minutes of pushing before the doctor finally lifted a real, warm baby onto my chest and the room broke out into ecstatic mayhem, though the exhaustion and shock of what had just happened rendered me fairly numb.

We were in hospital for far too long recovering from our respective minor ailments, and during this time I struggled to fill the enormous shoes of motherhood, which require you to not only be there in body but in soul as well. It wasn’t until we escaped that chaotic environment for home, however, that the bonding process truly began to take place. Since then I have been perpetually buffeted by a feeling that I can only describe as love, though it’s much different from any kind of love I’ve ever felt before.



Bruce thought I’d be able to aptly describe the process of labour, and until last week, I was pretty sure that I could. But just as ‘period pains times a million’ barely touches upon the real experience of labour, so does ‘love for your favourite cat times a million’ poorly illustrate the overwhelming mixture of sadness and joy I experience every time I look down at his sweet little face and wonder how something so beautiful could possibly have anything at all to do with me.



I envision so many different scenarios wherein I fail him completely as a mother that paranoia infiltrates my dreams and turns me into a nervous wreck when he’s not completely at ease, asleep. Bruce has taken to fatherhood quite naturally and is very good at settling him when he cries at night and also at reassuring me that I’m doing a good job (though my only weapon against distress seems to be the boob).

He’s been in our lives for just over a week, which isn’t very long at all, though already he’s changed us profoundly - as a couple and as individuals. Things won’t ever be the same again, but I’m not sure that such comparisons hold any meaning for me anymore.



I will try to write here as often as I can, though babies really do take up as much of your time as everyone says they do. As scary and consuming as it is, though, I truly love this new role and can’t imagine wanting or needing to do anything else right now.

An event

This morning I woke at an ungodly hour to stumble to the toilet for something like the fifth time, when all of a sudden . . . POP.

A snap came off the maternity jumper I was trying to dislodge myself from.

And that is truly the only thing of note to have happened in this pregnancy since I last wrote here. Yes, well I’ll see your disappointment and raise you an agonising bout of acid indigestion.

When you take everything else into consideration (heartburn, pelvic dysfunction, carpel tunnel, insomnia), traumatising my reproductive organs by passing a live human being through them starts to feel like the lesser of many, many evils. Why it took me so long to recognise just how evil this particular proposition is likely to be, I can only guess (denial?).

I decided that in preparation for the big day, I would read birth stories to familiarise myself with the general way in which labour progresses. What I discovered is that these generalities don’t exist and that, actually, there are many, many different potential worlds of fear and pain to experience in the labour room, and even within the hours leading up to hospitalisation.

Bar none (okay, bar one), the consensus seemed to be that this horrific ordeal was really nothing compared to the joy of seeing that smushed up little face for the first time, and that Project Reproduction would be going ahead for a second and possibly even third trial just as soon as their mangled lady parts were up to the task.

Though to be honest, it’s a bit difficult to take heart when most of what you’re reading is along the lines of:

I begged my husband to claw out my eyes so that I’d have something else to focus on. In retrospect, I now wish that I’d asked for the epidural much sooner, and that I’d asked them to put it IN MY BRAIN. Like, THE WEEK BEFORE.

It was the happiest day of my life.

So a slight sense of panic now accompanies each new twinge or movement in yonder netherparts, and I’m trying my darnedest to tame this wild stallion of terror before I too find myself having to climb up the walls of an unfamiliar room wearing nothing but a backless gown and a grimace.

Last night, as I was falling asleep to the dulcet tones of a tech-head from Holland who was giving Bruce a video tutorial on how to turn our EEE PC into a touch-screen, radioactive, six-piece dinette set that can save lives and makes toast, I started to feel these wild undulations from the tip of my womb to the base of my pelvic bone and vaguely thought, I think it might be happening.

But it hasn’t, and now I’ve nearly eaten all the snacks out of my labour bag, which has been packed and ready by the front door for the last few weeks, though I'm starting to doubt its relevance. Tick tock, little one.

Not nesting, but baking

Nesting is a phenomenon common to pregnancy, though it’s one I’ve yet to experience. Bruce and I were watching an episode of Gilmour Girls (restraints and the promise of fried egg sandwiches can accomplish just about anything) wherein the character Lane alludes to a ninth-month cleaning frenzy. Bruce turned to me and said YOU! GET NESTING ALREADY! Because oddly enough, I feel not even the slightest urge to pull out all our dishes and wipe down the insides of cupboards, or attack our baseboards with a toothbrush. I know, right?

I am, however, becoming more prolific in the kitchen, and find that meticulously following a recipe from beginning to end accomplishes a feeling similar to what I imagine nesting might engender. I know it’s not exactly the perk he envisioned, but given that I somehow managed to skip the honeymoon period, cravings and happy hormones altogether, I think this is probably a good (and tasty) compromise.



We’ve got a lovely New Years Eve lined up, with sparkling juice and cheese roulade and gourmet jelly beans and DVD thrillers – a veritable smorgasbord of non-alcoholic activity, which I think I’d prefer to the champagne nightmare of sub-zero London even if the pregnancy wasn’t an issue. For years I’d been unsuccessfully trying to fool myself into believing that putting on a nicer outfit and paying more money to spend the night in a bar you frequent anyway somehow constitutes an event.

Speaking of events – last night we were in bed, deciphering the erratic Braille of my belly with a note of panic because we were certain that the baby had somehow flipped right around and was now breeched. This is not a good scenario in pregnancy, because although it’s possible to deliver a breeched baby naturally, more often than not they will opt for a c-section, which is somehow safer for mother and baby overall. Luckily we had an appointment with the midwife today and so hadn’t long to wait on that verdict.

She spent a long time feeling the contours of my distended belly, frowning and not saying much, until she pinched my abdominal area, where the head usually sits. “There’s usually a head there,” I said uncertainly, and she said, “Yes, it’s still there, and it looks like . . . it’s fully engaged.” With first pregnancies, the baby will drop into the pelvis and engage within the last few weeks leading up to the birth. Really what it means is that all systems are go, and D-day could come at any time, which we knew already. But at least he’s made a firm decision about which way around he’d like to greet the world.



If I don’t talk to you beforehand, I hope you all enjoy the transition into 2009. Send me a note or an email if you want to be included on the list of people who receive a puffy, red-faced photo of me and the little grub. Otherwise, I’ll report back here once we’ve all recovered and give you the real skinny on labour and motherhood, as I see it anyway.

Love,

Friday Films

Consider me converted

Mrs. Slocombe kindly sent us a baby-sized pair of Aussie essentials – Uggs! I’d been wondering how to get our little bundle of joy home with his extremities unfrozen and intact, and these nought to six month sized booties will work perfectly.

I must admit, I never joined in the Ugg boot craze which ten years ago saw legions of young girls compromising their length by cutting themselves off unflatteringly at mid-calf with what, at first glance, appeared to be misshapen loaves of bread.

But as you can see, the baby versions are far too cute to be believed, and I will be doing my fair share of obsessive feet-checking this winter to make sure he doesn’t kick one off when we’re out and about.

Thanks, Betty!

xx Friday (and Bruce)

On my mind, or thereabouts

I’m nearing my 39th week of pregnancy, which means it won’t be long now. Sometimes I feel utterly heroic and wish that it would just happen already so that I can get this thing done. Others, the idea of leaving the security of my nest to do a 22-hour-long marathon push from an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar room leaves me breathless, and I hope for just one more day of respite.

The last few weeks have been brilliant, with both of us off work and no obligations, and mostly we’ve been enjoying our time together as childless adults, which (provided all goes well in life) is a state we will never again revisit. Everything we do now feels like we’re doing it for the last time in this respect: our last Christmas together alone, our last mornings of sleeping in late, our last spontaneous outings into town, or even to the shops.

It’s a lot to get your head around, so best not to even try, I think. We ordered the cot - that final, essential piece of furniture - and it was delivered on Christmas Eve. I spent the morning cleaning and reorganising the kitchen while Bruce put it together, and then we basked in the strangeness of it all before heading out to our appointment with the midwife.

The head midwife of our team takes her cues from me, we now realise, and will go to great lengths to locate them if these aren't on offer, I guess because she feels she’s not doing her job if she can’t give reassurance or a scolding or uncomfortably long hugs, or mixed nuts (she gave me half a banana once, too, after she unsuccessfully stabbed me twice with a needle, missing the vein and causing vertigo).

This time we went in with the confidence of a storm, and still she eyed me critically, as though a single tear would at any moment dissolve the shoddy mask of my inimitable okay-ness. Finally, she conceded that I was looking better than she’s ever seen me and then dug around in her handbag for some miracle Australian lip balm which she then put in a specimen jar and ordered me to take home and use. Because by God, if she can’t accurately predict and stave off impending postpartum depression, she will at least cure me of chapped lips.

That’s something I’ve been trying not to think about too much, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my long ago stint with poor mental health, it’s that you can indeed break your mind if you’re determined enough. It would be churlish of me to imply that anyone who ends up on a psych ward could have done something to prevent it. But all the same, I can still recall how I stood by and watched the last vestiges of perspective ebb away with a kind of morbid fascination, still not really believing that it could get any worse. Though it did, it got much worse.

For all her melodramatic fussing, the midwife is spot on about something: hormones tend to upset the delicate balance of good mental health, and if you’ve ever blundered into a psychotic or depressive episode, it can take even less to send you spiralling into another one day. I know this from the many conversations I had around my release date with nurses, psychiatrists and other patients, all of whom calmly assured me that, however fine I felt now, I would in all likelihood be back.

So as self-destructive as the ensuing years might have become (at least until I met Bruce) I’ve taken silent but concerted measures to ensure that – at the very least - this does not become a self-fulfilling prophesy. And yet you can’t live out your life under the assumption that the Big Bad Breakdown is lurking around every corner just waiting for you to make a decision that will knock your physiology a bit off kilter (though having two or three drinks a night for years was probably not the best course of action, now I think of it).

I don’t know how the leap and fall of hormones will affect me in those weeks following the birth, but I do know that I’m prepared to deal with any eventualities that could arise, and that includes being mindful (but not too mindful) of at least a few.

Last looks

I’m not inspired to do much these days, and whereas at one time I would have at least tried to excuse my reclusiveness, I’ve come to realise that there is actually nothing wrong with wanting to check out once in a while. And if you can’t live in your pyjamas, ignore the phone, nap all day and watch bad television during your ninth month of pregnancy, when can you? Hmmm?

The common misconception seems to be that pregnancy loves company, however, and the more I try and recede into the experience, the more phone calls, emails and visitation threats I receive from friends, family and colleagues. Most people assume that because I’m off work now, I must be lonely or bored; that I must want to talk to someone about what I’m going through, or that I need someone to help me take my mind off it. Though the intention is both kind and considerate, the underlying assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

For the first time in my life, I’m more content to spend quiet time alone in my own company than I am interested or willing to break out of that introspection and engage with others (Bruce being the obvious exception, as I think our co-dependence might constitute Siamese status by now). Whatever the reason, I seem to be on a different wavelength from the rest of the world, and I’m perfectly okay with that.

I’ve certainly done a lot of reading over the last few weeks, and it vaguely reminds me of those long, luxurious afternoons of University, when my only real commitment was a three-hour-long evening class on film theory and aesthetics or post-colonial literature. Except that in those days, I did not appear to be concealing a giant Kinder Surprise egg beneath my jumper (though I did have a pathological need for acknowledgement - one that has been mercifully snuffed out by time and maturity).

In any case, I don’t have long to revel in my deserted island experience before this journey becomes completely unrecognisable again.

It’s Bruce’s last day of work, and then we have a very small window of opportunity to pull everything together before the holiday draws us to its eggnog-scented bosom and smothers us in festivity; there’s just no way to predict when the newborn invasion will take place. Realistically, by the time we’re settled in at home again, we’ll probably have just over a week to turn the page on that short, intimate chapter of our lives when it was just the two of us and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Part of me feels very sad about this. But on the other hand, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

For meme

A personalised meme, just for me - devised by The Lass! If you want your own, leave me a note and I'll email you five questions. None as good as these, though, I'm afraid.

1. Of all the things you learned from your parents, what do you think was the most valuable?

If you don't regularly challenge your own beliefs - about the world, about others and about yourself - you risk closing yourself off to a wealth of experience. That lesson was inadvertent.

2. What is your most indispensable possession and why?

Our cats, quite literally. No matter how hard we try, or how logical it might seem at this point in our lives (and given the small amount of space we have to share), we can't seem to get rid of them. Yes, they are antisocial, ungrateful, petulant little things that flee from us 99% of the time and have nothing to offer except vet bills and the occasional whiff of used litter, but they're ours and we love them (at a respectful distance). Because we are suckers of the bleeding heart variety.

3. How has impending motherhood changed you? (Besides the obvious physical changes, of course.)

I'm less shy about saying what it is I want and need from others, because you can't afford to be timid when you're responsible for the well-being of something so vulnerable and so completely reliant on you. That meant saying 'no' to people at work more often, leaving the office on time instead of staying late, unapologetically taking someone else's seat on the tube if they offered, and eventually giving work an ultimatum (I can have the doctor sign me off now or you can let me work from home for the next six weeks). I will have to become even more assertive once this kid is out in the world, but it's definitely becoming a trend.

4. It's time to throw a dinner party for your favorite deceased authors. Who is in attendance? Why? What are you feeding them?

Most of my favorite authors are contemporary, but short of killing Martin Amis (who I'm not sure I'd actually want at a dinner party) and Zadie Smith, I guess I'd have to say Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace, because I like to imagine we share a similar perspective on life and writing, and I reckon that after a few bottles of wine, we'd have several hours of incredible dialogue. Or the two women would huddle together in a corner whispering venomously into into their cupped hands while I tried to wrest a bottle of corrosive toilet cleaner from David. I think we're having take out from La Porceta, because Italian is timeless and classic and therefore inoffensive to diverse palates, and I'd be far too nervous to cook for them myself.

5. Would you rather be famous or infamous?

The two aren't always mutually exclusive in these here parts, but if I had to pick one, I guess I'd say famous. Your tenure in the history books is probably far shorter than if you were infamous, but if I'm going to be remembered for something, I'd rather that something conjured up fond feelings in others, over impassioned rage or ridicule. Or am I missing a trick?

I'm beginning to look like Father Christmas

Just a regular old update then - mainly because it’s easier to farm the thought-scum that gathers at the top of my brain than dangle a tasty line in the deeper waters of the subconscious mind in the hopes of snagging a bigger fish. What? Yes, exactly.

So I’m 36 weeks + along, which means that by Friday, I could go into labour and come out with a baby that has reached full-term. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Every day I gingerly maneuver the great hull of my midsection – towards the toilet, into the shower, between the desk chair and cabinet, the bed and the wall – and carry on with life in spite of the discomfort.

A few weeks ago we had our antenatal classes with the NCT – not quite the hippy love-fest I’d been warned about, though certainly not a clinical hell, as was evidenced by our instructor’s dominatrix-like boots and stripy underpants, which she found far too many occasions to flash.

We spent two full days and one evening with eight other very nice first-time parents-to-be and were ushered through the terror (of which there is plenty) and joy (uh...) of what it will mean to birth a dirty plastic doll through the mouth of a soiled pink toque. Oh those were just the metaphorical teaching tools, but rest assured it’s the visual I will henceforth associate with my upcoming trials in hospital.

Everyone has a funny antenatal class story I’m sure, so here’s mine:

We were asked to visualise what a gorilla giving birth in the wild would be likely to do, in terms of finding a spot, getting comfortable and even asking her gorilla pals for help. It was the perfect allegorical blend of science and fantasy. As sentient beings, we humans tend to forget that the birth-giving process is, above all, completely natural. Huzzah! We were finally thinking outside the box of modern medicine!

Well, most of us anyway. Our instructor asked, “So what are some of the predators we might encounter in a labour ward?” and before the rest of us could conjure up that intrusive orderly or unwanted mother-in-law, an overzealous incubator piped up with “PEDOPHILES?” And because this is England, nobody batted an eyelash while the instructor attempted to address this unlikely scenario.

Okay, I thought it was funny.

So here it is, weeks later, and even though we’ve bought the newborn essentials and written up the birth plan and gathered the elements of an overnight bag (in theory), I am still having trouble believing that what we’ve been talking about and preparing for since April could feasibly happen any day...no...any second now. Fortunately, belief doesn’t enter into the equation, and this kid is going to come whether I’m ready for him or not.

And I am not, so please, kid: try to hold off on the grand entrance for your poor, frazzled mother? At least until she can erase the memory of The Constant Gardiner, Snow White: A Tale of Terror and The Changeling, which, you must admit, were some pretty poor choices for weekend entertainment.

Also, the more times I hear Oh you’ll want the epidural, trust me, the more I want to shout Enough with the scare tactics, you insensitive twat! and prove otherwise. I know I have a low pain threshold, and anyone who knows me could tell you the same. I can’t even get on the kiddy spaceship ride thingy at the fair without wanting to vomit. But I will not be talked into having someone else’s experience before I’ve even had a chance to register that first strong contraction. So fuck off, you epidural-pushing veteran baby-labourers!

And, erm, thanks anyway!

I'm also meant to tell you how deleriously happy I'm feeling about this important and exciting time in my life, which I'm going through with the most amazing man I've ever met. And I am! I really am.

Another cop out

Lovingly lifted from The Lass, who tags you as well!

Where is your cell phone? Mobile phone - Missing, again.

Where is your significant other? On his way home from work.

Your hair color? Auburn.

Your mother? Crazy, controlling.

Your father? Emasculated, controlling.

Your favorite thing? A day/night out/in with Bruce.

Your dream last night? Oral sex.

Your goal? A natural childbirth experience in the New Year.

The room you’re in? Is finally organised, clean and exactly how a bedroom should be.

Your hobby? Take a stab.

Your fear? That I will go into labour whilst visiting relatives in Hertfordshire.

Where do you want to be in six years? A more spacious home with a happy, healthy child, a happy, healthy husband, happy and healthy, and preferably in a job I love (I don't want much).

Where were you last night? In front of the television.

What you’re not? Smaller than a breadbox.

One of your wish-list items? Record player

Where you grew up? Canadia

The last thing you did? Plugged in the trees.

What are you wearing? Pajamas

Your TV? Is not communicating properly with the broadband box, hence no recorded shows - we are back in the dark ages of surfing and commercial-watching until we can fix this.

Your pet(s)? Are finally starting to come around (sort of).

Your computer? Has no tension in its screen so is propped against a small pillow as I type this.

Your mood? Content

Missing someone? Yes, but he'll be back soon.

Your car? Ha.

Something you’re not wearing? A hair shirt.

Favorite store? Orla Kiely

Your summer? Revolved around strategic eating so that I would not vomit.

Love someone? More than he knows.

Your favorite colour? I'm not bothered.

When is the last time you laughed? Yesterday.

Last time you cried? Last week sometime.

Tagging: Bruce, even though he has nowhere to put this. I need him to give me one item on his wish list now because I'm running out of time and ideas.

No ice cream before bed

GREAT, THANKS - MESSAGE RECEIVED.

This is by far the worst thing my esophagus has ever done to me.

Yeah

(Mixwit is now kaput and have replaced all songs with this one)