Update re: twitter at bottom.

Thanks for all the emails, comments, and even gifts that have arrived this week. It's been enough to bring more than one tear to my eyes.

The Foetus and I are still doing fine here. This morning's monitoring showed everything to be as normal and healthy as at the last visit, and, in fact, there was so much movement going on last night that I ended up making a casual remark about him "having a fit in there". And shortly afterwards sitting down for several hours to google "intrauterine seizures".

SOB asked what I wanted to do. "I want to do whatever is safest," I told him firmly.

"Well, with everything looking so good, we can continue to monitor," he explained, "but at this stage, and with such a favourable-looking cervix, the potential benefits of a gel induction probably outweigh the potential risks."

Enough said.

So I had a dose of prostin, took the train into town for a meaty and sustaining lunch, and returned for more monitoring. Because The Foetus still looks fine and the Braxton Hicks-like contractions are starting to get nice and regular - although not yet painful - we have left it at that and I've come home. The nurses studied the CTG trace and unanimously predicted we'd be arriving at L&D between 10pm and midnight. SOB agreed, but asked me to front up first thing tomorrow at the latest. You'll have to excuse my lack of stats. Since the machine was recording everything, I chose to focus my mental energies on fashion magazines, so I really can't tell you exactly how far apart anything is or anything like that, however, I do think you should watch out for this season's floral prints.

I feel like I should say something profound, or meaningful, but I'm coming up short. Yesterday, I bought some groceries. The cashier asked, "How many years of marriage before get baby? One year?" and she waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

"Nine," I replied.

"Oh. Nine years," she repeated, her face becoming serious. "You try try lah, or just wait?"

I drew breath to answer before I decided what to say. "It's been a bit complicated," I admitted after a pause, and she managed to nod in a way that conveyed sympathy without a trace of pity or awkwardness. Then, as she handed me my change, she looked at me directly and sincerely. "Then I hope it goes very very well for you."

Yes. Well. Amen to that.

(Further updates probably through twitter, right sidebar, sorry, never did get around to fixing that.)

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(Update re: twitter - it's 9:30 here, and things do seem a bit more intense, but I'm guessing it'll be more on the "midnight" side of 10pm-midnight.

Anyway, I dropped in because a couple of people have asked about twitter. You should be able to see updates on the sidebar as I text them, just like reading a really short post, in a sidebar. Otherwise, click a bit, see what happens.)

Short Version: latest appointment update, probably inducing Friday if no progress. Then some musings about the fundamentals of marriage, during which I discuss infertility and baby names.

I suppose I should update you on our latest appointment. After monitoring everything possible, no problems have been detected. I am feeling reassured for now. If nothing happens by Friday, however, we will probably try to induce. I rung Mr Bea to report on the appointment and told him that, whatever happens, he should avoid scheduling work meetings early next week since he'll no doubt be on paternity leave. This seems to have made him irritable. Husbands.

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"The trouble with all your name suggestions," I said to Mr Bea, "is that they're far too common."

"One of my requirements is that the name be recognisably common," he retorted.

Seeing the impasse, I pressed my fingers to my temples and said, "I wish you'd told me your baby naming policy years ago. I could have gone off and married a whole different person."

He looked at me strangely - carefully - as if deciding how to react. Then he broke into the grin I was expecting and turned back towards the computer to google the biography of the most famous person to hold the name under current consideration.

It was a flippant comment, til he paused. I guess, in hindsight, it's kind of strange. You know, what with the male factor infertility and so forth. What with the IVF and the OHSS and the years of misery and loss and so forth. I'll admit I sometimes thought about how different our lives might be if he was fertile. I even remember asking myself, once or twice, if I'd trade him in for a different model with proper sperm. It never took long to answer no, of course not. It was like asking if I'd prefer to die than to struggle with infertility. Fertile or infertile, I always thought of him as the right choice of husband - there's more to the package than genes, after all. There's being able to navigate the maze of challenges life can throw at a marriage. You can't just pick that up at a sperm bank.

Baby naming, on the other hand - now there's something to make you consider your alternatives. I mean, this is the first time we've differed fundamentally over an important parenting decision which will affect our child for the duration of his life. These things, so seemingly surmountable next to the years of barrenness and grief, these are the real tests. It's not the biggest crises you have to watch out for, but the problems which most show your weakness and differences. The creeping catastrophes; the questions upon which you just can't agree. Sometimes the deal-breaker isn't donor versus IVF versus adoption, it's Billy versus Bobby versus Benjamin. On the home stretch of an apparently healthy pregnancy, it's worth keeping that in mind.

(Thankfully, we have made headway on a shortlist.)

Short Version: last-minute name crisis, and labour-inducing TCM.

So, several months ago - like, four or five months ago - we decided on the perfect name for this baby. Wait, no, that's the fantasy version we've been caught up in. What actually happened was we both thought we'd agreed on the perfect name for this baby, when in fact we had misunderstood each other entirely. Only recently did we discover this fact, which has led to much starting all over again from scratch. Obviously a good time to be starting from scratch on name choices, what with the baby overdue and visitors in the house and the subsequent not-having of private conversational moments. Does anyone know what cultural tradition withholds the name announcement for the longest time? Because I'm thinking of claiming that cultural tradition.

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Everything is still fine enough in there to continue waiting, apparently. I've got to admit, this is starting to make me nervous. Mostly, I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus in utero, but I also have minor concerns about the level of intervention I'm looking at if labour doesn't happen as it should, mainly because I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus during a highly medicalised birth. Basically, I'm worried about the safety of The Foetus. I just think we'd all be better off if everything went normally, don't you?

This has led to much googling of terms such as "what does a mucus plug look like" and "ways of inducing labour". In terms of the former, it seems mucus plugs (should you see one prior to labour at all) can have anything from a distinctly, well, pluggy appearance, plus or minus a tinge of blood, all the way to the other end of the spectrum which is very nearly indistinguishable from globs of semen. The problem with which is, of course, that globs of semen are also very nearly indistinguishable from globs of semen.

On the "inducing labour" front, having ticked off all the at-home methods, I found myself reading about acupuncture. One article, based on an interview with an acupuncturist, raved that when labour-inducing treatment is given from 41 weeks, about 80% of women go into labour within 72 hours. The remaining 20% are given a followup round of treatment, and nearly all them will go into labour within 72 hours of round two. "Wow!" I thought. "So what he's saying is, nearly everyone he treats goes into labour by forty-two weeks! That's incredible!" So without pausing to so much as cynically ask what happened in the control group, I marched me off down to the clinic in Chinatown recommended by my yoga instructor.

I don't know what you're picturing here. I know when someone says "TCM practice in Chinatown" to me, I get visions of crowded and narrow alleyways punctuated by incense-spewing temples, wooden shopfronts decorated with lanterns and dragon motifs, mysterious little doors with bells on them leading into cluttered, poorly-lit dens, wizened old Chinese men with crazy beards and crazier mannerisms, and racks of pungent-smelling dried stuff, the origins of which you don't want to know.

It would be more accurate to picture a doctor's surgery. You know - blandly-coloured waiting area, polite nurses in crisp uniforms, practitioners strutting down the hallway in neat, white coats to their neat, white consult rooms with computer screens and tidily-framed certificates on the walls, the pungent smell of rubbing alcohol... doctor's surgery. I registered at the reception desk and cast around for a magazine. The nurses took my temperature and blood pressure, and I was called in by a young, female practitioner with neat, black spectacles, to whom I explained my situation.

"I see," she said, and wrote something in Chinese on my neat, white, patient card. "Could you stick out your tongue, please? Uhuh." More notes. "Now let me check your pulses..." What followed was a history of a vague range of medical conditions or complaints, at the end of which she announced that she would recommend a session of acupuncture, followed by "some herbs". You've gotta hand it to these TCM dudes. They don't hold with any of your new-fangled concepts like Explaining Things To Patients.

The acupuncture happened in a treatment room, and was augmented by a scary electrical device turned up high enough to make all four of my limbs twitch with every pulse. "Any pain?" she asked.

"It's not pleasant..." I replied diplomatically, hoping she would make it stop.

"Yes, but if no pain, then ok." And she left the room. For a loooooong time. And lo and behold, if my uterus didn't start to cramp and contract*.

Eventually she came back, switched off the torture device, and released me with my powdered... whateveritis which I am to take twice daily for four days, in a small amount of warm water, thirty minutes after a meal, and definitely not in conjunction with any "western" medicines.

My uterus stopped contracting on the way back down the hall.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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*Although it has been doing this at random anyway.

Short Version: conversations with the fertile world: how I feel about "getting my body back".

I have an email sitting in my inbox and I don't know how to reply. It's from someone who's due just after me, and she chats merrily about how, like her, I must be looking forward to "getting my body back". I feel like I only just did. I'm more afraid of losing it again.

I don't have to explain it to you. I don't have to explain the tyranny of non-functioning organs and hormones. I don't have to explain the helpless pleading to follicles, eggs and embryos. I don't have to explain the gradual, humiliating submission of my self to my LH or P4 levels, despite expensive and painful efforts to whip them into line pharmaceutically. I don't have to explain the unbidden and unwanted anger, jealousy, frustration, anxiety.

To some of you, unfortunately, I have to explain what I wish you all knew yourselves: the triumph of winning the battle against one's own body. For some, this means refusing to be controlled, any longer, by a menstrual cycle, or defined, so completely, by infertility, childlessness, or loss. For me, it has meant lucking out in the treatment lottery. This pregnancy has been a leash on my errant body, a tattooed symbol of power and ownership. For the first time in a long time, my body has been doing what I want. I have it back. Now, this moment, I have it back. Who knows what happens from here?

I realise that even amongst those who have been pregnant, not all of you have experienced pregnancy in this way. At least since Twin A, I've had things go normally (touch wood) and that makes a difference. Still, I think all of you - however different your path so far - can draw on enough common ground to appreciate my point of view, and can see why I'm not feeling impatient to "get my body back". So I don't have to explain it to you.

I wish, though, I knew how to explain it to her.

Check it out! I'm on twitter. Not to sound blog-obsessed or anything. But you can now check out the sidebar (to the right! to the right!) to see if I've updated with any exciting news.

I saw one, tiny glimmer of light when we got our MF diagnosis. Whatever lay ahead of us, it wasn't going to involve the type of lacklustre sex that has no purpose beyond that of producing a baby.

Let's just say I'm experiencing a sense of irony.

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Almost forgot - there's some nursery pics up at the picture site. Don't get excited - we haven't painted and decorated (being a rental property) more just purchased and organised.

Short Version: 1. Post-partum depression act, please read. 2. Maternity clothes discussion. 3. Baby kicks. 4. Warning of impending absense due to visitors.

First, for the Americans: this about post-partum depression legislation (via Rachel, who provides info on post-partum depression and infertility).

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"I'm busting out of my maternity jeans," I announced the other day.

"Too much belly?"

"I'm busting out around the thighs."

"Oh... ah... er..." Mr Bea trailed off, looking panicked.

"It's probably all muscle," I hinted.

"Absolutely!" he agreed, with relief. "Bound to build up the leg muscles with all that extra weight you're carrying." He paused and looked at me. "I've stuffed that one up, haven't I?"

At nearly forty weeks, especially after infertility, I am disinclined to rush out and buy more maternity clothes. So it's on, people: the race against time and fabric.

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The other night, I was lying on my side on the beanbag when The Foetus gave a nice, solid kick. And I heard the beans go "shush". All of a sudden, it felt like he didn't just exist inside my own body, but as part of the world. That little shush somehow made him a good bit more real.

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My parents-in-law are arriving tomorrow. If I drop off the face of the earth, try not to read too much into it.

Short Version: general Monday update, everything fine and the same, random observations.

Do you know what it feels like? It feels like The Foetus is trying to physically push his way through the cervix by bracing his legs against my ribs and diaphragm. Not gunna work, little buddy. You have to set off this whole hormone cascade and actually dilate the thing first. Trust me.

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Today I saw SOB and everything is still fine, although I got that feeling again where... well, before he palpates my abdomen he rubs his hands together vigorously to warm them so I don't get a shock when he touches my bare skin, which is all very good and professional and everything, but as I lie there watching him do this, him towering over the exam table, I just can't help but expect him to throw his head back and cry, "Bwahahahaha ha haaaa!" It's a mite disconcerting.

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Today, SOB signed off on my birth plan. I know! First labour, and I have a birth plan. How cute! The thing is, though, we're giving birth in a foreign country, with its own cultural practices, and no-one, including SOB, is inclined to wait until I'm 7cm dilated to have an argument over my fong.

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People keep commanding me to be things. "You're so close! You must be excited/nervous/impatient/etc!" At this stage, I find I'm neither excited nor scared. I'd describe myself as quietly waiting to see how it turns out. It seems infertility beat my sense of anticipation into such a pulp it has not yet recovered. As for patience - we've waited this long, another couple of weeks seems easily doable. I'll get back to you on all these. They may change.

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I've also been asked if we're ready. I'm never very sure how to answer. The best I can do is tell you that, give or take a cot, a carseat, and a cute little cloth nappy stash, we're about as ready as we've been for several years. Which is to say ready enough, I hope.

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New pictures up on our picture site. Email me if you want to see and can't.

Short Version: as the title suggests, really. Pretty sure it's not going anywhere fast, though.

So I wouldn't call them contractions. They're twinges. Cramps. They're uncomfortable enough to make me slow down my walking and, every so often, to suck in my breath. Last night they disturbed my sleep. But they don't last more than a few moments, and I get the idea a contraction, as such, should hang on for, at the very least, what? ten or fifteen seconds at a stretch? If not much, much longer. So I think this is more of an irritated, my-pelvic-floor-is-squashed-now response to having The Foetus sit so low, rather than an actual onset-of-labour type thing. Plus it seems to happen in response to either a) The Foetus moving or b) me getting up to walk around or c) my bladder and/or bowels becoming full, but never d) just spontaneously off its own back. However. I thought I'd mention it.

Short Version: perhaps you'd call it nesting, but I think it's more accurate to call it hoarding.

"Check out our freezer," I said to Mr Bea. "It's half-full of frozen food, and the other half is coming soon."

"Excellent thinking."

"Then I had a sudden urge to stock up on toilet paper."

"Well, we do have a lot of guests arriving, that's for sure*. And we don't want to run out of toilet paper."

"I've also started hoarding beer."

"Oh."

"You don't seem pleased. I thought you'd be pleased about the beer."

"Beer is pleasing, I'm just not too keen on the picture I'm getting in my mind of my nearly-nine-month-pregnant wife struggling uphill from the shops to our apartment with her little grocery cart chock-full of beer, whilst the neighbours stand around and tut and whisper behind their hands about how I probably beat you when I'm sober."

"I didn't see any tutting or whispering."

"Nevertheless. Maybe you should leave the beer-hoarding to me."


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*We are booked solid with guests during May and June. I also have my uni exams somewhere in there. And something else might be happening... what is it...? Oh yeah. We will probably be taking care of a newborn. If you don't really hear from me until July, you'll know why.

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P.S. If you were in Australia last night, or for some reason had access to Australian news, you might have noticed that my clexane video from IVF Shoot 'Em Up made a news montage about the recall of said drug. My belly was on national news! Cheers for the head's up, Jules.

You can't get a good bitch-slapping round here even if you ask for it! You guys are sweet. But I don't want to lose my perspective - it's one precious thing I've gained from the infertility - so those who offered to bitch-slap if asked, I hope you're prepared to make good on your offer if and when.

Short Version of this post: stuff is happening. Don't get too excited - I think I still have a good couple of weeks to go.

Question: hypothetically speaking, if your husband comes to bed late despite prompting, would you say a proportional response involved a) a small amount of verbalised irritation or b) beating him out of the house with a pillow in a wild frenzy, then locking the door, forcing him to sleep outside on a sun lounger under a sky threatening to rent itself apart with a violent, tropical storm? Hypothetically speaking?

I think my hormones may be fluctuating again. I've woken up with the same kinds of hot flushes I experienced in the first trimester; my breasts have suddenly gone up another cup size, with accompanying tenderness; my pelvic cavity has regressed from a cheerful, hardworking body part to a whiny, toddlerish body part ("Slow dooooooown!" "That huuuuuuuurts!" "I need to go to the toooooooiiilet!" and so on - pretty tolerable, but it does seem heavier down there); The Foetus seems restricted, more or less, to squirming rather than kicking; and I just feel, kind of... restless. Like pre-menstrual restless. I'd say it's my nesting instinct kicking in, but to date I have only progressed as far as getting grumpy at the standards of tidyness and cleanliness around the house, but not as far as doing anything about it.

So I'd say my hormones are starting to fluctuate. Suddenly, it really does feel like the end is coming close. Which I think, together with the fact that the storm didn't actually break until 6am (by which time I had relented and unlocked the door), is why Mr Bea has decided to be patient and forgiving with me.

Short Version: invitation to a bitch-slapping. The bitch would be me. Subjects discussed - birth, infant care. And infertility, again.

You know how, sometimes, what you need isn't unconditional validation and support, but a good, stern talking-to from a friend? This is one of those times. It's about the birth. Well, it's not just about the birth, that's the whole issue - it's about the infertility. It's always about the infertility.

Every so often someone asks me why we're keeping The Foetus' sex a secret (except from you guys), even though we know ourselves, and I say something flippant about how much I enjoy teasing my mother, but that's not it only a small an initially small but steadily increasing part of it. If pushed further, I will add that we wanted gifts in a more imaginative variety of colours than the traditional pink or blue, but that's really nothing to do with it. When Mr Bea and I discussed it together, our reasoning was two-fold. First, there was this sense in which we were still feeling trepidacious about letting people know we were "having a baby" at all. We were far too scared to commit to having this baby.

But we also just... well, we just wanted to keep it a surprise. It was our private information, and we controlled it. Infertility made that precious to us, having taken so much of our privacy and control away. Even if we had tried to keep as much as possible of our journey a secret, we would have needed to tell our GP, our fertility specialist, his nurse, his reception staff, the phlebotomists, the scientists and lab assistants, the anaesthetist, the hospital admissions people, the clinic's nurse counsellor, the chickie who comes in twice a week to freeze semen, the accounts department, the claims staff at two separate insurance agencies (one state, one private), several pharmacists, the security staff at the airport who checked my needles through, and any number of people at the clinics in Sydney (where our recurrent miscarriage specialist works) and Singapore.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Girl, if you're complaining about a loss of privacy and autonomy, you're talking to the wrong face. You had insurance, two sets of gametes, a functioning uterus, and a partner who was on the same page. Come step in my shoes and we'll see just how violated you feel." I'll cop to that - it's true. Infertility doesn't treat us all equally, and so far it has treated us relatively well. But although it takes more from some than others, there's no doubt it gets a certain piece of us all. It has robbed me of my desired level of privacy and autonomy.

And, God help me, I want it back.

Somewhere in my presumed-fertile past I didn't much care about my birth experience, and not so long ago I had whittled my aspirations down to a single, live, take-home baby (bonus points for being healthy). So when, and how, did this new transformation occur? When did I start worrying about the fact that I might want pain relief or need any number of interventions? When did I gain this ardent passion for exclusive breastfeeding? Why do I feel such a need to prove that I can do it alone? And how, when there are genuine things to worry about, can I be afraid of simply... needing more help?

Also, where the fuck do I get off even wanting these things? Did I not get beaten down hard enough, that I've bounced back so quickly and with so many extraneous demands? Have I learned nothing? Have I forgotten it so easily?

I want to be ok with whatever has to happen. My head has my priorities straight - I'll be fine, it says, with anything that brings The Foetus home safely. I just want to be sure my heart will agree.

You may start speaking sternly now, I can take it and won't hate you, I promise.

Short Version: Another appointment, everything fine, officially at term now with SOB saying he doesn't mind when I go into labour from here on in. I discuss my labour preparations.

"I don't know why the prenatal class teacher spent so long drilling us on pelvic floor exercises," I said to Mr Bea the other night. "Every time The Foetus headbutts my bladder I get practice pretty much automatically!"

"Er... yes," he answered, awkwardly. "Is that the kind of bawdy, intimate humour you have girlfriends and a blog for?"

Based on that conversation, I'm supposing he doesn't want to hear about the evening primrose oil capsules I've decided to stick up my neveryoumind. Do you want to hear about the evening primrose oil capsules I've decided to stick up my neveryoumind? Wouldn't be the worst thing you've read on the blogs today, would it?

I've got these evening primrose oil capsules. I've heard you should stick them up your neveryoumind on a daily (or is it twice daily?) basis, starting from about thirty-six weeks or as soon as you get around to it afterwards. Ideally, this should be combined with perineal massage, which is something else Mr Bea would be embarrassed to discuss, although I would like to point out that he's man enough to actually do what he has to do. (It was the same all through fertility treatments. We have this unspoken agreement that the sperm samples he obtained in the clinic "men's room" were produced more or less by magic.)

But bless him he will, for example, brew up a nice hot cup of rasberry leaf tea, which he doesn't like talking about either, but that's more because it bores him. So I've got the rasberry leaf tea, the pelvic floor exercises, the perineal massage, and the evening primrose oil up the neveryoumind, but I am in two minds about one matter: sex. You see, I've heard that the prostaglandins in semen are most efficiently absorbed through the gut. Then again, you won't get any perineal massage or pelvic floor workout that way, will you? Things to ponder. And perhaps to discuss, but only with girlfriends and blogpeople.

So have I missed anything?

Short Version: Cot purchase and safety/environmental/animal welfare announcement in one.

I nearly posted to ask you to resolve a moral dilemma for me, except then I thought of the perfect answer. So now I'm posting to boast about my answer under the pretense of keeping kids safe by disseminating information about the hazards of cots. Let's face it - most of you are well-versed in this stuff already, being the info-savvy, long-prepared, safety-conscious people you are. Frankly, if anyone knows this stuff and takes it seriously, it's an infertility blogger, think about it. Then again what the heck, you can't repeat an important safety message enough times, and there's always the chance you'll tell me how wise and clever I am. Therefore on with it.

It started when we saw a second-hand cot for sale. I know, we have the bassinet for starters, but it won't last for long, and I happened to see this at a good price, plus, hey! recycling! so I arranged to view it, tape measure in hand. Why a tape measure? Because I wanted to make sure it conformed to safety guidelines (pdf), and for that you need a tape measure to figure out how big all the gaps and things are. Happily, the cot passed the test and we arranged delivery to our flat.

That's when the dilemma started. Because the people wanted to get rid of not only the cot, but also the bedding, and they were using far more of it than is recommended by Sids and Kids in their safe sleeping FAQ (pdf). There is also the issue of using second-hand mattresses, which is discussed in the above brochure, and although the SIDS people haven't found enough reason to recommend against using one provided the mattress is otherwise safe, I am paranoid enough to want a new one anyway. So my dilemma was this: so much bedding, so little desire to use it. What does one do with two cot bumpers and five tiny pillows that one considers to be a death trap for infants? As well as a second-hand mattress which is arguably safe, but you never know?

When you have things to get rid of you have several choices: you can sell them, you can give them away, or you can chuck them. Now, whilst chucking them seems wasteful, selling them or giving them away involves a high risk that someone else will use stuff on their baby which you consider to be below acceptable safety standards, and there's something not quite moral about that. Profiting from their ignorance (by selling) does seem worse than passively accepting their ignorance (by offloading for free) but it doesn't really make the second option right.

Of course, ultimately there's a limit to my responsibility for other people's parenting decisions. I don't, for example, feel the need to picket stores that sell cot bumpers and baby pillows, or accost strangers wheeling prams in order to grill them on their tot's sleeping arrangements. On the other hand, I am clearly responsible for advertising used equipment as "used" and for being honest about my reasons for getting rid of something if asked. If I were to make up some reply about not liking the colour, that would obviously cross the line. But am I required to explain myself to people who don't ask me? If I am, is that enough, or should I go further by refusing to hand over the goods to anyone intending to use them for a baby, contrary to safe sleeping guidelines? If the second, am I required to ensure, absolutely, that the products don't get used for someone's baby in the future, or is it enough to gain reasonable satisfaction of such? What about my responsibility to the environment - to recycling and reducing landfill?

These were the questions I was going to pose to you when the answer hit me. The perfect place for unwanted and unsafe baby bedding is the local animal shelter or vet clinic. (Or, if you know someone, a neighbour with an elderly dog.) Why?

• Cot mattresses are ideal surfaces for medium to large sized dogs with mobility problems (including those with arthritis or those temporarily bed-bound from illness). The soft cushiness will help guard against debilitating and potentially dangerous bedsores, yet the surface is close to the ground and therefore relatively easy to get onto and off. Depending on the make of the mattress, it may also include protection against leaky bladders and drool.
  
  
• Small pillows can be used in clinic settings to prop patients into good positions - for comfort, ease of breathing, attachment and use of IV lines and other equipment, extra protection of wound areas, or positioning for x-rays.
  
  
• Cot bumpers, with the help of scissors, needle and thread, can be turned into mini-mattresses for small patients, or a number of thin pillows.

Any way you look at it, vet clinics and animal shelters can make good, safe use of your unwanted baby bedding, and I feel that by handing it over to such an organisation for that defined purpose, I have made a reasonable enough effort to ensure that no harm comes from their future use. So that is what we have decided to do. Perhaps you can think of further ways to safely dispose of unwanted cot bedding (and if so, please add them in the comments).

To sum up, there are a few reasons I went ahead with this post:

1. I wanted to remind people to check their safe sleeping guidelines when setting up their nursery. These guidelines can save little lives!
   
   
2. I wanted to remind you not to dump when you can recycle! The planet (and your local vet clinic, animal shelter, or whatever) wants to put your unwanted stuff to good, safe, alternative uses.
   
   
3. I was feeling smug about my solution and wanted to display my smugness publicly.

So there you have it. Goodnight and sleep well.

The IIFF Awards have been handed out. Head on over to the ceremony!

Short Version: I admit to the wisdom of my readers, and start nesting a little. Oh, by the way, I had another appointment and everything is normal. Weekly appointments from now on.

You were all right. Those of you who said it was no big deal and that it would work out either way - you were right. However, those of you who encouraged me to try and smooth the road by being prepared - you were also right. And those of you who pointed out that a bag packed by Mr Bea is a dubious proposition... well, let me take you back to our honeymoon, and a lesson I should have already learned.

In the hurly-burly of our wedding preparations nearly, gosh, nine years ago now, Mr Bea was assigned the task of packing a honeymoon bag. Long story short, he did quite well except for the underwear. Now, whilst I'm sure we can all find amusement in the fact that my groom forgot to pack any underwear at all for his bride to take on our honeymoon, I'm not so sure I'd be laughing about it in the maternity ward.

So I have packed. More accurately, I have thrown what I would like to pack into a plastic bag and dumped it into the bassinet, which is now out of its box and set up. I have also managed to drag Mr Bea to Ikea to buy dinky little storage solutions, and I have sat down and, well, I guess organised is the only word for it, the baby stuff.

"So that whole pregnant/nesting thing - not a myth?" Mr Bea said, poking his head into the nursery last night.

"Apparently not, from what I've read, although I do wish my instinct would kick in," I replied, stuffing a onsie into a drawer along with other onsies of arguably similar size*.

"Right..." he said, looking pointedly around the room.

"All these other people are way organised. You should see the Spock's nursery, with its ocean theme, and its boat-shaped bookshelf, and its drawers upon drawers of thrice-washed cloth nappies and infant clothing."

"How many pre-washes are you up to?"

"So far? Zero. Although, in my defence, most of our nappies haven't arrived yet."

"Yes... I do think you made a good choice when you decided against a legal career."

"Are you going to poke fun, or are you going to come and learn about the organisational intricacies of my changing system?"

"Will you hit me if I answer honestly?"

Anyway. I haven't got anything photographable yet, but at least I can see what we've got and where it is. And I'm in with a decent shot of being hygienically-clothed in the hospital. For now, I think we're good.


--
*"0-3 months" really does cover quite an eye-opening range of sizes, doesn't it?

Short Version: I wonder whether I need to be getting more organised.

Tell me if I'm wrong. By the time most of you wake up in your respective time zones and read this, I will be thirty-six weeks pregnant. I have, you know, stuff. After yesterday's car seat purchase, I officially have the sort of minimum requirements needed to get us through the hospital stay and, say, the first two days at home. It's not washed. It's not neatly laid out in a cute, fully-decorated nursery. It is, in point of fact, stuffed into the built-in robe in the spare room such that I can close the door and no visitor will know we even have stuff.

I haven't packed a hospital bag. Mr Bea asked when I was planning to pack a hospital bag. "I guess sometime..." I said, equivocating over whether to delete another 500 words of the essay on surrogacy I've been rewriting over and over again for several weeks now. "Damn, I've gone and contradicted myself again. I'm going to have to completely restructure this whole argument. We also have to pre-wash everything at least once, but you know, they say first stage of labour lasts eight to twelve hours, and is it just me, or is that heaps of time to throw some stuff into an overnight bag and put on a couple of loads?"

"And maybe arrange the nursery, set up the bassinet, put a few spare meals in the freezer, that type of thing?"

"For example."

"It depends. Are you also going to be rewriting your essay still?"

"Ah! I think I've worked it out! Do we own a copy of anything by Kant?"

Probably it'll all get done in a flash when my nesting instinct kicks in suddenly, any day now.

Right?

Short Version: another no-news/good-news appointment, and then I talk about baby kicks. And don't forget the IIFF!

I had another no-news appointment this morning. I am now at the same weight I reached at the peak of my OHSS. I thoroughly recommend that anyone who wants to stack on over a dozen kilos does so over a few trimesters, rather than a few days. Also, I love my exercise ball! I am back to not feeling achey and stiff, although I do still have to be careful about moving around, stretching and changing positions.

--

When I returned from my latest "IVF Holiday", back in August last year, I decided to watch Saturday Night Fever on the plane. They say babies start learning things long before birth. The Foetus seems to have picked up some disco moves. "Ah, ah, ow, ooh... staying alive." I'm telling you, he's been simultaneously jabbing me in the upper right rib and the lower left pelvis, just like Johnny T on the dance floor.

I've been meaning to describe how it feels for a while now. For some reason, I kind of expected the kicking to be a pleasant sensation, and, well, it is and it's not. I mean, fundamentally, it is. It is because it tells me he's still alive. Heck, it is because it reminds me he's in there at all. I like thinking about his little hands and feet as they pummel against my insides. "That was a foot," I think, and I get a wonderfully giddy sensation just thinking about these feet.

On the other hand, I am surprised (even though I shouldn't be, now I come to think about it) to find that the physical sensation itself is not really what you'd call pleasant. Put it this way: if I didn't know it was being caused by a baby, I'd probably say it was irritating. So did I, in the throes of our battle with infertility, spend one too many days thinking how great it would be to feel a baby in my belly, and not quite enough being logical about the whole thing? I was pretty sure I hadn't done that. I was pretty sure I had things in perspective, and not in some idealised, rose-coloured view. Luckily, I still feel I would have done it anyway. It's one of those "hurts so good" things.

"What does it feel like, exactly?" asked Mr Bea.

I tilted my head to the side and considered. "It feels like..." Bubbles? Pops? Gas? "It feels like..." Dancing? Mini earthquakes in the belly? Shocks? "It feels like a small creature moving around inside my abdomen."

"Illuminating."

"But not just any creature. Not, for example, like a large mouse with scratchy, tickly nails or anything like that. More like..."

"A pre-term human baby?"

"Right!"

It might be more comfortable if I could teach the little Disco Monkey in there to moonwalk, but I think Staying Alive is a much better theme than Thriller.

Short Version: I am beginning to feel physically uncomfortable, but I'll cope. Everything otherwise fine.

Extra note: don't forget to put your entries together for the upcoming IIFF!

It's finally happening. I guess it was bound to sooner or later, although, actually, scratch that - I can think of a whole range of scenarios in which late-pregnancy discomfort doesn't happen, and I think I'll take the backache, thankyouverymuch - but nevertheless it's here, so I am writing to sigh resignedly about it.

I can't do things for long. This is somewhat annoying. For instance, my back gets sore when I sleep. I'm still getting enough sleep, it's just happening in shorter snatches over a longer period. My back gets sore - in a different place - when I sit. I am still working on my course, but it's happening in shorter snatches over a longer period. My feet get sore, and sometimes swollen, when I stand. I am still doing the housework, shopping, etc, but it's happening, well, in shorter snatches over a longer period. The leg cramps have come back. It's distracting, and just not nice.

My work area looks like some kind of low-impact, executive gym (but with much cheaper decor). In addition to the laptop, books, notes etc, there is an exercise ball, a yoga mat, and an airer with towel and swimming togs hanging over it. Add a beanbag and a few cushions and you get the idea. This is because, over my long period of getting things done in short snatches, I need to stop and stretch the achey bits out, rest them quietly, and eventually immerse them all in water for twenty minutes so they can go back to their normal size. This leaves much less time for goofing off, and goofing off was so one of my favourite things. I suppose you could say this is nature's way of reconciling me to the end of pregnancy, the process of labour, and the start of infant care. Nature is such a bitch sometimes. She couldn't think of a nicer way?

Nevertheless, with a little extra work, I am still able to keep the symptoms under control, which is one more thing to be thankful for on top of everything else. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and be thankful for it on my exercise ball.

...your initial thought on a message in your spam folder entitled "make her all wet" is that it's nappy-related information.

Short Version: 32wk appointment, hospital tour, prenatal classes, shopping list - all coming along fine.

The Wardrobe Begins

A couple of days ago, we got our first baby clothes. My sister sent them, and they arrived in the mail. One T-shirt says, "If you think I'm cute, you should see my aunt." Apparently she considered, but eventually decided against, writing her phone number underneath.

When I took the clothes out of the package, Mr Bea took them to look at. "They're so tiny!" he breathed. "Are babies really that small?" I had to gently point out the tags that read, "Size 3-6 months."

My mum and mum-in-law also announced purchases, so I gave in and bought a few cloth nappies to round out the mini-collection.

Prenatal 101

Saturday was our first prenatal class. Friday night, Mr Bea asked if there was anything he should have read up on beforehand. "I think the purpose of the class is to learn stuff, rather than to show off your knowledge," I responded. Nevertheless, when I arose in the morning, he was already on the couch studying Breastfeeding Made Simple. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, "Hey - this could totally be on the exam."

In this first of three classes, we discussed normal labour, starting with anatomy.

"This is the cervix," the midwife said, referring to her poster. "In this picture it's closed, as it has been since it let through that tiny little sperm who swam up your reproductive tract and fused with the egg to make your baby." Um, yeah, whatever.

There was a run-through of the stages of labour. "Early signs might include nesting behaviour such as cleaning and tidying..."

"That'll be easy to spot," Mr Bea whispered from the corner of his mouth.

"...or irrational displays of emotion..."

"No help there, though."

Lastly, we learned some massage techniques. Mr Bea was instructed in light massage, sacral counterpressure, hip and pelvic massage, head and jaw massage, and various pressure points. "So how did you all feel about that?" the midwife asked when we were done.

"Maybe you should set him a homework assignment for practice," I replied. "After all, massage is going to be on the exam, right?"

The Fortnight Zone

We have hit SOB's fortnight zone. No more monthly appointments for us - the longest I'll go without seeing him from now til the end is two weeks. Next appointment we get to discuss our "birth plan", which in our classes is more accurately referred to as our "birth philosophy". Everything is fine, except that the boy, who is apparently already big enough to fit into newborn nappies, has decided that the normal presentation he's been dutifully displaying on pretty much every ultrasound so far is getting kind of old, so he's trying out breech. We're not to worry about that until next appointment. I think I'll be not-worrying in cat-stretch position, for what it's worth.

Tour of Delivery

After the appointment we went on a hospital tour, and learned all about hospital policies such as immediate bonding and breastfeeding, rooming in, free lactation advice and consultation, etc etc.

"Is it your first baby?" the tour guide asked us, and I affirmed that it was. "It'll be very exciting for you!" she enthused, to which I answered, "Not too exciting, I hope." Everyone laughed except me.

Near the end, we went up to the fifth floor to see the VIP suit where local celebrities and other people who have much more money than we do stay. The fertility clinic is on the fifth floor. A couple excused themselves as they shuffled from the back of the lift through our tour group of half a dozen heavily pregnant women and their doting partners and down the hall in the direction of the IVF centre. Most of the group moved aside absently and continued listening to the tour guide. Mr Bea and I turned to watch them disappear round the corner.

I hope they get here one day.