Almost a week ago, I was waiting for someone to call me about an induction date, whilst trying to figure out how to negotiate my way through our various options with BOB. My deliberations, however, soon became moot - like many parts of this surprising journey. The carefully-laid plans for an FET. The alternative birth options we researched and living arrangements we put in place when floods overtook our city, leaving us to evacuate our house in the eighth month of this pregnancy. The backup sleeping spots I organised in case the bassinet mattress failed to arrive in time. All moot, to name but a few.

Because the FET never had to happen, and the floods subsided, leaving our house high and dry and pregnancy intact, and the bassinet mattress turned up more than half a week past our estimated due date but days before the baby arrived. And in the case of my ponderings over the induction, they were moot because labour started later that night, and by the morning our little girl was safely in our arms.

Let me tell that bit to you from the start.

In Monday's report, I mentioned that I was having haphazard cramps, kind of like period pains. And that I had become so irritable and fed up with The Prata Baby, who wasn't really misbehaving, that I had called Mr Bea home from work an hour early to give me a break. Around ten pm, whilst watching TV, I noticed that the cramps were becoming more intense. I found myself closing my eyes until they passed, but they were irregular, and I was still able to keep one ear on the program in front of me. I decided, however, that things were starting to get underway, and that it was a good time to catch some sleep before I lost the chance. I had a shower and went to bed. I ordered Mr Bea to bed, too. Ordered, apparently. He said that, in hindsight, it was a sign he should have heeded more seriously. I may not have been doubled over with pain or breaking my waters throughout the house, but I was irritable and bossy and that should have been a warning. He's probably right.

Somewhere around midnight, having dozed on and off for nearly two hours, I started absent-mindedly counting contractions. When I woke up properly, around one, to go to the toilet, I calculated that they were probably coming around ten minutes apart. Or not, depending on how reliable you thought my counting had been, given that I was three-quarters asleep. Then I lost the mucous plug, and I decided to tell the entire internet about it before going back to bed, and sleep. But my plans were never carried through, because when I stood up I had a succession of rather intense contractions quite close together, which I rode out in various positions in the living room. When things quietened down a little, I decided to wake Mr Bea.

Mr Bea was quite reluctant to be woken. I got extremely frustrated with him and started bossing him around forcefully, which didn't work either. He was wandering around in a daze, taking ten minutes to complete simple requests that should have taken one, whining and arguing the point every step of the way. At about 1:30 I asked him to bring me the cordless phone and after I wheedled the action out of him (it took maybe ten minutes), I rung the hospital to speak with someone about when, possibly, I should come in. Mr Bea's attitude changed slightly at this point - apparently he had not realised that I was in labour. He must have thought I was waking him in the middle of the night and asking him to gather hospital supplies for kicks or... look, the guy was half asleep, let's not judge. We can all be really, alarmingly dense between one and two in the morning.

As soon as somebody answered the phone on the other end, the contractions started to ease off. I spoke to the midwife for a while, as she timed the duration and frequency of a few contractions, and tried to assess their intensity from my tone of voice over the phone. I could still speak through most of them, and through the others I was taking deep, slow breaths or producing softly audible sighs. She told me I should get my parents around to take over care of The Prata Baby, and maybe have a snack to eat whilst I waited for their arrival. She suggested toast. I thought toast sounded great, so I asked Mr Bea to make me some and this time, he got right onto it. I was to call them back when we were ready to start in.

On my way to the kitchen, things picked up. I dropped onto my hands and knees twice before I reached the end of the hallway, and one contraction was so strong it sent shudders through my body. I used the hypnobirthing techniques I'd gleaned from the book - deep breathing and visualisation. In my mind, I pictured my cervix as a big, shiny ribbon, gently unravelling before my eyes. I pictured my body dissolving, leaving only the sensations of labour, then I focussed on causing the sensations of labour to dissolve away, too.

When I got to the kitchen, toast sounded less appealing than a cool shower to take the sweat off my suddenly-heated body, so I made my way to the bathroom and hopped in. I worried briefly about how I would look to my parents when they arrived, and then a new series of contractions sent me to my knees in the tub. These ones were powerful enough to make me switch to the vocalisation techniques we'd gone through in yoga class. I opened my mouth and produced a low "aaaahhh" sound, sliding it down through the scale like a trombone. I remember feeling compelled to press forcefully against the bathtub with my arms, and I knew I should head for the hospital, but I wasn't really sure how to get out of the tub. I tried to plan a sequence of movements in my head, but it was hard to concentrate with the contractions coming one of top of each other as they were.

Then all of a sudden - it didn't seem like more than a few minutes later - I felt a change. And all at once, I knew these concerns were moot, too.

Mr Bea was hovering uncertainly by the bath, bringing me the news that my toast was ready. "I feel like pushing," I said simply. He made some sort of alarmed noise, but I didn't hear what he said, because I was having another contraction. I fought my instinct to push upwards with my arms and say "aaaahhh" and instead lowered my chest and puffed, to slow things down. When I could talk again, I said, "It's alright. It's fine. Everything's ok."

It's always amazed me how well that technique works. If you ever feel like taking charge of a situation that has everyone in a tizz, follow this advice: appear calm, authoritative and reassuring. Tell everyone firmly that things are under control, no matter what the truth may be. They will instantly decide - although decide isn't quite the word; the reaction is less deliberative than that - to follow your every instruction. Immediately, and without fuss or question. Try it and see.

I assured Mr Bea that everything was okay, then after a short pause (to allow this hard-wired human reaction to take effect) I went on to say, "I want you to go into the living room and get the cordless phone and bring it straight back in here." He left. Immediately, and without fuss or question. I had another contraction. This time, I felt the baby moving down the birth canal and knew we didn't have much time.

"Can you see anything?" I asked when he got back. He told me he couldn't see much - just some blood. "Okay. I want you to remove the redback spider from the wall in front of me."

"The what?"

"The redback spider. There is a redback spider crawling around in our bathtub in front of me. Please get it out." After a moment of stunned disbelief, he did this, whilst I had another contraction. Puff, puff, puff. Soon I could speak again.

"I want you to call triple O and ask for an ambulance," I told him.

He started dialling. I heard him give our address as I fought my instinct to bear down during the next contraction. Then I heard him say he could see the head. This seemed to alarm him somewhat, and he started shouting in exasperation at the person on the other end of the line, who was obviously still going through the initial, routine questions. "What? How old is my wife? I can see the baby's head! It's happening really fast!" he was saying.

A new contraction started, and I knew there was no way I could keep her inside any longer. "The head is coming," I said to Mr Bea, and I eased her out as gently as I could.

"The head is out!" he shouted down the phone.

And I asked him, "Are you ready to catch the baby?" I think I asked him several times, and I never really listened to the answer, but I heard him get into the bathtub behind me and I saw him under my armpit, ready and waiting with arms outstretched.

There was one more contraction and Surprise Baby was born. "Have you got her? Is she pink? How's her breathing?" I asked Mr Bea. I heard muffled infant noises.

"The cord's around her neck," he said urgently, and I turned to look and saw that it wasn't, really, it was going over her shoulder and around the back of her neck, well away from her windpipe.

"It's fine, it's not obstructing her airway," I assured him, but I had to say it several times. "Give her to me and grab that towel." He did. I unwound the cord in order to bring her to my chest and bundled her up, wiping her mouth and nose with the towel as she stared up at me in wide-eyed disbelief. Mr Bea was talking down the phone again.

"She's making soft noises. Yes, my wife's doing that. Yes, she's doing that, she's doing that. Um, I don't know, we haven't checked yet..." I checked... "A girl, it's a girl. Thanks. Yes. Ha!" He was babbling with relief, and grinning wildly. Then, "I have to go and let the ambulance guys in," he said to me, and he took off up the hallway to the front door.

There's not too much more to tell. The ambulance guys came in, they clamped the cord, they checked us both over, placed the very Adam and Eve of all maternity pads under me and escorted us to the ambulance waiting outside. They suggested they snap us a quick picture. Then Surprise Baby - how aptly named! - and I took off for the hospital whilst Mr Bea made a cup of tea to go with my uneaten - but still slightly warm - toast, and waited for my parents to arrive.

The Prata Baby, bless his tender little heart, slept through the whole thing.

Thus endeth the tale.

Baby girl, born early Tuesday morning, all is well with everyone. Full details to come - but didn't want to leave you hanging any longer!

Definitely getting there. Contractions about ten minutes apart, just lost the mucous plug. Not rushing anywhere yet, but might not update again before we go (never did look up that twitter password/etc). See you on the flipside, I suppose.

There's only so many ways you can compose a post to say, "Nup." I have, therefore, largely refrained. Today, however, I had a marginally more exciting stretch and sweep and we discussed booking an induction in case that doesn't work. (The receptionist was supposed to ring me back to tell me which day we were going to make that, exactly, only she hasn't, so I'll have to chase her tomorrow. Sometime towards the end of the week, only, hopefully not because hopefully things will happen before we get to that point.)

Here's the thing. Last time, as you probably don't recall, I had the stretch and sweep and the prostin gel at the same time and it all kicked off nicely. This time BOB says there's no point in using the gel because the cervix is already nice and soft and ready to go (apparently he can stretch my cervix out to 4cm without any trouble at all, by which I presume he meant trouble on his part) so the gel won't really won't add anything to a stretch and sweep. And I'm sure he's not making that up or anything. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who likes to make up medical facts for fun, or because he's too lazy to ask someone where they keep the prostin and can he grab some, please.

But it's hard to shake the thought that it worked so well last time and I guess I'm just not a big fan of going straight from here to ARM or a pitocin drip and I'm wondering... can it hurt to humour the batty patient? So I'm rehearsing a little speech in my head where we do it anyway, just for fun, just in case it's the mystery ingredient my body needs to nudge it into labour, and see where that takes us for an hour or two (it worked within an hour or two last time) and then we can maybe move on with his plan if need be. It can't be - in fact, it isn't, from what he told me about the reasons for his running over an hour late this morning - the craziest thing he's heard all week.

At the same time, if he's right and it wasn't actually the gel last time (and my body responds similarly this time) then I should be in labour any moment now from the stretch and sweep alone. It's not completely out of the question - although I have to say I'm not obviously in labour like I was this many hours after the stretch+sweep+gel combo of yore - because I have been having haphazard... cramps? dare I say contractions? often enough to call Mr Bea home early from work and help out with the bedtime routine. Not because I am physically incapacitated, as such, but because the cramps are strong enough that I am getting rapidly fed up with being crashed into, pestered, pummeled, whined at, or otherwise interfered with in the middle of them. I mean, heaven forbid I try to close my eyes and breath deeply during a particularly sharp one. I will instantly get my eyes poked and Somebody will shout in my ear, "Mum! Mum! Don't pretend to sleep, Mum! Muuuuuuum!" and after several hours of this sort of thing I was starting to go... well, it was ruining my Zen. So Mr Bea is doing teeth cleaning and I am taking a break and he will finish off his last hour of work from home later on, when all is a little more peaceful and icecreamful.

Which is something that will only happen if I duck off now to acquire said icecream.

I'll let you know if anything escalates, or if someone calls me back with an induction date, or whatever. 40w8d, and heading for the end game...

I am mainly posting because people are asking for updates. I don't actually have an update, however, so this is more of a non-update.

Nothing has happened. The plan is still the same - if still nothing by next Monday we might start doing things. And then if that doesn't work I guess we'll do other things. And in the meantime I have googled the sorts of things we can do on our own, and have started doing a lot of them.

Sorry to get you all going with news of contractions, but that doesn't seem to have led anywhere at this stage. My to-do list now contains items such as "review superannuation", so... mainly thumb twiddling... although I am still waiting on that bassinet mattress... we'll see... 40w2d and signing off...

I have just paid our latest embryo storage bill.

Did you know that in some states of Australia, embryo storage times are limited, perhaps to as little as five years? Or at least they were last time I heard, which was admittedly several years ago now. You might like to check my facts.

The point is, I just paid our latest embryo storage bill, and in doing so I paused for a moment, because in so many other ways I live in the conservative backwaters of assisted reproductive and alternative family-building legislation. I'm not trying to imply you can't use third party reproductive techniques (including surrogacy), adopt, or become a homosexual or single parent, but our brothers and sisters in other regions seem to fare much more easily on those fronts. When it comes to storing embryos, on the other hand, well, bless us one and all. As long as I pay the fees, they'll stay in the freezer, no questions asked. Which means that if, for example, one has embryos left over from a disastrous OHSS cycle performed in early 2006, which generated enough almost-rans to sink most reasonable people into some degree of panic, depression and/or financial disarray, such that it was decided to start fresh in mid-2007 and leave those last embryos for a later, saner time, which - praise be! - ended up being necessarily deferred until after the birth of a healthy child and then - praise and also astonishment be! - until sometime after the birth of another, completely unexpected surprise baby... just to pluck a set of circumstances from thin air... if this were to happen to you, and you weren't particularly keen to up and bin the whole batch on the spot just because some bureaucrat couldn't see why it would possibly take anyone longer than five years to use a frozen embryo, you don't have to jump through any legislative hoops or fill in any forms explaining your circumstances or justifying your decisions in triplicate to any legislative body in order to have your wishes granted, especially when you might have other things to do like, maybe, give birth*.

You just have to pay your bill. And they stay right where they are, in the freezer. As they should.

--
*Or not. I did have mild, yet regular contractions for an hour or so last night, between about 3:30 and 4:30am - about 30s each, about 5-10mins apart - but that all seems to have gone by the wayside. Bets are still wide open. My eyes, on the other hand, are not. Sleep awaits.

My to-do list is looking decidedly undaunting all of a sudden. Perhaps it's because of this that I feel as if I've hit a bit of a wall the last few days. I think I'm starting to recover - I suspect I just need a couple of afternoon naps.

There is no news. Surprise Baby still looks fine at 39w2d and is even back in an optimal position, after a brief flirt with a posterior presentation last week. BOB advises that the risks of induction are lower for women with a proven record of vaginal delivery, which is heartening, although he is still inclined to wait it out til after 41 weeks to give things a chance to start off on their own - all other things being equal, of course. Then (as long as conditions look favourable) he'd probably start with stretches and sweeps and the like before moving on to anything more serious, or keep waiting til 42 weeks, whichever we prefer/seems appropriate at the time. I think stretches and sweeps from 41+ weeks under favourable conditions sounds fine based on our discussion today. So that's where we're at. Current plan is two more weeks for things to hurry themselves along, and then we start nudging. If we get to that point. I'll keep you posted.

For those who follow Prata Baby there is a new post up there, too. Behind the password as it discusses infertility stories of friends who have not given permission to be publicly blogged about.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. It's been very reassuring.

Clothing:

I have enough hand-me-downs from Nephew to cover the clothing angle in the short term. I might need a couple more lightweight things as Nephew was born in a colder season, but I suspect MIL will be onto that before the first week is out (she probably already has a gender-neutral pile going and is just waiting to find out the sex so she can really go on a spree), so I'm not too worried.

Feeding:

Last time I got by with just breast. I do have a manual pump and a couple of bottles if need be and I even know where they are. Mr Bea can pull them out and wash them off at a moment's notice, and if I need anything more motorised I know where to get it as I go along. Burp cloths and bibs - check. I even found my warm-or-cool gel packs and I have nipple cream because I've been using it as lip balm for the last couple of years. Other people do that, right?

Sleeping:

Yeeeeeees. Well. Although you can house babies in drawers and cardboard boxes, we are hard up in both directions. We left a lot of our furniture (the stuff we're not taking with us in the move) under my Grandmother's house after the whole flood debacle, including pretty much all our drawers. Our cardboard boxes are mostly full of spiders by now, although I'm sure Mr Bea would take one for the team by consuming enough beer at short notice to empty out a sparkly fresh one, and although we have a bassinet, the mattress went moldy in all the rain and as it's an unusual size and what with all the businesses that have had to close up shop temporarily due to inundation, we may not have a new one for up to two weeks (it is currently on order). For those counting along at home, this is half a week past our estimated date. On the up side, MIL owns a portacot, so again I am not too worried - unless you count the fact that we don't really have room for a portacot. I seem to recall The Prata Baby mostly using our bed during the first couple of months anyway. I'm sure it'll work out. At least we are ok for sheets etc.

Calming:

The first time around, I didn't realise this was a whole category on its own, and a really, really important one at that. For some reason, the baby shopping lists I had led me astray. However:

- muslins, check
- miracle blanket, check
- vibrating bouncer, check
- sarong sling and ergo, check
- dummy, check
- iPod and speakers, nineties' grunge playlist, check
- rocking chair... hm... I seem to remember this being exquisitely useful last time around, and although I have the fitball so I can at least rest my legs, I might have to look into buying and/or hiring one, if I can work out where to put it.

Outings:

We have both a car seat and stroller that can be used from newborn, although the former has not yet been installed, but that's quickly sorted. I'm not sure I'm ready to lose the spare seat in our car for another week or so, til I'm more confident we've finished carting items around.

Changing and bathing:

I need to pick up a bath from my SIL which I will do tomorrow. I am actually more worried about where the rest of us will bathe, since our bathtub (we have a shower-over-bath) CRACKED FROM SIDE TO SIDE and water pours out through our floorboards whenever it is turned on now. This is happening to us two months before a major renovation project which involves completely dismantling the bathroom, and I am still trying to decide if I need to do anything about it and if so, what. Feel free to give your opinion.

Back to babies, however - I seem to have a lot of free samples of soaps and nappy creams, enough so that I am pretty much good for the next couple of months. I have one hooded towel, plus our ordinary towels, and I am inclined to leave it at that. I have facewashers.

I have plenty of cloth wipes for messy jobs and a few packets of disposables. I have a couple of packs of disposable nappies - I am planning to return to cloth, but not until after all the moving is over and done with, especially considering the latest post-partum business trip developments happening over here. (To keep tally - flood evacuation, birth, house falling down around us, moving internationally, business trips/temporary single parenting, major renovation. Maybe I should throw a major course of study into the mix, or...?) I have the change mat from the nappy bag, and am thinking I'll just use that on the bed rather than try and get fancy with change tables etc. I may have to think about how to organise all the stuff so I can use it easily. Shoeboxes, perhaps. Somebody, somewhere, must have a spare shoebox.

I might need a few Q-tips.

First Aid:

- thermometer, check
- standard first aid kit, check
- there's not a lot else you can give a newborn without proper, medical supervision, although for what it's worth I do also have infant panadol. I found gas drops to be useless last time - I know some swear by them - but I am not planning to restock until unless I get desperate enough to want to try anything.
- relevant contact numbers, check

Playtime:

A couple of people have given us toys, there's a toy rail on the bouncer, The Prata Baby will hopefully share some of his more suitable items, and also provide live entertainment. Right?

So to recap:
I should think about getting a rocking chair. Or, I dunno, borrow parents' hammock, since the front verandah is about the only space it could possibly go anyway, and then only if I remove a side-table and chair.
Buy packet of Q-tips. Pick up hand-me-down bath.

Unless someone can think of something else, that seems pretty sorted. Hurrah!

Summary: I ask for help with my newborn shopping list.

So I did it. I unpacked the house again, and it is so much better because it is now devoid of a number of pieces of clutter that would have just made my life harder if they'd still been around.

So now I am starting to set things up for this baby we're probably bringing home (it feels good to say that, even with the precautionary "probably") in a couple of weeks' time or whenever (!). The fact is, I got rid of most of our baby stuff when we moved from Singapore. I couldn't bear to ship and store something I might never use again, and I stand by that decision - some of it would have broken or spoiled, and all of it would have detracted from my mental health. Not only that, but now I've unpacked what's left, I can't for the life of me think what the rest of it actually was.

I mean, I have hardly any baby stuff here, yet I really don't know what else I could possibly need. Am I missing something? What have I forgotten? At this stage, I really only want the bare essentials to get us through the first couple of months, because (after all) we are moving again come April. (Did I update you on when that was happening? It's going to be April. Actually, the house should be packed up in late March, Mr Bea will go to Singapore to set things up and we will go to my parents' house for a month, and then go to Singapore in late April or possibly early May. By the end of May I should be very, very good at moving. And quite, quite disinclined to accumulate unnecessary stuff.)

So for those who've done it before and can remember better than me: what's on your "essentials" list? I'm a bit worried I've missed something vital and I'd rather sort it out before the birth.

Summary: a short list of what's going on now, followed by musings on eye colours and what it means to be family. Lots of mentions of children and pregnancy.

***Appointment update** - went well. Boring. Fine. Hurrah! ***

News in brief:

• I am almost finished unpacking the house again. Just over a week to unpack a house after a move is some kind of record. I may even get around to doing up a hospital bag before labour begins.
  
• I have my thirty-eight week OB appointment later today. I'll let you know.
  
• Everything is rapidly going moldy and mildewy in the post-flood heat and humidity. Everyone here is battling it. The Prata Baby's mattress and the one from the bassinet have both fallen victim, amongst other things. Every time I turn around there is more growing on the walls or ceiling. Incredible. Insane. Inconvenient. I am just flat out keeping up with myself at the moment and my to-do list keeps on growing.
  

The Prata Baby and I were chatting at the supermarket yesterday, and for some reason we got onto the subject of eye colour. I asked what colour eyes he thought the new baby would have, and he said blue, like him. I agreed that this was possible, and then mused that they could be a different colour, too - perhaps brown, like Dad's? Or Hazel? The Prata Baby affirmed his guess of blue, and went on to opine that the new baby's Dad would have green eyes. I stopped and peered at him. "The new baby's Dad is your Dad," I explained carefully. "You'll have the same Dad."

Whoa. Whoa. Obviously this hadn't occurred to him. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by a rather longer period of thoughtful fingernail-picking. Then PB tentatively asked about the new baby's Mum and I had to break it to him that he'd be sharing one of those, too. Blue, brown, hazel or green - he was prepared to accept the outcome. But the realisation that someone else would have the same Mum and Dad as him? It, like, totally blew his mind.

I used to think I'd be sensitive to conversations about where my children got what genetic traits from. Apart from a sort of general squeamishness on behalf of those who wouldn't be passing on their genes, I wasn't sure if a hypothetical Next Child would be genetically related to the same extent as the first. I remember having a complete change of perspective the first time The Prata Baby met my Grandmother. To my grandmother, idle chit-chat over eye colour is for amateurs. Even before she and PB met, she had dug out a pile of family photos showing infants around the same age, and was keen to lay them on the table and hold them up one by one, analysing everything from general build to subtle facial expressions. And that's not counting all the other information she'd collected about our family history, no matter how old or peripherally-relevant.

All of a sudden I knew she would do the same no matter where the child had come from. Whether we'd conceived with the help of donors or adopted from The Philippines, she'd be there with pictures and books and magazines, retelling and guessing and predicting and - above all - looking for commonalities between the child and ourselves. She has a very loose definition of family, my Grandmother. To her, it's not so much about blood ties as about showing up and joining in. To her, discussions of this type are about finding connections, rather than separating "us" from "them".

Perhaps I would feel different if our family had been built differently after all, but since then I'm not sensitive about discussing the baby's eye colour. Even the Prata Baby knows it doesn't really matter who shares that.

We got back in last night, albeit without internet access.

I am buggered. Absolutely buggered. Thirty-seven weeks pregnant in the middle of summer is not the time I'd recommend to move house twice within the space of a week. In fact, moving house twice within the space of one week is insane under most circumstances. Nevertheless, it has all been good, the flood did not actually reach us after all, I am overwhelmed at the amount of support we received, and we are probably three quarters of the way towards putting it all back together again. Then we really must start getting ready for this baby.

Despite everything, I actually feel as if, personally, I've had a good week. Others obviously not so lucky... but as far as our four (thankfully flood-free) walls are concerned, the care we've been shown far outweighs the inconvenience we've experienced.

I have not been able to read blogs much these last few days. Please update me! Whilst I shower and crash into bed.

In the end, the flood waters were a lot less severe through our town than the worst predictions. This was, basically, because the weather stopped dumping torrential rain on our catchment areas at just the right time, allowing the hydologists to stop releasing water from the upstream dam. The dam was already doing a lot to spare us from the more dangerous flash flooding which occurred upstream and in other parts of the state, and in the end it was able to spare us from waters high enough to reach our house, as well. Our neighbour, who elected to stay (their house has three stories compared to our one - still, they stayed up til high tide at 4am Thursday morning just in case they needed to pile into the car and leave), reports that the flood waters stopped a good block or so away and are now receding.

Earlier, they were talking about the possibility of more flooding with the king tide next week, but as the waters reached us, the media stopped discussing anything that wasn't of immediate concern. I think, now that we've experienced our longest period without rain since... gosh - in months? - and the medium-term forecast is looking a bit more accurate, this concern has subsided. However, I am having trouble getting confirmation on this. Apart from the same, basic desire to know what's going to happen next that everyone must be experiencing, my nesting mind wants to know when we should put everything back in preparation for the birth. At present - and due to the absolutely amazing efforts of our helpers who whisked the entire contents of our house away between dinner time on Tuesday and lunch time on Wednesday - it is squirreled away in four separate locations across a twenty kilometre radius and I don't really know what's where. On the plus side, I think I can actually get to the hospital I'm booked into again now, and possibly even meet my own obstetrician if need be. Yesterday it was looking very much like my choices were either telephone-guided home care, or nearest emergency room. Which is not the worst possible set of choices, but "in person with own OB at intended hospital" is much better.

At any rate, today is going to be a day for cleaning. The extreme humidity this summer has caused (I discovered once the house was empty) mildew to grow behind most of our furniture, and there doesn't seem much else for me to do today except keep an ear on the radio and take the opportunity to scrub down the walls. And maybe try to find where I left my shorts. Or at least Mr Bea's shorts, which fit me nicely at the moment. And the Prata Baby's kiddy toothpaste, which he misses very much.

Everyone and pretty much everything is safe and dry. With predictions getting ever more optimistic, at this point it looks like it will all be wasted effort, but never mind! We will sit it out for a few days and see what happens and make plans from there.

The latest flood reports are predicting levels well above 1974 levels. We have decided to self-evacuate, tonight and tomorrow morning. If one more person instructs me, jokingly, not to go into labour for at least another couple of weeks, I will... thank them for their concern and well-wishes, of course. Still, if the comments keep up it might start getting old. Wish us luck!

**Update to update**
Predictions have worsened slightly, but we still expect to be ok. They have started evacuating parts of our suburb, however, so I have left laundry and Prata Baby with MIL and come home to do a few things, including pack a suitcase. Thursday now looking dodgier than Wednesday, so we'll see how we go over the next couple of days, but really, we should still be above the waterline.

**

Just a quick update from us.

Yes, our city is "next in line for flooding" and the council is issuing alerts.

Yes, our suburb is one of the "at-risk" suburbs.

No, our street is not on the list of streets expecting/experiencing closure.

No, our house did not flood in 1974 (although the property itself did - right up to the floorboards! - so if that happened again, we wouldn't be able to really live in our house or park our car anywhere near where we live) which is good news, as the floods are not (currently) expected to be as severe this time due to changes in infrastructure. I think we're going to be good, and the hundred-year flood report on our property combined with predictions about floods to come over the next couple of weeks says life will almost certainly go on more or less as usual for us.

The one exception is our shed is quite damp, with water across the floor, which is a bit of a problem because with our small house we are actually using it to store important things. We have evacuated some stuff (I started on some of the baby stuff last week anyway) and nothing has been ruined (although I suddenly have an awful lot of laundry, but luckily MIL has a dryer which we are shortly going to avail ourselves of). Mr Bea is just off to do another check of the shed to make sure everything important is either in our living room (which is getting quite crowded at this stage!) or on top shelves, well clear of the ground (thank goodness I invested in some great shelves and also plastic storage boxes a year or so ago! Thank goodness also for our decluttering efforts over the last two years - we have a much more manageable amount of stuff and don't have to worry about things that aren't at all important to us! Yay me!)

But overall, for those watching the news, we are almost certainly going to be fine in our household and ditto for family (I'm still chasing up friends but pretty sure they're all good, too). At present, worst days are expected to be tomorrow and next Friday, so I can let you know then, but in the absence of news, expect that we are ok.

First, this:


Then this:



Now this: (summary - my feelings as I start into the last month of this pregnancy, and how they compare to last time)

Surprise Pregnancy is progressing well, if quickly. Technically, I am into the last month, although having been fifteen days past dates last time I find myself unable to take that estimate very seriously.

It's impossible, of course, not to compare my feelings this time to last. Last time I was feeling... what? "Emotionally exhausted" is probably the best description. I did not feel excited. I did not feel relieved. I did not feel nervous, or impatient, or wistful. I felt... I think I described myself as "patiently waiting to see how things turned out". I guess I felt detached. I believe I could have persisted in that state for approximately ever and ever, if that had been an option, neither moving forward to the future nor revisiting the past, but instead existing in that narrow window of emotional stillness. I had not had the opportunity to experience such stillness for the longest time.

This time, I am not still. I am somewhat restless, in fact. I am frustrated by my inability to get things done at a worthwhile pace. I am frequently tired. I am heavy. I am irritable. I feel hot too easily. I can't think or concentrate well. I have too much to do, and I am not confident in my ability to do it all. It's downright annoying, is what it is. This must be what normal women feel like towards the end of their pregnancies, when they complain of being "over it". Have I gained the sympathy I previously lacked for their "plight"? No. If anything, I have lost a little. Good grief - get a problem. See, I am even annoyed at my own annoyance.

That is, except when I am marvelling at the human body's ability to reconcile our souls to the inevitable. There is a peace in my restlessness that didn't exist in the detached stillness of the last pregnancy. I really may not do this again, and yet I find that I am more or less willing to move on. The tiredness, irritability, and other symptoms help, as does - no doubt - the prospect of a second live, take-home baby, but I don't think it's really that, or at least not just that. I am moving through the normal, emotional cycle of pregnancy in a way that eluded me before. I am living in synch with myself.

Our Christmas tree is, like, six and a half feet tall. Perhaps, to some of you, that doesn't seem so big, but when you look at it in the context of our teeny-tiny cottage, it's enormous. If I want to be able to access my back door, or the computer desk in the corner of our living room, I have to set it up so the back half is squashed into the corner, the branches bent upwards as if they never came out of the box. I can only decorate half.

And they're such adult decorations, too. The baubles and floral arrangements are insanely fragile and almost painfully refined. No bold primary colours here; no cheesy but unbreakable Rudolf figurines. Instead, we have delicate bouquets of golden leaves, glimmering, rust-coloured berries and little tiny harps. None of it is right for our house, or our lifestyle. None of it makes sense at all - except to us.

On the twenty-second of December, 2006, I wrote about our family's hierarchy of trees - the biggest at our Grandparents' place, where we all gathered to exchange gifts on Christmas morning, my parents' slightly smaller version, and our own, little desktop tree - just big enough for two. I wrote about how, over the years of our marriage, I had looked forward to upsizing our tree as we built our branch of the family, and about how, that year, I took it upon myself to re-evaluate our status in the scheme of things, to sit down with infertility and renegotiate what it could and could not have, and to, basically, buy a fucking big tree with a whole stack of very adult-looking decorations. Which is no longer right for our lifestyle.

But I put it up anyway, because it means something to me, this tree. It means something to me when The Prata Baby - bless his little heart - unpicks the very delicate, very refined bouquets in the earnest misunderstanding that the individual pieces are supposed to be separately distributed amongst the other decorations, or when he brushes against the very delicate baubles in his rambunctious charging around the house. It means something to see the playgroup craft activities taking over the branches, one by one, cutting an as-yet small, but nevertheless unforgiving line through the tasteful cohesiveness of the display. It even means something when I lift a broken decoration out of storage and wistfully place its pieces in the bin. Life is changing, and evolving; the past is gradually being chipped away. But I can still see the imprint of our history. And I can still taste how it felt to draw that line in the sand to say gosh, infertility, I can't stop you taking this or that. But these things here - they're mine. They're mine and you're not having them.

Merry Christmas to all, and special greetings to those still waiting for life to smile on them.

See Prata Baby.

That's one other thing that happened in the prenatal class. The midwife was doing a brief overview of possible complications and signs to call the hospital about. "So if you notice any of these signs of pre-eclampsia, or even if you're unsure," she sub-concluded at one point, "it's safest to just give us a call and get checked out. Pre-eclampsia can be serious. Worst case scenario, you might even start having seizures and we'll have to admit you." Uh, no... worst case scenario, you die and your baby dies, too.

But, see, it's awkward to bring that sort of thing up.

I've been taking a prenatal yoga class. I was kind of just looking for the exercise, like I got last time, but for logistical reasons (see: work, babysitting, transport arrangements) I ended up taking about a quarter of this whole yoga-based prenatal course. It's a pretty useful format for prenatal yoga, actually, and I recommend it to anyone who can stomach instructors with high-pitched, breathy tones of voice who use oracle cards to the same extent as they use plastic pelvises*.

Last week, the topic was "dealing with the unexpected". We heard the story about ending up in Holland, rather than Italy, and then we were asked to sit with a partner and discuss our worst case scenario as a prelude to an empathy exercise. At first I tensed - I can think of some pretty bad scenarios, and it's not very polite to freak people out. "You go first," I blurted clumsily to my partner, before we'd even properly sat ourselves down.

"Damn. I was going to say that," she replied, and sat thoughtfully for a moment, before stealing a hesitant glance in my direction. "Well, this is my second time around," she explained, "and after what happened last time, I realise how useless it was to spend all that effort worrying about how I might handle the pain or about various interventions that may or may not be needed. I think as long as my son survives-" she touched her belly- "that's really all that matters."

I nodded gravely. Then, as gently as I could muster, I ventured, "It sounds like things didn't turn out well last time."

"Oh!" she hastened to assure me. "No, they did, they did. Everything went perfectly, in fact. No no no. I just realised, afterwards, how short and insignificant the birth experience was in the grand scheme of things. This time around, I know we'll be ok as long as everything turns out in the long run. That's all. So yes - my worst case scenario is that my son dies. Er... what about yours?"

"Well, it's hard to choose," I replied, feeling a bit reassured about my natural response. "I mean, your baby dying - that's bad. But then what if you died? Or both you and the baby? Or one or both got a very serious injury - in extreme cases, that sort of thing might even be worse." I stopped myself short. "Basically, I agree that I'm fine as long as it turns out ok in the long run. I mean, in the story, everyone actually landed, after all." As we were nodding, the instructor chimed the bells to signal the end of the activity and invited us to assume the lotus position and re-centre our energies using deep, cleansing breaths**.

But I couldn't help trying to think up ever wilder scenarios all afternoon, and when Mr Bea came home, it was his first instinct, too.

"What would be really bad," we found ourselves musing, "would be a coordinated terrorist attack on the hospital during the birth, wherein you and your partner and baby were taken hostage, tortured, and then eventually and horribly killed in some grizzly way or other..." there was a pause here whilst we ran through some grizzly modes of death inside our heads... "one by one and in front of each other. For an ignoble cause you were violently opposed to."

It's not just us, right?

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*Although naturally cynical, I tend to think most of this hippy-dippy stuff is just one way of expressing otherwise perfectly sensible ideas. Which is kind of what my mother said when she saw my oracle card. After she stopped sniggering.

**Or in other words: everyone sit down now and shut up. See what I mean?

Short Version: we went to our prenatal refresher class at the hospital.

So. Anyway. Let's refresh the page on that old sleep debate.

We went to our prenatal refresher class this week. Last time we didn't take the hospital class, instead choosing a privately-run series geared towards expats living in Singapore. We chose this course for two reasons: the content was created specifically to bridge a few gaps for people used to other hospital systems and western cultural practices, and also we could actually get to the classes without having to rearrange our entire lives or spend a fortune on taxis.

This time we took a hospital class. We mainly wanted to tour the hospital, and hear what they had to say under the heading "coping strategies for dealing with siblings". I was a little disappointed in their coverage of the latter, but there were a few good suggestions as well as some references for further reading, and in any case I am less worried about that subject nowadays. The hospital tour was very worthwhile. I was comforted to note that their foetal monitors are much harder to tip onto the floor in an amazing cacophony which causes staff everywhere to leap around in fright than the one we used last time. Also, they served great biscuits.

I was amused by their talk on pain relief. Granted, the last class was a full series with much more time to discuss details at length, but last time we learnt about a range of techniques for managing pain, from breathing and massage, to TENS machines, to prescription drugs. This time, just the prescription drugs. "You have three options: gas, pethidine, epidural." Uhuh. Because I remember doing a lot of things last time, and none of them involved pethidine or epidurals, and I only used the gas mask to beat against the side of the bed and throw across the room* - which wasn't a mode of use they even suggested. Perhaps a quick-list of other options wouldn't have been overloading things. In any case, that doesn't worry me at all, because I can always bone up on my breathing techniques elsewhere, and I am not sure I'll bother hiring a TENS machine again anyway.

What stuck out for me - apart from the quality of the biscuits** - was the bit where everyone introduced themselves and told us a bit about their family. There were eight or ten couples, and all of us had a single toddler at home, in the two-to-three-year age bracket. After all that, after everything that's happened... how did we get to look so normal? Sometimes it's as if someone took our infertile lives and hit "refresh".


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*I tried it over my face and couldn't stand the sensation. It was interesting to learn that they have dispensed with the mask at this hospital because apparently I am not alone. You can now get your gas on a T-piece, which means I might actually be tempted to breathe some in this time, who knows.

**Tim Tams. Mmmmmmm. I played the pregnant card heavily on those ones.