I kind of wanted to get that last post off the front page before the weekend. I have a wonderful husband and I wouldn't swap him for anyone. Except maybe... no, let's just stick with that first sentence. Because, actually, it's true.

However, I don't have much to say. Maybe you could skip this post and go over to say hey to Vee and Max, because they do need support.

For those still reading, I should probably confess, after the bravado of Monday's baby purchases, that everything* is still sitting in its original packaging in the spare room (aka The Room That Doesn't Exist) with the receipts securely taped to the front. However, I did book prenatal classes. I guess I'm going to need to know about labour and delivery either way, and quite frankly it would be silly, at this point, to prepare for everything except the possibility of a live, take-home baby. I considered going in unprepared for any sort of good outcome, but I think it would be overdoing the pessimism slightly.

Because, check me out! I reached the end - no no, the beginning** - of another gestational week! Without any risk factors for preterm labour, stillbirth, pre-eclampsia, um, let's stop this list short by just adding "or anything else bad", I sometimes feel silly singing, "Whee!" as I tick off the little milestones. I imagine some of you reading, thinking, "Lady, you don't know the meaning of either fear or relief." So I want to set the record straight before we go any further - when it comes to last-trimester bollocksing-up of pregnancy outcomes, I do not know the meaning of either fear or relief. But I still get a small sense of victory each Friday as the ticker ticks over. So, for what it's worth, and with all due consideration, "Whee!"


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*ie. both things

**It's a fine line between too much pessimism and too much perkturdiness. We all waver.

Short Version: 28 week appointment gloriously boring. We celebrate the third trimester by buying not one, but two actual baby items, and I try out my brand-spanking new Shrewish Nag persona.

I don't have too much to say about today's appointment. Things are normal. They measured the same stuff as always and it was all normal. Except for the bits where I morphed into a shrewish nag. That was not like me at all.

When the first of our friends conceived (only shortly after we'd started trying ourselves), somebody in the group came across this paper about the enhanced cricket-hunting abilities of mother rats (upon which we all made lame jokes about getting her around to our houses to do pest control, whether she'd eaten any particularly nice insects lately... well, I told you they were lame). The jokes were based around the idea that pregnancy miraculously imbues one with various super-human powers. It's the "you grow an extra pair of hands when you have children" conceit. You know the one. Which, of course, is not how the paper says it at all.

The paper clearly concludes that it's not some magical superpower that comes packaged with the pregnancy hormones, like the ability to stack on weight or forget the question that just popped into your head within the space of time it takes you to draw the breath to ask it*. No, it's nothing as mystical and magical as that - it's just necessity plus practice. Which leads me to believe that anyone who needs to multitask like crazy at any job with demanding response times is going to have an enhanced ability to hunt crickets, metaphorically speaking, and the fact that, for most people, parenting is the busiest, urgentist, and multitaskingest job they'll ever have in their lives doesn't mean a childless person can't possibly acquire the same skills in a completely different way. Which means there's hope for us all. So goes the thought I'm clinging to.

You see, it's since I've started having to arrange my entire day around cooking, cleaning up after cooking, eating the very second I feel hungry, grocery shopping via public transport in a city where I need to go to five separate and widely-dispersed markets to do a full shop, and still getting the same amount of everything else done that I would normally do, that I've become a much better multitasker than I used to be, whereas over the same period of time, Mr Bea's life has gone on more or less as usual, which means he's still multitasking at the old rate.

And it's driving me batshit freaking insane.

Suddenly it seems like he never gets anything done. This led, earlier today, to the main problem, which is that, in the grand tradition of a hundred generations of housewives before me, I have started to bark orders at him. Don't question me - just do this, do it now, and have it finished within five minutes because I can't stand your fucking duffing about any more. Except in the long term that doesn't teach anything and is irritating to us both. And in the short term it makes him slow down and act stupid, just to be perverse.

So now I finally understand how it all happens, I have only two questions remaining: for me, it took the deep-seated urgency of a voracious pregnancy appetite to whip my skills into better shape. What will it take for him? And how soon can we start with that?

Because if I have to go through another shopping trip like this morning's, just to buy a co-sleeping cot and sling that I'd already decided on beforehand such that the entire trip should have taken ten minutes at most including waiting for the sales assistant to become available, I'm seriously going to have to get Mel to change me over to the Single Mum By Choice category on her blogroll**.

That feels much better. To finish on a positive - third trimester! Baby stuff! Improved multitasking skills! I wonder when it starts feeling "real"?


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*Yeah, well, I'm still sticking to my "pregnancy hormone" excuse.

**Don't worry, I'm not really serious about this at all, I'm just ranting and I probably shouldn't even joke. Although if anyone has husband assvice, feel free to add it to the comments.

Short Version: The Foetus vs My Sleep - rounds one and two of this exciting battle. Also, happy Spring Festival, and have a shiny and prosperous Chinese New Year!

A week ago, I informed Mr Bea that we had probably, all going well, had our last night of decent sleep for quite some time. The Foetus, you see, has started kicking hard enough to wake me up. A week later, I realise I should have placed more trust in my physiological abilities. Let me explain.

I'm a heavy sleeper. My body craves sleep. My mind craves sleep. In my past, my body and mind have conspired to produce awe-inspiring feats of sleep protection, well above and beyond the call of duty, or even, perhaps, evolutionary sense. My parents still tell the story of how I fell out of my holiday-home bed with nary a wakening. My record for unconsciously and repeatedly hitting the snooze button is two full, consecutive hours. I can carry on whole conversations with people who use the trick to make sure I really am awake this time, whilst serenely slumbering on. I can even answer the phone. "It's as if," my mother has sometimes commented, between clenched teeth, "you're still trying to catch up on the fifteen straight months of sleep you missed right at the very beginning." In fact, when next you wonder why babies scream at the same number of decibels as a jackhammer operates but ten times the stomach-clenching urgency, think of me. People like me are the reason for that.

So I should have known that my brain would have no trouble working around the slightly unusual sensation of being jostled from within. Last night, for example, I was in the middle of a dream. The plane flight I was on had crashed onto our old highschool sports oval, and the survivors - of which I was one - were being asked to audition for a new reality TV show. As I stood chatting to one of my fellow-contestants, I started to feel a kicking sensation in my belly.

"I didn't know you were six months pregnant," said a passing member of the crew, pausing beside us.

"Yeah," I confirmed, matter-of-factly. "It comes and goes." And right on cue, as we watched, my bulge stopped wobbling and flattened into the usual, non-pregnant shape of my abdomen once again.

I slept through til morning, at which time I awoke to find the pregnancy hadn't really gone at all - thank goodness. Never did find out about the reality show, though.

Everything feels a bit... thing... this week, what with the loss of Sylvia, Claire and Lucy. Forgive me if I don't sound as whacky as I would have liked. I can't imagine they feel like the world should keep going, just at the moment.

Short Version: I talk about parenting assvice.

First, there was the hazing, which I brushed off, laughing merrily. Oh, how merrily*. Then came the pregnancy assvice, which I shook my head at. (Did you know I shouldn't be picking things up off the floor, let alone doing any housework "in my condition"? Apparently it's true. I should either hire a maid or make my husband do it all. My job, so they tell me, is to remain seated with my feet up eating healthy, pregnancy-safe foods - preferably with "the girls" - and maybe popping out to yoga every now and again. I know! I would have fallen pregnant much sooner if I'd realised. Because it sounds so relaxing.) This week is an extra-special occasion, however, because I have received my very first ever piece of parenting assvice.

I feel so... accepted. So much a part of the club.

I have dreams in my head, you see, of trying all sorts of hippyshit parenting methods, such as co-sleeping, babywearing, exclusive breastfeeding, and yes, even cloth nappies. It's as if the infertility taught me nothing. My cloth nappying plans are the ones which have become the subject of specific criticism. Apparently it will be too much washing (quite a shock after all that time off housework, I suppose), will be dirty and smelly, will promote nappy rash, will be fiddly, and just generally won't work well enough. Now, I've read a lot on both sides of the cloth/disposables debate in reference to all these points, so I quickly accepted that no amount of rational argument would go anywhere. Instead, I pointed out how cute cloth nappies can be. Somehow, everyone seemed to think this was such a valid and important point, that we were left with nothing further to say.

The thing is, I started out wanting an easy, spontaneous conception and a low-intervention pregnancy. In reality, I have worked with what I've had to work with. But there was nothing inherently wrong with my first choice, as many happy couples will testify. So yes, I acknowledge your cloth nappy concerns, and I admit that there are pros and cons and that things might not turn out as peachy as all that. But if the best you can do is, "You'll see!" then you're wasting your breath. Because, trust me, I'm well on board with that idea.


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*Last night The Foetus was tumbling around and I was thinking contentedly about how great it all was when suddenly it occurred to me: holy fuck, that whole baby's got to come out of there at some stage! I expect this thought to represent itself periodically.

Just a note to say, in case you hadn't heard, that Mary-Ellen and Steve could use some thoughts just now.

(As an aside, if I haven't commented on your blog, this is partly from business but also because a) bloglines hasn't been updating properly and b) my comments have been getting eaten, especially but not exclusively by wordpress. I've been trying to read as much as ever.)