daily bread

So the good news is that a wee blood test revealed the reason for all that grumpiness, breathlessness and tiredness. Hooray! I’m pretty anaemic which would be grand except that I am below the level that they allow you to have a home birth at. Boo hiss.

This is a body blow and I’d love to say I pulled on my big girl pants and was a trooper but no. I’m pretty devastated and holding on to the vague and unlikely hope that my blood will go from 9.2 to above 10 in the next week and that the baby will stay in there until then. I’m too tired to trust God’s plan in this, too weary to hang on to faith, almost too far gone to rage at the heavenlies but I’m managing to wave my little finger in disgust. Again, again the need to let go, to unfurl that fist full of plans and control and just let myself be carried. To allow trust be a passive verb rather than an active one.

I’ve been a grumpy wee so and so these past few days; I’m tired, I’m huge and I seem to keep grasping at things to fret over to keep the negativity nicely topped up. A grey cloud has settled on me and I wish it would piss off, not least because it’s taking it’s toll on my 3 boys. I was telling Caleb about how I was feeling and saying sorry for being a grumpy mummy, ‘That’s ok Mummy, I think when the baby comes out you’ll feel better’. I thought I’d better manage expectations by explaining that Mummy won’t be getting much sleep when the baby comes and still might be a wee bit grumpy at times. Bless, he’s very forgiving which is just as well.

Jayber is being his legendary supportive self although even he has had to send me to the naughty step a few times this week for my temper. Yikes.

So, I’m going to try a bit of thankfulness now, I need to remind myself that the reality of my circumstances are actually enormously better than my current capacity to enjoy them. So, today’s highlights in no particular order:

• watching Eli flirt with people in the hairdresser’s. Too cute.
• getting my hair done, bye bye roots, hello blondie
• listening to Caleb make up stories about his lego men and their body swapping
• the anticipation of a warm bath with the special bath stuff and a new novel, both bargains.

I’m off to get my minions (that’ll be the long-suffering Jayber) to run me a bath

(he even lights the candles for me, I think I’ll add him to the list)

<sigh>

Resting is very dull. Especially by day 3. By day 3 you’ve run out of puzzles from this weeks papers, decent stuff on iplayer and maxed out the debit card online. Made more dull by the fact that everyone else is delighted I am confined to barracks and thinks this is A Good Thing. Need a wee rest before pushing that baby out.

Harumph.

Just when we were reaching the pinnacle of this weeks PNA (Planned Nesting Activities): a final (ish, no promises) trip to Ikea, I fell off the front doorstep and sprained my ankle (with all the elegance of a baby elephant being harpooned). Cue rest, crutches etc. I explained to Jayber how easy it would be to push me round Ikea in a wheelchair, how we could put Eli on my lap/get caleb to push him/ tie the children to the handlebars, but he was having none of it. Meanie.

I was very obedient and took myself off to bed and plotted my next Ikea opportunity which was to be this very day until I woke up with a tummy bug yesterday.( I might just add that sprained ankle and tummy bug aren’t the best combo). Cue more rest, more reckless online spending and quite a lot of grumpiness, improved only by the highly illegal watching of season 5 of Lost.

In other news, Caleb’s empathy training appears to be paying off – he has been most attentive and lavishing lots of strokes and kisses to his mummy and keeps asking how many days til I get better. Which was all very touching until I said ‘2 days, I think’ to which he replied “and then can we go to ikea?”.

Ah, he is his mother’s son.

Last night our lovely home group staged a surprise ‘graduation’ for Jayber complete with gown and even latin to celebrate him graduating his MCS from Regent. Real grad was a few weeks ago in Vancouver and quite the anti-climax to 2 and a half years of hard graft. So lovely for them all to mark the occasion and always fun to see Jayber looking ridiculous in a mortar board.

Maybe because it is my third, maybe because we just moved back home but I have been doing some serious nesting. In the past 3 months we have completely re-decorated and refurnished most of the rooms in our house (luckily, it is a small house) and redesigned our garden. The closer the birth gets the more frenzied I become. Saturday, for instance, saw me digging a flower bed in the morning and then pulling up a carpet in the afternoon whilst making an enormous pot of spag bol for the freezer. If you are wondering what the flip Jayber is up to while I am doing all this hard labour fear not, he has been given a list of jobs which he must complete by deadline on pain of death. Family members have been conscripted to move sheds, put up blinds, washing lines, bookshelves and curtain rails. Ikea has become Caleb’s primary child care provider and even Eli has been taught how to use a dustpan and brush.

All that’s left is the new patio (I have been dissuaded from laying the flags myself) and yet another trip to ikea to kit out the nursery.

And then maybe the baby could come and give me something else to do with my time.

After I have a wee rest

p.s most very thankful for my transformed wee house

So the midwife phoned to see if she could ‘drop a few things in’ for the forthcoming (we hope) homebirth. I’m picturing a few disposable mats and a set of scales. Half an hour and 4 trips out to her car later our living room is starting to look like a makeshift ICU and I’m starting to feel a tad freaked out. There’s oxygen tanks, an ‘instrument’ box, a suitcase full of wires and tubes and kidney dishes, a resuscitation kit, some mysterious bag that must be kept plugged in at all times, 2 tanks of gas and air (happy to make room for those), meds and most cheerfully a bright yellow box for the placenta. Nice. I had an interesting conversation with Caleb about that one.

The on-call starts today for the midwives so we are good to go. It’s all a bit surreal. I never would have thought of myself as ever volunteering for a homebirth and yet here I am, plastic sheets ready and waiting. Mostly prompted by a horrendous experience in the local hospital with Caleb I went in to this pregnancy demanding a c-section and slowly, slowly began to believe there may be another way, one that has the potential to redeem the birthing process for me rather than just write it off.

Who knows how it will go. Viability for homebirth is a precarious thing – you develop any risk factors or go too overdue and you are hospital bound. But for now I am thankful for the oppurtunity of facing the birth of this little one without terror and with confidence.

Now, just need to find somewhere to store all this stuff…..

A matinee movie, holding hands with jayber and feeling this little one squirm at all the exciting bits in Star Trek.

‘ARGHHHHHHH! OW OW OW! ‘@%*$£”‘

‘Mummy what happened?’, turns briefly away from Cbeebies.

‘A chair fell on my toe and it HURTS really BAD, Ow’,

Turning back to Cbeebies, ‘I’m glad that didn’t happen to me’.

‘Thanks Caleb’, as she limps away to find comfort elsewhere.

A little more education needed on empathy perhaps.