Baby Brain

I have succumbed to baby brain. I have tried to resist it, I really have, but it has caught up with me, as the following conversations will demonstrate:

Conversation in the lift with a work colleague:

Scenario: I am walking into the lift, staring intently at my Blackberry.

Colleague: *looks pointedly at Blackberry* You're not still working are you?

Me: No. I'm sending myself an email to remind myself to do something I forgot to do before I left. If I don't do it right now, I'll forget what I need to do. 

Colleague: What do you need to do?

Me: I can't actually remember. 

Several hours later at home:

Scenario: I am logged into the laptop staring aimlessly at an empty blog post screen, trying to work out what I was planning to blog about. 

Mr B: You look confused.

Me: I've forgotten what I was blogging about.

* logs out  of Blogger *

Mr B: Oh well. Did you manage to sort that training out at work?

Me: S@*t. That's what I forgot to do. 

Mr B: That's not very bright. 

Me: No. It gets worse * tells Mr B the story about the lift at work * I need to email myself about it right now so I don't forget tomorrow. 

Mr B: * laughing at my stupidity * That would make a good blog post. 

Me: B*@ll$%cks. That's what I was logged into Blogger for...

Mr B: * laughs again*

Me: * shuts down laptop *

Mr B: What are you doing?

Me: *looking at Mr B as though he has two heads* I'm shutting down the laptop

Mr B: What about that email?

Me: What email?

Things No-one Ever Tells You About Being Pregnant

1. Your bump is not a permanent fixture. In the early days it will disappear without warning, leaving you looking like you just ate too many pies (or in my case, too many cakes). As your bump develops, it will look like there is a little alien inside you. It will move around randomly and, at times, will look quite disfigured.

2. Ironically, the bigger your bump gets, the fewer cakes you can eat (the same applies to chocolate, chips and anything else you might like to eat in large quantities).

3. You will not realise how useful your pelvic floor muscles are until you cannot rely on them to function adequately in a variety of different situations.

4. Gaviscon will become your very best friend.

5. Random strangers in supermarkets will ask you "when's it due?" and you are expected to want to discuss this. You are also expected to carry on as normal when they say "bloody hell, you're enormous", and by 'carry on as normal' I do not mean 'punch them in the face'.

6. You will become stupid. I mean really stupid. You cannot resist it.

7. You will suddenly decide that the names you picked out for your child when you were 7 years old are complete rubbish and that no-one in their right mind would call their child that. Then, despite promising you would not be 'that person', you will go out and buy a book of baby names which you will read cover to cover without finding a single name you like.

8. When people you barely know reach out and touch your bump, it is not acceptable for you to respond by reaching out to touch their belly.

9. Not only will you lose the ability to see your own feet, you will also lose the ability to put your shoes on without assistance. Unless, that is, your shoes happen to be slippers or flip-flops because things would have to be pretty dire before you could fail to get your feet into those.

10. Wearing orange clothing of any type will result in you looking like a space-hopper. There are no exceptions.

Devastated

I had the most humiliating experience of my entire life last week.

Mr B has a new car. (Don't panic, we haven't won the lottery and left you out or anything, it's a lease car). It has all these fancy gadgets, one of which is parking sensors. You know, those stupid beepers that warn you when you're about to crash into a large solid object like a wall or another vehicle?

Mr B picked me up from work the other day and I went to put my stuff in the boot.

I set the sensors off.

They thought I was a vehicle.

Carry On Midwifery

During pregnancy, visiting your midwife is supposed to be a positive and reassuring experience. With my midwife, it is more like an episode of a carry on film.

At a recent visit, the midwife began by calling me by my middle name. This is not good. I do not like my middle name. I do not use my middle name. I most certainly do not want my first name to be replaced by it. Said midwife did not understand what she had done to irritate me, even after a very clear and concise explanation from Mr B, who was trying to spare her a very slow and painful death-by-Mrs-B's-evil-eye. 

She then attempted to take blood. You will soon understand why I say attempted. First, she had to find the needle and relevant vials in which to collect my blood. On the surface, this would appear like a relatively simple task, however, it transpires it requires some detective skills. After all, locating a box of empty vials on the top of the only filing cabinet in the room is rather like searching for a snowball in the Arctic (I'm sure you'll agree). 

After locating those pesky vials, she then went to sterilise her hands. Good move, I thought, until she squirted the hand gel at the window instead of in her hands. This was the woman I was supposed to let near me with a sharp and pointed needle. Mr B kept saying everything would be fine. He tells lies. 

She began with my right arm. She tried to find a vein, failed, and stabbed me randomly in the muscle of my arm before saying "oh, there's nothing coming out of that one" as though surprised that my muscle was not leaking blood. She moved to the left arm. She tightened the band around it, then proceeded to watch the vials roll off the desk onto the floor, before looking around the room in amazement that they had disappeared. By this point there was a rather large, throbbing, purple vein from which to take the blood. You could not have missed it if you tried. Hell, I could have taken the blood from my own arm it was that big. She missed. Or rather, punctured the vein in a variety of places, leaving me with a rather heavily bleeding left-arm (which later turned into the most horrendous bruise you have ever seen from a simple blood test).

This is the woman I am supposed to trust to bring my baby safely into the world. Suddenly a home birth is not looking like such a terrible idea....

Game Answers

Well, we have returned from our anniversary holiday in Grasmere, and I know you are dying to know the answers to the hangman game, so here you are...


Game One

A jigsaw puzzle made out of a photograph from our wedding day 

Game Two

Afternoon tea for two at the Linthwaite Hotel in Windermere

Game Three

A new shirt, well it is a cotton anniversary after all

Game Four

A card


I also bought him two other shirts and a pair of skinny jeans.


He bought me this:

I think he wins...

Holiday Blues

I totally have the holiday blues already. Yes, you read that right. Me, Queen of the holiday countdown, has the holiday blues. You want to know why? Mr B. That's why.

In the car on the way to work this morning, we had a holiday conversation:

Me: This is our last working day until our holidays.

Mr B: Then how many more days?

Me: Today and two more.

Mr B: So, how many days until we go back to work?

Me: Gnjorhgoh?nlb!lnbldgn*jdjbvksjb?!!!

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT BEFORE YOUR HOLIDAYS HAVE EVEN STARTED? WHY?????!!!!!

Asshats

Dear Well-Known Retailer (whose name I cannot mention because it will let the cat out of the bag),

I recently placed an order on your website. This order was for an anniversary gift for my husband. Our anniversary is on Tuesday. I placed the order on 8th May and was advised by your website, and by email, that the estimated delivery time was 6-8 working days. It has now been 9 working days.

On contacting your Customer Services, I was advised that the website information is "incorrect" and the estimated production and delivery time is actually 16-18 working days. I pointed out that it might be advisable for this information to be made available on the website as the product is advertised under the "gift" section, so it is likely that people making such a purchase are doing so as a gift. If not, there is something quite seriously wrong with them.


I was then advised by the helpful gentleman that he would see if there was anything he could do to speed things up. Whilst a 20% discount is a welcome gesture, I fail to see how this improves upon the delivery time. The Customer Service assistant did not understand the problem and pointed out that this was only an additional 10 days. Clearly, in his opinion, my wedding anniversary is a moveable feast. Perhaps in another 10 days I will have another lovely holiday booked and another round of cards and presents? No? Well, it might have been prudent to deliver my order on time then!

Please bear this in mind for future customers.

Regards,

Mrs B