Just Keep Breathing

Stop press. I've got it. The magic knowledge that means giving birth will not be as horrendously painful as I've been led to believe. Are you ready? ....

Apparently the trick is to breathe.

Yep, breathing is the future. That's it. You don't need medication, or injections, or gas and air. You just need air.

So says the woman who ran my Parent Craft class. All you have to do is remember to breathe. This information took two hours of my life to acquire. I learnt how to breathe in a variety of different ways (well, apparently it was all different ways, but it was effectively breathing in and out over and over again) and then got yelled at and told to pretend to have a contraction. I don't really know how you pretend to have them... I was always under the impression they just kind of happened. In our class, you close your eyes and relax (as much as you can relax on a gym mat in a room full of other pregnant women) and then get yelled at to breathe and then to breathe a different way and then to breathe another different way.

This is the cure for all pain in childbirth.

Personally, I think I shall be relying on a large quantity of chilled chardonnay.

The Saga of James The Delivery Van Man

It's that time again folks ... mobile phone renewal time! Hurrah! You may remember the sage I had last year in attempting to renew my mobile phone company and the resulting complaints (yes, this particularly company's customer service was so shocking I had to make two complaints!!) Following this, I decided that in no uncertain terms was I ever going to renew my contract with them, whatever the circumstances.

I therefore found myself another contract with an entirely different company and a shiny new phone. I also found another saga. I call this The Saga of James the Delivery Van Man.

My new phone was due to arrive next day by courier delivery at some point between 7.30am and 9.30pm. The timings were very vague. Armed with my parcel tracking number, I saw that my delivery left the depot at 8.30am and satisfied that it should arrive that day and sat around the house waiting and doing little jobs, mainly weeding the front garden.

My phone did not arrive. At 9.30pm I checked the online parcel tracker and discovered that the delivery company had updated their records to say that they had "attempted delivery" at 11am and had left a card. It must have been the most bizarre attempted delivery to ever take place. At 11am I was weeding in the front garden. The only way a delivery man attempted to get past me was if he, his van and his parcel were invisible. There was also no card. I was tres disappointed.

The next morning, I called to find out what was happening and was advised to call James, my personal delivery driver for an update. I called and was promised it would be delivered by 9.30pm. 9.30pm came and went and there was no sign of my parcel. I was beginning to get more than a little annoyed.

The following day was Saturday. I called the company I ordered the phone from and was told that James the delivery driver had gone AWOL with my parcel, had not returned to the depot and was uncontactable. The customer service assistant promised to call back as soon as she had any news and advised me to stay in just in case the parcel was delivered in the meantime. I waited for 3 hours. I thought this was quite long enough on a Saturday and called back to be advised by a different assistant that the delivery company stop work at 12.30 on a  Saturday (by this point it was almost 3pm) and I was very furious. I enquired about cancelling my order so that I could just go into a shop and sort this out myself (convinced that the stress of awaiting James the Delivery Man would put me into an early labour), but was told that I would need to send my phone etc back, they could not cancel the order until it had been delivered. I was also told that if I called back on Monday they would raise an enquiry with the delivery driver.

On Monday, I called and was advised that it would be delivered absolutely definitely by 10.30am. It did not arrive. I continued with my morning. At 3pm, I decided to chase them up. I was told the driver was 5 minutes away from my house. I waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited. James the Delivery Van Man eventually arrived about an hour later.

I was ready to give him my full furious. Then I opened the door to the stench of cigarette smoke. It was not a little bit, it was as if I had been sat in a smoking room with about 500 smokers for the day. I signed for my parcel and shut the door quickly.

In James's case, it turns out smoking actually saves lives! He will never know how lucky he is...
 

Mascara Mysteries

Last week, Mr B and I decided to celebrate the start of my maternity leave with a long weekend in Yorkshire. We stayed in a lovely B & B near Fountains Abbey and had a very nice few days. This is all beside the point. I am telling you this in the hope that you can help me solve my mystery.

On our last morning there, I was in the bathroom attempting to put on my make-up so as not to frighten the other guests at breakfast time (very considerate of me, I know). It was not a particularly large or fussy bathroom.

As I was busy applying my eye-shadow over the sink, I heard a tiny little tap noise as if something had fallen. I reached for my mascara and it was gone. It has been sitting on the shelf by the sink. There were no holes in the shelf, or the floor. There were no cloaks of invisibility. All the units were firmly sealed and the toilet seat was down.

My mascara was nowhere to be found. Where is it?!!!!

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....