The antidote to domestic organisation

...except that I don't think it is.

For anyone who has known me over the last 9 months, they will know that pregnancy and Mrs Mal do not mix particularly well without there being trouble of some sort. Allow me to explain.

First, it was the sickness. I couldn't even open the fridge without being sick. It smelt of "fridge" and this, apparently was not to my stomach's taste. Neither was the kitchen bin. Neither were certain shops. I felt like I was welded to a washing up bowl and a bottle of water for the first 20 weeks. Including at work, on the shop floor.

Then it was the crashing tiredness. I was bordering on the narcoleptic. I would sleep, go to work, come home, sleep a little at lunch, return to work, and then sleep all evening. If I wasn't sleeping, I was in a zombie-like state, usually prodded awake by Mal to make sure I wasn't dead, and to offer me food.

After the tiredness came the aches. The aches turned into stabbing pains, which actually made me catch my breath and nearly fall over. The stabbing pains (sciatica) then turned into PGP (Pelvic Girdle Pain, formerly known as SPD) which meant I was referred to physio. When I turned over in bed I could feel the bones in my pelvis moving about at the front. Until now I had no idea that the pelvis wasn't a solid ring of bone! This meant I was on crutches from about 14 weeks until It got better, which was around 29 weeks.

All this time, with the tiredness, the sickness, the gnawing aches, pains and general feeling that your body that has functioned in a particular way for the past (in my case) 28 years, was then compounded by having a less than understanding boss at work. When I'm not upduffed, not much fazes me. I just get on, I cope, and I get things done. This has been a huge shock to the system. Simple things such as not being able to carry something, bend down to pick it up, stand up straight, stand up... It's just such a culture shock to me because (and I am sure Mal will confirm this) I am most vehemently independent in a capability sense. That is, if flat-pack furniture needs assembling, he doesn't get a look-in. Same for any shelves needing put up, the garden, the painting, car maintenance, carrying something - you name it. I am just not a lady-like girly-girl. I have felt so weak and feeble (that came out as feak and weeble in my head - weeble's not too far from the truth, lol), having to ask for help has been another shock too. Luckily Mal is one of a very rare breed of gentlemen, and has, I think, almost enjoyed being able to help his wife. It's never happened before.

Back to the boss. She didn't understand as much as I could tell her, that I couldn't do certain things now, like work over 5 days in a row (I was nearly dead after 3) or do 12 hour shifts (I could barely keep my eyes open after 6), or lift a box, or remember things without writing them down. She didn't bother to read the company's maternity policy, which explained in fairly minute detail about extra things I was allowed (extra breaks, risk assessments, uniform, etc) and went about her duties being almost deliberately obstructive. This caused me no end of stress, which compounded everything I've mentioned so far. I lost count of the number of times I got home and just sobbed because it was all too much.

On the advice of my physio, I was no longer able to stand for 8 hours a day at work. Rather than sign me off or find something else for me to do, they hired me a wheelchair. Which was actually great as it meant I could get around with minimal fuss and not be on my feet. The difference in attitude from customers was amazing too. I would be blanked totally by some people some of the time. Not once was I blanked when I was on wheels. I mean, what sort of person would be rude to someone using a wheelchair? It just proved to me that however people might see you, they do see your disability too if it's got a visual cue.

After the sickness and the tiredness and the aches and the pains and the rotten boss, came the fainting! At about 25 weeks, I started fainting if I stood up too quickly, or if I sat up a bit too fast from lying down. I discovered this by taking buddy and his sister Yoda for a walk along the canal towpath near our house. Or rather, they took me. The day was particularly humid, and in order to get back to our house, we had to walk up a large flight of steps. The dogs may be small, but they are also mighty, and they towed me up them faster than I would have liked. When I got to the top I was seeing stars, and I had an amazing moment of clarity in which I realised that unless I sat down, I was about to fall down. So I sat down pleading inwardly with my brain not not let me faint. If I did, I would have let go of the dogs' leads and they would have run into a main road and in all likelihood would have been squished. So I sat there, breathing, and a van pulled in and was about to call me an ambulance when I asked him not to as I was just a bit light headed. I sat there for another 5 minutes, and regained composure. Bless that guy for stopping though. At this point, I got signed off work.

As well as all this, the hormone levels in my body have given me back my teenage acne-prone skin, and my face and back are just a huge mess.

The fainting thing continued a while, and then it gradually phased out. For about 2 weeks I felt ok - back not too bad, hips although sore, were tolerable, ok skin not too good, but apart from that, not doing too badly.

And then the itching started. I started to itch on the soles of my feet, which I thought was just a sign that they might be a bit swollen and I might need to get the pumice stone on them in any case. Then it spread to my palms after a few days, and last Thursday I woke up itching like I never have before in all sorts of places - thighs, backs of knees, calf muscles. All without a hint of a rash - just red claw marks that I had left on myself.

So, I phoned the community midwife number who suggested I go to a chemist and get some cream for it. This rang alarm bells as I knew from somewhere that you should keep an eye on anything being particularly itchy. so I rang the hospital, who had me in within the hour for blood tests, foetal monitoring and urine samples.

they called me back at 6pm the next day with my blood work and said I needed to go in the next day to begin treatment for Obstetric Cholestasis - whose classic symptoms is itchy soles of feet and palms. With this nice liver complaint, they like to evict babies a little bit early. So now I am 38 weeks... I am booked in for induction tomorrow.

Pregnancy really has turned me into a moany old cow, and I don't like it one bit. I am looking forward to tomorrow for 2 reasons - I get to meet this fantastic little person who has been making me laugh and wince in alternate measures, and I also get to be not-pregnant-any-more.

So, I think although the road ahead will have many challenges, I will find them easier to cope with rather than having to cope with them and be uncomfortable in my own skin.

so, here's to motherhood.

Wish me luck!

Reading someone else's blog about standards of grammar etc. has got me thinking.

I have recently considered some things which bother me - the lack of teachers who are willing/able to spend the time with pupils and teach them one-on-one how to read, how to use phonics. Not just the gifted and talented pupils, but every single one, including those who find it incredibly difficult.

I had a friend whose brother couldn't read when he was 8. She had great difficulty too in reading, and her parents just didn't bother with either of them. I helped her learn phonics (aged 14) because she had huge difficulty in writing. She used to just panic when she didn't know how to spell a word and write any old letter that came into her head. After teaching her phonics ("if you can write how it sounds, the person reading it can sound it out and have a guess what you're trying to say rather than being at a total loss") her grades improved in her written work. It only took a couple of weeks. Why at 14 and a pupil myself did I have to do that? Why had no teacher bothered?

Which brings me onto my next point. Why did her parents not notice? Why did they not do something to help? I think this society has become quite detached from their own childrens' education. They are all for shouting the odds if their perceive there has been unfair treatment in the playground, but a lot of parents just don't engage with their kids' educations in a meaningful way at all. They can't do much reading at home... or they'd notice their child was struggling. Wouldn't they? Or did the government of the time fail them too, and forget to teach them how to read?

The government has put so much pressure on teachers to jump through hoops and make the children exam-passing machines, that they seem to have forgotten to leave the teachers time to spend teaching the children. It's now such a social norm for both of a child's parents to be out at work, that's where the reading time has gone. I think the TV license is great value if CBeebies is your main form of childcare. Coupled with the fact that teachers are spread so thinly these days through no fault of their own is going to culminate in a disastrous mess sooner or later.

I am determined that my boy (whom I get to meet this week) will have a Mum who will read to him, sing to him (poor thing!), and teach him, and when he goes to school, will be asking the teacher how I can help him from home so he is able to excel in the classroom. I think it's my job as a parent to know what they are teaching him.

I am determined to break the cycle: Government interferes with good teaching, standard of education drops, parents powerless to do anything to help due to the pressure of keeping a roof over the family's head, government gets more involved because standards are slipping.

The second dilemma that has been eating away at me, is that unless we make sure the above happens - English being properly taught in schools and at home - we are going to witness the creolisation of a pidgin, and txt spk will become a new language. It will be fascinating from a linguistic point of view, but as a scholar (read: pedant) of English, it will be the death of the language as we know it.

A creole is created when a pidgin (an auxiliary language that is primarily a simplified form of one language, with a reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation) has a new generation born into speaking/writing it, and that generation adopts it as their first language, giving it a proper grammar (this is an innate human capacity, and if you want to read some fascinating stuff, go and read loads on Nicaraguan sign language) and uses it every day.

I suppose it would be an interesting form of spelling reform, in any case. It bothers me though. I like my quaint spellings, and my unpredictably conjugating verbs.

There will be loads of holes you can pick in everything I've said. I blame my brain which probably looks like swiss cheese due to pregnancy and how forgetful it has made me. It's a basic mind dump on a load of stuff I have been thinking of for a while now.

I hope my brain improves after I get rid of the squatter in my uterus. It probably won't though due to the impending sleep deprivation!

I have waited in for most of today for my rocking chair to arrive.

And it is now here! Wireless broadband is a wonderful thing. I am sat in the nursery in the rocking chair, gently moving back and forth, with my Mac on my lap, and the dog refusing to come in the room on accont of the fact that there is new furniture in here and that it *moves*. Buddy does not like things that move. They may push him, or eat him at any moment if he is not constantly watching them. This explanation does not work for the issues that he has with the ironing board though - it is inanimate. The only thing I can think of is that the ironing board is in league with the iron, which has a long length of flex that might leap up and devour him like a boa constrictor.

I have a fridge magnet that says:

"I hope when my children look back one day
They remember a Mum who had time to play.
Time spent cleaning, time spent cooking -
Children grow up when you're not looking.
So hush now, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep."

Indeed. I'm rocking my baby, and admiring the cobwebs. I'll deal with them later.

He may have had a great time on a gin palace in Cannes, but he is mightily hung over.

Great success!

Urgh. I feel like I have jetlag. I am an almost total zombie. I had to get up at 4.30 this morning to give Mal a lift to Heathrow, because he was going on a team trip.

Mal sent me a text message at 9.19 saying he'd landed in Nice. They had no idea where they were going until today. I have just been further updated, that they are now happily installed on a yacht in Cannes harbour. Thanks for making me feel better about the jetlag and the housework that needs doing.

Wash the floors Cinderelly! Clean the kitchen Cinderelly!

Had the first of my NCT classes today.

Had I not already had a birth preparation class in the form of a Hypnobirthing course, I think I'd be at a bit of a loss. They give you lots of information and show you lots of pictures, and then reinforce it with a big dose of "it's going to hurt a lot", and a lot of our next class is going to be in reference to pain relief. Oh joy.

I really wanted to stand up at a couple of points in the class and say "it doesn't have to hurt! It doesn't have to be like this!" But I think it would have been wasted on some of them. Teacher included.

Things like saying that the midwives will only pay attention to you when you go in if you make a lot of fuss, and hop about and writhe in agony, and whinge and complain and make like you're in a "TV" version of giving birth.

It would be a pretty shit episode of casualty if the labouring woman lay there deeply relaxed, breathing through her contractions, and didn't whinge, scream, shout, or create a fuss, but just lay there, breathing, and suddenly she had a baby. I've seen it - I've been watching a lot of hypnobirthing videos and none of them have the yelling etc. Just peaceful, calm, relaxed atmospheres, in which women give birth with virtually no pain, and have bright alert and happy babies.

Reading this back I sound like a right old hippy. I just can't put into words how unneccessary I believe all of the drama to be. And I hope I can prove it, whenever the big day arrives.

I reserve the right to eat my own hat though.

Still - I did learn some things today. like about colic, how babies turn during labour, and the people we met seem lovely.

I shall focus on the positives.

I have spent the majority of the evening/afternoon excavating the understairs cupboard. Another 2 black binbags full of stuff are leaving. One is heading charity-shopwards, and the other is heading recycling/binwards. It feels good for the soul, ridding yourself of crap that has been weighing you down.

I feel horribly guilty for making Mal live like this. He is less tolerant of mess than me. And I have made him live like this for 6 years. I have been so lazy and rather than making the decision to get rid at the time - have stashed away 6 years' worth of unwanted crap that I couldn't be bothered to deal with until now.

I have the kitchen drawers in my sights tomorrow.

Then next week I am going to tackle the bedroom. It doesn't sound like much, but the bedroom is arguably the worst of it all. It's just got mountains of crap in there that we put there in times of panic-tidying, on the grounds that nobody ever needs to go into our bedroom except us. It's embarrassing. I have actually avoided having people over to the house as it's been in such a shit state. I have rinsed out all of my friends' hospitality too much. I usually turn up with cake or somesuch so it doesn't feel like I am completely freeloading.

After the kitchen drawers are done, then I need to knock the dining room into shape a bit - I have put things in there that are intended to go there - I just need to find places for them now.

I ache all over. I think I might have overdone it a teensy bit. I shall find out tonight/tomorrow depending on how crap a night's sleep I have and how much I can't move in the morning!

I might have to delay the kitchen drawers by a couple of days in that case... hmm...