Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Nothing

    So, today is day 3 of intermittent contractions and no baby.

    Some are more painful than others, but really? Nothing is actually progressing. I suppose the only good thing to be said is that I have had bloody show, so something must be happening down there, right?

    The baby has dropped firmly into my pelvis, making breathing so much easier. I will totally take needing to pee eleventy hundred times a day over not being able to breathe any time.

    I think I’m more relaxed now. Now that things have at least started to happen, I am able to relax into these last few days (weeks?) lots more easily than a week ago when I couldn’t breathe and everything hurt.

    Sure I want to be done sooner rather than later, but I’m embracing the zen, knowing that nothing I do will really move things along unless they are ready to be moved along anyway.

    It probably helps that the contractions have been stopping overnight, leaving me to sleep mostly in peace. Hehe.

    ***

    Head on over to FruitFemme and congratulate her and Scully on the birth of their son, whom I can only assume is gorgeous. A leap into big sisterhood for Khubz!

    ***

    And it’s that time again. Time for you to nominate your favourite blogs for the Bloggies! There are loads of categories, fitting just about all the blogs you read.

    ***

    We’ll just blame my pregnancy brain for the complete lack of links when I published this. That and the fact that Amy kept shutting the laptop lid so I was in a hurry to just finish.

  • All Shiny Clean Now

    I was standing in the bathtub wearing nothing but a bra and track pants when Nathan got home from work this afternoon. Bear in mind that I am about ready to pop, so it can’t have been the sexiest thing he has ever seen.

    But I suppose you need some back story.

    Dinner tonight was going to be a throw together meal of chicken boccocini. I tend to boil the chicken first so that when I cook it the second time it isn’t A) overtly fatty and B) likely to end up raw in the middle. I have a tendency to poke things while they are cooking, which sausages? Fine. A pot of boiling chicken with bright orange fat floating on the surface? Not so fine. Being the clumsy pregnant woman that I am, I managed to splash myself with bright orange fat.

    Not such a big deal, say, if I was wearing one of Nathan’s t-shirts. Instead I was in one of my only (fitting) maternity tops and so I freaked out a little and ran to the bathroom to rub it with soaker and get it in the washing machine.

    Trust me, I am not that anal on any other given day.

    I rinsed the top in Amy’s bathwater and then realised just how grubby the bath tub was.

    And being approximately eleventy months pregnant, I decided that I just couldn’t live with a grotty bathtub for a moment more.

    Up until that point, I always thought that the idea of a pregnant woman scrubbing her bathtub by hand was a sort of myth. Not true apparently, because dude, you should have seen me.

    I will just remind you I was wearing nothing but a bra and track pants at this point. Perfect bathtub cleaning garments.

    I started off just scrubbing with a face washer and Amy’s soapy water. I quickly realised that it was useless (unless I had of wanted to scrape the crud off with my fingernails and honestly, I just wasn’t that committed) and moved on to the big guns.

    Bicarbonate Soda.

    The BEST cleaning product ever.

    Ever.

    And I just happened to have bought 2 bags the other day at the supermarket. Prophetic? Probably.

    I grabbed a scrubber, threw some bi-carb in the now empty bath and went to town.

    45 minutes later, the bath tub was cleaner than I had ever seen it. I was just rinsing all the bi-carby bits down the drain (Bi-carb. Also good for unblocking drains) when Nathan walked in the door and caught me in all my glory.

    After his ‘What on earth ARE you doing?’ question, he laughed. And then spent the next 10 minutes snickering at me.

    All I can say? Let’s hope that the whole myth of NEEDING to scrub the bath right before you go into labour is not actually a myth. I could definitely handle having this baby out where I can hug and hold him already.

    Because if he decides to hang around in there much longer, not only will I need a helluva lot more chocolate in order to cope, but I might decide the bathtub needs cleaning again.

    And I’m not sure I could handle that.

  • Goddamn Animals!

    Last night as I was cooking dinner, I realised I had been yelling at Seven to stop barking for an awfully long time. Strangely enough, she was barking near the house, normally all barking occurs at the property line as she protects us from strange people trying to post letters or answer mobile phones.

    So, I did what anyone would do. I yelled some more and then headed outside to investigate. Lo and behold, what did I find but an echidna! Quite common in Tassie, not so common on my actual property.

    echindna

    The poor little thing was terrified and had buried itself in the hay up against the house.

    I called the dog inside figuring that the echidna would trundle away once s/he wasn’t scared anymore.

    However, 17 hours later? The echidna has done nothing but burrow into the hay more, creating itself a little tunnel and hidey hole.

    Now I have NO problems with an echinda taking up residence in my backyard. God knows that we have enough ants about the place to feed an army of echidnas and Amy thinks it’s fantastic. The cat and Seven however? Are less than impressed.

    Seven seems to think that she needs to protect us from the spikey burrowing thing and the cat isn’t sure whether to ignore it, or to spend all it’s time wandering around eyeing the moving hay uneasily whilst puffing up to 3x her normal size.

    [An impressive feat when you consider that the cat is due to have kittens any day now and is therefore as big as a basketball]

    So to the disgust of my domestic pets, we have an echidna living in our yard now. Ner ner.

    Unfortunately Seven can’t seem to stop barking at it. I wonder how long until my ears start to bleed?

    ****

    Also last night, [not while I was cooking dinner] Nathan discovered why Seven barks at apparently nothing.

    There is a possum, living in the giant pine tree nearby.

    This possum likes to come into our yard and run in circles taunting Seven to chase it. When Seven obliges, the possum darts away up the nearest tree where Seven can’t get to it.

    Sort of like how your younger siblings used to taunt you when you were a kid, only as soon as you went and told on them, they promptly looked all angelic and you got into trouble for making things up? Or as soon as you went to chase and hurt them, they ran behind your mothers knees to hide?

    Yeah, the possum has been doing that to Seven.

    ****

    So an echinda making a home in the backyard and a possum that has learnt to tease the dog.

    What will be next?

    ****

    Also, what is the world coming to when spellcheck doesn’t recognise the word ‘echidna’? It’s not like I am talking about some kind of exotic animal here. Sheesh!

  • Twelve Days of Christmas

    On the first day of Xmas my toddler gifted me
    A kitten stuck up a tree

    On the second day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the third day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the fourth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the fifth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the sixth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me with
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the seventh day of Christmas my Toddler gifted me
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the eighth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Eight soiled underpants
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the ninth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Nine metres of tinsel
    Eight soiled underpants
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the tenth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Ten minutes of screaming
    Nine metres of tinsel
    Eight soiled underpants
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the eleventh day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Eleven sticky cuddles
    Ten minutes of screaming
    Nine metres of tinsel
    Eight soiled underpants
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    On the twelfth day of Christmas my toddler gifted me
    Twelve sloppy kisses
    Eleven sticky cuddles
    Ten minutes of screaming
    Nine metres of tinsel
    Eight soiled underpants
    Seven overnight wake ups
    Six loads of washing
    Five minutes peace
    Four headache tablets
    Three stolen biscuits
    Two yowling cats
    And a kitten stuck up a tree

    ***

    Thanks to Xbox for the idea.

  • I keep trying to write…

    But then something inevitably happens.

    Amy runs up and shuts my laptop lid, meaning that I get distracted.

    The tiny little kitten climbs my leg, meaning that I swear like a trooper and have to shut everything so I can pry his needle like claws out of my skin. His destination is generally my hip or shoulder, anywhere where Amy can’t throttle him and he is hard to dissuade.

    There are cries of ‘bootiful Mummy, look! it’s bootiful. Pretty shiny bootiful!’ as Amy pulls the tinsel and beads off the tree. It’s all about the pretty shiny bootiful here people.

    There are requests for food and drink and then tantrums when the food and drink wasn’t exactly what was requested. A little voice telling me ‘Still HUNGWY Mummy, still HUNGWY, please Mummy Amy still HUNGWY’ even when their is food right in front of her. Somehow the difference between chicken sandwiches and chocolate is made astronomically clear when you are Two and actually requested chocolate. How could Mummy misunderstand so badly?

    Then once Amy is mostly occupied, there I things I realise that I should be doing. Christmas baking; washing walls; swearing about the carpet stains; washing everything that isn’t tied down. I might be nesting, but goodness knows having Christmas coming up compounds my stress levels something fierce. Things that I could leave for a few more days all need doing right! now! because damn if there isn’t only 6 days until Christmas (and 36 weeks), then there is New Years to get through, then we have 3 weeks left until my due date. If the baby decides to hold on that long.

    If.

    There are big things left to do, like buying a car that will actually fit 2 car seat, buying a car seat, moving the bedrooms around so that ours will fit a cot, cleaning the carpets (Nathan’s job) and making sure that no one falls through the dining room floor in the meantime.

    There are Braxton Hicks contractions to breathe through; not painful but definitely intense. There are ribs to be kicked and I need to try and remember to shower so that I’m not found at the end of the week, unwashed with tangled hair and a scrubbing brush in my hand.

    And at the end of the day when I am able to sit and relax and not have to shut my laptop lid eleventy hundred times, there is a bed calling me.

    None of this is conducive to writing blog posts. (so that you know, I have been interrupted 12 14 times while writing this much already)

    But we’re all good here. Busy and a little stressed and it’s hectic, but we’re holding up. Nathan is working long hours so I’m not getting any backup and we’re just hoping like mad that he doesn’t have to work this weekend, or over Christmas.

    Everything is on the countdown. 6 days until Christmas and 34 days until I’m due.

    Eventually I will have time to stop and take a breath. Until then you can find me pottering (slowly. v v slowly) around my house, cooking and cleaning and ignoring requests to watch the Banana’s in Pajama’s DVD for the thousandth time.