Category: Life

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.

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.

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.

Or more correctly, the geneticists at the Hospital.

My GP who admitted straight away that he didn’t know anything about EDS – and then asked me how to spell it so he could google it – was a little hesitant to agree that I may or may not have EDS, because there is normally a family history associated with it.

That is, until my Dad* stepped in and mentioned that him and both his sisters had all had very similar symptoms as teenagers and that one of my aunts still suffers from CFS like symptoms.

All of us with no solid diagnosis. Although that may have something to do with the fact that Dad and his sisters were never taken to the doctor for any of this.

What can I say, my Gran is a bit … strange – and not in a good way.

So, once my doctor heard that there was indeed a strong family history of similar symptoms (Gran was sick as a teenager too and as an adult, although Dad says she whines so much about everything you never know what is really going on) he was more inclined to believe that EDS is a distinct possibility.

And we’re back on the medical roundabout in the hope that something shows up this time. Sigh. I have no idea how long it will take for me to get seen because as of next week all the clinics at the hospital will be taking 2-3 weeks off. My doctor isn’t hopeful for an appointment being before the baby arrives, but hey, maybe that is for the best.

I had to laugh, the doctor mentioned that ‘I would have thought that if one has EDS and is super stretchy, that child-birth wouldn’t be super easy’. He did look slightly abashed when I told him that I didn’t have a hard time birthing Amy at all. I wasn’t game to mention the fact that my Aunt had one of her babies in her own bed just as the Ambulance arrived. Yeah, we don’t have trouble birthing babies at all.

Not to mention the fact that I ended up at the physio for a pelvis that was separating and twisting about 10 weeks earlier than it should have. (Pelvis has been hurting for about a month+ now for anyone counting down the weeks and wondering why I said 10 weeks when I have only 6 weeks ish left to go).

Oh yeah, only 12 more sleeps until Christmas! Have you got it all together yet? (I don’t).

And that horrid baby widget thing that I refuse to put on my sidebar, but still occasionally check on with my due date tells me that I only have 40 more days until my due date. We’re on the count down now baby.

—

*Dad had an appointment at the same time, so I asked him to come in with me while I talked to the doctor. I suspected that the doctor probably wouldn’t take me seriously unless I had Dad there to mention about him and my aunts and whoa, I was correct.

Just upgraded to WP 2.7 and am just checking that everything still works okay.

Ignore me over here, okay?