my-speck

Hello Baby,

well.  Aren’t you an active little volcano.  Your mum is very not happy this morning after a shocking night’s sleep.  It wasn’t all your fault, but mostly hormones.   Woke up at 2:45 am and my brain was just “BING – ON!”.   With all sorts of half-real imagininings and panic and stress.  Your Grandad, my work, your dad’s employment.   All non-you related things.   Things to do, people to see.   Aagh.  And then got a major attack of the itches all over my body for no apparent reason.  I almost convinced myself there was a small spider in the bed that had been feasting on me.  But examination in the bathroom revealed that was all just ficticious imagining.

An hour and a half later I finally gave up and got up, changed to the spare room and read my book for an hour.   Yann Martel’s “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios’.   Thankfully I was past the first story – the title of the novel, as that one made me ball my eyes out for about 20 minutes before bed the other night (though in retrospect, although upsetting perhaps helped me sleep better as I was emotionally exhausted by it.  Needless to say the other night your dad did his usual “what the hell are you reading”.  Tried to steal the book and throw it away a few times.  I protested.  Crying sometimes is ok according to my book-reading philosophy.  Ended up he still had to comfort me after the story, with his usual grumpy hug.  But I ended up with the book – so this is what I read last night).  Anyway, the story I read wasn’t exactly uplifting – small sections of a warden’s account of a man’s last hours on death row – the account written to the mother.  About 10 different versions.  So not happy, happy, joy, joy.  But it worked.  Took my mind off whatever it was that had been keeping me awake and stressed, and I managed to go back to sleep.   You then woke me a number of times – your movements at the moment when I’m lying down seem to be pretty major.  Like all limbs and body flailing around like you’re playing volleyball in there.   Its actually pretty disconcerting but I take it as a good sign that you’re healthy.   But yeah, overall I missed a few hours of much-needed sleep so today am feeling a bit shabby to say the least.

Anyway, in order to appease the rising anxious nerves, I haven’t managed to pack a bag for the hospital.   But I have written a list.   So I’ve made a start.   And you dad is in charge of labour food (mostly for him from what people have told me, but we’ll see), and he has made his list too.   Neither of us have got any further than that as far as I know.   So my list:

• your dad
• me
• camera, charger & memory stick
• cards & games for if we get stuck in a maternity ward for hours with nothing to do.  Or just so we can play cribbage between contractions.   Wishful thinking on my part.  But I’m going with it.
• my phone.  yes,  I’m addicted to my iPhone and it is coming along with the charger.   How else am I going to communicate with the outside world if there is no wifi / computer in the hospital?   What were they thinking – its a brand new facility, where were the wifi access points, we wondered when we did our tour?   Yes, again, I think you are going to subsume my entire attention after your arrival, and perhaps I won’t be thinking about the internet at all.  In fact I really think I won’t give a flying contraction.   But these are the deranged thoughts I’m frantically having as my ability to reason / think logically seems to desert me more each day the closer you come to arriving.   So I’m putting it on the list so that my brain can stop churning over it and worrying for no rational reason.
• a bar of lemon myrtle soap.  So I can smell it if I feel like it in the delivery suites.   Its a good smell.
• a big poster of the rainforest / waterfall to look at in the delivery suite.
• nightie
• jammies
• toothbrush, paste, hair wash, moisturiser, hair band
• daywear.  That is on the hospital’s suggested list.   What the hell does that mean.  I think I will just shove random t-shirts into the bag on the day.  Whatever is clean.  Pants are surely optional when you’re in hospital and have just had a baby.
• new big boobie maternity bras (yay, I finally found one that fit when in Sydney a few weeks ago, and then ordered up from the states – they arrived yesterday so now I have enough big-boob over-the-shoulder-milk-holders to hopefully be comfortable.  For reference – Anita brand seemed to be the only ones that came in big enough sizes and didn’t make me look like I was a large mono-boobed monster and felt comfortable too).
• granny knickers – yeah, I’m taking the advice of a friend and buying up a pack of granny knickers that I can THROW OUT soon after you’ve arrived and we’ve gone home.  I looked at the ‘wearable’ knickers – those incontinence knickers yesterday.  One of my friends who is due the same time was given some by another friend who recently had a baby and said they were great.   Yes, maybe convenient and I know some mums use them.  But I don’t know if I could bring myself to put them on.  Too much like your nappies.    It might just depress me.   I’ll stick with maternity pads for the moment.
• my ugg boots
• my ankle brace
• nursing pads to stop my leaky boobies
• maybe a few cloth nappies so that we can get the midwives to show us some nifty folding techniques to keep your liquid poo in.
• clothes for you –
  • 6 singlets,
  • 6 growsuits,
  • a beanie,
  • 2 pairs of socks,
  • and a blanket to wrap you in for when you come home
• and newly added as of yesterday, something stylin’ to wear home so I feel like a superstar mum.  My friend I visited yesterday had a great vintage long dress that almost glows radioactively there is so much orange and green from the 70s in it.   I don’t know I have that exact thing, but surely there is something in my wardrobe left that doesn’t make me look like a bloated whale.

Ok.  Got it all out.  Can now relax.  Schedule relax time.

Love you

mum

p.s. Byron Bay weekend beckons.  I think I really need it.