On being heavily pregnant

I am now more pregnant than I've ever been, in my whole life. And it does not, repeat, not feel good. James was born 10 days early and I've been optimistically calculating a second experience to match it. Not to be, not to be. Instead, I will hit 39 weeks tomorrow with a belly full of baby and covered in a river of thick blue veins. Not a stretch mark in sight, which has to be a bonus, albeit one I'm not that excited about. I can clasp my hand around a fully stretched foot sticking out of my right hand side and stroke it. I get electric shocks which make me gasp when it's head nestles right down and grinds against some nerves. I can feel it hiccup and imagine it smiling with satisfaction when they are over.
Being this pregnant, accompanied by the two weeks I've had of period pains, back ache, the occasional contraction (i.e. a Braxton Hix with pain lasting over 2 minutes) makes me jumpy as I keep thinking, YEEHA THIS IS IT. And then waiting with tense anticipation for that repetition of a BH or period cramp to come within 20 minutes....and then it never does. The worse part is that armed with the knowledge of how brutally painful childbirth is, it's a bit like thinking I'm going to die every day, and then not. So, half of me is relieved that I'm not going through it, yowling like a stuck pig and hanging onto the bath, and half of me slightly wishes I could get it over and done with.
Talking of pigs, if they need to induce me, they do this with giant pessaries of pigs sperm (apparently, says a very learned friend of mine), which contain prostaglandin (also contained in human sperm) which apparently sets off labour. This is why they recommend sex to induce labour, however clearly you'd need to do it every hour of the day and then lie back waving your legs in the air in order to get the same effect as one or two giant pig spunk pessaries. So, that's something to look forward to boys and girls, isn't it.

Whilst on the subject of frustrations, I thought I'd tie up the outcome with work and how my last week went there, given it was the subject of much blogging think-time in the previous six months.

So, the week before I left I emailed my boss, Ben. This was partly to remind him that I was actually leaving, and partly to tell him that I'd like to organise a leaving lunch. His response was that he wasn't there the day I was leaving, along with two or three others and it was also 2 days before pay-day which meant people couldn't afford a fiver for a soup and sandwich lunch. Right. So, with good grace I said that was fine, and agreed to meeting up ten days after I had left, to have lunch with the whole team, now with fat paychecks in their brown suited pockets.

The day before the named luncheon day, everything fell apart. One member of the team's father died and his funeral was the luncheon day, four decided that actually they fancied going on annual leave and three were stuck in floods. So, I received a text, not from Ben, oh no, he is far too busy ebaying shirts with stick on woolly vest tops to communicate with his team, but from a friend who said 'you do realise your leaving lunch has been postponed.' I wasn't aware but I wasn't unduly surprised either. So, that was that. I came back to work on a day my boss was unaware of, despite receiving confirmation from me and HR that it was my start date, and I left on a day that no-one remembered or celebrated, and Ben didn't even email me goodbye on.

Chances of me going back to work for this bunch of muppets? Zero.

Right, back to baby-producing happy thoughts. I've scrubbed the kitchen floor so many times it hurts my eyes to enter the room, so I think I'll opt for a large lunch and a brisk walk with Hinba and see if that does the trick. If not, I'll have to order some chrysanthenum (sp?) soda from my brother, now resident in Abu Dhabi and into experimenting with all sorts of disgusting drinks.