Dear Diary, I need to pick your brain. Desperately.
So here’s the deal: in November we’re hauling our asses on a plane to South Africa to visit family and friends. It’s a 12-ish hour stop-over flight that travels overnight. And I can think of nothing more unpleasant.
Seriously.
I prefer the thought of gouging my eye with a blunt knife (even a spoon) to imagining the tedious horror of keeping my daughter occupied for the flight’s duration. “She’ll sleep” you tell me, “HA HA” I tell you. Read the rest of this entry »
I found it (mental high five)! “What?” you may ask. My brain dear diary, my beloved brain. It took me ten months but I finally found it hiding amidst masses and masses and masses of baby paraphernalia. This baby paraphernalia seems to have monopolised all thinking patterns. But brain is back with a vengeance. 
So, was it as bad as I thought it would be? Yes with a capital Y. Oh the pain! Dear Diary, here is my Labour story:
It’s happened. Two weeks early – WTF? I thought first babies were supposed to be late! I had ‘a show’ this morning at 7am and water has been trickling out all day. No waterfalls or gushing. It’s now 9pm and still no contractions. If nothing happens naturally by 8am tomorrow morning I will be induced. Whilst sitting on the toilet this morning as water leaked out my vag, I thought that it would probably be a good idea to write down my birth plan in my antenatal notes, as I was meant to do some weeks back; I remembered that my flat looks like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb and that I would need to clean; I have also done no ‘nesting’ – the baby’s crib is still sitting in a box. Then I got excited about the idea of taking my baby girl to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Woopee! Time for a pad – can’t sit on the toilet all day. 
The big 37 week mark has come and gone: my baby girl is fully grown and if she is born any time from yesterday she will be considered a full-term baby, not prem. Awesome. Her head is getting ready to ‘engage’ and I have put together a vague semblance of a birth plan (involving no epidural – I do consider myself quite insane) that I still need to write down in my antenatal book. Note to self: write down birth plan. Other than that I am still shitting – no changes there. I have had very few ‘baby dreams’ of late, other than one significant dream that certainly makes up for the lack. I had a dream that I was in labour for what seemed like ever and when I eventually gave birth, my baby looked like a miniature H.R. Geiger Alien but cream-coloured rather than black. I remember being a little scared of the baby but I still loved it, which, hopefully, is an indication that if I breed a mutant I will still love it. So that’s good news. 
A month today … or earlier … or later – who knows? CRAP! The uncertainty is killing me. I just want to get this giving birth thing out of the way. I am feeling petrified and paranoid. Petrified of the pain and paranoid that something will be wrong with my baby girl. If I am completely honest with myself, I think that I will be able handle a deformed baby but I can’t handle a retarded one. The ‘what if’ game is seriously dangerous but I find myself playing it irrespective. One minute I am excited to meet my daughter and the next minute I am thinking about brain damage, down’s syndrome, episiotomies and third-degree tears. 
