I'm finding it very difficult to concentrate on anything remotely work related at the moment. I think the happy hormones have kicked in and I'm loving life and can think of a million things I'd rather be doing than sitting in the office with my miserable whinging colleagues.
I have to admit that I haven't achieved a great deal today. In between pretending to be the model of productivity I have been catching up on the forums I used to read. They're very useful for finding out what sort of things you might need and getting good links to websites. For example, I never knew that as well as a nappy bag, I might also need a nappy wallet. This is a smaller device to hold a spare nappy, wipes and other baby paraphernalia, which you can chuck into a handbag if you're just popping out. I found a website with some kick-ass designs. Then someone pointed out that it's also useful to have a huge nappy bag for days out or over at someone else's house and you can shove a change of clothes and toys into it, so I found a cool nappy bag too. $189.95!! Sure, it has lots of cool removable compartments (including a pocket to keep baby's food chilled or warm), a super-funky design AND it's reversible. But $189.95? Does this strike anyone else as excessive? I suppose it will get used a lot.
It is exciting to be getting to the stage where I can start buying things. I just wish everything wasn't so damn expensive, but that's one of the reasons I'm starting to buy now. My Nana has sent us our first baby clothes. I think she is convinced it is a boy. I told her I thought it might be so she probably has it in her head that it definitely is now. It doesn't matter; the clothes are lovely and very cute anyway and better to dress a girl in boy's clothes than vice versa. I'm not planning on buying any clothes just yet though. I figure we might be given loads and newborns grow very quickly.
I think we will get some things second-hand, such as a baby sling which is only used for a couple of months. We're also planning on giving cloth nappies a go. These days there is a thing called the modern cloth nappy, of which there are many different types, including the pocket nappy, where you stick an absorbent pad into the nappy lining. You can adjust the number of pads, or type of material according to required absorbency. You then scrape poop off the nappy and pad and flush it down the loo, and then shove the nappy in the washing machine. The nappies themselves come in all sorts of funky patterns and there are no pins, no folding, no soaking. I need to do a bit more research on this but I figure we'll need quite a few to avoid having to do too much washing and they're expensive. I'm also not sure how often we'll need to upgrade to a bigger size but I need to figure all this out before I can decide whether it's cheaper than disposables. And unfortunately I don't live in an ideal world, and I'm not a super-organised green-hippy-mum so I will be investing in some emergency disposables too, especially for the first few weeks. I'm keeping an eye out for when they're on special at the moment.
The clothing crisis continues but at least the weather is warming up so I now have a choice of skirts too. Soon it will be acceptable dress weather. I still haven't popped but I was sure it would happen this week so we'll see. I might be lucky and get another week or two of looking reasonably normal. I really should get Toby to take some belly shots.
I'm pretty sure I felt the bairn move again last night. It knocked on the wall of my belly three times. I asked "who's there?" but there was no answer and I haven't felt anything since. It's pretty exciting but it was hardly a "there can be only one" moment. It would still be nice to feel something a little less subtle. There's a lady in my yoga class who's almost 20 weeks pregnant and as of last Saturday wasn't sure whether she'd felt her baby or not.
Rather excitingly a good friend of mine has recently discovered she's pregnant. It's early days for her so I won't mention any names, not that it really matters as no one reads this but me anyway. She had her first scan this week and saw a heartbeat so I imagine word will get out in about a month or so. It's pretty cool to think we can hang out and learn how to be mothers together.
The Birthing from Within book that I got out of the library talks about birth art. It suggests you draw things to do with pregnancy, motherhood and birth and gives projects, such as "Pregnant Woman" or "Fantasy of Birth". I've been doing this and it's pretty cool actually as it does get you thinking about your views and expectations. It started when Toby and I were clashing one night because we just couldn't seem to communicate about how we should manage our lifestyle and household chores after the baby is born. I suggested that he draw what he meant, and I drew what I imagined when he used the words he was using ("methodical", "shiftwork", I felt like I was at work and was just waiting for "service-oriented architecture" to pop up in there somewhere). It really helped us to get to the crux of the matter and improved our communication no end. Since then I've drawn a pregnant woman, the journey of labour (a HUGE mountain) and me in labour. I couldn't quite manage to draw an open vagina and crowning head as some examples in the book had, but that possibly just highlights that I'm a wee bit squeamish about where babies actually come from and that it's something I should probably work on over the next few months. (I have been totally avoiding trying to think about it too much to be honest. Urgghhh!)
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