the waiting game

Just six days now before I'm officially due to do some birthing.

My brain is like a hand minus its opposable thumb. It goes: pat (soft) pat (kitty) pat (tummy) etc, but cannot hold on to a coherent thought. Constructing sentences is like groping in the dark for the light switch; my language synapses have broken giving me a glimpse of some darkling future dementia...

All this though helps protect the brain from SHEER PANIC at the thought of labour and dealing with a newborn. Its like being on a nice little cocktail of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, valium and a glass of red wine.

la, la, la,

'lil.

Departures from the Isle of Work...

Yesterday marked my last day in my library job for some ten months as I go on maternity leave.
I still can’t quite believe I won’t be heading into StKilda every day and talking up a blue streak with my colleagues.
It was a crazy week too, with some big changes to my team (to be revealed soon) meaning I actually interviewed (ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies) to go back to work in a different position come end of year. I was so hyped up I thought my waters might burst and the bosses would have to get me off to the labour ward!
But its done now and yesterday left me feeling strangely sentimental. After so many years trying to conceive, suffering three miscarriages and believing I’d never leave to have a baby, it now becomes real: when I return it will be as a ‘working Mother’.
I’ll miss everyone, particularly Bunny-man, Wize-Womon, Stig, Noreen the Possum, Curly-Kat and Gypsy-Chic. Hugo the Cat will also have to find himself a new milk-bowl monitor...
Until this business of labour begins I plan to spend my days visiting the lovely Sun cinema in Yarraville to see all the Oscar films, and dawdling around the permanent collections at the National Galleries in town.

I suspect there will be some polishing too, and maybe some cleaning of cornices with a toothbrush or fixating on cobwebs with broom in hand…
Why clean I do not know as everyone keeps warning me of a new bub’s scary capacity to turn itself into a Catherine wheel of faecal flares!

slowing down and taking stock on our day of mourning

Sunday morning and I've got the TV on in the background picking up footage of the mourning service for bushfire victims. Even though there's bound to be plenty of organised religion involved in today I hope the huge gathering of people sharing their support can act as a catalyst for the necessary grief to really begin. It must be difficult for those victims to 'find time' for their emotional needs when their basic physical needs are still so far from being met, but great stories are already emerging of the community efforts to start rebuilding. Crap stories too, of looters and cheaters, but these are still far outweighed by the good in people caring for each other and animals.

I'm slowing down, and gosh it's hard. The garden beckons but my back says go easy. Sleep no longer is enough to ease the general backache of carrying this extra little being around, so I have to rest a lot more and enjoy warm baths. I miss being able to rub heating oils into the tesne places, but its not allowed. I miss seeing my pubic hair (odd I know) and being able to cut my own toenails...

I miss hugs with my husband where our groins touch and rub, but its impossible with such a big belly!
but I like this pregnancy business most of the time, and remind myself to enjoy it.
A beautiful dinner last night- sitting at a Greek restaurent in Williamstown with a view of the water and City beyond, savouring my saganaki and calamari with 'himself' and companionable in a quietude together as we prepare for the future onslaught of 'the boy'...