you got me feeling emotions

I picked up a book at the library the other day just because of the nice graphic design on the cover. It is called Life Lessons; Things I Wished I Had Known Earlier by Lesley Garner. I read it one afternoon and recognised many of my own thoughts organised and categorised. That is always encouraging!

Whenever I have a lot of time to myself I tend to read a self help book or two. This one was a collection of very short essays giving advice basically. It seemed poignant that the first story was about a woman who had an amazing life but was bored. This is a secret or not so secret fear of mine, I love my life, I am so looking forward to having a baby, but to say my career is on hold is to over estimate where my career is up to! One reason why I like to blog is to keep myself thinking and finishing of my thoughts, a way of getting my ideas and musings to a sharable state of understandability. Thank you dear reader for coming along.

This book recommends a few things that may be useful in coming months, well even useful now, pregnancy reminds me of the Mariah Carey song, ‘Emotions’. I love the line: “you got me feeling emotions". I can relate. There seems to be some extra feeling going on and not always very specific emotions to go with the feeling, a bit of churning I guess. I have noticed that with age I like change less and less and am aware that it is always good to have a strategy of what to do when overwhelmed. The author says the purpose of her book is roughly to share what she does when she is in a state! These skills are common sense but are not always at the ready when we are melting down. They take a bit of practice.

Lesley has about 5 key ideas for the average person. They are to practise meditation, gratefulness, forgiveness, letters to God and ‘taking 20 minutes’. She is not promoting any religion in particular but it has been my Christian faith that has taught me about the first four. Sometimes these things are just so common sense but they can feel so foreign if you are out of habit. It is time to practice! The 20 minutes idea is that you find a task that requires your attention for just that long, long enough to keep focused and overcome stagnation or procrastination or avoid giving up. It’s the just a little more approach and hopefully a breakthrough with whatever you are doing will be around the corner.

She also introduced me to a saying: ‘when the sea is rough, mend your sails’. I am not normally a sayings person but I like this because it is common sense. We can use periods of flux to do other things a busy life doesn’t always have time for. We can learn new things, evaluate, consolidate (possessions, thoughts), plan, dream, and cultivate friendships. So with 3 or 4 more weeks to go until this baby comes I am thinking about these things and practicing.

Thinking face.

nesting

I am nesting about the house like a possessed person, cleaning the doors anyone? What about window sills, skirting board, cupboard and drawer interiors!? Dusting! Has anyone else avoided dusting their whole life? How do you dust? I am going about with soft wet cloth. I don’t want to just move the dust with some wafft stick with feathers. This house seems unreasonably dusty, am I molting skin excessively? I say dusting is the lamest chore.

So you may be able to guess that I haven’t been working a lot so I have been getting things sorted. The baby room has been our crammed storage cupboard and under constant revision since we moved in. Slowly things are tidied and organized, all the pens and rulers in one place for example. Revolutionary. A few boxes of books have been carted back to Cam’s folks place to wait for our next house, the one with a library (and fireplace with a rug).

This week is the deadline for ‘have things ready a month early’. I do like planning and preparation so that sounds like a smart idea to me. This was recommended to me in Oh Baby by Kathy Fray. I highly recommend it. She writes a down to earth account of being heavily pregnant, labour and the first year or so of motherhood.

So this week the plan is to:

• reorganize the spare room
• store surfboards in the neighbours garage
• pack the hospital bag
• wait, must decide on hospital vs birthing unit once and for all
• put up the bassinet
• make up the bassinet with sheets and things
• try out the car seat

Sound like fun to you? I’m loving it, however the reality of a tiny infant coming home from the hospital in that outfit, packed in that hospital bag, in that car seat, to sleep in that bassinet is kinda starting to sink in.

being pregnant

I think it is worth recording what it is like to be pregnant. Heavily pregnant I think is how you describe me now. In the scheme of things I am quite lucky really. A bit of back pain that passes and I still eat relatively spicy food compared to the average kiwi. I have gone through a long list of minor ailments, a daily blood nose as my blood vessels in there got used to the extra 30-40% blood volume I am now sporting. My feet are at least half size bigger thanks to the pesky progesterone acting on my ligaments. Those loose ligaments produce a multitude of sore legs, feet, ankles, blah blah blah… they don't last too long thankfully! Earlier I experienced a terrible slowing of daily functions that apparently will return. (That share is my way of desensitising myself, a blog about motherhood is sure to require some discussion of gross things. Speaking of which. I have to push this baby out soon. What the who what?!

Those are just the physical side effects. The emotional roller coaster has been quite a ride lately. Lucky for me we had house guests this weekend too so I could really practise being spazzy amongst friends and family. I am pretty sure they felt lucky too… Gushing and fretting at this, that and the other thing. Tears did arrive to join the bliss. I will blame the hormones while I can.

Worth noting is that there is also a wee child INSIDE MY STOMACH. When she really gets going it looks like a volcano is about to erupt through my t shirt. My stomach is currently between a basketball and a tetherball size. The app’s on my phone that tell me how big the baby is say that she is about a melon or so. I am fearful of the day when she becomes a watermelon. I am pretty sure that will be close to the EDD, 20 November! How big will I be in a month? The mind boggles.

From chapter 6: motherhood

a new beginning

I really have an urge to write. I just finished a lovely book about a food critic for the NY Times. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. I would call it ‘foodie lit’. It had a conversational style, lots of foodie descriptions and recipes too. Good writing always makes me think, “I want to try that”. A bit like how you think you can dance or want to take lessons or just bust moves on your way out of the cinema after seeing Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance. So here I am, perhaps I will look a little foolish if I find I can’t dance, but it’s so much fun to try.

They say write about what you know. So as yet I don’t ‘know’ anything about being a Mum but I am about to find out! Sooner or later I will no longer be just me and Cam and I won’t be a just a two person we, we will be parents; permanently we will have a baby, we are about to become “Mum and Dad”. This blog is about that adventure, the highs, lows and perhaps the doldrums in between as I become 'stay at home mom' or 'homemaker' or 'domestic goddess' or which ever euphemism is in style.

The other book I just read was The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine (yep, that is two books in the last 7 days people). She goes into detail about the chemical differences between men’s and women’s brain, she tries not to give excuses for women to be crazy at certain times but instead explains what hormones are doing to make us crazy. Louann is in the information is power camp, if we understand what is happening we can rationally respond to our emotions. Baby steps Louann… Let’s not rush things. In any case I am pleased to announce that the hormones surging through me are doing more than taking away my memory and giving me cankles. I also really can’t wait to meet this baby. I was looking forward to having a wee one already, we did plan to get pregnant and boom! I got pregnant first try. People, well teenage girls, have asked me, are you excited? My response is always of course, and I add that I am scared too. It is just so crazy to think of pushing out another human being and then they live with you for 18 years or so. But over the last week I’ve begun to imagine our wee girls face and I am less scared she will look weird and just imagining how cool she will be. I truly can’t wait to meet our new bundle; it is so exciting that she is coming soon! 6-7 weeks away and counting.

This blog partly is also born out of the urge also to go on and on about this new phase of my life. I will still be myself and as entertaining as ever, ahem, I do hope you indulge me and come along.

From chapter 6: motherhood