The bored ramblings of a neurotic heavily pregnant woman – First blog
And so here it is, my first ever blog. Brought on by the boredom that is maternity leave. As much as work was tiring, annoying and actully hard work it seems now to have been a welcome distraction. You see I’m almost 35 weeks pregnant with my first child (Baby boy to be named James) and now I have no work to occupy myself my mind is going overtime. Maternity leave from my understanding is meant to be a time for mum to be to rest, get herself organised and go through the whole nesting process. It was also my understanding that during my pregnancy people were meant to run around after me and I would be the one making demands. Oh how wrong I was. Grab a cuppa, some biccies and get comfy whilst I take you on my journey…
It all started with a telephone call to my Grandad Jim. The poor old blighter is 84 and was diagnosed with Asbestos on the lungs a while back, he was so Ill I was convinced he wouldn’t stick with us long enough to meet his great grandson. Truth is although the old goat is now back on track I still have my doubts. He lives in Throckley – Newcastle Upon Tyne roughly 6 miles from Newcastle airport and I try to call him as often as I can as I don’t visit him nearly half as often as I should. Along with his asbestos lungs he’s aldo in the early stages of Senile Dementia, which depending on what mood he is in when you call, can turn into either an entertaining 20 minutes or the most depressing 20 minutes of your life for which you feel you have been robbed of! Thursday last week was an entertaining day. He managed to remeber my name before rattling off the names of all the other females in the family. He even remebered that I was pregnant on this call (the previous call he was adament his youngest grand daughter was not stupid enough to fall pregnant out of wedlock and was far to young – I’m 25!!).
“Eee hinny it’s great to hear from you, how you getting on are you feeling your pregnancy yet?” Was his first statement. This took me aback somewhat as, like I say, last time we spoke he was adament I was that stupid. I’m great, tired had a few aches and pains but other than that I’m fine was my response. “And you’ve got such a long way to go” he sighed back. I explained to him that I only had 6 weeks to my due date – 20th December 07 – at the time of calling him and had been looking like a house end for the past 4 months. My poor old Jim wasn’t having any of it. Yes he acknowledged that I was pregnant but no way was this baby due in December this year. “We can’t have a baby this christmas, I just couldn’t possibly cope!! I’m not sure you have your dates right, baby is due in December next year. I’ll speak to Mary (his wife, who happens to be a nurse) when she gets in, that just doesn’t sound right!” Stiffling the laughter/tears I said my good byes and hung up.
Fabulous not only to I look and feel like a chuffin whale, my grandad thinks I’m an elephant. I’ve now decided to record all of my conversations with him as this is just one of many that has had me in stitches. I’ll use the recordings to publish a book, one that I’m sure will make millions.
Feeling in good spirits I decided to call my nan, I hadn’t seen her for a while as she had been out in Spain visiting my folks. This was one fone call I would live to regret. My nan god love her doesn’t have senile dementia, well not that we’ve had her to the quacks but she can be more tiring than good old Jim. As soon as she realised it was me she was exstatic, over the moon I had called. Was I ok, was baby well? What your maternity leave has crept round already? Thats great news, when are you coming to see me? I’ve bought a laptop and can’t work my emails/SMN.
Oh joy of bloody joys. This coming from the woman who has to have written instructions for her tv remote. I could slowly feel the life being sucked out of me, surely it was to soon to go into labour but that didn’t stop me praying. Now please don’t get me wrong, I love my nan to bits, but trying to explain anything to her and you might aswell bang your head off a brick wall. If you tell her it once you’re telling her for the millionth time. Not one to be a twat I said I would visit Monday morning after I had popped into town for some bits.
Monday morning came round all to ruddy quickly, soon enough I was sat in front of her laptop whilst she is bring me a coffee waving a piece of paper that my uncle had written out for her. He had been with her when she got her laptop and he had supposedly set everything up for her. Looking at this sheet of paper it was not wonder she was dazed and confused. She had email accts with every possible provider, passowrds for this, passwords for that, but none that worked!! So I got started, binned her piece of paper and attempted to establish which email acct she had already used and what else she wanted internet for. Now you may be thinking that this is no great task, however I beg to differ. My nan seemed to think that email and SMN as she likes to call it, were one in the same thing. So ater an hour of explaining she finally understood the difference. I got her email set up for her, saved it in her bookmarks making sure her passwords had been remebered aswell. I then had the joy of writing down a step by step guide of how to get into her email, how to open the inbox and how to create new mail. This was the easy part, after a gruelling hour she had cracked the fine art of emailing and almost cried that she could now interact with her niece in the US. Next up her SMN, this was easy, we managed to get this one cracked within 20 minutes. So robbed of 4 hours of my life that I will never get back I took my sorry chunky butt home for some lunch and a snooze.
If it was this hard entertaining and teaching a woman who had lived a lifetime, how on earth am I going to cope with a baby who has no idea of the life before him? The mind boggles. I’ve decided not to leave the house tomorrow, instead I’ll be nesting. The house could do with a spruce and baby’s clothes need to be washed, dried and put away into the newly built wardrobe and drawers. I’m going to keep the doors locked and unplug the housefone. Only 5 weeks and three days until my EDD (estimated due date), I’m fed up already.
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