Barren Mare

Where does the time go

We will walk on a hill
Red hats and blue coats, and everything still.
Snow will cover until
We can't tell the sky from the ground.
Where are the buildings, the old wounds of mine?
Did I ever once cry?

Waiting for you to arrive,
Where does the time go?

                        - The Innocence Mission

Last week, I found myself in the first of my antenatal classes (session one: early labour & pain relief). Because of the house move takes outside the boundary line for my previous clinic, I was forced to change GP surgeries (farewell, Dr Best Friend) and thus am a little late in gettig signed up and started on the classes.  Consequently, I was the second-most pregnant person there.  Also, seemingly for the number of weeks, the largest.

The new surgery is located in a slightly posher area of the city, so the attendees were similarly rather upscale.  All the other women seemed to be tall & well-groomed, lots of shiny hair and manicured nails, wearing cute little trendy tops over relatively neat rounded bumps.  One girl even had on lovely spangly silver sandals.  I on the other hand, am short and presently look like I am carrying around an oversized beach ball in my midriff.  It probably didn't help that I was wearing a slightly too small shirt that day, and it was straining over the bump.  Also I could not get comfy on the hard plastic folding chairs provided, and sat squirming for an hour and half while all the other madonnas reclined serenely. 

The midwife went around the room and asked everyone to say what we liked and didn't like about being pregnant. I was next to last, so had plenty of time to listen to everyone else's catalogue of joys & woes. When it came to my turn, there was part of me that wanted to shout: "How can there be anything bad?  What's not to like?  I'm still walking around on cloud nine that this has happened all!"  And then of course I stammered something about there being highs & lows throughout (morning sickness early on, total sleep deprivation at present- but happy! very happy!) Then I realised that traitorous as that feels sometimes, it is the truth- and one of these days I am going to learn to stop apologising for having normal reactions to the essential discomforts of pregnancy. 

Fortunately, I did not have time to dwell too much on the never-ending dichotomy of the pregnant infertile, because the demonstration of a plastic baby rammed into a life-sized plastic model pelvis was so riveting.

Some of you have noted the apparent swift passage of time- as you might expect, because it's been happening to me, some days it feels like months gone in the blink of an eye and other days it seems as if I have been pregnant f-o-r-e-v-e-r as well.  There was a large chunk of time round about the halfway mark where it seems like the days were dragging, that everything was suspended in molasses, and all I did was wait- wait to move house, wait for a scan, wait for a test result, wait to go off on maternity leave, wait for the baby to arrive. Lately though it seems as if I am trapped on the fastest luge run in Olympic history, and it all seems to be going way, way too quickly.

I remember extremely well when I was in the waiting room of infertilty- where everything seems to take longer than it should- tests, appointments, the start of an IVF cycle, the two week limbo.  It seemed then like everyone around me was popping out babies with lightening fast speed.  Friends produced one child, then two- in the time I was taking to even produce two lines on a pregnancy test. And I watched as all their milestones passed, feeling like such a spectator, a wistful bystander. When you're stuck in the trenches with no end in sight, everyone else's nine months (and all the days thereafter) seem to go by so seamlessly.  I know now from the other side that it doesn't really quite work that way, but the memory is still so fresh in my mind.

If there is one thing that I take away from the whole experience of infertility, it is that feeling of watching precious time slip through my fingers, with all that pent up expectation and longing. And so even I could never possibly sum this up in a few sentences for a roomful of glamorously pregnant strangers- the best thing about this pregnancy is that I feel, I really do begin to believe, that there will be something at the end of this- that there is finally something to hope for. 

The race is on

We got the keys to our new house on Sunday- yippee! Our initial euphoria was short-lived, however, as we discovered that it needs quite a bit more doing to it than we had originally anticipated- that is, there is no carpet, no floor covering, no tiles, bare bulbs everywhere and no decorating apart from stark white walls.  The acoustics when the dog barks are quite ear shattering.  I guess in reality we knew we would have to do all this, but we were simply in denial.   

We spent most of the week not to mention the entire weekend traipsing around the shops trying to organise all of the interior decorating in one fell swoop. We can't really move in properly until we get something down on the floor, so for the time being we are still camped out in the rental flat.  Fortunately both E. and I are capable of being ruthlessly decisive about purchasing fixtures and fittings, but it's frankly exhausting, not to mention eye watering expensive at times, since we don't have the luxury of time to do a lot of price checking and shopping around.  I feel like the clock is tick, tick, ticking on to my due date- now only about 8 weeks away. Aieee.

Plus, all of this scurrying about like decapitated chickens is just to accomplish basic home furnishing, which means I have yet to acquire any baby items whatsoever.  We keep driving by the big baby gubbins supply store- the dog and I eagerly hang our heads out the window, panting and drooling (albeit for different reasons). And then instead I find myself in the the paint aisle of the DIY store arguing about the respective merits of natural calico versus natural hessian. Or possibly natural wicker. 

Given that we both feel like we are in never-ending blue-arse fly mode, the decision was taken to proceed with bumping my maternity leave up a bit- so I have just two more weeks of work. This is probably just as well, since people are beginning to giggle when they see me coming down the corridor.  Even if it means a bit less time at the end, I'm hugely relieved to be going which to me suggests it's probably the right thing to do.   

Now if I could just get something as simple as a phone line connected.  Anticipated hook-up date is THREE weeks from now, plus another week to ten days to get internet service. A bit aggravating since I think for the phone, all they reallyhave to do is flick a switch at the exchange down the road.  But there is not much I can do, except gnash my tiny teeth and soldier on.

   

Castle Bloggage

Aha. The phone is still not hooked up, but it's kind of become a moot point anyway since it turns out that we get the keys to the new house next week. For which, yay.  No doubt it will then take another 39 months to get the stupid phone line installed there; however, it means we can draw a line until the futile exercise of trying to get some service in the stupid rental flat.

In the meantime, we've gone on holiday for a week. Nothing fancy, just a cottage in the northeast, an area in which I have not previously spent much time in, but thus far it is very pleasing and pretty albeit in a rather waterlogged fashion.  The house is basic yet very cosy, and it has a huge beautiful private walled garden so that Little Guy can romp to his heart's content.

I owe many emails to many people, and I apologise for the ongoing lack of communictaion. But I'll have to be brief here, because this posting finds me checking in from the world's most expensive and possibly slowest internet connection.  Plus I can only open one browser window at a time. It is however, located in a rather improbably grand castle, complete with faux ceiling roses, vast fireplaces and slightly tasteless statues of, er, cavorting wood nymphs and such like.  I think there was actually a real boar's head on the wall when we came in.

So for sheer novelty value, it makes a nice change from Cafe Oobleck.  If it ever stops raining, we will take Little Guy for a walk/waddle through the woods afterward, and maybe there will be some cake and hot chocolate in the local bakery/cafe later.  The Apocryphetus seems to be enjoying herself so far, or at least I am guessing so, given the vigour with which she is punching me in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen at regular intervals. It's all good.