Fear and Loathing in Anti-Natal

Anti-Natal appointments, sound easy right??? Maybe if your not me!

Firstly I got into the doctors surgery to find the waiting room full of babies!! Crying babies!! Way to put a girl off before we even start!! So I get into the consultation room, with the midwife feeling have run gauntlet of toddling children, breastfeeding mum's and gawping babies, and the worst thing is the babies have a better grasp of what is going on than I do!!!

And the questioning begins, my history the fellas history every birth in either family for the last 500 years or so it feels! Amazingly enough I can answer them, but couldn't remember my boyfriends address, how dumb did I look??? I mean I know he's got a horseshoe shaped kidney and his blood group, but not where he lives!! About half an hour into the appointment my brain has turned to mush and I've stopped taking in anything she's saying. Anyway we make appointments for some blood tests and she tells me my scan date will come through in the next week and finally after an hour I'm free to leave.

Carrying a huge bundle of leaflets, magazines and badly photocopied information, I begin the long walk home. (At this point I feel I should explain that I live in a village in the middle of nowhere, that gets a bus every two hours, in theory!) So here I am trying to sneak up to my own house without the token gossipy neighbours who have nothing better to do than hang out on doorsteps and scrutinise everyone else's movements for gossip fodder, seeing the glaringly obvious see though maternity wallet! No doubt the joys of the text message would have the information flying across the channel to my Nan before you could say 'baby bump'.

The good news is that I'm allowed up to 6 cups of coffee or Coke a day, way hey! So I settle down with a coffee some choccie biscuits (hey I found one benefit, I'm off the diet for the first time in 18 months) to read the pack. First the important thing, what can I eat? No soft or blue cheese, no shellfish, no pate, only well cooked meat the 8 page pamphlet listed pretty much all my favorite foods! Not a good start on to the next pack in which I discovered Sickle Cell Anemia, Down es Syndrome, Syphilis, the possibility my body may develop anti-bodies to the baby's blood and many more exciting complications. By this time I've completely lost the plot. When the fella having finished work calls. He asks me how it went then starts on a comedy routine about how I may as well get used to a life without Stilton and Rare Steak 'cos once Peanut's born we'll be so skint we'll have to live off toast and baked beans. Just typical of his humor which normally makes me giggle hysterically before joining in, but boy did he misjudge the mood! I went off like an atomic bomb, 'Do you really thing that's funny?', 'Am i supposed to sort that as well while you swan round up there eating curry and going to theme parks?' (He'd had a weekend away with his friends last week) before slamming down the phone.

I ran round the house ranting to myself scaring the bunnies in to hiding in corner's before finding myself coming to my senses crying on the stairs with the rabbits desperately trying to make friends with licks and nose taps. Of course I called the fella back and spent 10min justifying my totally irrational behaviour, rather well even if I do say so myself.

Note to Self: Take a deep breath, count to 100 and let rip anyway!

Reality Packs A Punch

Hey Ho, The plans are rapidly spiraling in to a huge crash! I've been re-examining dates and realise there is no way I can do my PGCE this year! Not so good, and not gonna go down so well with the family. So I phone the fella hoping he'll give me some sympathy, typical bloke he heads straight for the logical cop out 'it's up to you' 'and if that's what you really want'. Like I have a choice!! It means that I could move to him rather than him having to come home tho, a choice I put to him, which he put down to 'hormones' then told me he had to go out.

Am I being irrational? Yes. Tough! I'm seriously stuck between a rock and a hard place either

1. he moves down here and grumps madly about it, and his hugely interfering mother, who by the way thinks I'm evil because I don't agree with every word she regains control of his mind and my life.
2. or, I move up there where I know no-one but his friends.

What's a girl to do?

What is an Iggle Piggle?

There are 3 easy steps to complicating your life

1. Complete uni and move home to be able to afford to study for PGCE (teacher training)
2. Get back together with your ex-boyfriend, who lives 200 miles away.
3. Suffer a 'wardrobe malfunction' and become pregnant.

Yes I have managed to do all these things since August! So it seems a good point to start a blog in earnest, not least because we've decided not to inform the family and friends for a few months until we have a sensible plan.

Currently the plan seems to revolve around the fella moving home, or to a reasonably close city (as opposed to the villages we grew up in) and me toddling off to join him. All very well, assuming he can find a job and I can somehow manage to gestate and complete the first year of the course simultaneously! Hey I can do that!! Right?

So i spent today with an Argos catalogue on my knee making a list of nursery items we'd need. Which leads to the question what is an Iggle Piggle?

Igglepiggle, played by Nick Kellington, is a blue creature similar to a teddy bear. He always carries his red blanket with him, and tends to fall flat on his back when surprised. He arrives at the beginning and leaves the Night Garden at the end of each episode in a boat, for which the blanket doubles as a sail. Igglepiggle has a bell in his left foot, a squeak in his middle, and a rattle in his left hand. His best friend in the garden is Upsy Daisy [3]. He is the only character not to sleep in the Night Garden, apart from one time when he fell asleep on Upsy Daisy's bed, and also the only character to walk on the garden path. Igglepiggle is clearly not a native of the Garden but a visitor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Night_Garden

So there you go - how could I not have known that, he's on everything!! Of course that's the simplest question, more complex ones include, do i need a changing mat as well as a changing station? Will the fella let me get Eeyore blankets even though they're pink and it could be a boy? Apparently no boy of his is having pink sheets, my counter point that the donkey is blue doesn't seem to carry much weight. And finally am I evil and neglectful because I can't understand why a mini-bath to go in the bath is now a requirement - I mean a sink was good enough for both me an the fella! And surly bending over the bath will just give me a bad bad back.

All this for a woman who's now suddenly gone cold turkey on the smoking!