I got an 'I love you' from Littlun today!

I was helping him with the complexities of urinary aim at the time. It's amazing what that kind of assistance can do for a boy's affections!

Admittedly I almost lost control of the, er, situation in my excitement - but what's a small damp patch between friends?

Thanks for all the excitement folks! But you may have to calm yourselves. 1st baby, so could be a couple of weeks yet...!

Boco is under strict instructions, however, to arrive before 19 August when Uncle Chris goes back to Brazil. Otherwise feck knows when s/he will next get the chance to meet his/her Uncle, and Chia Nanda (that's Auntie Nanda in Portuguese, btw).

So I shall do my best. The midwife says I have to eat fresh pineapple and have sex. Not at the same time, I'm guessing.

Boco's head is 3/5ths engaged!!!!!!!!

Wooohooooooooo

and

Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*eyes Things To Do list, which remains extensive despite best efforts*

...and I'll cry do two loads of laundry, finish my tax return and sort out my pensions paperwork if I want to.

Hey - I'm a rock 'n' roll kid!!

ps. i am typing this naked.

Last day of the school year yesterday, so ParsleySage took himself off on a bender. He rolled in at 1.30am - quite coherently I thought, under the circumstances.

At 4.20am I was woken by ParsleySage heaving his drunken self out of bed (or, more accurately, attempting to heave himself out of bed and falling, heavily, on me instead).

A minute later he is upright - sort of - and proceeds to open a selection of household doors (cupboard, bedroom, office, bathroom) in an attempt to identify which one meets the case.

Clearly none of them does, because he is then heard stumbling downstairs.

And then I hear the front door open.

"What the ?!*?!", I think, and roll my 35-weeks-pregnant form out of bed and over to the front window.

Where I see ParsleySage.

Wearing nothing but his pants.

With his cock out.

Urinating in the middle of our front lawn.

In the pouring rain.

Beautifully stage lit by the street light outside our house, it was. He was bathed in a golden glow.

Barely pausing to laugh hysterically (ok, I lie, I was doubled over with the giggles) I rush to put on my dressing gown and glasses and waddle downstairs to rescue him.

The front door is still wide open, but ParsleySage is nowhere to be seen.

I'm about to wander out into the rain in my dressing gown to find him, when logic tells me to check the house first - and there he is, curled up on the sofa.

So I close the front door and suggest to him, in a coaxing whisper designed not to disturb the somnambulist, that he might like to return to bed.

At this point, part of ParsleySage's brain obviously recognises that he is in the wrong place, because he quotes (with impressive accuracy for one who is sleeping) a line from John Cooper Clarke's poem 'Sleepwalk':

are you ok not really no

So I give him the next line:

i seem to stop and start

and he quotes back at me, and we could go on like this all night, but I'm figuring we'd better not move on to the complete works.

So I persuade him up to bed, after a few false starts and painful-sounding encounters with furniture on the way, and he lays down on his back sleeping like a baby.

I try and persuade him to turn onto his side, so that I won't get woken up by snoring two hours later.

"Turn onto your side, lovey," I say. "So you can breathe better."
"This is good," he replies stubbornly from his supine position. The argumentative, sleepwalking bastard.

It takes ME an hour and a half to get back to sleep.

the victim of ambition loitering with intent
the human condition of who knows what percent
it's goodbye from me til now i never really cared
sleepwalk anyhow anywhere
John Cooper Clarke

I'm in charitable mood, 'cos I've just had my best poo in ages. (TMI??? Just trying to toughen you up in preparation for my 'birth blog'. MuhahahahahahahahahahaD )

5 weeks tomorrow until Boco's due date. No, I am not fed up, or ready for him/her to come out, or any of those things that people keep telling me I must be. I am a bit tired now and again but I am still enjoying being pregnant. No, I do not have 'everything ready' or my 'bag packed'. No, we have not decided on names.

I am, however, becoming used to the fact that being heavily pregnant is, apparently, a license for complete strangers to stare openly at you in the street; today a woman actually stopped what she was doing in order to gawp open mouthed at my bump. I stopped and gawped open mouthed back. This seemed to confuse her.

An hour later and I was open mouthed again, this time at the till in Boots, when the woman told me how much I'd just spent on all my paraphernalia. I had a £35 Boots gift card from my kind arty colleagues. If only they could have tripled it.

I have bought birthday cards for everyone I know who has a birthday between now and the end of September. The baby has teeny tiny nail clippers and scratch mitts and a 'top and tail' bowl. I have a cheap t shirt saying 'Relax' on it to give birth in and lots of other mysterious provisions (breast pads; nipple cream). At what point does one decide that one has enough stuff?

Because it is just 'stuff' at the moment, and it's hard to imagine a real baby. I feel overwhelmed when I think about the baby. It's hard to explain. It's sort of knowing things will never be the same again, I think.

My bump is heavy and low (although the baby's head isn't engaged yet) and presses against my thighs when I sit down. The baby keeps stretching its legs out so that outlines of its feet appear in an extraordinary spot to the far side of my ribs. It responds to food and to playing tag with its kicky feet. It calms down when ParsleySage talks to it.

It's so weird after years of childlessness to be in this situation. I get surprised when I catch sight of my pregnant self in shop mirrors. It doesn't feel like it's real or me. But here are those kicky feet again.

I think that maybe I had better stop buying stuff and doing stuff and preparing stuff. I think that perhaps I should just sit here for the next 5 weeks and admire my bump and talk to Boco. I think that not being ready, practically, is symptomatic of my not being ready, mentally. But you can never be really ready - can you? And if s/he arrives tomorrow then we have, essentially, everything we need. It might not be ordered and put together and where we want it, yet. But it's all there, I think. Somewhere.

I think I'm allowed to call him ParsleySage now.

One of the many million things I adore about ParsleySage is that even his sleep-talking is of a literary bent.

I am gradually becoming acclimatised to sleeping through his nocturnal mutterings, rather than constantly waking up saying "What?" and "Pardon?"

But it so happened that last night I was awake owing to Pregnancy Bladder, and caught this little gem, which amoosed me.

"Hail, Caesar!"

mutters ParsleySage,

and then adds,

"for fuck's sake."

Does anyone know if they are going to repeat this on any digital channels or if it can be downloaded from the web anywhere?

Morelearning had recorded it specially... and guess who went and hit the delete button by accident

Just found this quote:

"In the Huichol tribe of Mexico, the presence of the baby's father [during labour] may be required so that a string can be tied round his testicles on which the woman can pull as each contraction mounts to a peak of pain."
- Rediscovering Birth, Sheila Kitzinger.

Now, where did I put my Birth Plan?

Unlike my consumption, which has returned, due to catching a cold. Oh, joy!!!!

Morelearning has gone off to work with the remains of a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake and the furrowed look of someone who was up until a ridiculous hour of the morning marking exam scripts.

Actually that last bit's not true. Even in my washed-out, floored with exhaustion state this morning I couldn't help but notice how lovely he looked and have a little inner phwooaaarrr.

Unlike me (bed head hair not washed for 4 days, sweaty maternity nightie, pile of snotty tissues next to the bed). Which probably explains his look of grave concern, i.e. "look at the state of it. how did my life come to this?!" "poor wee angel, on last legs, needs looking after".

So: I have washed my hair and made myself a bit more presentable, and now my feet are going up and the telly is going on. I am having a Taking It Easy day, and I am not going to so much as glance at my Things To Do list or think about the fact that there are now LESS THAN 7 WEEKS!!! until Boco's due date.

PS. My mother, bless her, swept all the floors before she left. She drives me potty, but I love her to bits.