The waiting game

I am formally playing the baby waiting game. This baby is due to arrive in six days time, but at this stage I feel like I can’t possibly go the distance.
It truly feels like this has been the longest pregnancy in history – peppered with such sparkling highlights as five-month long bouts of morning sickness, cleaning products sniffing obsessions and spaghetti bolognaise phobias.
I’ll be glad to be ‘normal’ again. In fact I plan a maternity-style bonfire to rival any eleventh night affair, except mine will be packed to the rafters not with tyres, old sofas and placards bearing derogatory remarks about people of another persuasion but stacked with horrendously unflattering elasticated waisted maternity jeans, matronly looking flowery tops and bottles of gloopy Gaviscon.
Something peculiar happens to a girl in the last weeks of pregnancy. People no longer converse normally to a heavily pregnant woman – they want to talk about babies and nothing else. I find myself starting conversations with people about topics as broad ranging as the recent budget to the situation in Iraq. No matter what the subject people turn it around to bumps and babies.
“What about that budget eh? Bit dramatic, everyone’s up for the chop.”
“Never you worry your pretty little head about that silly old budget, you concentrate on cutey little baby blankets and pink fluffy bunnies.”
“Ammm, OK then.”
And why is it that people feel that it is OK to invade the space of a pregnant woman? Complete and utter strangers, who would walk past a ‘normal’ person without saying a word, are suddenly over patting the bump and taking great pleasure in scaring you with their nightmare birth story.
The last few weeks of pregnancy are torturous enough without having to hear about ladies whose actual heads exploded in childbirth or who went actually mad, as in like seriously mad – mooing like a cow and everything – with the pains of labour.
Forget the cutesy ‘Baby on Board’ t-shirts mums-to-be are prone to wearing, I’ve put in an order for a few ‘Back off the Bump or Die!’ and ‘Pregnant and Dangerous, stay well clear for your own safety!’ t-shirts.
I was to take a tour of the new wing at our hospital last week to familiarise myself with the place. The midwife who had been explaining the place described the new multi-million facility as ‘like a hotel, a spa even.’
I don’t know what these midwives do of a weekend but the last time I went on a luxury break it did not involve excruciating pain, and abundance of drugs – perhaps I’ve been frequenting all the wrong places – and the most I went home with was a ‘complimentary’ bathrobe, not a tiny human being who will drain my finances for the next 18 years. Also, as far as I know you can stay in these hotels for a little longer than six hours before they chuck you out.
I seem to be suffering from severe grumpiness; no one is safe from my wrath.
As for those scoundrels who call, Facebook and text constantly asking for news of the baby I’ve taken to switching the phone off and have left a message along the lines of….
“You have reached the O’Neill residence. There is currently no news, no sign, no shifting and no ‘word of me yet’. I am still the size of a small semi-detached house and extremely, extremely irritable. If you’d like to leave a message please do so, refraining from mentioning anything that will tip me over the edge to insanity – topics to avoid include jump start cables, 10-month-long pregnancies and 15 pound babies. Should your message annoy me in any shape or form I shall dispatch my children to your abode, have them daub poster paint stick men on your living room curtains and bad words all over your car. This will then be entirely your fault. You have been warned. Ba-Bye!