Weeks 31-33: the confinement December 18, 2007
Well, I’m finally on maternity leave. It’s a very weird feeling, knowing that I have voluntarily left a good job to have a baby, and before the baby is born I get to hang out on the couch and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer AND get paid for the privilege. Not a bad deal, once my hack agency sorts out my lost maternity certificates and actually PAYS ME.
Now I am officially confined, as the Brits so love to call their pregnant women, I am coming up with new and inventive ways to be the best possible hausfrau for The Beloved, what with him being the main provider of income and all. Today’s agenda has followed thus:
8.30am: Make The Beloved sandwiches. Admittedly this is not the first time I’ve made him food, but quite probably the first time I’ve ever actually voluntarily arisen before I needed to and made food for him that hasn’t involved also making food for myself and subsequently eating it. Retire to bed. Contemplate nap. Read graphic novel instead.
9.30am: Arise. Officially. Decide that as an act of defiance I will not get out of my pyjamas all day. Partake of breakfast; check blogs; consider taking constitutional before lunch. Decide instead to do some godamn housework instead of sitting around on my arse all day. Such housework, today, has consisted of:
- Yet another bloody load of washing. How can two people go through so many clothes? I ask this because since I have become the size of a small beached whale, I have found my acceptable-in-public wardrobe reduced to about two items and a heap of underpants. Yet the washing pile ever-remains.
- The dishes. Our dishwasher (the mechanical one) has kicked the bucket, so we have resorted to using old technology for cleaning dishes. Ie, the hands of a hausfrau. Our kitchen is one of those in which if any single item looks remotely out of place, or if a single dirty dish is placed within eyesight, the entire kitchen looks as though it has been heavily over-populated by first year university students. Don’t start with me, I used to be one. I know.
- Tidying of the bedroom. Honestly, you’d think first year university students had taken over our entire flat. Why does it still seem, as my late 30s gallop toward me, that the floor or a chair is an infinitely better place to store your clothes than the wardrobe? Why is that?
- Started packing for our imminent move to a slightly smaller town in just under two weeks. I have so far in one day managed to pack an entire wardrobe’s worth of stuff (linens, baby clothes, fragiles), PLUS about 1/3 of our CD collection, PLUS emptied and boxed up our bathroom cabinets (X 2).
12.30pm: Time for lunch, and a spot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
12.45pm: Take nap on couch mid-Buffy.
4pm: Awake and consider more housework. Decide on fruitcake and hot chocolate instead.
4.30pm: Begin Mario Kart marathon.
And so the days continue.
While I could deffo get used to this lounging about lark, the Protestant working class in me does harbour some shreds of guilt about how I’m sitting about not really doing much other than breathing, eating and taking in popular culture. Then the modern, university-educated part of me kicks in and boots the Protestant over the head, because hell, growing limbs and brains and eyelashes and kidneys is damn exhausting business, and besides which, I’ve worked a demanding, full-time job that includes a 1.5 hour commute every bloody day for pretty much every day of this pregnancy until yesterday, so fuck, I’VE EARNED THE RIGHT TO WATCH BUFFY ON THE COUCH AND EAT FRUIT CAKE IN MY JIM-JAMS.
And at least while I am at home relaxing I am in a much better position to restrain myself from punching strangers in the face who insist on gazing in some kind of weird stranger-awe at my belly and asking in supposed jest, WOW, ARE THERE TWINS IN THERE?? Instead of hi, how are you?
No, I’m just fucking big, my kid is big, and thanks for reminding me. Like I’m not already becoming vaguely nervous about pushing something THAT big out of something THAT small.
