Tuesday 15 June 2010

35 weeks pregnant and a slight panic

When you are pregnant you can sign up to all these websites which send you regular tips and tricks and offers and little reminders of what's going on inside and out of your body. So why does it come as a big surprise to me when I get an email saying 'Hi Flora, you're 35 weeks pregnant'? I suddenly find myself in a mild panic, worrying that I haven't packed my hospital bags yet, washed any of the baby stuff we've been given in baby friendly soap powder or prepared my husband sufficiently or myself for that matter!

The panic leads to me putting on a calming CD to try and breath through it and sitting on the edge of the coffee table whilst bursting into tears. Jam is poorly and trying to rest but comes through when he hears me sobbing and comforts me. Through the tears I sob, 'tell me it's all gonna be alright', he says 'I'm going to be alright', I sob a little more, squeeze tighter then say, 'what did you say?' He looks deep into my eyes and repeats it, and I say, I thought you said that, I actually said 'tell me IT'S ALL going to be alright, as in ME and the BABY, not YOU!' Then the laughter sobs break in and he reassures me that EVERYTHING is fine. I'm doing an incredible job and he had wondered why I was worrying about things I couldn't control, then the CD starts skipping at the 'little donkey' ambient dribbly variations on a theme part and he offers to make some tea and talk about what's bothering me.
[You may be interested to know the chap who wrote little donkey in 1959, Eric Boswell died in December last year.]

The pregnancy preview email also said I would be having whacky dreams and should write them down. I do this anyway, they are usually quite bizarre. Last night I couldn't sleep very well and wanted to get up at 5am, but forced myself to sleep some more after another trip to the loo (poor Jam has to change the loo nearly every other day at the moment instead of weekly.)

I woke having dreamt I'd had the baby, it was a boy, but I was also performing a concert for my album launch at the same time, and kept forgetting I'd had the baby, and would run backstage and Jam would be holding the baby and it was a girl, with really crusty hair, then I'd go back on stage and talk about the album and find that the words for the songs were all muddled up on the songsheet insert of the CD, which was a long thin sheet of black satin and one side of it was in Arabic, and the other side had a big lion and the words KAPLAN and I would be joking with the audience, doing a stand-up routine instead of singing the songs for I couldn't remember the words. I was saying things like, 'so, I'm 8 months pregnant and I've been watching this bellydancing DVD every day, that's right, every day, I'm really good at it, see, I'm watching it on the shelf, I'm looking at it every day, I think it's made a huge difference don't you? Then I'd remember I'd already given birth and run backstage to see the baby again....

2 comments:

  1. Everything WILL be ok..you can handle anything dear Flora! : - ) Think we need to start worrying about how I wil cope with it all..being so far away an all! Eeeeek! xx

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  2. I would think these freak outs are really normal. Everything will be fine. Like Jam says, don't worry about things you can't do anything about. And don't sweat the small stuff either!

    I'm glad that the two of you can navigate tense situations through humour.

    Incidentally, I have very similar dreams and I'm not nor have never been pregnant. Often while I'm in la la dreamland I leave babies in the trunks of cars, closets, or just plain forget that oops I have one. Sometimes for days on end. The baby is always fine, but I have problems getting over what a terrible and irresponsible mother I am and what society might think. Then I wake up and think, "huh, that was weird."

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