Remember, remember, the fifth of November

Written just over two weeks ago:

So here I am writing to you from my hospital bed. You’re not due for another four weeks, but on Sunday, just as I was about to go to Mothercare to buy some baby gear (not for anything, you know, important, just the cot, the sling, the pram, some nappies, a baby monitor, your bath, a moses basket…), my waters broke.

Just like that. It wasn’t dramatic. It was more of an ‘oh my god, is that what I think it is?’ moment. I reluctantly called Trafford General, they told me to come in and before I knew what was what I was legs akimbo on an NHS-issue bed while one doctor after another poked about to see what they could see. Doctor Number One (a bossy lady doctor who you’d think would be a bit more maternal in her bedside manner), couldn’t tell. She barked at me like it was my fault and ordered me to stay in bed, overnight, in the hospital. I complained loudly that it was like being in prison (I can’t call anyone! I have to pay to watch TV! There’s no email or internet! And I didn’t pack a toothbrush!) but the Doc wasn’t for moving. She unveiled her trump card: if I went home and then came back, I could be misdiagnosed and that could lead to a c-section. As if, I thought, huffily. But I got into said NHS-issue bed anyway.

Next day, Doctor Number Two pitched up and asked me to assume the position. Just as he bent down to get a closer look, my/ your waters flowed forth, soaking the bed, the blanket, me and, I think, the doctor. He stood up and, with a slightly pained expression, said, ‘I think we can safely say your waters have broken.’ Given that the ward was now knee-deep in amniotic fluid, Doctor Number Two should be awarded the Trafford General Hospital Medal for Stating the Bleedin’ Obvious.

Since then, midwives have come and gone, I’ve been assigned a consultant, the other patients who were in the not-quite-ready-to-give-birth ward have been allowed home (or ‘set free’ as my midwife chirpily tells them) and I’m still here.

I’m currently waiting for a scan and to see the doctor again. They told me I could go home earlier but may have changed their minds since – the decision-making process here appears swathed in several impenetrable and inexplicable layers of gauze bandage. They also want to take me for said scan in a wheelchair. I said I’d walk.

As you can probably tell, I’m not the best of patients. But it’s really not my fault: in amongst the lack of sleep, the boredom and the terrible realisation that I have deadlines I can now never meet, is another, altogether more important one.

Whatever happens, and however it happens, I’ll be giving birth to you this week. If you don’t come by Sunday, they’ll induce you.

Honey, I don’t know that I’m ready. The house is barely back to normal (update on Colin the builder: he STILL hasn’t finished. I entertain fantasies of calling him during a contraction and screaming ‘just finish it – I’m having a f***ing baby!’)). Simon is, as I type, running round Mothercare doing a supermarket sweep so that you at least have somewhere to sleep when you come home. And all my plans to finish work this week, file my accounts, put my feet up, clean, wash all your cute little outfits and read some childcare books have gone out the window. My hospital bag so far consists of some lucozade tablets, several pairs of big pants and a tennis ball.

I wanted to be ready for you, but it seems you’re just as impatient as your ma. And I’m worried, too. How can I not be? The visions I had of you as a 10lb bruiser with your Dad’s giant head and your Mum’s colossal appetite have disappeared and now I’m left wondering whether your lungs will be strong enough, whether you will be strong enough. Doctor Number Two says you’ll be fine, but….

The one thing I’ve learned during all this is that you never get what you want. You will be who you will be. You will come when you’re ready (with some chemical assistance if necessary). You won’t be anything like the little boy I entertain fantasties of. You will owe me nothing and you will be, I hope - I truly hope - your own person. And it’s times like this that I’m reminded of that and all I can do now is sit and wait, and hope.

Missing in action

Ah, baby, where do I begin? The reasons I haven’t updated this blog for a few weeks are:

The house fell down. I came home from a day of meetings to find Colin, the builder, standing several feet below where the living room floor had once been. Dust everywhere. The dog traumatised and in a complete huff upstairs.

To illustrate the point about the parlous state of the (crumbling) joists, Colin clambered out of the hole-that-was-my-front-room and jumped up and down on what remained of the floor. Everything wobbled. ‘Yup, that’s all got to come out,’ he said. I was just about to lie down in the hole and pull rubble over my head when your Dad pitched up. I left him with Colin, chewing the cud. Between them they worked out a way of making it all better.

Joists fixed, Colin then went AWOL. Again. This, so I believe, is common. You are a builder, ergo you are incapable of either commitment or communication (hmm, sounds like every relationship I ever had before I met your Dad...). After a period of increasingly hysterical phone messages, Colin turned up again this week and we’re back on track. He is the only person in the entire Manchester-sphere immune to your imminent arrival. Such is a builder’s blissfully unaware life.

Then I developed a kidney infection. If anyone had told me that I could drink three pints of water and not pee, I’d never have believed them. I mean, where does all that water go? I couldn’t sleep for, ooh, about three weeks due to chronic back pain and the hourly need to drink and/or visit our freshly decorated WC. ‘Well at least when the baby’s born I’ll be able to sleep again,’ I told Simon, thinking these were just the symptoms of pregnancy. He looked at me quizzically until the penny dropped that no, I will not be sleeping after you’re born, not for a long stretch. I started thinking it might be worth having a caesarean so that I could at least get a little shut-eye on the operating table.

Due to your mother’s total fear of being branded a malingerer by the NHS, I didn’t do anything about said infection for some time. It was only after I looked up ‘symptoms of kidney infection’ on t’interweb and scared myself silly that I decided I should do something about it. So that’s how I found myself in Trafford General at 9pm hooked up to a fetal monitor.

This late night trip to Trafford (the place you’ll be born, please note) had its upsides. I got to listen to your racing heartbeat for one (I never knew that babies have really fast heartbeats compared to adults – our heartbeats get slower and slower as we age, presumably until they just stop altogether, at which point we are packed in under the floorboards to prop up rotten joists). And I also got seen by a rather luscious Greek doctor, who sauntered into the room wearing ER-style scrubs and speaking in a husky, heavily-accented voice. While I drowned in his enormous brown eyes (look, it’s my hormones, OK? I’m not proud of regressing to the level of a simpering teenager), Simon remembered to ask all the right questions.

I recounted all this to Eliza the following weekend as we elbowed our way through mums-to-be at an NCT Nearly New Sale.
‘Was he single?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘Oh god, did I really just ask that?’
I nodded and carried on looking for babygros…

And there’s more, but I’m running out of space and time: I’m still learning to drive (so far, I’ve managed not to kill anyone, though I do frequently spark road rage incidents thanks to my talent at stalling at traffic lights); your Dad is still deep into DIY and thus close to losing the will to live; your grandparents came last weekend and helped out on the house; we finally finished your bedroom thanks to help from our friend Vic; I interviewed Rose Tremain, the new issue of Transmission came out, I had a few features published in new places and went to an event with Martin Amis, Will Self and bezzie mate John Banville. And I’ve been over in Liverpool beginning research for a book I’ll be writing next year.

But, mostly, I’ve been reading about babies and childbirth and alternating between terror and excitement. Which is nothing new: I’ve been feeling that way for the past 34 weeks. So, not long now; the childbirth clock has begun its countdown.

TV killed the radio star

I’ve been trying to imagine what your life will be like when you grow up. When I was 10, my brother got his first computer, and we thought Pac-Man was the height of technological sophistication. We’d put cassettes into our BBC computer and listen to the ‘eeeee-aaawww’ as the games slowly, laboriously loaded. And then we’d play, for hours, the same game over and over again.

This first taste of technology converted Tim (Uncle Tim to you), and he got so bitten by the technology bug that he now earns gazillions as a computer wunderkind down in Cambridge. As for me, I threw computers over for books and poetry and mournful music. I was more interested in hanging out in parks with unsuitable boys, bunking off school and reading Bukowski.

(Now, don’t be getting any ideas: if I even catch you thinking about bunking off school, I’ll march you to the gates and back and every day. Wearing my most embarrassing outfit and giving you big wet kisses in front of your friends.)

Anyway, although I learned binary code at school, it never really did anything for me. I didn’t go near a computer again until university. The internet was so slow I’d take a book with me when surfing the web; it took me so long to type out my dissertation that I got a crick in my neck; and I didn’t get a mobile phone until I was 24. And in my first job, we debated whether DVDs would ever take off.

I was thinking about all this (mainly about how you’re not going to be allowed a TV or PC in your bedroom, as it happens), when I came across this interview with Ian Brown:

‘My kids laugh at me when I tell them about life when I was 14. They say "Go on dad, tell us again". There was no Walkmans, videos, Nintendo or Xboxes, no internet, no mobiles. No computers. No DVDs. There were only three TV channels. They cry laughing.’

‘But it made us hungry and thoughtful. And we had great things like the Sex Pistols. We're breeding a generation who won't invent anything. They've got everything. They're stimulated all day and they're never bored. I think there should be an hour of total boredom every day for all kids.’

Or, to put it another way: necessity is the mother of all invention. Prepare to be bored, baby…

Dad rocks

I’ve lost sight of my feet and my belly button’s not far behind. Any day now said button will pop out, most probably when you wave your arse in the amniotic air, giving it no place else to go.

And these days my stomach moves all by itself, depending on whether you’re doing star jumps, line dancing or just plain old run-of-the-mill kicking. Despite what any mother earth type might tell you, this is not all altogether pleasant experience. It’s like something out of Alien. I keep telling you as you press your face up against my skin: there’s only one way out, son, and it ain’t through my belly button…

Despite my increasing rotundity (how did my thighs get so big??), I’ve decided to get myself to The Aftershow later. It’s a new club night that launches at Sankeys this very evening. That hippy hairy band are playing (The Magic Numbnuts or somesuch) as well as The Ting Tings and about a thousand other bands. Clearly, the youth will poke me with a big stick for a) being old b) being preggaz and c) being there, but I don't care! I can still pretend I'm with the kids, even when I’m, er, with kid.

Last night, Simon (AKA ‘Dad’) was reading about this year’s Mercury Award winners.

‘I’ve no idea what the Klaxons sound like, I’ve not a clue who Bat For Lashes are and only the vaguest idea about Amy Winehouse, and that’s only because she’s always in your magazines.’

He looked up, shrugged and said, ‘Dad rock rules!’

I think we may as well embrace our parental status now. I mean, we need to get in some serious practice if we’re to humiliate you with our crap dancing, misuse of slang and attempts to wear skinny jeans/leggings/braces/jodhpurs/clown hats or whatever else is in fashion come your teenage years. Now hang on while I dance round the living room to the latest sounds from the Hit Parade…

Bad mum strikes again

Yet more bad news about being pregnant. New research reveals that 90% of mums-to-be are so whacked out by stress that it could be having an adverse effect on the little one.

The thing is, show me one woman who doesn’t worry during pregnancy and I’ll show you a woman who’s not up the duff. The second you manage to wrestle fears of miscarriage, nasty midwives and bad scans into submission, Panorama broadcasts a shock-horror-special on the crisis on our maternity wards. It's no bloody wonder we’re stressed.

For the record, honey, I’m scared witless. So far, my list of fears includes: childbirth; being a bad mother; becoming a fat mama; you not liking/loving me; being sidelined at work; never getting back the energy you seem to have sapped; backache; post-natal depression; pre-natal depression; oh-god-just-all-the-time depression; short-term memory loss; being skint; eating the wrong things; you being poorly, ill or even dying; and the fact that, once your Dad sees you emerging from the ‘business end’, things between us will never be the same again.

Watching the very realistic childbirth scene in Knocked Up last night didn’t help. I also noted that a) there was a higher than usual proportion of preggaz ladies at the cinema and b) most of us left the auditorium ashen-faced. Mind you, you seemed to like it, if the rigorous wriggling and belly kicking was anything to go by. I suspect this might have something to do with the cinema’s booming surround-sound system than a love of US romcoms, but who knows…

Dog behaving badly

This weekend I wandered lonely as a cloud through the Lake District. Actually, that’s not strictly true: you, me, Simon and friends holed up in a cottage for the weekend and spent a few days yomping companionably through Wordsworthian countryside, eating communal curries and generally enjoying a bit of fresh-air fun.

Not that you can remember anything about it. You were unusually quiet, rocked to sleep by the swish-swish-swish of amniotic fluid as I stomped-stomped-stomped over hill and dale. Highlights of the weekend included playing with the kids (Louis and Finn, aged two and three) and wondering if you’d be as lovely as them; looking at the looming Langdale hills, which encircled us as we tried (in vain) to find a pub that served food after 2pm; your Dad finding a ‘frog’ in the outside toilet, rushing in to get the camera and then realising that said frog was one of Finn’s toys (to be fair, it gave me a bit of a fright as I sat on the bog at 2am); green custard with a carved broccoli frog bobbing on top (made in honour of Simon’s froggy faux pas); singing the Rocky theme tune to Pete as we celebrated his success in last week’s Iron Man; and finding a series of pools and waterfalls about an hour’s walk from the cottage, perfect for swimming.

I didn’t go in. Claire reckoned the cold might bring on labour. I lounged, whale-like, on the shoreline, eating egg sandwiches and taking pictures of the boys as they launched themselves into the icy depths.

The dog, too, was quite keen on the pools. He ran around in frenetic circles, leaping in and out of the water, wiping his muddy paws all over the towels, shaking on the sandwiches and barking at dogs, rocks, sticks, people, children, sheep, rubbish, Iron Men, the camera, you, me, your Dad… and when he wasn’t barking he was whining, quivering or getting under people’s feet. He went deaf, too, seemingly unable to hear the pleas of ‘sit DOWN’ from me and ‘calm DOWN’ from Simon.

In the end we had to take him off, out of sight of water, to calm down. I wouldn’t mind but he’s thirteen – this is not behaviour that befits a geriatric canine.

And then I started to worry. That dog has always had a mind of his own. I’ve tried everything: obedience classes, denial, praise, special leads, special toys, pockets full of doggy treats, cheese, pieces of chopped liver, water pistols, whistles, a sly kick to the backside… nothing has ever worked. But at least, I thought, the bugger had mellowed with age.

He’s currently lying in his basket, dribbling. Don’t be fooled by this cute demeanour. He is a Devil Dog.

So my fear is this: if my (beloved) mutt runs rings around me after thirteen years of ‘training’, what hope do I have as a mum? Am I doomed to be a bad mother? Will you be a vile child? Ah, sweetheart, how are we going to work out this crazy thing called parenthood? Clearly, I haven’t a clue.

Famous for 15 minutes

Hello, son. How’s it going? You’ve been drumming on my belly all morning so I’m assuming all is well in the womb department.

It’s been an exciting week for us. First was our monthly check-up with the midwife. She had a squeeze and a measure of my belly (all good), checked my wee (all good, too) and took my (normal) blood pressure. And then she got out a strange grey stick-with-wires-and-speaker thing, rubbed it across my tummy and listened to your heartbeat. Which was VERY LOUD. The midwife looked vaguely worried, I was terribly alarmed and the trainee midwife got the giggles. Luckily, you stopped using your umbilical cord as a skipping rope, your heartbeat returned to a less ear-splitting volume and we all breathed a sigh of relief. You and I were given a clean bill of health and told to come back in three weeks.

So that was that. The second development of the week was your name. As in, because we can’t decide on what to call you, your Dad took matters into his own hands. I know that by the time you read this you’ll be in possession of a fully-working ‘I’ve had it all my life’ moniker but I can’t tell you how difficult it is to come up with something suitable. I mean, it has to work at both ends of the spectrum: rock star or scientist. We can’t call you Moonboots if you turn out to be an accountant, can we?

Your Dad’s genius idea was to open it out to a public vote via Facebook, getting his virtual friends to send in their suggestions and then choosing something from that pile. (Look, so far your Dad is stuck on Isambard Kingdom Brunel and we currently refer to you as ‘Bagel’ thanks to the incredible amounts of bread products I’ve been scoffing while pregnant. Enlisting the aid of a social networking site can only be a good thing.)

I admit, I do quite like the idea. It’s very twenty-first century (though by the time you hit your teens we’ll have chips implanted in our heads, enabling us to surf the net by the power of thought alone and you’ll mock Facebook as terribly old-fashioned). And it’s kind of like getting your 15 minutes of fame before you’ve left the womb. Warhol would be impressed.

Talking of Warhol, I found a quote from the King of Pop (Art) himself, which I thought you’d enjoy:

“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”

Now, run down to the shops and fetch the shopping for Mummy. There’s a good chap.