Insomnia: I CAN'T GET NO SLEEP

Yes, in the words of Faithless, those great sages of 1996, I need to sleep I can't get no sleep.

The baby, meanwhile, is sleeping like, er, a baby.

I'm not sure why people use that phrase, as "sleeping like a baby" clearly doesn't mean lying in a crib suspended between two trees in a gentle forest resembling Tellytubby Land, rocking gently while a soft breeze lulls the baby into a peaceful pink-cheeked slumber more profound than that of Sleeping Beauty, but refusing point blank to go to sleep until well past midnight, needing to be rocked by a knackered mother for half an hour thereafter and then waking at two hourly intervals for a bit of boob following at least twenty minutes of squeaking and flailing arms about while Anxious Mother looks on nervously to check Baby has not fallen victim to some terrible accident in the co-sleeper.

That very same Anxious Mother is not being helped to sleep by either of the following (both entirely non-baby related):
a) Classic 1996 dance anthem Insomnia is now stuck in my head.  As pleasant as the memory of those years of GCSEs and trying to get into clubs wearing a sparkly blue bra top and so called "hipster" trousers, neither of which I shall ever be able to wear again, may be, it isn't conducive to a peaceful night's sleep.
b) Upon reflection on the poor state of my finances, I decided to ditch the decaffeinated tea I have been drinking for the past year in favour of the caffeinated version, purely because the former only comes in small boxes of sixty or so teabags, thus making it less good value than the larger boxes of so-called "regular" tea.  See how thrifty I am?  See?

The Devil's Own Drink

Given the number of cups of tea I am prone to sink in a day, combined with my lack of tolerance for what must surely be one of the world's most addictive sleep-depriving substances after a year of withdrawal, I am now, to use another analogy from the unsurpassable dance music of the nineties, about as wired as Keith Flint from the Prodigy singing Firestarter in a vat of Red Bull whilst slapping his head repeatedly.

AND THE BABY IS SLEEPING.

This can only mean that come tomorrow, yet another attempt to get Piglet into a routine that does not involve going to bed past midnight and sleeping on and off until nearly midday is going to fail, as I will be too knackered to implement it.  And meanwhile, everyone from my NCT class is busy breathing a collective sigh of relief that their babies now sleep virtually through the night, thanks to their rigid routines.  I have not felt like such a failure of a mother since July, when all seven expectant mothers in that class managed to pop out their babies before me, despite mine being due third.  THIRD.

Perhaps this is why their babies all seem to have such superior circadian rhythms, because they have been in the outside world for longer (I hate to say they are "older," preferring to rate babies' ages by their conception dates, or failing that their birth weights, to make myself feel better about the being last situation).  Not that I am in any way competitive or anything.  My life in no way resembles that scene in Baby Boom when Diane Keaton overhears the pushy mothers in the park discussing all the classes their babies are doing so that they can get into the best nursery and start on a lifelong course of academic achievement culminating in graduation from an Ivy League university.

Although come to think of it, that's no guarantee of success.  After all, I went to Oxford and here I am, in a state of such abject poverty that I have to buy caffeinated tea because it works out slightly cheaper than the decaff, and taking detours to Wilkinson's to buy the toilet roll that's on special offer.

Anyway, I must go, I have to keep the beast in my nature under ceaseless attack or something.  I can't get no sleep.

Horrible Itchy Disease

Woman in the last days of pregnancy is not a pretty sight.

I, for example, have just thrown up the sole thing I have eaten today-a fried egg sandwich-and after three hours sleep it's all I can do to move off the sofa in order to search the cupboards for stray crisps.  That is, if I can allow myself to eat anything at all, as I have also convinced myself that I have a terrible liver condition which is slowly poisoning the baby.

It all started last night.  I had been itchy, on and off, for quite a while, but last night's itching was on a whole new level.  My mother had kindly given up her bed and allowed me to sleep in her double while she suffered in the single bed which for reasons of storage has two mattresses and lives in "my" teenage bedroom, but it was all to no avail.  I tossed and turned, scratching away and peering at the internet on my phone in the darkness.  Unfortunately, Dr Internet's diagnosis was that I had something called obstetric cholestasis, and that my baby was going to die.  There was even an accompanying article from the Daily Mail about someone this had Really Happened To, to prove the point.  It took until 3.30am for me to finally get to sleep, only to awake at 6.30, just in time for me to confess my fears to Mother before she went to work.  Mother has now taken to addressing frequent stern grandmotherly rebukes to the baby within, urging him that it is "time to come out now and meet your grandmother."  I'm starting to think that's why he's staying in.  It was all I could do to point, sobbing, to the relevant section in What to Expect When You're Expecting and wail, "Mum, I have this.  And the baby is GOING TO DIE."

And what if the baby did die?  What would I do?  How would the news be shared on Facebook?  How would I go back to work and face all the puzzled teenagers wondering what I was doing there?  How would I put myself through it all again?  And some people actually have to do that.  It's too hideous to contemplate.

Anyway, I have spoken to the midwife this morning and they are going to do some tests today to establish if I do have This Horrible Itchy Disease.  Hopefully the results will be quick.  And at least the baby won't be premature.  Which is pretty much all I have to comfort myself with at this point, given that EVERYONE in my antenatal class (even the ones who weren't due until mid-August) has managed to miraculously pop out their babies already, leaving me as the bottom of the class loser who's a bit slow and holding everyone else up.  All I have to feel smug about is that hopefully, if my baby is born alive as planned, he will be so advanced that he'll probably walk straight out of the womb and off to university, and I'll never have to worry about getting the hang of breastfeeding, weaning or toilet training as he'll pretty much already be a fully formed adult.

I wish the Internet had never been invented.

So it turns out you can have such a thing as too much protein

Had an appointment with the midwife today.  This was the first appointment I have had where things did not go entirely according to plan.

I had, for a start, completely forgotten to do my urine sample, and had to try to squeeze it all out in the delightful conditions of the toilet in the GP's surgery, which has signs pinned up all around it advising people not to make a mess and informing the plebs that should they have an "accident" they should inform reception so that they can "help you clean it up."

I can only imagine the utter humiliation of having to have that conversation in the reception area with ten thousand people queueing up behind you and the assembled masses squeezed into the waiting room like sheep off to slaughter.

Also, is everybody in Wembley suffering from double incontinence?  Why does that sign even need to be up at all?  The last "accident" I had was on the way to gymnastics class in 1987 and even at the tender age I was then I managed not to wreck anything beyond my own leotard.

Anyway, I had the opposite problem as I only managed to squeeze out one tiny drop into the container, an embarrassingly poor effort on my part.  Even so, the midwife was still able to test this and confidently proclaim that it contained protein.

PROTEIN.  I'm not sure I even eat enough protein, let alone have such a surplus of it that it's coming out in my urine.  This can only be A BAD THING.  A very bad thing, according to my knowledgeable searches on the internets, as this could be the start of pre-eclampsia, and that's the thing that killed poor Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey.

OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO DIE LIKE LADY SYBIL!!!!!!!!!!

Well, OK, the midwife did have an alternative explanation for this.  She thought it might be a urine infection.  Not sure if anyone ever died from one of those, but it may mean I need to take antibiotics, which I will doubtless feel guilty about as will be contributing to the global epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that will one day wipe us out and take over the planet.  I can just imagine it now, me being rudely evicted from my flat by two tiny yet mighty blobs called Mr Bubonic Plague and Miss Small Pox, and them sitting down to enjoy a nice TV dinner on my cosy leather sofa in front of a BBC4 documentary about how these things called humans used to live on Planet Earth and they were really nasty and used to kill each other all the time in these things called Wars back in Ye Olden Days, and how Miss Small Pox herself nearly became extinct but luckily one of these humans had the foresight to keep her alive in captivity in a high security storage facility in America in case she might be needed for one of these Wars; and how Mr Bubonic Plague was briefly forced to eke out a miserable existence living in bins when those naughty humans proliferated.

Anyway, enough about diseases (although can I just say, not too long ago I read an article on the "Top Ten Worst Diseases Ever" and the worst one was something someone apparently had once in the Middle Ages where these insects burrowed inside his body and then multiplied until there were so many of them coming out of him that his servants had to maintain a constant routine of collecting them in buckets and emptying them into the sea until he finally died, eaten alive by insects.  IMAGINE IF THAT ONE CAME BACK).  The main point is I might have a urine infection, and this is kind of annoying.

Also, the baby is still back to back, and I'm not sure what to do about this as all the advice I have read says I should sit in a leaning forward position, but this is impossible as my bump is in the way.

Still, if last night's antenatal class is anything to go by, all this might be the least of my concerns as when the baby is born, apparently my life is not only going to not involve never being able to drink a cup of tea from start to finish ever again, but every day will be one long panic about whether or not I have or am about to accidentally kill the baby.  Yes, apparently the whole flat (or any building in which the baby spends any time) needs to be maintained at a constant temperature of eighteen degrees celsius, the baby cannot under any circumstances have a duvet, it must lie on its back at all times, you cannot fall asleep on the sofa anywhere near it and it's going to spend all day every day crying because you are a terrible parent who doesn't know how to breastfeed, bathe a baby without drowning or scalding it, swaddle it properly or change its nappy, and it wishes it had been born into some nice family with two parents and a car and a proper house instead of to wretched old you.

I cannot wait.

Sudden Panic at Actual Realisation that I am about to become Really, Really Poor

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

This pretty much sums up how I felt when I saw how much (read: *little*) I am going to get in maternity pay.  Seriously, it's so bad I almost considered having Little One adopted.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

I am literally terrified.  Why am I not married?  WHY WHY WHY?

OK, need to calm down now.  Things could be worse.  I could have terminal cancer, for example.  Or I could be one of the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria.  Or I could be Madeleine McCann.  This really isn't all that bad in the great scheme of things.  I haven't been kidnapped by Boko Haram, or burnt at the stake as a witch in medieval times.  I don't work as a prostitute in Whitechapel in 1888 and consequently Jack the Ripper poses no risk to me at all.

I might need to start working as a prostitute though if things get really rough.

It'll be OK.  It'll be like Pretty Woman and I can prance about in thigh-length boots and court gentlemen who are extremely wealthy and not at all seedy.

Everything is going to be OK.  I just need to breathe.  I'll just master the art of self hypnosis and mindful breathing and everything will be fine.

Went to my first NCT antenatal class last night.  Hilarious.  Some of the men were asking very silly questions about birth.  Men are silly.  I don't need a husband.  No, not at all.  I, on the other hand, was a total swot, showing off my knowledge about all things birth related to the assembled clueless marrieds.  I've read a few books on this subject you know, I'm practically a midwife.  Anyway, all was good until the end, when we had to work in pairs with our husbands (HA!) and do some dancing.  It was at that point that I could tell the woman running the course felt sorry for me as though I was some sort of Abandoned Wife.  It could have been worse to be fair, as when she first said we needed to work in pairs with the partners I thought for one horrifying moment that there was going to be a discussion of perineal massage.  PERINEAL MASSAGE, ladies and gentlemen.  It's ACTUALLY A THING!  The hypnobirthing book has an entire chapter devoted to perineal massage, that's how much of a thing it is.

Anyway, I'm going to get into the bath now and try some breathing techniques to calm myself down.  Hell, I might even engage in a spot of perineal massage while I'm at it.  It's supposed to reduce the likelihood of tearing.  Lovely.