The Curse of the Mummy Clothes

Not a terribly productive day.  Currently procrastinating cleaning the flat and using Piglet's current slumbers as an excuse.  We cannot have him being woken up by the vacuum cleaner after all.

In fact, today's activities consisted of: going downstairs to check my mailbox, baking chocolate cookies and going to the bank.  As I am currently desperately trying to reclaim my Public Badge of Good Motherhood and also as the first of these necessitated going outside briefly, Piglet was trussed up in a snowsuit for a walk of several metres across the courtyard, whilst I was wearing leggings and a T-shirt.  Granted we were only actually outdoors for a matter of seconds, but what would people think if they saw a wee bairn like Piglet snowsuitless and wearing just a hat and indoor clothes in December?  I also had to put him in the sling for the journey, as what would people think if they saw me carrying around a baby in my arms?  I mean, it's just not safe.

Later on we went to the bank and Piglet finally managed to have a nap in the pram, and we went into a charity shop for a look around, only for Piglet to be woken up by a screaming child who wasn't him, and who in my opinion was a bit too old to be sitting in a pushchair, but then I'm no expert in toddlers and I can envision a day when someone thinks that about Piglet, so I will try not to judge.

Anyway, by far the most important thing about the visit to the charity shop was not Piglet's rude awakening, but the fact that I found a dress for one pound.  Yes, ONE POUND.  It wasn't exactly a masterpiece, but ONE POUND!  I found myself explaining the style of the dress to my mother thus:

Mum: "So, what's it like then, this dress?"
Me: "Er, it's kind of like, a dress."
Mum: "What colour?"
Me (realising this makes it sound like a primary school summer uniform circa 1989) "Pink and white checked."
Mum: "What size?"
Me: Noting that the size had not even occurred to me when I bought it "Well, it fits.  Sort of.  It's long.  It looks OK with a belt.  It would have cost, like twenty pounds in a vintage shop."

I stopped just short of describing it for what it was; a tent-like object which which was probably previously worn as an overall for cleaning the house, but still, ONE POUND.  And yet I still feel guilty for buying it, even more guilty, randomly, than I do when I spend £2.50 on a latte, even though that is more than twice what I paid for the dress.  There's just something about clothes, sitting there in the wardrobe, that invites guilt.  Perhaps it's the fact that the only things I wear these days are those in the list below.

My list of mummy clothes, a.k.a. the only things I am allowed to wear now that I am of the maternal persuasion.
Leggings-some of which are from Primark-ugh.  A total waste of £3 as they don't even fit properly.  Thanks Primark.  Thanks for making your size eight leggings more like AGE EIGHT.
Orange T-shirt from American Apparel which slides off easily, therefore good for breastfeeding.  Also good for accidentally revealing entirety of bra to Wembley High Road.  Speaking of bras....
Two M&S nursing bras (all other bras currently in storage until they can be worn/fit again).
Multipack of M&S Giant Mummy Pants.  I'm not sure that's the name they were advertised by on the website, but it is implicitly understood that this is what they are.  And my Caesarean scar is still a bit too tender to wear anything that isn't a Giant Mummy Pant.  The jury's out on whether I will ever wear acceptable underwear again.  Once you've worn a Giant Mummy Pant, nothing else is ever comfortable enough.
Sensible shoes.  I grant that what is sensible for me isn't necessarily sensible for everyone else, but put it this way, they are not Jeffrey Campbells.
Parka coat.  No more spectacular furry creations.  Everything has to be waterproof and have a hood.
Pyjamas.  In fact, I basically just live in these.

So in other words, that pound might have been better put towards the cost of a latte.  I probably would have got more wear out of it.

Suddenly inhabiting weird parallel universe consisting entirely of Bugaboo Bees

Well the World Cup has now started and I missed my first England World Cup game since about 1982 simply because I was too tired to stay up and watch it.  Now watching France vs Honduras and although it's only 9pm and I had a nap earlier I am already yawning profusely.

Ooh France have just scored.  Looks like they have finally introduced goal-line technology.

Anyway, I am beginning to feel increasingly like an invalid.  A huge, bloated whale of an invalid at that.  Today I was wearing one of the few dresses that still fit-a floor-length blue vintage number-with flip flops, and had the sudden realisation that I looked like the Virgin Mary, escaped from the nativity play and roaming the streets, sans donkey, looking for some room at the inn.  As my brother quite rightly pointed out, I even had the immaculate conception to match.

Speaking of clothes that don't fit, yesterday my mother and I went to Westfield and I am now the proud owner of two nursing bras, which I think I am going to be wearing from now on as I have actual scars on my breasts from trying to squeeze into my normal ones.  We also bought breast pads (eugh), disposable knickers (EUGH) and worst of all, giant maternity pads (EEUUUGGHH), which are all apparently things I am going to need.  I very much doubt I will ever have sex ever again.  With all the waddling around, I started getting pains that felt like severe period pains in my back and front and at one point (round about the stage I was doubled over in Boots, buying the breast pads thinking this is definitely the end of my life as a style icon and woman about town) I actually thought I was going into labour.  Today my mother was so worried this was going to happen she wouldn't even let me salsa dance at the Marylebone Summer Fayre-probably the world's most middle class event, which we had accidentally stumbled into and which became something of an ordeal for my brother as my mother and I spent literally every moment exclaiming "look, ANOTHER Bugaboo Bee!  I've never seen so many Bugaboo Bees in my life!  It's like a Bugaboo Bee conference!" to each other repeatedly.  Looks like I have the Marylebone It Pushchair.  I either have very middle class tastes, or I am a total trend-follower. Or both.

Anyway, I am going to have to go now as I literally cannot stay awake any longer.  I'm off to dream crazy pregnant dreams about the baby kicking a hole in my stomach again.

On the hunt for a Vivienne Westwood birthing dress

Today I am mostly panicking about: baby positions.

That's right, it turns out that there is an optimum position for Baby to be lying in for the most desirable, Call the Midwife-style, two pushes and they're out form of childbirth which I am hoping to emulate.

And this, despite my jubilation at being told at my 28 week appointment that the baby was "head down," is not the position that Little One is currently adopting.  Although he is probably head down, it seems that he is also what is known as "back to back," meaning a more difficult and painful labour could be ahead.

I blame myself.  Apparently (so saith the Great Sage of Childbirth, the Internet) this is because nowadays we spend all our time lolling on sofas watching TV and surfing the internets instead of behaving like proper women and getting down on all fours to spend hours scrubbing floors.  I have probably never felt so guilty about my total lack of interest in cleaning.  Apparently the remedy for this is to spend as much time as possible on all fours, crawling about the house or sitting on a "birthing ball," something which I had up until this point considered a totally useless and co-ordinated flat decor-ruining item.

In other news, not only do I need to be getting around the place via the medium of crawling from now on, but I also need to be eating foods high in iron, as I am anaemic and so far my efforts to extract a prescription for iron tablets from the NHS have been farcical (twice I have been to the GP surgery only to find they have no record of my prescription request.  Thank God I'm off work this week.  In other work vs. NHS horrors, I am supposed to go for a repeat blood test at the hospital in a few weeks, but cannot make an appointment as bizarrely you just walk in for a blood test, although it has to be between the hours of 1pm and 2pm, which is of absolutely no use whatsoever when you have an employer who wants to see evidence of every appointment.  What am I supposed to do, take a selfie in the clinic?)

Lastly, the other main news this week is that I am surprisingly fussy about what I wear in bed, especially if that outfit is likely to be seen by the masses in hospital.  Usually I don't wear anything in bed, which is why it surprises me that I have suddenly become so fussy, but given that the likes of my mother and brother probably don't want me strutting around their house in the buff when I am staying with them after the birth (well actually my mother probably doesn't care, given the amount of times she has brazenly wandered around naked, causing my brothers and I to start screaming and covering our eyes-even now when we are supposedly sensible adults.  My brother, on the other hand, definitely will care, especially given his reaction to my bump-flashing the other day, when he shrieked "EWWW!  What is THAT???" at my bloated belly button).

Due to my need to buy some pyjamas for giving birth, breastfeeding and generally not frightening the horses, I spent much of yesterday trawling around Westfield, where I managed to buy a grand total of nothing-except a thermometer.  A must-have, according to the teacher in my antenatal class.  One thing the bloated belly now does, entertainingly, as well as provoke reactions from random passers-by "Ooh how cute!  What are you having?  When are you due?  Ooh, SOON!" is ensure that whenever one enters Mothercare, one cannot look at an overpriced pushchair for even a nanosecond without being pursued by over-eager salespeople swooping in like seagulls around a sandwich.  Anyway, back to pyjamas.  Why is it that they are either too big (M&S), too wintry (giant bunny onesies.  Why?  Also awkward to get out of when giving needing easy access for giving birth), too see-through or too chavvy (thank you La Senza for the latter.  I didn't realise that budding Katie Prices could still actually buy fluffy sequinned leopard print Ugg boot slippers with leopard print velour hotpant and T-shirt sleepwear combos for those all-important "just got out of bed and couldn't be arsed to wear proper clothes" paparazzi shots).  When my brother heard I was looking for an outfit to give birth in, he may have unwittingly identified a niche in the market with his comment, "What are you looking for?  A Vivienne Westwood birthing dress?"

Please make one Viv.  I can only imagine how brilliant that would be.

First Foray into Topshop Maternity Ends in Disaster at Shocking Realisation that Big Clothes are Boring

Urgghhh.

I have quite possibly the World's Worst Cold.

Literally, it is so bad that on Friday I even had to take a day off work.  With a cold.  It's the sort of cold that one normally only gets on holiday, at some point towards the end, after ten whole days and nights of drinking and carousing and no sleep.  Only this time, there has been no carousing and certainly no drinking.  Even the lychee juice in the fridge is eyeing me threateningly with its questionable morals (fruit juice is the enemy now, did you hear?  One glass contains as much sugar as twelve Krispy Kremes.  Or something).

Anyway, the deadly cold shows no signs of abating, and all I can do is slather on the Vicks and hope for the best.

Yesterday I decided to brave Topshop Maternity, as I am looking a bit fat now, at least in the afternoons (for some reason, I look thin in the mornings, but by four O clock I look about six months gone) and I don't want insolent children at work asking me if I'm pregnant.  I therefore decided it was time I purchased something slightly looser than the usual obligatory pencil skirt to wear to work, lest I am papped by the Daily Mail and accused of "flaunting my pregnancy curves."  The great thing about Topshop Maternity is that as the average age of the whippersnappers in Toppers is about fifteen, the Maternity section was completely empty.  The not-so-good thing is that unlike the rest of Toppers, it does not appear to sell crop tops, jumpers made out of clingfilm or pieces of pink fluff, all of which I had hoped to see reinvented for the maternity market in an ingenious bump-disguising style.  In the end, after discovering that it consisted entirely of loose-fitting but boring dresses and pencil skirts with a slightly enlarged bump-accomodating section at the front, I moved on to the "normal" sections, where I purchased a huge candy-pink tent-like creation to wear to work.  Nobody will suspect anything when I turn up in that.  Except that I might possibly have gone mental.

That is, if I am well enough to return to work tomorrow.