[*This is not saying very much. My current build-up of broken sleeps and short nights and long days mean that I can barely remember what happened half an hour ago, so not being able to remember any other February is hardly surprising. I do not remember what I left this room for ten minutes ago, although I'll probably remember in a bit now I've come back empty handed. Today I managed to pay at one of those self-checkout things at the tiny supermarket at the end of the road, and then walked out without my shopping, only realising two hours later. Still: I remembered the baby, so I'm counting the outing as a success.]

It is not just the baby clothes that are making up the laundry motherlode. They are very small. Baby sized, in fact (and he is quite a small baby, at that), so don’t take much room in the washing machine or the hanging space. What take up more room is the adult sized things that have been covered in baby-matter.

Babies, I have learnt these last few weeks, are prodigious creators of matter, from either end. Doozer’s main business appears to be in the transfer of milk-matter from my breasts to cotton muslin squares, via a short visit to his stomach. Sometimes, however* (*around 479 times a day) he misses the muslin, and hits me. Or his father. And whatever we’re wearing at the time.

Laundry volume, therefore, is quite high. It would be higher, but my standards are currently quite low.
And getting lower with tiredness.

Usually, the biggest splattering of sick comes just before we have to go out somewhere - for an appointment, or social engagement, such as they are. Usually, this will mean I’ll have time to change Doozer, but not both of us.

I now find myself looking at the thing I’m wearing and thinking “Has this got sick on it? How much sick? Oh. Some sick. Is that too much sick, I wonder? I mean, how much sick IS too much sick, really? This can barely be seen. In fact, if I put this cardigan on, it can’t be seen at all. Oh, this cardigan has sick on it as well. But not MUCH sick, right? No, this is barely any sick at all! This is definitely a passable level of sick…”

It is surely only a matter of time before we start wearing clothes printed with a tasteful baby-sick-splatter pattern (there is a market for this. Surely someone is making these already) or just forego clothes altogether.
To be honest it’s more likely to be the first.
Oh who am I kidding: to be honest, it’s more likely to continue exactly as we are now, but I’ll start trying to convince people it’s the first in order to try and persuade them that I’m not a posset-splattered slattern after all.
(Which, of course, I am.)

Some things I have learnt in the last three weeks include

1) How to change a nappy. I had never changed a nappy before this point. I have now changed eleventy-billion. I am pretty good at it. Baby poo looks like pesto. It’s going to be a while before I can eat pesto again.

2) How to feed a baby with my very own breasticles. It is harder than I thought. We went to many hours of classes, which, I have realised in retrospect, were very high on nice and well-meaning propaganda about the health benefits and ethical correctness of breastfeeding etc etc (had I not already been convinced that breastfeeding was a good choice, perhaps this would have been helpful, but five hours of being told how brilliant something is isn’t, it turns out, very helpful in *doing* that thing), and very low on practical advice. If it had been said, even once: “It might be hard. It might feel very uncomfortable and you might be miserable, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, it’s natural to have different feelings about it, but persevering will be worth it.” that first week would have been a lot easier to cope with. It is going ok now, but I still feel like we’re making it up as we go along, Doozer and I.

3) Sleeping in two-hour chunks is not all it’s made out to be. If anyone has ever made it out to be anything other than rubbish. Because it is. Rubbish, I mean. However, it does make other things seem very non-rubbish, by contrast. Like sleeping in three-hour chunks. Suddenly, sleeping in three-hour chunks seems like an enormous treat. I get very excited about a three-hour sleep right now.

4) People are lovely. And very generous. Things have been arriving, since the baby. Boxes of hand-me-down clothes and random useful stuff and toys and things. People are lovely. You, in fact, if you’re reading this - YOU are lovely.

5) You do not need to take a baby to the registry office in order to register a birth. Because, by the magic of modern science, they just believe you when you say you’ve got one, even if you haven’t got him WITH you. Either that, or they just trust you. Whatever. We registered our son. He is now an official person. Let the oppression by The Man commence. Or something.
(Please note, we did note register him as Doozer. Much as I might have argued the case for it)

6) Muslin squares are the greatest invention in the history of the world. Simple white squares used for wiping up baby sick, impromptu baby-sheets, swaddling, catching baby sick, protecting the one corner of your clothing not already covered in baby sick from baby sick (though frankly, what’s the point anymore?)

7) Daytime television is TERRIBLE. But I’m still working out what to do while pinned under a feeding baby and when out of reach of my computer, so I’m watching a LOT of it. I am becoming an expert. I should very much write about that.

8) Babies are alright. Or, in fact, quite good, really. Whatever the case, they are not as terrifying as I previously thought. They’re only about half as terrifying. But then, I’m pretty easily terrified, so that’s not a very accurate measure.

9) I’m not going to be able to write long blog posts for a while. Much as I very much want to. This one’s been sitting here staring at me ever time I open my computer for a couple of weeks now. And I can’t even remember half the stuff that was meant to be in it (and there was a LOT of stuff). So I’m just going to have to do shorter posts for a bit while I get used to this. But I have to write *something*, because I’m going a bit mad otherwise.

10) I am really enjoying this. I am very tired. I am constantly confused by the tiny dictator who has taken over my house, and why he might be shouting in my face this time. But I am very, very happy. We have somehow created a very good baby.

Doozer was born, at home, at 7.21 on the 11th of January. He weighed, at birth, something around 7lb. Maybe 7lb2ish. We don’t know for sure, because the last bit of Doozer-launching happened a bit too unexpectedly and quickly for them to send the second midwife out. The second midwife, apparently, is the one in charge of ‘bringing the scales’.

This is him about an hour after he was born:

And this is him the day after - by which I mean ‘today’ - with me:

about 18 hours after he was born.

According to both the midwife and the gp, I do not look like someone who gave birth yesterday. I’m not entirely sure what they were expecting: an unwashed panicking harridan dripping blood, but if they were, I at least managed to look, for the duration of those visits, not like that.

This is, I admit, a better picture of me (who you’ve met before) than Doozer (who you haven’t), but it does at least show a little of how proud I am of him right now.

Ah yes. And he hasn’t quite got a name yet. Not that we were expecting him to fly out of my mimsy with a name badge saying “HELLO MY NAME IS …[NAME]… HOW CAN I HELP?” (though that would have been useful), just that we have been sitting and calling him by the remaining names on the shortlist trying to decide what suits him best. Maybe tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I may write down what the labour/birth was like. People often write these things down to be helpful and informative to other people. I just want to remember it. I do not think my story will be particularly helpful or informative. It might be rather more ’sweary and undignified’, but frankly, there’s only so much you can do with the raw material of persuading a fully formed human being to emerge from a place somewhat smaller than itself.

Anyway.
Doozer arrived.

We are, as should be expected, completely and utterly in love with him.

The midwife and the gp did their home visits today. They in turn said that he was a model of perfection and, what’s more, had the most adorable nose ever recorded in medical history.
Or maybe they didn’t say that. Whatever, that’s certainly what I heard them say, even if they didn’t actually say it.
(I’m almost 100% they probably did, though)

It is completely normal that he hasn’t arrived yet, of course. As I have mentioned, the estimated due date thing is really more of a four week window, and first babies are almost always in the second half of that window, and he’ll come when he’s good and ready and OH COME ON, LA LA LA, I’M TOTALLY READY AND BORED OF WAITING NOW, DOO BE DOO BE DOO.
See?

Mainly, I am tired. Physically tired of being pregnant, and emotionally tired of it too. Tired of talking about being pregnant, and of hearing well-intentioned cautionary tales about pregnancy and birth, and of worrying about whether I am making things difficult for people socially or emotionally, just by being pregnant, and frankly, I just want to hide. Not in a bad way, just in a ‘retreating into a nice warm cave like a polar bear’ way.
Which is, frankly, an entirely normal thing for me in winter anyway, it is just magnified. By about a billion.

When it comes to persuading the baby that this is a perfectly good time to come out, there have been several different theories posited, some about eating, some drinking, some exercise, some alternative therapy related and some, well, ‘other’.

The most intriguing, though are these:

a) THE MOON!
I just got an email from one of the wonderful lovely women in my NCT birthing class, suggesting that lots more people go into labour during a full moon than not. Because of amniotic fluid acting like the tides of the ocean, etc. And, it being a full moon tomorrow, that consequently, we would all suddenly be exploding with baby on the same day.
I mean, it’s a lovely idea, though if THAT powerful, you would imagine labour wards would take these things into account, close the doors and go on holiday to the caribbean for 27 days out of the month.

b) BE PREPARED
Is not, apparently just the boy scout’s marching song, it is also what you have to do in order to persuade a baby to be borned. It was suggested to me that perhaps some kind of psychological block could be behind the non-appearance of baby. Is there, it was suggested, any work left over to do? A room that needed cleaning? A tiny piece of DIY that needed finishing? No… no, I said, no, I didn’t think so. My birthing room is ready, my bag is packed in the slim chance I have to go to hospital after all, everything for Doozer is organised and arranged in the corner of our bedroom.
Did we have a car? Did it need MOTing? Were there outstanding bills? No, no and no.

Was there, came the next question, perhaps someone in my extended family who was due to die soon?
Not that I could think of, I said.
And if there was (in my opinion) and they seemed to be taking their time about it (in my opinion), what, (in their opinion) I should do in order to rectify the problem? To sort out this interesting ‘one in, one out’ policy?

The answer I will keep to myself.
For reasons of legal propriety.

Still, it did make me think.

Perhaps I will go quiet now. Completely quiet.
I’m sure you’re not all checking in daily to see whether I happen to be liveblogging labour or not, but just in case you are, I think I might just turn off the internet for a few days to sleep and prepare. After all, the thing about having a blog, and a twitter account, and a flickr account, and another half-dozen things that need updating means that I do ALWAYS feel like there’s something I should be doing…

So I may just need not to worry about those for a week or so.
So, y’know, don’t be surprised if I’ve gone quiet. Don’t feel the need to ask about whether it’s because I’m in labour, or conjecture on whether Doozer’s arrived or not. When he does, my blog will be one of the first places that it gets announced.
Until then, I may be quiet. Or I may not. Depends how I feel tomorrow, or the day after, or however long this takes.

But until then, I may just go offline and sleep instead.
And prepare. And NOT KILL ANYONE, AT ALL.
Honest, guvnor.

*Signs off, and retreats to a nice warm cave*

Or perhaps I have. Perhaps the immensely tragic tale below - possibly my first official piece of published writing - represents the pinnacle of my fiction-writing ability. Which is good, if sad. Because this is good, but sad. SO SAD.

Ahem:

Just in case you can’t see that picture, transcribed:

THE BALLOON PRINCESS
Once there was a princess who loved balloons. She got lots of balloons. One day she had so many that she flew away: but she was a sensible princess. She let the balloons down and then she never had balloons again.

by Joanna Pickard
Class 5

(Class 5 would make me about 6, six and a half)

1) Yes, yes, my full name is Joanna, let’s move on.
2) THIS IS THE SADDEST STORY EVER TOLD. Well I think it is, anyway. Because:
a) It could have had such scope. There was room for such possibility.
b) The princess had all the balloons she could ever have wanted (and she REALLY wanted balloons, she loved them, you know).
c) She could have flown away! Gone to space! floated around the world! And what did she do? She let the balloons down.

It might as well be called ‘Little Girl, Don’t Bother Having Dreams’.

I want to grab the little girl who wrote this and hug her SO HARD. And then give her balloons. Lots of balloons. Enough balloons to fly away.

(It is now two days past my due date and no, since you ask, I have not had a baby yet.)

This is FINE, obviously. I’m not grumpy.
Or tired.
Or impatient.
Or so bored of hoisting myself off the sofa and up the stairs to the bathroom that I have recently been going to bed hours early, because at least that’s on the same floor at the toilet.
Or listless, or anxious, or overthinky about everything.
It’s not like I’m ANY of those things, or even ALL OF THEM AT ONCE.

Oh no, wait, I am.

I am partly just so excited for it all to start happening, partly wanting just to get to the moment when we get to meet him, and hold him, and partly wanting to get to the - not scary, but certainlyintimidating, like someone saying “At some point in the next couple of weeks, you’re going to have to run a marathon. I’m not going to tell you when, though, I’m just going to walk up to you with a starters pistol, shoot it, and then you have to start running” - labour and birth bit, so we can just DO that, and stop waiting.

Waiting waiting waiting.

I’m very bad at waiting. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before. Really terribly, terribly bad.

The due date came, and went, and I felt a bit flat. As much as I rationally know that a due date is pretty much an arbitrary thing, it’s still the thing that we’ve been talking about, working towards and seeing written on the front of every medical note for the last 8 months, so watching it come and go was somewhat deflating.

Today I went for a session of reflexology, some part of me hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would squeeze my toe and the baby would fly out, like some massively more impressive version of pulling someone’s finger to make them fart. It didn’t work. Or not yet, anyway.

Excellently, yesterday, on my due date, we had agreed to go to the theatre in the evening, believing that if anything was going to drive Doozer out it was the prospect of having to sit through a musical if he didn’t come.
But still, no Doozer.
One day, will will have words about that.

So I am finding things to do. Blogging. I need to do that more, though I’m scared of sounding whiny. I will find other things to write about that are about NOTHING TO DO WITH BABIES AT ALL. That is what I will do tomorrow. Also, tea and cake with the other enormous pregnants of my NCT group. And a film, I think. And some relaxing. I hear that is meant to be what I am doing right now.

And not being very good at it.
And not giving myself a bad time for being very good at it.
And not being very good at not giving myself a hard time for things.
See? I’m keeping myself busy after all.

1) Have a baby.
This one’s a bit inevitable, I think. I’m two days off my due date.

2) Write more
I always want to write more. I mean, I do little else, practically speaking. But more. I want to do it more. I want to do it effortlessly and productively, words running from my fingers like little letter-filled drips from a leaky tap.

3) Write better
I am pleased with some of the things I’ve done in 2011, of course. But I still feel like I haven’t written the thing I meant to write. I want to write that thing, this year. Even if it’s only a sentence. I feel like I’ll know when I have written it.

4) Get my brain working in non-linear ways and squiggly tangents again
I’m hoping that sleep deprivation will help with this. I’m hoping sleep deprivation will be useful for something, at least.

5) Learn how to make ginger thins.
They’re a very good biscuit.

6) Not move house
If we can help it. If we can get to the end of this year without moving, it will be the longest period I’ve spent in one house for 17 years. So if we manage not to move house, country, city or anything else due to exciting changing-life circumstances, that would be remarkable in itself. But I won’t hold my breath.

7) Take photos. Lots of photos.
And set myself (small, manageable) projects.

8) Get good - or at least passable - at being a person with a baby.
I am also hoping this is inevitable. But you cannot be too sure. As long as Doozer is healthy and happy, then I think that I will - we will - be passable people-with-a-baby. Anything better than that is a) a bonus and b) probably a matter of opinion.

9) Wear the same dress on my birthday this year as I wore on my birthday last year.
We shall see.

10) Win the lottery.
Yes, yes, 10.1) PLAY the lottery.

11) Be better at being in touch with people. And emails. And video calls. And all of that
Same as last year, then. No but this year I will. I WILL.

12) Be nicer. And more patient. And calmer. And happier.
To be fair, this was a last minute substitution. It was GOING to be “Seriously: I need to learn how to make ginger thins”, because let’s face it, they’re a really, really good biscuit. But I thought it sounded trite, so I should do the other stuff instead. OH NO WAIT I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING!

12) Learn how to make a really good homemade ice cream sandwich. Every bit of it from scratch.
And all that ‘nicer/patient/calmer/happier/more forgiving’ stuff as well, obvs. I just tend to think that if I had a good ice cream sandwich in my life, all that other business would follow naturally. Also: ginger thins.

Which eventually turned into a border, as soon as I could work out how many big whatever it was I was doing should be:

I worked it out, one stitch at a time, and, while doing it, thought about Doozer and what life will be like when he gets here, and what he might grow up to be like. I think that’s why people do these things, traditionally, isn’t it? In order to spend time meditating and thinking about someone, or something? I never realised that before. It is a nice thing to do. Even if you’re making it up as you go along. Maybe even more so then.

After slowly beavering away on it on and off in the evenings, when not working or staring at my laptop trying to be working but feeling all brain-tired instead, it turned into a finished thing. I finished it just before new year. It had turned into an elephant.

And now it is finished. So Doozer can arrive.
You hear that, Doozer?
YOU CAN ARRIVE NOW, YOUR ELEPHANT IS DONE.

Thank you.

I’d (blimey, how much have I detailed of this already? I can’t remember. I have memory issues at the moment. Apparently the small beautiful parasite still living in my abdomen is somehow eating my brain) I’d found out I was pregnant the day before my birthday. A birthday when I had, no less, arranged to see lots of my favourite San Francisco friends for a meal entirely composed of cocktails and raw fish. And couldn’t tell any of them why I was sitting there looking hungry, sober, sleepy and shellshocked. A few days after I found out, we ran a 12k race. Yes, slowly, but I’m still unbearably smug about it.

And then we went camping. I never want to forget it, that’s the only reason I’m writing it down.

We took the tent and camping gear that we’d left at a friends house when we moved from San Francisco, knowing we were more likely to camp there before anywhere else. I’d booked a campsite on a beach a couple of hours up the coast from the city. Right on the beach, basically. So close you could go to sleep to the sound of the waves and the smell of everybody’s firepit embers. It was practically the most perfect romantic thing I had ever imagined, in theory, and I had been thinking about it for months.

And suddenly, it all felt different. And weird. I was in one of my favourite places in the world, and all I could think about doing was getting home to go to see my GP (I’m not sure why. Because I thought she would say something wise and useful, I think. Which, of course, she didn’t. She said “If you say so” and then sent me off to see the midwives. That’s what they do).

So the whole thing seemed removed from what I expected it to be anyway.
And then it rained. Torrentially.
Torrents of rain. Hard, and constant, and cold and apparently unending, it rained. It started tipping down when we turned off the freeway and into the river valley that leads to the sea. It didn’t stop. The closer we got to the sea, the more it rained.

It poured as we parked the car and sat there, trying to figure out whether to try waiting for a lull in the rain to put the tent up. And we decided we should. And so did. And then, after picking the most sensible tree-shaded corner of the pitch, put the tent up, blew up the air mattress and crawled inside it faster than we’d ever previously managed.

And then we lay there, in grey afternoon light, napping and listening to the Pacific get poured through a sieve onto the tent roof on top of us.

And then feeling it, as it slowly soaked through a vulnerable spot where the top sheet was touching the lining and started pooling at the bottom of the tent.

The nearest town with a shop big enough to speak of was half an hour’s drive away.

Together we went and sullenly ploged around the small shop that seemed to serve as chemist, post office and holiday goods emporium. They had, it turned out, sod all of any use.

It was at this moment that I turned into McGyver. Or, for those not of the right age bracket to remember the reference, to “a person who was going to be able to fix complicated technical problems with only some ripped clothing, a ball of string and some sticky tape”. We bought the only potentially useful things they had: coincidentally, some cheap disposable rain ponchos, a ball of string, and a roll of duct tape.

Together we rigged up some complex canopy, strung from the apex of the tent and six different branches. Theory was, it would catch the rain and divert it away from the tent and safely onto the ground downstream of where we were sleeping. It was not attractive. It was shoddy and looked like it all might collapse at any second.

And, magically, it worked. The rain kept on falling, and the tent stayed dry. All the way through the next day, the rain fell, as we lay in the tent, reading and sleeping and listening to the water hitting the beach that we’d intended to have long romantic walks along.

Our second night there, the rain eased off for a long enough time to make us think that it was going to stop completely (it wasn’t, of course) and decide to have the dinner cooked on the firepit.
It stopped raining, in fact, for exactly long enough to light the fire.
But only just.
We took it in turns to stand over the barbecue, holding an umbrella over the fire and the food. When, eventually the food was ready, we opened the boot of the rental car and had a picnic sitting in the trunk because it was the only place dry enough to eat. To eat food that was a little soggy, that is.

The third day we were there - the day we were leaving - the sun came out. Of course. It looked like this:

And then, mainly because I had to go and catch a flight to another city to do work for a few days, we packed up and left.

And that was my favourite bit of 2011. Or one of them. The one that is currently playing in my head and making me feel better about all the chaos and panic and amazing mess that is to come.
So please excuse my soppiness, and self-indulgence. I just didn’t want 2011 to slip too far away, and head too far into the next bit without remembering this.
There were a lot of good, memorable bits in 2011 for me.
But the wettest camping trip that ever existed is the one I don’t want to forget.

As I mentioned before, the thing they don’t tell you when going into pregnancy, the thing that no one really mentions, is that the due date is not really as firm an estimate as they pretend.

The due date is the point at the end of 40 weeks when you might be ‘done’. But then again, some babies are done at 38 weeks, and some are done at 42. Some might be done past 42, but after that the medicals don’t like them still being in there, so they reach in and get them out for you, so 42 weeks pregnant is (pretty much) the only definite number in the mix.

Everything else is very, very vague. The ‘due date’ is not a bus schedule.
It’s not even the most likely date, not in and of itself.
It’s a date in the middle of a four week window when your baby may possibly arrive.
This is vague.

I’m bad at vague. Which is surprising for someone who is very good at BEING vague. I am just not so great with large life situations being vague. I don’t like life being vague at me. I really don’t like it at all. And it’s happened quite a lot in the last few years, which is why I’m so confident in saying “I really don’t like it”.

I am also very, very bad at waiting. I’m bad at vague, and I’m bad at waiting. I am - particularly when I don’t know when the thing I am waiting for is going to arrive, some of the people who know and love me best would say – ‘horrific’ at waiting.

It’s like (and not physically, obviously, I’m not comparing the physical sensation, just the idea) - it’s like someone saying that “at some point over the next four weeks, you’re going to break your leg”. No indication of when, or how, or how badly it will hurt, just that at SOME point over the next four weeks, your leg will definitely be broken. This is the kind of thing designed to drive most people mad, isn’t it? It’s certainly the kind of thing designed to drive me mad.

And so it is not unlikely to suggest that IF someone told me that “at some point in the next four weeks - not saying when, or how - you WILL break your leg”, I would quickly go mad to the point of sitting with a large hammer, attempting to break my own leg so at least I didn’t have to do any waiting on vagueness.

But I’m not doing that, obviously. There is no hammer I can take to this leg.
I mean, yes, I’m eating my spicy food a little more spicy than usual, I’m being more dedicated about walking daily than maybe I was last week, and I’m drinking tea that tastes of leaves and dirt, and I may or may not be eating an entire pineapple a day (which hurts, by the way)(and yes, I am remembering to take the skin off) - but the basic fact is, Doozer will come when he’s ready. And if he’s not ready to arrive, he won’t arrive, no matter how excited I am to meet him, and no matter how strongly I detest the waiting.

Which is fine. I will be patient if it means that everyone will be healthy and comfortable and nothing will be unduly rushed. But it doesn’t mean I will like waiting. And it doesn’t mean I will like the vagueness. No. No, I will not.

*Sits patiently, twitching only a little.*