Archive for November, 2009

I grew up listening to the sounds of sleeping.  My dad did it, my mum too.  When we stayed at my nan’s house she did it and my grandad’s night long mumbling and thumping is still cause for many a joke.  He’s a martyr to his insomnia, don’t you know.  They’re not alone, even I admit to doing it (although I only know this because others tell me so) and the boy seems to have picked it up too, although in his case no-one can consider it anything but cute.

I’m talking about snoring.

The exception to that used to be the husband.  He never used to snore, or at least I never noticed it.  In more recent years I’ve only noticed it at times when we’ve gone to bed at the same time (he usually holds out until the early hours of the morning whereas I’ll happily be in bed by 10 or 11) and he’s fallen asleep first.  It’s very rarely bothered me at night and when it has, a sharp jab to the ribs or a kick in the leg seems to sort things.

But recently it’s gotten worse.  One thing anyone who’s ever been pregnant knows is that there comes a point when your body starts to deny your bladder’s existence, a point where it wants a constant line to the nearest toilet.  Try as you might to ignore the fact, you’re popping off to the loo every hour and it only gets worse the further on you get.  You would think by 3 o’clock your body would have gotten a hold on itself and you could last out until the alarm goes off but it’s not true.  Just because you haven’t taken a sip of water since 10 o’clock the previous night doesn’t mean you won’t need to pee.  Yup, a pregnant woman’s body is a law unto itself. 

Combine that with the insomnia I was suffering due to the lofepramine (which has thankfully subsided now) and it made for some very long nights.  Awake.  Listening to the husband’s snoring.  Which is now more frequent and reaches higher decibels than ever before. 

I thought that things would get better once I was sleeping well again.  And they did.  I sleep fairly heavily and so don’t notice the snoring.  When I’m asleep, that is.  The bathroom trip before the husband comes to bed is easy: out of bed, back to bed, fall back to sleep in seconds.  It’s the ones after that are a problem.  Three or four times a night that I wake up to stumble to the bathroom and return to bed to listen to his refrain. 

It’s loud and near-constant.  A jab to the ribs or a kick in the leg only serves to wake the husband briefly and is more likely to give me bruises than him.  It takes less than seconds for him to fall back to sleep and the moment his eyes close the roaring starts up again.  If I try to wake him again he claims to be awake, that he’s not even snoring.  He’s that unaware of the noise he’s making.  The one that, to my ear right next to him, seems louder than a rocket launching. 

The husband’s tried nasal strips; they don’t work.  Anti-snoring mouthwash doesn’t even touch the problem and he claims it makes him feel sick.  I know how he feels – the smell makes me feel sick too.  He’s tried oral strips but they last only an hour or two at most.  The other night I was so frustrated after listening to him for the best part of an hour that I found the sleeping bag and sent him down to the sofa.  I would’ve gone myself but I’m pregnant and it’s not right (and don’t you dare shatter that illusion).  It wasn’t a great solution; he ended up playing on the xBox and the bed just felt empty (even if it was a little quieter). 

I’m at my wits end and need a solution.  But at least when the baby’s born, if he can sleep through the noise his father makes, he’ll be able to sleep through anything.

We’d planned to go in to town this weekend to watch the Lord Mayor’s Show and fireworks but the boy got invited to a birthday party and was much more taken with the idea of going to see Fantastic Mr Fox and eating pizza.  Unfortunately for the husband, I saw the boy’s absence as the perfect time to shop.

But, before we could shop, we had disasters to deal with.  After the previous night’s torrential rain, one more bout was all that was needed to get the conservatory roof leaking.  We don’t have a particularly nice conservatory; it’s a haphazard attempt at extending the house and consists of some shoddy brickwork, some wooden beams that can’t be considered beams but thin bits of wood purchased from Homebase and a bit of manky plastic stuck on top.  The last bit of heavy rain had managed to make its way through the join between the plastic and the main bit of the house and was coming down on to everything.  Everything generally being the husband’s studio equipment that he’d stashed in there.  So we had a bit of a mad panic trying to clear as much junk out of the room as possible and hoping that the rain wouldn’t get any worse.  We were lucky though. The next showers, which weren’t as bad, didn’t cause any more leakage and we can hope that we’re safe for now.  Still, it’s another reason to call and pester our landlord which we can really do without.

We started off the shopping by getting baby stuff as I’ve still not packed my just in case hospital bag.  At least the husband got off lightly by nipping next door to hide in Game for a while.  Then, with the possibility of having to pick the boy up soon, we stopped so the husband could finally get his first Starbucks red cup and ran through the supermarket too.  Now I’ve only got two presents left to buy and can even start writing my Christmas cards.  If only I could be so organised with the baby stuff!

Once the boy was home we headed over to Ikea.  Now anyone who’s been to the Croydon branch during the day on the weekend knows that the place is hell on earth so waiting until 7 before we left was definitely a good idea.  The boy was disappointed that it meant he couldn’t go in the kids play place, but soon cheered up at the thought of getting to look for a new bed. 

Of course we didn’t find a bed (although the husband thought the single bunk with space for storage underneath that was about six feet high was suitable for a five year old) but we did manage to pick up the chest of drawers I was after and a dirt cheap baby bath.  So yeah, the kid’s got no clothes to wear when he’s born but at least he can have a bath.

When we’d started we’d picked up a supermarket style trolley.  The boy might be one of the bigger ones in his class, but we can still jam him in that trolley seat until he starts complaining.  After that it’s going to be duct taping him to the side of the trolley!  The drawers came in two packages, neither of them small nor particularly light.  Despite my wonderful idea that we should pick up a flatbed trolley, the husband insisted he could get the two packages into the trolley.  Well he did, but it would have been much much easier if the boy hadn’t insisted on helping.

Sunday saw a lazy start to the morning but I did at least manage to start packing that hospital bag.  All we need now is some baby clothes!  Eventually we go out to do a run round of a couple more shops.  Nothing interesting to report, but I do now have an entire case of Irn Bru.  Nothing like the stuff. 

Once we got back we attempted to put up the chest of drawers.  Once again, the boy insisted on helping, and I insisted on being present because I don’t entirely trust the husband’s DIY skills.  Once he put up two shelves in the corner of a room and I spent two years having to look at them both slanting in different directions!  Needless to say that the boy’s brand of help wasn’t exactly helpful but he did seem to enjoy being part of things and we managed to get the outer frame built in time to watch Doctor Who.  The only trouble was, we halted once we got to the drawers because despite being in a completely different aisle to the same set in a different colour, we’d managed to come away with drawers which were a different shade to the outer.  I’d call that a shelf stacking fail.  So today, one of the husband’s tasks is to call Ikea and convince them to send across the right parts. 

So at least I feel like we’ve had a reasonably productive weekend and I’m glad we didn’t go out for those fireworks.  They were cancelled because of the high winds in the end.

As I got in to work yesterday I fired up tweetdeck to find a rather interesting tweet, with a photo.  This photo.

Yeah, my boy was missing a tooth.  I’d expected it, tried to prepare myself for it, but damn that thing was only wobbling a little.  Surely it wasn’t time for it to come out yet?

And I was right.  It wasn’t.  He’d had an accident on the way to school.  Quite often he takes his scooter and the husband rides on the road alongside him having taken possession of my bike.  They’d only gotten two blocks away when he’d managed to go flying and knocked the tooth out, getting a lovely purple bruise on his hip in the process. 

There was blood.  Where I would have taken the boy onwards to school and gotten him cleaned up there, the husband took pity on him and took him back home to get him sorted.  And convince him that he wasn’t about to die from blood loss.  That’s our boy; melodramatic beyond belief.

When I got home all was forgotten.  I sat down and he told me about his day, what he did at school and after school club, all about the game he was playing on his PSP and then went pack to playing as if the loss of his first tooth was no big deal.  So I asked him if he was late to school that morning.  “Yeah”.  There’s no point averting your attention from Ben 10 if you don’t have to.  With a little coaxing he told me what happened, there were demonstrations and everything.  He was quite proud of his gap. 

In the evening he retrieved his tooth and we found a small bag to put it in under his pillow.  He carefully made sure it was in the middle of his bed and then we sat down to read a story.  And he told me that the tooth fairy wasn’t real.  I asked him who told him that and he happily told me it was his dad.  No surprise there then.  The husband wanted to tell him there was no such thing as Santa on his first Christmas.  “Really?  Are you sure?”  Then he realised that if he admitted he was, there was no chance of any money from the tooth fairy and he quickly changed his mind.  That kid is manipulative I tell you. 

After I left him I sent the husband up to say goodnight.  I could hear the boy telling him that he wasn’t going to go to sleep.  If he’s like this with the tooth fairy who doesn’t exist, what’s he going to be like come Christmas Eve?

I was very conscious that I shouldn’t forget to do the switch.  The moment I was sure the boy was asleep I did it.  I can remember one year my mum forgetting after my brother lost a tooth.  It wasn’t pretty.

This morning, as usual, I went in to wake the boy up.  He was sleepy, he stretched, refused to open his eyes.  Nothing new there.  But instead of asking for five more minutes he sat bolt upright.  “My tooth!”  He dove straight under his pillow and marvelled at the pound that had been left there for him. 

Now somebody tell my boy to stop growing up.

Tuesday was a quiet day for the lump.  We get them sometimes.  His kicks will be few and far between but he usually picks up by the evening.  There’s nothing like kicking your father’s hand whilst he tries to watch TV. 

But he didn’t get moving that evening, and the next morning the husband admitted that he’d not really felt Lumpy kicking throughout the night.  He normally does, because there’s nothing like kicking your father in the back while he’s trying to sleep.  See, these two are going to get along like a house on fire.

As the few kicks I’d felt lacked their usual intensity (try comparing a tap on the shoulder with a mean left hook) and Lumpy’s normally so active, I decided to call the midwife.  There was probably nothing wrong, but I spend too much time on the babycentre forumsand they’re the perfect thing for inspiring panic in a girl.  I was hoping that I’d get a call back (you have to leave a message 90% of the time) and be reassured that there was nothing wrong.  By lunch time I hadn’t heard anything but I managed to get hold of the phone number of the assessment unit at the hospital and they advised me to come in straight away.  There’s nothing like the words ‘straight away’ to make you panic. 

The plan was that once I’d arrived I would have the usual blood pressure and pee checks, be monitored for a time and then go for a scan.  As it was, the unit was a little too full when I arrived and they sent me straight to wait for the scan.  Only moments after I’d sat down I was given a rather large kick.  The sort you don’t believe the strength of until you realised you’ve seen your belly pop out from the corner of your eye.  Yeah, that’d be about right.  The lump only wakes up at the moment I’m at the height of my worry.

I got called through for the scan and as I laid down on the bed he started off again.  Still, I was there and covered in gel already so we carried on.  Everything was fine, the placenta’s in the right place, Lumpy’s got his head the right way up (or down if you want to be specific about it) and he’s still got abnormally long legs.  The bit that makes me laugh is the way they seem to be able to estimate the baby’s current weight; it seems an impossible thing to be right about when there’s no scales involved.  Still, they’re saying he’s only a few ounces under 4lbs at the moment. 

So all that worry for nothing.  Part of me thinks that I was overly paranoid; another part realises that although I should expect a decrease in movement from any time now on, if that decrease had been gradual instead of sudden I wouldn’t have been worried at all.  I guess I’m just slipping in to the role of mother to a baby a little sooner than expected.

Remember a few months back when GTT had us admitting to our list of five?  Well Diane’s now admitted that she left a few actors off of her list because she only found them attractive because of the character they played.  Well that’s not entirely a problem for some of us seeing as 80% of our list were published on paper before they made it through to TV. 

But still, opening up that list to fictional characters does make it a whole new ball game. 

5. Kisten.  He loves his woman so much he dies for her.  Twice.  Come on, tell me that ain’t hot.  He also wears tight leather, rides a bike and kicks bad guy ass. 

4. Lucan.  He’s muscular, toned and tattooed.  Any further description should be saved for the book, because trust me, if you like your fictional characters hot, this one is not to be missed.

3. Smoky.  He’s a dragon.  Yeah, I know, how can a dragon be hot.  But he shifts into totally hot human form.  He’s superior, arrogant and most definitely the sexiest dragon alive. 

2. Edward Cullen. Edward is just enough to make you swoon.  We’ll ignore the fact that he’s only 17.  He’s been 17 for a very long time.  Time matters.  Sure, book Edward doesn’t exactly ooze sex, but he’s still a dream come true.  The love he feels towards Bella is the sort of thing every woman dreams of.  But he should know, I would have been the better choice. 

1. Eric Northman.  You have to admit that Alexander Skårsgard is totally but book Eric is hotter still.  He’s that little bit more bad, and definitely way sexier.  Seing as the series has only gone through two books, I won’t spoil it for you but damn he has some sexy moments. Go read Dead to the World.