So, we have made it to the 35 week mark which, using my superior mathematical skills, means that there are five weeks to go. And I really am in a fabulous mood.
Antacid tablets from the doctor have meant that I suddenly have an appetite - a mammoth appetite - for the first time in months. For example, yesterday I was able to eat some fish fingers (six) a baked potato (two) and some green peas (half a bag) for dinner. Instead of only being able to hold down a small rice pudding or half a dry biscuit, I can now savour the delights of exotic morsels such as grapes and melon - without my Oesophagus exploding. Which is apt, as my many emails and apps inform me that this week my baby is the size of a Honeydew Melon - last week it was a Cantaloupe Melon - I hope Watermelon is not on the list to come at all. All of these apps use fruit and vegetables as a marker for your pregnancy. I remember, like it was only 6 years ago, the baby being the size of an avocado or a naval orange and I even remember when it was the size of a poppy seed, a lentil and a blueberry!
We are moving house and my partner tentatively suggested to me (while I sat sobbing, naked, precariously wrapped in a towel, perched on the toilet seat) that it would be easier on me if I went away and missed out on all the dismantling of furniture, packing, cleaning, paperwork, negotiations and consequential stress of moving and returned a week later to a brand new home.
So ... I went to my hometown - to stay with... my parents.
There are many horrifying aspects to being in your childhood home with your parents when you are heavily pregnant. Not least because you didn't ever envisage being in your childhood bed, on your own, rotund and 35 weeks pregnant when you embarked on this journey of pregnancy. It all feels laced with tragedy.
The bedroom you stay in is also the room, if you are anything like me, you have been back in, every time, from the age of 18 to 30, when a relationship and living arrangement has been smacked to splintered pieces. Your old tear stained pillows taunt you. The walls group together and roll their eyes "back again are we?" they whisper condescendingly "another one bites the dust eh?" they say. "No, no" I wail - "everything is fine. I am just stopping by!"
The small town is littered with friends past and present and ex-boyfriends a plenty. This renders the area a minefield. Your life becomes a new game show "Who is just around the corner?" and how awkward will it be when you bump into them complete with your un-camouflage-able bump? I have decided it better to stay housebound for now.
It is also, shall we say, challenging, to live with one's parents at this age and their 'ways' that had been long buried in your memory. As my mother works away, I am left on my own with my Father for the week who follows me around like a slightly eerie Henchman from a Horror film, silent and stealthy in the shadows doing the exact opposite of what I do.
For example,
I will enter a room through opening a door, he will appear out of nowhere and shut it.
I will put a light on, he will pop up and switch it off.
I turn the heating on, moments later, the heating is turned off.
I will turn on an electrical appliance, be it the TV, the iron, the oven, the kettle - a finger will appear out of the darkness of the unlit room and switch off the offending appliance before disappearing again. He would be lethal in a hospital ward.
I will put a cup down, it will immediately be lifted and put on a mat.
I finish a drink or meal and the plate vanishes before I have put it on the side table.
I set recorders on the TV for all my favourite shows for the evening but awake to nothing because he has been in, one can only imagine seconds afterwards, to turn off the contraption at the wall.
He is also, it would seem, obsessed with Bleach. Everyday he can be seen bleaching everything he owns; the bath, the sink, the toilet, the oven, the cutlery, the cups, the plates, the cat. I had a cup of tea one morning, put down my cup on the side table, only to look up moments later and it had disappeared. Odd I thought. So I went into the kitchen and found my cup in the dry sink with a bit of water in the bottom of it. I gave it a quick rinse and made a second cup of tea. I sat down and got ready for my second lovely brew, before the door burst open to reveal my dad, panic stricken,
"Which cup is that?"
"My cup" I said
"Ah... you don't want to drink that. I put bleach in it".
Brilliant.
So here I am, sat in a cold, dark house - carefully sniffing my tea just in case it has been garnished with poison.
My pregnancy has been off limits in any casual chat between my Father and I for the last 35 weeks and I get the feeling that he is not overly elated at me being here so close to D-Day. Mostly because he keeps on looking at me as if he is looking at a cartoon bomb with a lit fuse steadily getting closer to the end of the wick. He is clearly terrified of my waters breaking around the house at this stage.
I am sure it would be alright though - as he'd probably appear moments later with a mop and some bleach, switching off the lights as he went.
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