parcels

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I'm 32 weeks and 4 days now. Final Stretch.

I'm on maternity leave from work, so it's all feeling very real. The ailments are mounting up, I wont talk about it because I feel like all I do is moan about aches and pains at the moment, and my tummy is rapidly rounding. It feels like the majority of space in my belly is taken up by baby now, and I can spend all day watching my tummy move as she wriggles around. I've ticked off almost everything on the "stuff to buy baby" list, and have been getting some exciting parcels from shopping for stuff online. I say exciting but they're mostly just very practical things...buggy, car seat, re-usable nappies and a second hand breast pump (fun!).

I had handmade craft fair last Saturday which took up a lot of my time, but now that's over I'm 100% all about baby. Bit scary! So far days have consisted of small amounts of house cleaning (I can only manage half an hour at a time, silly back-ache), a bit of yoga in preperation for birth (argh) and more sewing for etsy (I've recently seen pretty good sales so it'd be a shame to let that drop when I've got all this time on my hands).

I'm packing my hospital bag this week, just in case she's early. Advice is fairly wide ranging from "don't even pack nappies, they give you some for free" to "pack everything, and spares of everything in case you're in hospital for weeks". I'll go for somewhere in between. I need to buy a cheap nightie for giving birth...I have been considering wearing one of the many massive t-shirts I've built up over time from work, namely a Jaqueline Wilson one as it's the biggest, but now that bump's grown I don't think it's long enough to walk around in and I'd like an "active birth" - lying down as little as possible - so need something a bit longer. Yoga is helping me to gain a bit of confidence that I can cope with birth, and I'm trying to build up strength in my arms so that I can try to be on my hands and knees for a lot of the labour because it's much better for my back. It's all pretty embarassing though. I'll probably just chicken out and ask for an epidural as soon as we get to hospital.
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