Overdue, overreacting and soooo OVER IT!!!

Ok, so someone up there hates me, I’m sure of it! Either that or this is Karma’s way of finally getting me back from when I engraved ‘Sara did this’ on the family dining table with a compass when I was about 4 and actually went to the lengths of asking my mum how to spell ‘this’ whilst she was doing the washing in the kitchen. For those of you who don’t know, Sara is my older sister who at the time would have been about 10 and a half so would 100% know how to spell ‘this’ and would realise that acting like a dick and trying to get her sister in trouble for doing something that clearly annoyed me at the time, would result in a slapped ass from our dad and being told I couldn’t go to the local church fair and get candy floss and popcorn with my play school crew that afternoon.

Its currently 1.58am and I have been awake for the past 30mins with unbearable heart burn, jaw ache and the itchiest arms and legs you could imagine – I’m talking ‘I’m a celeb’ green ant level itchy. I’m 5 days overdue now and it’s like the powers that be have realised that I was scheduled in for some pain recently and because that hasn’t happened in the form of labour yet, they have sent other forms of discomfort just to piss me off. I can just hear them now (I don’t know who ‘they’ are exactly, but it must be someone who’s got a chip on their shoulder that’s dishing out this crap) saying ‘Ok hun, so you were supposed to be in labour last Thursday and that obviously hasn’t happened yet because your cervix is a lazy shit and doesn’t want to play ball, so instead we’re going to be sending you heartburn every night approx. 2-3 hours after you go to bed which is so bad it wakes you up with acid reflux and makes you think your throat has turned into a bubbling cauldron of bleach. A heat rash, in January, all over your bump, arms and legs which makes you want to rip your own skin off, because lets face it, who doesn’t love a heat rash in one of the coldest months of the year? And finally, because they’ve been laying dormant for a while, we’re going to start sending your wisdom teeth through again so expect a constant dull ache all down the right side of your face and a jaw that you can’t open fully due to the pain of the extra teeth you don’t need and, despite their name, don’t make you any fucking smarter!’

Yep, thanks for that, that’s just what I need when I’m already walking like I’ve shit myself because the baby’s head is so far engaged my hips aren’t even in line anymore and my bump is so low I look like some obese larger lout on a package holiday with their beer gut hanging over their union jack speedos. Dunno about you but I am Living.The.Dream!

Alongside all of this I had a sweep yesterday to try and get things moving, which again, was a lovely experience I’d like to share with you. Now anyone who’s had one of these before will tell you that its actually not that bad at all, so if you are someone that needs to have one in the future you really have nothing to worry about – unless your midwife looks like a German shot-putter and has hands like garden spades. Luckily mine doesn’t, so it was all good. It’s basically a way of getting your cervix to wake up a bit and to encourage the membranes (I hate that word) to separate, in the hope that it will kick start labour in a few days. Think of it as prodding someone in the arm to wake them up from a deep sleep except someone has their finger up your vag prodding your cervix to encourage it to open enough so your baby can slide out – yep, I’m still going with that visualisation that it’s just going to slip out like a bar of soap. I laid on my sofa with my legs open and a blanket covering my dignity – not really sure why they ask you to cover yourself, I haven’t been able to see ‘down there’ for bloody ages so a blanket really isn’t going to make any difference at all, but nevertheless, I chucked one on, laid back and thought of England! She talked through what she was doing, even though most of it was pretty obvious unless you are a complete moron, whilst I laid there and watched an afternoon repeat of ‘Come Dine With Me’. I think they were making some kind of Caribbean stew or something but my attention was soon diverted when I felt a weird, but not painful, sensation in my lower abdomen and my midwife said ‘ok so that’s your cervix and it’s not very open at the moment’. Well, what a way to kill the vibe of a vegetarian being served a spicy chicken bowl of (what looked like) shit. I wondered what she was going to do to try and get it open. Shove something else up there? Give me a magic potion? Bribe it with a treat? After a bit of wiggling around, (her not me), she managed to open it enough to ‘get a good feel of what’s going on’.  She managed to feel the baby’s head, which surprised me. I mean, I know it’s down there, but the fact its only about 4-5 inches away is pretty amazing. She had another rummage around (I’m aware I am making it sound like a have a bucket – really I don’t…there were only 2 fingers up there not her whole hand, which is one of the horror stories I heard about a sweep, and remember she’s not a German shot-putter so we’re talking normal sized fingers here) before taking them out and saying ‘OK, you’re done.’ The whole thing lasted no more than 2mins and on a scale of 1 – 10 the pain factor was about 2 – think of a mild period pain as comparison, and men – if any of you are reading this and have made it this far, think of it as going to the fridge to get a beer only to realise you drank the last one yesterday so now you’re a little bit broken inside. I couldn’t think of anything else to compare it to as we all know how over dramatic you get about man flu (aka a cold) so whatever I could compare it to from a health point of view wouldn’t have been a true representation due to your natural lack of being able to deal with anything other than a sneeze without thinking you need to take a trip to A&E.

After the sweep my midwife checked the heartbeat again and it was slightly faster than before, but rightly so. Can you imagine being the only person in your little bubble of comfort to suddenly have an intruder enter your ‘safe place’, tap you on the head and scare the absolute crap out of you?! Poor little thing must be thinking of investing in a security alarm and electric fence to keep trespassers out! After a few seconds it resumed its normal pace and I was told I could get dressed. I put my knickers back on and just as I lifted my leg to get my leggings on a blob of lube escaped down the tunnel of love into my underwear making me feel like I had wet myself…bloody fantastic! I had to spend the next 15mins of my appointment sitting on my sofa (luckily its leather, so nothing a quick wipe down wouldn’t fix) hoping that when I stood up to let the midwife out there wasn’t a massive wet patch left behind making it look like I’d had a tenna moment. The appointment finished, I showed her out, got changed and realised I had missed the ending of ‘Come Dine With Me’ – devastated. Now I’ll never know what mark the vegetarian gave the chicken stew!! There’s another thing to add to my every growing list of first world problems!

Now in regards to speeding this whole thing up, I haven’t been that successful so far, but that’s mainly because half of the shit they tell you to do to get things moving on a Google search is a load of old bollocks anyway, so I’m hoping the sweep gets things moving. But if you’re reading this and you are overdue the best piece of advice I can give you is – don’t stress about it. The more you worry the less likely it is to happen, so although I know how completely fucking irritating and uncomfortable it is and you just want to be able to do your shoes up on your own, sleep on your tummy and resume a natural looking walk, your body will push your baby out when it wants to, not when you want it to.

The best piece of advice I can give to everyone else that’s waiting for you to have the baby is ‘BACK THE FUCK OFF’ in the nicest way possible, of course😉. Yes, it’s lovely that you are really excited and yes, it’s nice to know so many people are thinking of you in the lead up to this life changing event – even those you haven’t spoken to for about 5 years and are clearly just being nosey, but it’s bad enough playing the waiting game when you have a bundle of arms and legs wedged in your pelvis, you can’t walk anywhere without waddling like a duck and you are constantly knackered from lugging round all the extra weight to then be bombarded with phonecalls, texts, facebook messages, smoke signals, morse code messages and snail mail saying 1. Are you in labour yet? 2. How are you feeling, any signs? 3. Any ideas on when baby might be here? 4. God, this baby wants to hurry itself up doesn’t it? Well let me tell you that…

1.     NO I’M NOT AND I AM HARDLY GOING TO DO A FACEBOOK LIVE VIDEO LETTING EVERYONE KNOW WHEN I AM!

2.     I FEEL LIKE SHIT, I’M TIRED, I ACHE, I’M BORED, IF I BOUNCE ON MY MOTHER FUCKING BIRTHING BALL ANYMORE I MIGHT ACTUALLY POP THE BASTARD THING BECAUSE I AM THE SIZE OF A SMALL DESERT ISLAND, I HAVENT GOT ANY ENERGY TO DO ANYTHING AND I AM WAKING UP EVERY NIGHT FOR ABOUT 3 HOURS AT A TIME BEFORE ACTUALLY GETTING BACK TO SLEEP – NO I HAVENT HAD ANY SIGNS, OTHER THAN THE FACT I AM SLOWING GOING INSANE AND BEGINNING TO THINK I AM JUST FAT AND NOT ACTUALLY PREGNANT!

3.     NO, DO I FUCKING LOOK LIKE I KNOW WHEN THE BABY WILL BE HERE? IT HASN’T GOT A SCHEDULED TIME OF ARRIVAL, ITS NOT PUBLIC FUCKING TRANSPORT!

4.     HAHAHA YOU ARE SO FUNNY, YES YOU ARE RIGHT, IT DOES WANT TO HURRY ITSELF UP, BUT I’M ENJOYING THIS HELL ON EARTH, WHICH SOME OF YOU MAY RECOGNISE AS BEING OVERDUE, SOOOO MUCH THAT I AM ACTUALLY CROSSING MY LEGS IN THE HOPE IT STAYS IN THERE UNTIL ITS READY TO GO TO SCHOOL.

*Breathe*

I feel better now.

So yeah, feel free to share this if you’re going through the same thing. I find venting (even if it is bashing the absolute shit out of your laptop keyboard) helps, but the main thing to take from all of this is that it will happen eventually, and when it does your main problem will be finding polite ways to tell people to bugger off when they have outstayed their welcome whilst visiting you and the baby (mainly the baby, no one will actually be that bothered about you…you’re old news now) when you have only had 14mins sleep over the past 3 days….maybe that’s something I can help with in a future blog, who knows?

So anyway, I will leave you all with this….

Thank you for your well wishes, they are appreciated (even though I am going bat shit crazy at the moment) I love you all and I promise there will be a baby by the end of the month. When, I have no idea, your guess is as good as mine, but we will let you know, it’s not the kind of thing that will just slip our minds – unless I get to the point where I am smashing my head against the wall because it still isn’t out and I give myself amnesia – hopefully that won’t happen! (Fingers crossed).

L xx