Your bed's made

We're just waiting for you to come now...

Baby room done

Just need to unpack into it, but this isn't urgent as baby won't be sleeping in here for a while!

Hip pain in pregnancy

I have finally got a referral to a physio for hip pain, though I've apparently left it too late to see a chiropractor or osteopath, who won't work with women in their first trimester or the last month of pregnancy.

If you have hip pain in pregnancy, don't leave it too late like I have. I'm slightly annoyed at myself for listening to the midwives tell me that it's an "unavoidable part of pregnancy", because I've now found out that it's not! You can do lots of things to get it fixed or at least ease it considerably, and the doctor immediately referred me to the physio, as soon as I mentioned how much pain I've been in. Why didn't I just go to the doctor in the first place?

I was also told to stop cycling or walking up stairs (the stair thing being rather impossible as our house is over two floors). Incidentally, stopping cycling hasn't helped at all. It's actually got worse since I stopped, though whether this is due to decreased movement (being still for long periods of time makes it worse) or because I am further on in pregnancy, I have no idea.

Anyway, my point is, the pain is not (as I was told) utterly unavoidable. I wish I'd done something earlier. Ah well, at least I know for next time (if there is a next time).

Another first

I filled the car up with petrol today! All on my own. The first time I have ever done this. I am very proud of myself. :-)

It's achieving small things - and overcoming the small fears by refusing to listen to the Voice of Fear and not letting it dictate to me - that make me feel more confident about being able to achieve the bigger things.

Here's to many more small successes on the path to overcoming my biggest fear. May I manage that as competently as I have been managing the smaller fears...

Bedroom finished

Another one done! Just a Moses basket to install in this room now.

It's been a tough summer, not having much time to ourselves or to relax with one another, but it's shown us who our friends are...or some of them anyway.

I've also learned how to accept help this summer, which has been a huge learning curve for me and for which I have the man and aforementioned friends to thank.

Just two rooms to go and then our lives will never be the same again...

New lawn!!!

All I can say, is yay for the lawn and yay for the rain.
We've also got the heating on for the first time and it's deliciously warm. :-)

H&S gone mad

So we had our new lawnmower delivered just now (by whoever Argos uses as its delivery company) and I asked the man if he could kindly put it somewhere against the wall in our hallway (so I could close the front door) and he muttered something, leaned in and moved it about two inches. I asked again if he could move it in a bit and he said a bit louder "Not allowed..."

I'm able to open and shut the front door, but can barely squeeze past the damn thing to get in or out of the house or to get to our downstairs loo. 

I'm gobsmacked. So the health and safety of the delivery man (not being allowed to lift the lawnmower in my home) is clearly of greater importance than a heavily pregnant customer? Where have manners and consideration got to in all this?

I suppose I ought to be grateful that we have a back door (in the event of fire or other emergency) and that we have an upstairs loo - that'll make me marginally fitter...

[Cross pregnant woman]

---

Update - apparently it's for insurance purposes, not H&S, that they're not allowed to be helpful...

No, I don't want to move over

I got shouted at today.

This isn't a rant at white van drivers - it's more of a request to *all* drivers.

He shouted at me to tell me to move over to the left while I was cycling on the road. In fact, he rather aggressively shouted at me, asking me "Do you want to move over?" as he approached (very closely) from behind me. At least he waited to overtake until there was enough space for him to do so safely - to give him *some* credit.

Although he was long gone in the short time it took me to gently and politely reply "Nope", it was satisfying to reply. I wish he'd stopped so I could have explained *why* I didn't want to move over, but of course he wasn't really interested in my response. He wasn't really asking me. He was telling me what he thought I *should* have been doing.

The reason I didn't want to move over, is that there were inch deep pot holes and grooves covering the entire left hand strip of our side of the road - not comfortable or safe to cycle over even without being 34 weeks pregnant. I would have happily swapped sides of the road with him, had he wished to do this, though I noticed that he seemed to have no intention of driving over the pot holes himself either.

My issue is that (a) I have as much right to be on the road as any car (and not just squashed into the curbside) and (b) sometimes cyclists can't or shouldn't move over i.e. if it is terrible road surface (like it was), just one among many other reasons (ice, very windy conditions, other obstacles...).

Anyway, I guess this man will probably continue to shout at cyclists (though I really hope he noticed my fat belly as he drove past and felt bad about shouting at me), but I am aware that there are many drivers who have never cycled and possibly don't realise that we can't always move over to the left, so this is the intention behind my post - just to raise a little bit of awareness. If we're in your way, it's not necessarily to be irritating or just to make a statement - there's probably a very good safety reason.

If you're already very careful about cyclists, then please ignore this post. If not, I hope it helps a little bit. I know there are loads of bad or annoying or aggressive cyclists out there, but not all of us are like that. And, just to clarify, I know that not all drivers are mean to cyclists - most people are very, very nice and I always thank those that give me lots of space.

Rant over. This tired, fat-bellied lump is off to bed.

Punchdrunk while 7.5 months pregnant

So we went to the theatre on Sunday evening and it was a Punchdrunk production - this time, the Drowned Man.*

I'd been to two Punchdrunk productions before (Faust and the Mask of the Red Death), both while living in London, and neither with an extra couple of stone attached to my front. I was slightly apprehensive about how I'd manage a three-hour promenade performance with a long journey home afterwards, but I was fine (upon purchase of a large chocolate bar at the end, anyway). I managed to locate the toilets quickly and the bar had glasses and jugs of tap water on hand at all times.

For those that have never been, it's a surreal experience. You can either choose to follow the main acts or you can split off and follow your heart. Sometimes an actor parts from the main group and runs away, with whole segments of audience members (all in masks) following at a quick tempo. This was not an option for me this time, as there was no way I was keeping up, especially as the whole thing was over four floors. Instead, I generally wandered on my own, not even spotting my man until about half an hour from the end.

The whole thing was more surreal than usual, given some of the key themes were madness, loss of reality, desperation, fear and anxiety. Usually (previously) I have had my own odd and special experiences and this time was no different.

In the medical room, where I found (upon reading some medical reports lying on the table) that one of the key characters had depression, the doctor found me and stared at me a while, before shining a torch on my large belly. He then touched my belly - with some reverence - before leading me to 'someone very important'. We eventually found ourselves in a forest, large trees around, woodchip on the floor, watching a performance in a gazebo. He (very respectfully) slow danced with me, before pointing out a blonde woman (one of the key characters) and telling me that I should keep an eye on her, as she was falling apart, acting scenes, rather than living her life. I had previously watched an odd scene in a diner, where she was working, where she acted out a scene that a man brought in on a clipboard, rather than seeming to have any free will of her own.

My second odd experience was with a woman in a long black veil. She'd been part of a scene on a floor covered with sand, dimly lit, rows of straw people sitting in chairs, a dead world. When she left the scene, I followed her and, after she had unlocked an invisible door, she held her hand out to me. She ended up telling me a story about a little girl who had been afraid of the light and had sought out the moon...until eventually the light had died and the world with it. About an hour later, when I returned to this floor, she put a small scroll in my hand with the symbol of Ankh written on it, which I thought was rather appropriate in light of the new life within me.

Each of the floors held incredible detail - the woodchip floor had an area of caravans, each full of information, letters, belonging to each of the characters, that gave away a little bit more of their story. There was the sandy floor, with rooms full of studies - the Bible, engineering, electronics - a church in which the woman in the black veil resided. A floor with a bar, a toy shop, a diner, a water fountain in the main square. And finally, the basement, a place of madness, full of shrines to dead people, a room full of dead sunflowers and what was clearly some kind of ritual sacrifice room. I can't remember which floor it was on, but I also found a psychiatrist's room, where the desk was full of reports on all the actors and their various states of madness (some with simple depression, other with hallucinations and on a cocktail of prescribed drugs). Then there was the floor with salt deposits and the actors' dressing rooms, crumbling ash covering some of the rooms...another dying world. There was so much in this created world, that it's impossible to list it all (and would, no doubt, be terribly boring!). I'm convinced, if I were to return, that I would see many unfamiliar rooms and scenes.

It was an excellent performance, with incredible attention to detail within the set, as usual, and the three hours flew by, with me barely noticing how tired I was getting.

If you can get to it, I highly recommend it. Well worth it, especially if you (want to) challenge your own fears and wander off on your own, seeking out your own experiences.



* Synopsis from the National Theatre website:

The award-winning Punchdrunk stage their biggest and most ambitious production yet. The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is an extraordinary theatrical adventure: a unique personal journey which unfolds across four levels of a vast central London location.

Amidst the fading glamour of 1960s Los Angeles, stands Temple Studios – a crumbling monument to the golden age of film, seducing wide-eyed dreamers with the promise of wealth and fame. Here, movie stars mingle with hungry young upstarts, while beyond the gates lies a forgotten hinterland where the many rejected by the studio system scratch out a living.

Inspired by Georg Büchner's fractured masterpiece Woyzeck, The Drowned Man explores the darkness of the Hollywood dream. Celluloid fantasy meets desperate reality, and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world.