Candid Camera

Right now there about a thousand images I wish I could capture for you -- the sight of my pale, ballooning belly, laced with pale blue deltas of veins, the delicate wood carving on the antique wardrobe I've spent hours painstakingly stripping of years of paint, the giant pile of softness in whites, pinks and pale yellows: all of Layla's newborn babygrows, jumpers and blankets sent all the way from her granny Sally in South Africa...

{this pic of me was taken at Christmas time: I am now uncomfortably rotund at 33 weeks, though the midwife says my uterus is full-term/40weeks in size: GULP!!! And how will the next 7 weeks pan out?! Can my skin really stretch anymore?}

But alas, the awful little camera we bought from a colleague of Craig's needs 2 brand new batteries to take just 3 or 4 grainy photos before agitatingly konking out. My 5 weeks of working at Avondale Juniors (blood, sweat and many, many heartbroken tears later)and the money I earned was used to pay my dad back - though I was promised, as part of my employment contract, reimbursement for mileage driven and 7.50GBP a day for lunches. HOWEVER (insert 'thunderous glare' here) the company who processes the payments, MyKeyPay, insists they have absolutely no record of me - and because I am on maternity leave, there is nothing they can do about it. To put it kindly, I'm bloody pissed off as all hell!!!! I followed the correct protocol in terms of registration, filling in forms and posting them back etc. I EVEN received a telephone call from one Gaelic-sounding Sean CONFIRMING my registration two days after the fact. SO. WHAT. IN. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?? A South African colleague of mine who teaches at the same school, hired by the same company, blah blah blah: SHE gets all her expenses paid. So why not me? The most frustrating part is that I was hoping to use that 200quid to buy a camera and various other things for Layla Rose's arrival. And now I can't. You can't have a baby without having a camera. (I know it sounds somewhat insane - but after my own mom has documented our lives so exquisitely in album after gorgeous album, I can hardly imagine not having captured Layla's growth from wriggly little newborn all the way through to first steps and messy icecreams...)
I have someone from my employment agency looking into it for me - so perhaps I may be paid after all: I told him I was writing about MyKeyPay on my blog - and that he better warn them that a feisty little journalist was gonna take 'em down if they didn't sort me out with some cashola!!! (Said in jest. Sort of.)

Anyway, if any of you have an old camera lying around you're not using, could you please send it my way? THANK YOU!!

PS. I thought I was a really cute 'n cuddly baby - but since I put my baby photo up on Facebook as my profile picture, absolutely NO-ONE has commented on it. Think I better take it down - and replace it with one of my arty pics which always elicit enormously good responses. lol

Anyone with tents to rent? Preferably in floral or stripe prints.

Propped up in bed by every single pillow in the entire household, minus my glasses, the morning view out over the fields was grey and misty (and that's not just because I was spectacleless!)and it made me feel as though the sun may never reappear again after so many days now without it. It is now common practice for people living in the UK to take a good quality Vitamin D supplement!! But thankfully for me, I have a special fondness for grey, wet weather -- I can handle the lack of sunshine for longer than most South Africans can!

One of the things I never expected from pregnancy was the sheer abundance of discomfort, pain and strangely embarrassing ailments! Were I to list them all, I'd probably never be allowed to write publicly again! One example is the sudden swollen sausageness that has taken over my hands in the last two weeks -- my once-sparkling engagement ring sits forlorn and dejected in my jewellery box... Even my face and my feet are 'fat' - causing my mom, via webcam, to comment that every time she says me it looks like I've just woken up; and another friend to giggle, "Oh look, even your little feet are fat!" (Whoop-dee-doo.) But back to the hands - they wake me up at night (OFTEN) with an arthritic ache - and let's not forget the pins and needles!! (And, mind you, this continues all through the day time too - so that typing is a chore, opening a tap a miniature agony etc etc etc etc.) And let's not forget that wonderful feeling of heartburn. Never before in my life had I experienced it - though felt so sorry for my dad and sister suffer from it as part of daily life. And man oh man, I wish I had given them even more sympathy!! Thankfully, it's evasive during the day, hiding away and building up its acidic power for the minute I start to drowse off...

Now if you can imagine the remedies for all of these little atrocities put together, you can imagine what I must look like at night in bed: both arms hanging down off the side of the bed to discourage the carpal tunnel syndrome/swelling in the hands, torso propped up at 45 degrees to enlist the help of gravity against the heartburn monsters,as well as minimising the ridiculously loud and snotty snoring from those overactive mucous membranes and the relaxin hormone quite literally relaxing my pharynx etc; lying on my left to a) allow my hands to hang off the edge of the bed and b) so Layla doesn't lie on my vena cava which cuts off blood supply to my head and herself, a pillow between my knees to keep my lower back aligned as a result of my old broken-coccyx injury which has flared up what with Layla using it as a jungle-gym. Last but not least, the every-hour-on-the-hour need to wee -- and the elephantine grunting that goes with extricating my estranged lump of a body from the pillows, duvet and my old friend, gravity.
Poor Craig. That's all I can say. He endures it all with the patience of a saint - even though I've offered to sleep in the spare room. (I'm still not sure what the pay-off is for him - because, as the light sleeper he is, I cannot imagine he gets any more sleep than I do. It can only be suggested that it is his love for me. Surely?! I certainly wouldn't put up with myself!!!!)

Besides my ring not fitting, I have only got about 4 pieces of clothing left now that can accommodate me. If only I were either rich and could buy myself everything I needed or b) lived in a nudist community!!

And though I have these gripes and moans, I still feel quite special that I have been granted this blessing of becoming a mother. Knowing that I have been given this life-long task of custodianship over a brand new human being's life has me both in a state of magnificent awe --- and sometimes in a blind, frightened panic. I have so many questions that swamp me every day, reminding me of those waves that would blindside me as little girl on seaside holidays, knocking me flat into the salty, sanded, swirling power of the sea. But then paradoxically, there is that peaceful, inner knowing that tells me the answers will come. And that letting go (especially of my craving for perfection) is the day-by-day path I must take.

PS. That's me in the bath - obviously was eating like a bit of a piggie so was relegated to the bath where I could make as much of a mess as I wanted!