inconsistent ramblings of a hormonal overtired pregnant woman

I've been wanting to post about so many thinks for days now and the list keeps getting longer so I don't know that I'll even remember all I want to say. Not that it matters as I think no-one reads my blog any more and I already know what's going on in my head so my 'audience' tantamounts to zero anyway...
I am at my mother's again. With all the same problems that go with it. So that's tiring. But the baby bird is loving it - it's like a big exciting holiday for her and she wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me we're at 'nanny's 'ouse' and that 'nanny's car blue' and 'narnie dog woof woof' etc. very sweet but I am really struggling from a lack of sleep with her breaking up the short time I get in bed after I've got home from various concerts that are up to a 3hr drive away...as well as being mightily pregnant and all the tiring things that go with that..consequently I am even less tolerent of my mother. Who deserves more really as she is wonderful with the baby bird.



We're back home now. It's always hard to post things when I'm at mum's so lots has happened and is unreported. Not that it matters... I've had a good and a bad time. I had a really good experience in Oxford meeting a friend's family at a crazy street festival which was beautiful. The experience was all the more unreal as the father of my friend is a very famous author whom I respect greatly and I had such a lovely conversation with him - intelligent but not showy and not at all egoistical (which he has every right to be in my mind!). So that was nice. That was the evening when after the concert just as I was (waddling) off stage a woman approached me saying 'did you go to wells? the cathedral school? are you (raven)? which I found disconcerting. When I had confirmed I was the person she was thinking of she announced herself as Image Soleil's mother!! Small world!

It was also my birthday while I was down in somerset and I had to go to a horrid city to do a fairly boring concert - fortunately I have a really lovely friend who was on the gig and she made a wonderful birthday tea with garlic mushrooms, lentil dahl and a spinach salad which made a soggy day a lot better. The baby bird got me a very sweet present (through my mother). They had spent the previous day at a donkey sanctuary and had adopted me a poorly donkey....she had wrapped up a postcard of this donkey - alongside (unseen by my mother) the local chinese takeaway menu. I laughed a lot.

So too much else to say as usual but I am too tired now and the moment has passed. I am very pregnant now. It's lovely and exciting but I am working too much and I am totally physically and mentally exhausted. I spent half the morning in tears again whilst trying to learn some music for wednesday. I've managed to pull myself together again now but I'm really feeling the strain of working with a toddler and a huge belly. I have another midwife appointment tomorrow which will be good. I'm still fainting lots from poor blood circulation and low blood pressure but it's nothing to worry about they say - just annoying.



And I'm still undecided about whether the baby bird should be at the birth. I am changing my mind actually and am beginning to feel that really she should be there if she wants to be. By that I mean I won't shut her out or farm her out to someone else for the duration. This is because birth has become a part of life that people are afraid of and I think it is partly because it has become so medicalised and also because it has become an event to take place behind firmly closed doors. It seems a little strange to me that as a woman I have never seen even a part of another woman's labour yet it is such a huge female experience. So if the baby bird wants to be in the room as I give birth then why not? I think she mustn't be left alone for a moment however, for a variety of reasons - she shouldn't feel sidelined or scared or bored for example. And I think she should be totally free to come and go as she pIeases. The only way is to try to designate a person whose sole responsibility is to her and her wishes..that way if she wants to go and see the tadpoles or whatever she can, and if she wants to sit in a bath with me she can and whatever happens I needn't worry that she is ok. Therefore I would like her to be in the care of someone she loves so she feels safe. What do you think?