Radio Silence

I'm apathetic. After a whole week with no blog posts, I wonder just where my motivation has gone. I haven't done much this week. On the bright side, though, that's actually a good thing to some extent. Because the Husband's business course is finally done and dusted, we can have - gasp! - evenings together! Evenings that don't involve me reading or trolling Pinterest in the bedroom while he sits on the computer in the living room writing paper after paper. Last night, we sat in bed and watched TV. Tonight, we're off to the cinema for a viewing of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Retro spy drama, here we come!

Basically, we're enjoying the lull. The blessed, beautiful lull. The time between the end of Henley Business School work and the start of our lives as parents to an outside baby. That precious and indeterminate amount of time where our obligations are at their lowest. Where we can go to the cinema, or spend a day out at this cute farm in Surrey (our plan for Saturday) without worrying about feedings or diaper bags or studying financial projections and process systems diagrams. My friends: welcome to The Lull. Embrace The Lull. (Wondering how many more times I can say that before it stops sounding like a word? Me too...)

The other highlight this week was a lovely surprise baby shower thrown by my girls in Young Women's. Apparently, the last baby shower thrown for a girl at church was given the final judgement of being boring by all the teenage girls. They decided, therefore, to take matters into their own hands so that my baby shower wouldn't be boring. And they had a pretty impressive turn out! Though I have to say, it was an interesting task trying to drive without wrecking the three-tiered cake made of disposable diapers and other assorted baby things.

Another fun baby-related experience? Our antenatal class. It was an all-day affair at the children's centre across the street. Whoever thought that sticking 10 heavily pregnant women and their husbands (and in one case, the soon-to-be-grandmother) in a poorly ventilated room on a hot day was a good idea should give serious consideration to the idea of getting a job as a medieval torture artist. Seriously.

It was nice to hear some of the information on labour and the facilities in our hospital directly from the source, but generally, all the medical stuff was an overview for us. Not to mention the poorly delivered list of Old Wives' Tales about how to jump start labour. Eating spicy food? Raspberry Leaf Tea? Good sex? (As if I'd condone any other kind!) And nowhere in that whole discussion was the sensible advice that if your body and your baby aren't ready to go into labour, there's pretty much nothing you can do short of an actual medical induction in a hospital! Thank you, NHS, for lazily promoting pseudo-science. Of the three examples I listed, only the sex would come close to being effective anyway because of the release of chemicals like oxytocin and prostaglandins. And even then, those occur naturally in far too low of a dose to really kick start anything that wasn't starting itself anyway! Though I do have to thank the antenatal class for my new-found possession of an exercise ball (both to exercise with and to lean on when I'm wildly uncomfortable during contractions) and some pretty awesome massage techniques. I think even when I'm not pushing out a baby those back massages will feel pretty darn good.

So, as we round the corner into 38 weeks of pregnancy, I will do my utmost to enjoy The Lull. That said, I'm getting pretty impatient to actually have a baby I can hold and talk to and put into all the cute clothes we've been given. (Especially the super cute ducky pyjamas from my mom!)