Baby, are you engaged yet?

So I’m in my final week of pregnancy and the baby’s head still hasn’t engaged. In other words, the baby hasn’t descended into my pelvis yet. Not that I blame her – I mean, I can’t imagine it’s all that comfy in there. But, you know, she has to go through it if she wants to come out the other side. It’s like having to put up with all that crap at airport security just so you can get to the sun lounger in Spain.

But, I guess, from her point of view, she already has pretty much everything she needs, so why bother uprooting? She’s got free food and drink, lovely warm central heating... The kid is living in the lap of luxury. Fair enough, her conditions are ever so slightly cramped, which is why I understand the reluctance to want to limit her space even more. After all, I wouldn’t be so keen on moving from a relatively spacious stomach to a less-than-palatial pelvis, but hey, it’s free digs. She can’t really knock it, you know?

So yes, I completely understand why she wouldn’t want to be evicted. She’s like a student who, upon graduating, is faced with the harsh realities of work and responsibility so, instead, enrols on another course. But now her student loan money is running out, so she either comes willingly in the next two or three weeks, or she’ll have a helping hand from the hospital staff.

The midwife is slightly concerned at the fact that the baby seems unwillingly to give up the cushy number she’s become accustomed to but, when you’ve got the world’s two most stubborn people for parents, I’m not really all that surprised. She’ll hang in there ‘til the last minute. I wouldn’t even be surprised if, after delivery, she tried to claw her way back up the cord. She’s exactly like her mammy – she doesn’t like change.

Still, not understanding that stubbornness runs in the family, the midwife sent me packing to the doctor to have a look. I don’t know if you’ve ever been pregnant but, to briefly explain, you pretty much get mauled at every appointment. Your bump is prodded and poked until the baby starts to retaliate with a series of swift kicks. What I wasn’t expecting was the utter man-handling I got from the doctor. Without so much as saying a word he just started manually moving the baby about – a less than comfortable manoeuvre. I mean, seriously, buy a girl dinner first.

You know those programmes where you see people perform surgery with their bare hands? You know the ones – they just push through the skin with their fingers until they end up removing your liver or whatever. (Am I the only one who watches that type of programming?) Well that’s exactly what it felt like. I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to search for the baby’s head or slice me open and deliver her there and then.

Thankfully, he finally told me it was nothing to worry about. And that was that – I was chucked out on my ear feeling disoriented and more than a little disconcerted. There was no discussion of what I could do to help things along, or what might happen next, so I’m just back to playing the waiting game. How fun for me.

So yes, I’m pretty sure I’m at that stage in pregnancy where you become very impatient to have the whole thing come to an end. It’s not that I’m fed up being pregnant – I love it – but there’s only so much uncertainty I can handle. Hubby, likewise, is eager for the whole thing to be over, but he has an ulterior motive. Living with me is probably pretty tricky at the best of times, but living with me while I’m the size of a house and have hormones flying all over the place? I reckon he’s close to dragging the baby out of me himself. Hopefully, he can hold out a little longer and it won’t come to that.

Long story short, there’s a timer on this oven that’s counting down the minutes and, one way or another, this bun is almost done.

My brother, Casanova

So my little brother, all of sixteen years, has brought home his first girlfriend. I’m sure there have been a string of them already but, until now, we could all remain blissfully ignorant and just pretend he was still the young innocent we’d watched taking his first steps and saying his first words. A classic case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But when mam came home from work recently to find the pair of them watching a DVD in the house... well, the illusion was irrevocably shattered. It was the end of the age of innocence. And, like any mother, I don’t think she took it too well.

She was straight on the phone to me to spread the good news. When I asked what the young lady was like, mam replied, “She has a badge on her bag that says, ‘Sex, drugs and sausage rolls’. I hope she sticks to the sausage rolls.” That pretty much summed it up for all of us.

So yes, my little brother is officially all grown up. But it doesn’t end there – apparently the lucky lady turns eighteen this month. Eighteen! That means that not only is my brother actually dating, but he’s dating an older woman! Quite the little Casanova, it seems. I don’t know whether to be horrified or slightly impressed. In truth, I guess I’m a bit of both.

And, according to mam, he’s actually gone and bought her a present. The first present he’s ever bought for anyone ‘cause, to him, spending money on anything other than video games was the same as setting it on fire. The same guy who, when I told him he was going to be an uncle and asked if he was excited, simply said, “No”. The same guy who doesn’t like Christmas. The same guy who would struggle to drum up enthusiasm for anything other than a lie-in. I mean, it’s all very “A Christmas Carol”, only with more snow and less dying children.

(Obviously I’m not going to spoil the surprise by telling you what the present is. There’s no doubt in my mind that the girl in question reads the Kildare Nationalist religiously, and particularly this column. After all, she’s dating my brother so she clearly has exceptional taste.)

So it’s officially the end of an era. I basically have a man for a brother now. Given that there are twelve years between us, I’ll always think of him as being just a kid but, unfortunately, he seems intent on reminding me of reality. Whereas once he was all bright eyes and scratch mittens, now he’s all long hair and fingerless gloves. Whereas once it was all “gotta catch ‘em all” Pokemon, now all he wants to catch is forty winks. And women, apparently. Alas, long gone are the good ol’ days when girls were icky and smelly. I’m not sure what conversations have taken place at home, but mam has made it perfectly clear that she’s quite happy with just the one grandchild for the foreseeable.

So now the whole thing has me worrying about the future of my little one. I mean, it feels like it was only yesterday I was sixteen myself, so it’ll only be a matter of blinking before my little girl is all grown up and starting to attract the interest of boys. (Coincidentally, it’ll be right around the time I go to prison for breaking some kid’s legs.) I’m pretty sure that’ll be the point at which I finally start drinking. But what can I do? There’s only so much cotton wool I can wrap her up in.

No, all I can do, as any mother can, is hope and pray that she sticks to the sausage rolls too.

Breastfeeding for beleaguered beginners

While most of you were out schmoozing on Valentine’s Day, I spent part of mine in a hospital waiting room with the woman on my right talking about (and showing off) her swollen legs, and the woman on my left trying to hock up a lung. The lady in charge of the breastfeeding workshop I was booked in for was running late, so I had a full twenty minutes of trying not to let the actions of the women waiting either side of me make me vomit.

I was already somewhat aggrieved from what had taken place at my pregnancy yoga class the hour before. Our instructor had, in an effort to demonstrate what contractions would be like, got us to hold our arms straight out at our sides for a minute. The whole idea was that it was supposed to be uncomfortable, but bearable if we took deep breaths. I was a little put out by the comparison being drawn between being able to hold my own arms aloft, and my whole womb contracting to push something about the size of my head out of my body.

Another technique she recommended was that we hold ice-cubes in our hands for a minute – the same technique they use to try to help people who cut themselves to quit. I wasn’t overly impressed that my brain was now being forced to make a connection between getting pregnant and self-harming. All in all, I don’t think I’ll be continuing with yoga after the baby is born. Any deep breaths I’ll be taking during labour will be to try to assuage the anger I feel at being led to believe that I could get through the whole ordeal with some stretchy pants and a smile.

The instructor also suggested some books we should read, one of which was called, “Birthing From Within”. I mean, where the hell else would you be birthing from?! Another was called, “Hypno-Birthing”, describing how you can use self-hypnosis to relax during labour. Not only will that not help me, but I’ll now be picturing Paul McKenna continually clicking his fingers while my baby is being born.

So I was sitting in the waiting room, starting to suspect that relaxation techniques have the opposite effect on me. Far from calming me down and lowering my blood pressure, I find my eyeballs wanting to pop out of their sockets and my fists wanting to clench until my fingernails machete their way through my skin. And by the time the breastfeeding woman arrived, I was so wound up that I could barely even summon up relief when I realised that Susan Swollen-Legs and Sarah Smoker’s-Cough wouldn’t be joining us.

We shuffled into a room that was so hot it was like sitting in a furnace with Satan himself breathing down the back of your neck. And then it got worse – she wanted to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves. It took all my strength to refrain from saying, “My name’s Laura, and I’m here to learn how to use my breasts in the fight against the evils of bottle-feeding, not to make small talk”. (What I probably should have said was, “Hi, I’m Laura and I think I’m in the wrong room – I’m here for anger management classes”.)

What followed was an hour and a half of learning how to hold a doll. And, you know, various bits of advice on feeding your baby. Admittedly, I was of the “the baby’ll feed when it’s hungry and stop when it’s full” school of thought, but it seems there actually is a bit more to it than that. The one thing that stood out to me, though, is that the hospital has a policy of not letting the baby go for more than five hours without feeding. So, after hours and hours (possibly days) of gut-wrenching agony and exertion during childbirth, the most sleep I’ll get is five hours. That’s at least four short of what I need to be a halfway functional human being. So now I’m worried about punching the person who comes to wake me.

Overall, these classes, which were designed to help put my mind at ease, have only served to open up a whole world of undiscovered anguish. What if I do the wrong sort of self-hypnosis and end up clucking like a chicken throughout childbirth? What if simply lowering my arms doesn’t prevent the pain of contractions? What if I slap the midwife? All valid concerns, I’m sure you’ll agree. No wonder pregnant women have to be monitored so closely for high blood pressure.

My next class discusses birthing positions and the dreaded ‘relaxation techniques’. One way or another, someone’s going to end up flat out on their back.

Honesty is such a lonely word

Have you any idea how difficult it is to find a non-soppy Valentine’s Card? All I want is one that says “Look, you know I think you’re alright or I wouldn’t have married you”. Or “I let you father my baby – what more do you want?” But it seems that’s too much to ask. Seriously, Hallmark need to hire me immediately so they can start selling cards that tell the truth. I mean, yes, I love the man, but it seems wrong to gush about him unconditionally when half the time I want to stick pins in his eyes.

We’re always hearing about how honesty is the best policy, yet every year we go all gushy and gooey and tell our other halves that we think they’re the perfect specimen of human being. Funny, but you weren’t saying that when they left their smelly socks all over the floor. Or when they emptied your joint bank account to buy Star Wars memorabilia. Or when they got drunk and puked all over your new shoes.

My husband regularly buys me big bunches of flowers. He leaves chocolate bars around the house for me, and patiently puts up with my one-woman crazy train. But he also knows I like things neat and tidy, so he goes around leaving little bits of paper everywhere just ‘cause he thinks it’s hilarious. He knows I hate animal cruelty, so he brought a big reindeer rug into our home. He knows I prefer bare walls, so he hangs pictures on every available inch of wall space he can find. And you expect me to tell him that absolutely everything about him is splendiferous?!

No, we tell each other the truth. We’re honest with each other. Yes, the good far outweighs the bad but, at the end of the day, he still supports Liverpool. He’s still a Dub. And, to him, I’m still a bogger with OCD and a tendency to talk too much. (Ain’t love grand!)

So why can’t everyone else just tell the truth too? Why aren’t there more cards that say “You drive me insane but you’re loaded so I’ll give you a go”? Or “I’m happy to go along with this... for now”? Why sugar-coat it? Even for our wedding, I found it extremely difficult to find readings that didn’t make me want to vomit. While searching, I found one that began, “Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived”. It was about an island that was slowly sinking into the sea and, one by one, all the ‘feelings’ that lived there left. But ‘love’ remained. Honestly, I’d rather have set fire to my own hair.

I was on the DART recently when a teenage girl got on. Her clothes and partly-shaven head said she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her, but I was most struck by her immaculate complexion. She had the palest, clearest skin I’ve ever seen, and looked absolutely stunning. And then she pulled out a make-up bag. Now I admit that a lot of women look better with a touch of make-up, so I wasn’t too quick to judge. But when I glanced back at her a few minutes later, it was as if she’d been replaced by a circus clown. Or a man in drag.

Why should we all lie to people like that and tell them how beautiful they look with all those caked-on layers? Why is there one day a year when we pretend like our other halves have no flaws, when every other day we give serious consideration to poisoning their pizza?

Where’s the Hallmark card that says, “I prefer you when you don’t look like a satsuma with eyebrows”?

Loath letters

Dear wind,

I hate you.

From,
Laura's hair

Good idea, bad idea

It's time for another good idea, bad idea.

Good idea: taking a power nap to catch up on lost sleep and restore your energy levels.

Bad idea, taking a power nap before a meeting, thus having to turn up to said meeting with conspicuous lines all over your face.

D'oh.

Dressing down

On the agenda this month is people who wear pyjamas in public. It’s not big and it’s not clever. Though it’s been something that has irritated me for quite some time, it reared its ugly head recently when I was feeling particularly lazy. Wandering around the house in my own pyjamas, I was cursing the fact that I would have to exert effort to get dressed so that I could go to the Post Office. Then it occurred to me that no-one would even bat an eyelid if I didn’t bother changing.

That was all the motivation I needed to pull on a pair of jeans and a jumper.

It’s true that we’ve become an increasingly lazy society (she remarks, while eating a microwaveable dinner), but how has it gotten to the stage where we can’t even be bothered to dress ourselves? How long will it be before standards of hygiene start to slip and we can’t even summon up the strength to shower ourselves?

The pyjama is a statement. No, clearly not a fashion statement, but a statement about how little these people care about their appearance, their lives and the people around them. It says “I don’t work for a living” and “I’m just popping down to collect my dole cheque”. It screams “I stroll around all day at my leisure while you go off to work to fund my pyjama habit”.

What began in Asia as an indication of how wealthy you were (clothes just to sleep in?!) has sunken to a symbol for every unemployed woman and trouble-making teen in the western world.

And it’s only women. You never see men, the sex that considers a spray of Lynx to be a sufficient shower, going about their day in their pyjamas. No, women spend five hours putting on make-up, then five seconds pulling on pyjamas.

And let’s think of the practicalities. Sure, pyjamas keep you warm and snugly when you’re wrapped up in your council flat. But on the streets of Ireland? I mean, I’ve heard of global warming but come on!

Sadly, it’s a growing problem. Even Asia has now dubbed it “visible pollution”. I hear Still Films are currently shooting a documentary about it, called Pyjama Girls. I secretly hope it’s merely a ploy to lure all pyjama-wearers to a secret location where they will be rounded up and shepherded off to some godforsaken place. (Limerick?)

So I beg you, for the love of god, GET DRESSED! It’s not that difficult. Yes, I know the multiplication tables have you stumped, and you often have difficulty spelling your own name, but proper pants are just as easy to wear as pyjamas. And I know shoelaces are an enigma for you, but buttons shouldn’t be. And zips? Well they just go up and down.

So ladies, please, jettison the jammies. And men, I encourage you all to ridicule mercilessly any female you encounter wearing this gruesome garb in public. In the short term, you may make them sob their little hardened hearts out; in the long term, you’ll be lauded for helping to eradicate a swiftly sweeping sickness.

Let’s do it! Let’s purge the pyjama plague!

Ode to a frog

Dear French tenant,

In light of recent events...

... I am hereby giving you notice that your rent will double. Effective immediately.

What’s that? You can’t afford to pay that much? Boo-fucking-hoo. In that case, I am hereby giving you notice of your eviction. Effective immediately.

Don’t bother coming home from work; I’ve changed the locks. Also, I’ve packed up all your belongings and had them shipped c/o “Those dirty, rotten, cheating, lying scumbags”. I trust the postman will know where to send them.

I considered marking it “Handle with care”, but I guess that goes without saying.

Adieu!

P.S. On your way back home, could you pass on this letter:

“Dear France,

We are no longer on speaking terms.

You know why.

Ireland.”

'Til debt us do part

I don’t like mentioning the R word, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid because there’s nothing like a good old recession to highlight stupidity. But who’s to blame? Is it the stupid banks, or stupid individuals?

Before the whole boom bubble burst, I was standing in the O’Connell Street branch of Bank of Ireland, patiently waiting my turn to tell them what a lousy shower of bastards I thought they were, when along came the security guard asking if anyone would like to apply for a mortgage. Anyone who replied in the affirmative was immediately swept from the queuing quagmire and deposited on a soft, comfy seat to await a private, one-on-one chat with a senior bank employee. The rest of us were left to wait in limbo.

By way of a similar example, a chronic alcoholic I know (who shall remain nameless) decided during a short-lived sober stretch that he was going to buy a house. He approached his bank about getting a mortgage for a relatively meagre amount. Not only did they give him the money, but they gave him an extra forty grand for good measure. This is a man that has suffered with alcohol abuse since his teens and has been living on disability benefits for years.

Needless to say, he drank the lot.

While I don’t condone his behaviour, I also don’t have a jot of sympathy for the bank now having to write it off as a bad debt. And this story is just typical of what went on around the country for so many years. It’s like waving heroin in front of a junkie, then acting like a woman scorned when he grabs it from you.

But does that mean the heroin addict is completely blameless? After all, we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess if we’d just learned to say no. Just as junkies thought “I can quit any time I want”, so too people thought “I can afford to take on this massive mortgage and live outside my means”. I mean, why own just one house when you can have a house, a townhouse, a log cabin in the woods, and a villa in sunny Spain? Why buy a car when you can buy three?

The banks may have thrown money at people, but some people grabbed it with both hands and immediately rushed out to overspend it. And the number one thing that people bought? The idea that money makes you happier, healthier, skinnier, taller, more popular, and better looking.

Shiny shoes? €400.

Jazzy jewellery? €5,000.

The look on your face when you get your bill?

Priceless.

Madonna has taken over my body

I don’t know what possessed me. I suspect it was the devil because, upon waking this morning, I had the sudden urge to jog. Jog! I hadn’t done any exercise since... well, pretty much ever. Needless to say, my suspicions were aroused. Especially in light of the fact that, a week ago, I decided I wanted to go on a two-week detox (water, water everywhere and every single damn drop to drink). Something was wrong. Something was very, VERY wrong.

I remembered that one time I decided to do a few minutes on an elliptical machine. I spent five minutes on it, and the next five puking my guts up in the bathroom.

So yes, I was wary, but I figured I’d give it a go. I crawled out of bed, donned a tracksuit bottoms (I knew I’d kept them for a reason), a strappy top and my favourite (and only) Nikes, and hit the road.

I jogged for five minutes. I spent the next fifteen trying to get my heart rate back to normal. No vomiting this time, luckily, but I did have that awful queasy feeling.

So now the burning question: should I keep it up? Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Pros: I had that elusive windswept look down to a tee, and a lovely rosy glow in my cheeks. Also, if I keep it up, I’ll become a lot more fit and healthy, and will probably tone up a bit too.

Cons: I had an old woman badger me about getting pneumonia (it wasn’t even cold), and I got wind-burn on my décolletage, which I will now spend the rest of the day scratching.

Hmmm...

While exercise is something I hate, it seems to be inescapable. Every magazine I open, or book I read, or TV programme I watch, seems to exalt the benefits of exercise. Apparently, it keeps you young and fit. (I have my doubts. I mean, look at Madonna. She may be fit, but she’s still a haggard old witch.) Just last night I was reading a book about how unbearable getting old would be if I hadn’t done any exercise. Stiff joints, weak heart, slow reactions. I would have suspected it was a book of horror stories had it not come from the non-fiction section.

In hindsight, that’s probably where my urge to jog came from.

My body is telling me to keep it up, but my mind, in all its infinite wisdom and experience, knows that this is just a passing fad. Sooner or later it will fall by the wayside, like so many other things. It’s just a matter of when.

...

“Hello, Domino’s?”

Sleeping with the enemy

Like a Ryanair flight, it was a long time coming, but it had finally arrived. I had to clean my room. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. In fact, it had taken many sleepless nights, various stubbed toes and a bunch of broken bric-a-brac. It had gotten so bad that the only real available floor space was the few inches required for the door to open.

The first thing that needed clearing was the bed. For longer than I care to remember, piles of random detritus had been building up on my double. When you end up sleeping in a corner of the bed ‘cause that’s all the space there is left for you, you realise it’s time for action.

So, feeling particularly emboldened, I decided that I would sift through all the stuff, and anything that didn’t immediately go in the bins (regular and recycling) or the laundry basket was divided into three piles: clothes, bags and accessories, and “other”.

The clothes pile, unsurprisingly, ended up turning into 3 piles.

The pile of bags and accessories was small and unremarkable. The pile of “other” was neither.

What follows is a list of all the crap I’ve been sleeping on/under/beside for the last... oh, eons.

*deep breath*

1 letter from a close friend; 2 dustbags (one for my Chanel handbag, one for my Cole Haan shoes); 2 CPD compliance cards (for work); 1 face scrub; 3 birthday cards; 2 moisturisers; 1 tube of toothpaste; 1 mini hairbrush; 1 lipstick; 2 mascaras; 1 rubber band; 1 packet of silica gel (“throw away, do not eat”); 1 paper clip; 1 diffuser nozzle for new hairdryer; 1 A4 ring binder; 1 gift bag from Hallmark; 2 passport photos; 1 notepad; 9 pens (anyone who knows me well – one person, really – knows about my unintentionally extensive pen collection); 1 packet of moistened toilet tissues; 1 eyelash curler; 1 Tube map from my trip to London; 1 mint; 1 dry-cleaning bag; 1 blister pack of multi-vitamins; 1 fault report card from Eircom; 2 packets of throat lozenges (from my suspected bout of swine flu); 1 leaflet on the Lisbon Treaty; 1 National Lottery envelope (3 stars on a scratch card!); 1 book with misleading title (“The Pocket Stylist”, a hardback book measuring 6x10.75inches!); 1 packet of tissues; 1 tea towel; 1 shower gel; 1 pair of iPod headphones; 2 cleansers; 1 can of bug spray; 1 can of Febreeze; 9 Mars bars (yes, 9!); and 15 clothes hangers.

And that’s not to mention all the stuff that’s on my bedside locker, my bookcase, my chest of drawers, my two wardrobes, my desk, my shelves, my chair, my floor...

*pauses to catch breath*

You now have a small insight into my life.

Scared?

The case of the missing banana

Sometimes I’m convinced that certain people were put on this planet with the sole purpose of raising my blood pressure. Of course, being a landlady, I bring a lot of it on myself, so it was no surprise that, when a new tenant moved in, I fully expected to require hospitalisation for the dreaded “blood boil” disease.

My suspicions were immediately aroused when, on his first night in the house, I was treated to the entire back catalogue of Natalie Imbruglia (i.e. “Torn” on repeat) until after midnight. I let it go, remembering he’d said he didn’t get up until 9.30, so I had the promise of a lie-in.

At 7am I was woken by the warblings of Robbie Williams.

I was more than relieved when he left the house at 7.30, as I was mere seconds away from ripping his door off its hinges, plucking him from his bed and chucking him out the window.

When I finally got up (many hours later), I took the opportunity to engage in some calming and captivating activity: I decided to put my new kitchen table and chair set together (Argos’s finest). With a drill in one hand and a bunch of screws in the other, I was making progress.

Then he came home.

He hovered over me, insisting that I let him take over. He persisted. I resisted. He stopped just short of saying that such things were a man’s job. I stopped just short of beating him to death with a chair leg. He must have sensed the hatred seething from every fibre of my being because, after several painful minutes, he finally left.

And so it went for several days, me hating him, him seeming to go out of his way to annoy me. He continued to ask ridiculous questions, claiming he didn’t know the “rules of the apartment”. OK, rule one: don’t call it an apartment, it’s a house! And you don’t head off for the day and leave the front and back doors open. It’s not the “rules of the apartment” you haven’t grasped, mate, it’s the rules of common sense and human decency.

If only they published an “Idiot’s Guide To Life: How To Avoid Pissing People Off And Being Stoned To Death As A Result”...

After several days, having pseudo-settled into an exasperating existence, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that one of my bananas had disappeared from the fridge. Not being one to jump to conclusions, I texted him and demanded the immediate return or replacement of my beloved banana. He admitted to his fruity filching and assured me he would replace it.

The next day, I cautiously returned to the fridge to investigate. There was no banana. There was also now no bread.

He moved out last week.