S had a pretty rough old day today — a fair bit of boredom, nausea, stomach pains and cramps all suffered through to a background of bad tv, plentiful rain and fatcat dragging and hiding dead rats in the house.
The day didn’t start so bad — we spent some time paging through one of the I’m pregnant helllppppp books we picked up at Kinokuniya yesterday, and I have to say, it was pretty damn good.
Lots of pictures, diagrams, charts and summaries meaning that after a 15 minute sitting I felt I knew all there is to know about this stage of being pregnant — and I’m not even pregnant.
Unfortunately, and as I suspected, there is only so much a book can teach you, and there’s many things we’re only going to learn by experiencing them ourselves.
Take this afternoon at the kitchen sink for example.
Even when un-pregnant, S was never much chop in the washing up stakes — and by that I don’t mean she didn’t do a good job of it, rather she just didn’t do it.
“Washing up? No sorry I don’t go there.”
Always one to get a clean glass rather than rinse a dirty one, S had an uncanny ability to fill an empty sink at the drop of a plug — and our sink is huge.
Today had been no exception and by early afternoon the sink overflowed with the great unwashed. While starting the big wash, first I dropped and broke a plate, then I had to dispose of yet another rat that fatcat had decided to bring inside, then, as I scrubbed the araldite-like remnants of a strawberry smoothie out of the blender, things got the better of me and I got wound up over who was doing what — and so what do I do?
I gently ask S to try and do a bit more around the house.
I really tried to be gentle, and while she certainly didn’t explode, S didn’t take it all that well.
Any other day and a minor altercation like this would throw us both into a grumpy funk. We’d both sulk for hours and refuse to acknowledge that in all likelihood we were equally to blame about whatever the problem was.
Not this time. This time the fault wasn’t ours. It was theirs. Those bloody hormones!
This morning leafing through my favourite baby book, I learned that currently S’s insides are all beginning to twist, turn and expand. Many of these dull aches are related to tendons and ligaments being stretched and manipulated. We laughed it off this morning — suggesting that the baby is swinging off her very own monkey bars inside S, but our laughter made light of the monumental changes S’s body is going through…
My response to the insides of dearly beloved being turned into a jungle gym?
I have the audacity to suggest she get off her butt and do some more washing-up.
I may as well have added “hell woman, get me a beer while you’re at it”.
Washing up? After my efforts today S doesn’t need to do it — I have it all under control.
Sorry babe!