A Little Catch Up

pregnancy craving part 1 - pregnancy craving part 2 - crisp september morning

empty work inbox - packing hell - giant spider

paint porn - kitchen floor - planning, list making, world conquering

instagram - madeupoflittlethings

Well, I haven't written for a while. Has it really been a month? It's certainly not through lack of things to blog about, more lack of time to sit down and put fingers to laptop!

There's been so much going on lately. I finished work for my maternity leave on 13th September (woo hoo!) so was frantically busy in the run up to that. Mainly because I'd had to cut my working hours on doctor's advice to try to manage my SPD, which was worsening by the day, but also because the huge multi national plc I work for hadn't got their act together enough to appoint someone to cover my maternity leave. So I spent the last few weeks dividing up my role and distributing it amongst the people I felt were most suitable for each part. All of whom already have full time roles and no desire to take on more work. Add to that the fact that I couldn't drive to their locations to carry out face to face training, meaning non stop conference calls, and you can imagine how it quickly became quite stressful

In addition to trying to finish up at work, I have been preparing for our move, which happened this weekend! It's been a long old slog to get here and to be totally honest, the house is still nowhere near ready. But given that our new tenants move into our old house on 1st October and we have work to do to that too, we just had to set a date and stick to it. The new house is still mostly unpainted inside (partly unplastered too!) has no carpets, curtains or heating and until yesterday no toilet/bathroom/kitchen facilities. Living there is as depressing a prospect as I can think of, especially given that I'm 8 months pregnant and extremely uncomfortable most of the time anyway, even in a house which is warm and comfortable! The plumber will be here all week (we hope) to try to make it bearable and we have called in electric heaters in case of emergency! Luckily the Aga keeps the place absolutely roasting so unless we have a big freeze we should be ok. My filofax is bursting at the seams with appointments for the safety checks for the old house, carpet measurements and alarm installation for the new house, phone line/broadband/Sky installation etc etc ... not to mention midwife and GP appointments ...

The final nail in the coffin was spending last Monday night on the phone to NHS Direct, watching Matt writhe around in agony and finally rushing him to A&E in the early hours to find that he had kidney stones. A pain (so I'm told) which is as near as a man will experience to childbirth and which saw him in hospital, hooked up to a drip and regular morphine until Thursday when I was finally allowed to bring him home. Watching your partner who is never ill and never takes painkillers, completely insensible with pain and begging for morphine is quite frightening. He's been working 24/7 for such a long time now to try to get the house done and ready for us whilst running his business - I barely see him at all - it was inevitable that something had to give. When I did finally get him home he went straight round to the new house to check the delivery of bathroom furniture was all correct and undamaged, rang work to give instructions for the next day, then got home and hoovered the living room (for about the third time in his life - WHAT??) Men eh?? A law unto themselves!!

So although it looked for while like we were going to postpone the move, it ended up being full steam ahead. I had loads of packing still left to do, my lovely parents and best friend were here on Saturday and Matt and his brother were here yesterday, all moving stuff as quick as I could pack it! My parents cleaned up a couple of rooms at the new house that we can use for storage and somewhere to sleep and by last night we were all moved in. I'd been looking forward to this moment for years but I had no idea it was going to be like this - heavily pregnant and with a stinking cold, no bathroom, no heating, and with a still-very-poorly man who refuses to steady the pace

It all sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, doesn't it ??