In two weeks time, our baby will hopefully be ripe and ready to meet us all. In a week’s time as is tradition for anyone expecting a baby we are squeezing in a house move. I am currently living surrounded by packing boxes and bubble wrap. Given the state of my hormones, I have also launched myself into a massive ‘clear-out’, sorting and ordering every drawer I come across. I am determined to use this opportunity to become clutter-free and begin my new role as a mother of four as ordered as possible.
Needless to say, my husband has entered into a particularly busy period at work and with a week or two’s paternity leave looming is cramming in the hours at his desk. So it is my mother and I who have spent the last week bent over packing boxes frantically sorting while the children are at school. Occasionally, I am stopped by a sudden twinge as the baby reminds me to spare a thought for it. “Please don’t come now,” I plead with it. When I remember my first pregnancy, I spent the last month reclining on the sofa regularly refuelling myself with tasty tit-bits, my orderly hospital bag packed and sitting ready by the front door. With this baby, I can imagine myself arriving at Dorchester Hospital armed with a carrier bag and a toothbrush, desperate to lie down and enjoy some time away from packing boxes.
I just have to keep imagining myself in the coming months safely settled in our new house relishing in more space in which to dilute the current noise levels. However, with the new house comes more responsibility in the form of five resident hens, one of which is broody, two cockerels, three ducks and some fish. I also understand that some lambs will shortly join us alongside a whole brood of chicks, just to keep the new family of six, the Labrador and the border terrorist on their toes.
With this in mind, I have decided to sign off on this chapter of Family Ties whilst I tend to my brood. We will be back shortly with the next chapter – one that I know will be full of new challenges for the deranged mother. However, please excuse me for now. I have some serious nesting to do.
