A meandering post about blogging, pregnancy and being a little lost

Inspiration - I thought it would come back with the rain. When the sun shines, there's too much gardening, too many playgrounds, too many barbecues to think about sitting indoors with a computer. I was sure the rain would fix all that. But writing is a precious and fragile thing.

To write this blog, my world needs to satisfy too many conditions. I need to be lonely enough - too many friends at the door, and my head is filled with them. Too lonely is not good either - if I lock myself in the house I don't feel good enough about myself to fill these pages. Too depressed and the words don't come - all I want to do is sleep. Not depressed enough and I will be sitting in the garden with a drink, quite content to sit and watch the children and not wanting to bitch about anything on here. Then there's sickness, pregnancy, full diaries. I wonder how I ever get to write at all.

Just now, I suppose the pregnancy is making me sleep about four hours more every day than I would otherwise. My back kills me whenever I sit in a chair for too long. I've gone all sentimental when it comes to my children and will spend ages making a jigsaw or colouring with them. Or just cuddling. Earlier, I lay on the sofa with Marie, just holding her for half an hour.

I can't get my reader to go below 120 posts just now. I try to keep up, but there's just too many. I'm thinking of culling some blogs. There are some I've visited for ages, but there's never been any return visits (like never, not even one), so I may just give up. However lovely they are, they do make me feel bad (Why don't they love me?) and I like to be part of a community which implies a certain reciprocity.

I'm just bitching a little and feeling sorry for myself. I feel fat today, and tired. I pulled a muscle while sitting on the sofa earlier. I feel like the next couple of months are going to be impossible to manage. I feel like I owe it to the children to spend their summer in parks riding bikes and going to the farm. I will probably try to manage as well, meaning I'll be completely finished by four or five every day. Which leaves two or three hours of HELL with two bouncy children before Babes comes home.

I can't get my head around the idea that in two months' time I will have a small baby again. The idea seems so abstract. It could hardly be anything else moving around in my belly, but still I can't understand the concept of a small boy - ours, new, real. I have so many fears about the birth - how will we both get through it - and the health of this baby - isn't asking for three healthy children plain greedy and stupid? Am I tempting faith? As a result, I have my head firmly in the sand. I have some onesies, even some nappies, but I have done nothing about sorting our babyclothes (still in the attic), sorting the bedroom (still occupied by toddler), even finding a name or arranging the logistics for the two others when I'm in the hospital. I am metaphorically singing LALALA in my head every time someone mentions birth or tiny babies.

Maybe my inspiration is not the problem. I just don't feel like being all that funny just now. I'm feeling more and more thoughtful and immobile. While my body keeps reminding me of a Buddha statue (surely the pregnant belly and breasts on him are not a coincidence), my mind is slowing down, coming to rest, turning in on itself. Like the Buddha I am starting to resemble, I am becoming more contemplative and meditative by the day. I always forget when I'm not pregnant how it gets into your every fibre. It's not just my body that changes, it's my mind and my feelings as well. Nothing is as it was before. I can't move like I normally do. It takes me longer to do the most basic tasks. Laundry has become a full time job. At the same time, my mind is slower. I can't do sums as fast, I drive slower, I take my time. I have started reading again: long books, long stories. I take my time with them.

The small baby stage will be different again. There will be night feeds and tiny little clothes. There will be breastfeeding and trying to fit all this in around the other two children. There will be more love, and therefore more to worry about. There will be even more lack of sleep. I can't remember what that was like either. Is it self-preservation, this amnesia all mothers seem to have?

I'm not sure what all that will do for my writing either. I know I don't need to write every day, but I want to. I feel I need to. It's strange to have a public record of my year, and such an important one at that. I am in the middle of my life. This is what I will remember, I guess, when I'm old and wrinkly and I look back. The times when I was growing and nursing and raising my children. It is a crucial time for this family. The beginning on which we will build later.

Time is going so fast. August is nearly here. I'm not ready. I'm not ready.