Did We Move At The Wrong Time?,

Every time I have thought about this or talked about this it has been primarily in concern to my pregnancy, and when we were getting ready to move it was the thing that I was focusing on; pointing out to anyone who was holding up the process that I was only getting more and more pregnant as the time went on, and the last thing I wanted was to be moving house at a time when there was a risk of the stress putting me into labour, or that it was going to happen and I would be in the hospital and my partner would have to handle the move on his own. 

It was definitely something that was a big concern, and rightly so because it really got in my way for things I was able to do on the move day and also the things I have been able to do since, but it's not just that I was thirty odd weeks pregnant, it was partly the way that the house had been left - with many spiders and many, many cobwebs, so there was a lot of cleaning to do before we could even think about putting anything away - but also because the state that the gardens were left in. 

Every time this comes up, people tell me that the gardens are something that can be ignored for now and the most important thing is the house and whilst it's true to some extent, it's also evident that they have been ignored for a long time anyway, or the level of effort needed was a lot higher than the level of effort that they got. It's partly where plants have gone out of control, or where the trees just haven't been pruned so they are damaged in places and wild in others and things like ivy have been left to run rampant and trying to now tame them is difficult, and it's the wrong time to be sorting it out because of the pregnancy, but also the start of winter is not the best time to be trying to get out and do anything with the garden and it's not the best time to be trying to sort out all of the garden waste as well. I know there are a few things about gardening where it's like, No Mow May or thinking about baby bunny season and not raking leaves because of nesting hedgehogs, but because of the sheer amount of garden waste there is in the garden we need to do something with it and leaving it to rot in place isn't really an option. We're also in one of those councils that make you pay a suplement for garden waste collections and they're only just starting to do a food waste collection in the new year. Naturally, I'm frustrated by this, but I'm just trying to get what I can do done and accept the fact that it's not going to be perfect.

We've been able to look back into an archive to see what the gardens used to look like, and we have our own ideas as well, of course, of what we want to do with them, but there is quite a big gap between where they are now and where we want them to be.

Like with a lot of things though, I know that part of the joy of it all is going to be the journey of getting it to the point that I want it to be at, rather than just walking into something that is perfect from the first minute, and I'm looking forward to doing this with my son in tow, getting to teach him about it and get him involved in it all as well.

Do You Know What You're Doing For Christmas?,

I know it's a natural question to ask at this time of year, but seriously, this has been getting on my nerves since November, because I have been saying for months that unless my son has decided to arrive early, but not too early that he's having to spend a long period in the NICU, I'm not doing anything.

I've bounced between being a lover of Christmas and a total Scrooge for years now, so maybe it's not surprising to some people that I am really not up for doing anything, but there are reasons and it's pretty much because the baby is due so close to Christmas that I don't want to plan anything because I can't commit to those plans and I don't want to make plans that I'm pretty certain I will have to break at some point. The simple fact is that if we have the baby a few days or even a week before Christmas then we'll be very much in the newborn trenches which won't be ideal for either having guests or being guests, and if he has not arrived then I don't want to be sat around all day feeling like everyone has me on bump watch to see if I'm going to have contractions and the baby might be arriving on Christmas day or at least starting to make his way out on Christmas day. Even if he didn't then decide to arrive on Christmas day, I know how I feel right now - like an overinflated balloon or a planet with my own gravity, and also very unstable so I keep walking into things and sometimes that is bump first, which really hurts - and the addition of more weeks and a heavier baby will only make that worse. All of the symptoms I am having, the exhaustion, the nausea and the mood swings don't really lend themselves to a Christmas celebration that it feels like everyone is expecting. Even before our scan where we had the updated due date, we were due right around Christmas so I've been saying since spring this year that I wasn't doing anything for Christmas and I meant it.

Christmas just doesn't feel the same to me this year anyway, because I've not really been able to go out to go shopping and find presents for family and friends, partly because of feeling sick all of the time but also because the amount I can walk is limited by the level of pain that I am in. When people have asked me what I want for Christmas, I haven't had a clue, because it's not something I'm thinking about at the moment. The only thing I have been thinking about is what we need for the baby, because so many people have been asking us what we want or what we need. 

The biggest problem with not being able to make plans for ourselves is because our parents have then been reluctant to make plans, particularly my mum who we are planning on taking the dog when we go into hospital, but she also knows she's on call in case I need her for moral support or in case my partner isn't at home when I need driving to the hospital. Granted, on Christmas day or particularly closer to Christmas he'll be off on leave anyway, so that is a bit less of an issue. I think she just doesn't want to plan anything and then have to say she can't help with little man if I need anything and we are in those early newborn days, and I completely get that. She knows I'm going to need some support and he's her first grandbaby so I know she is going to want to be able to spend time with him as well. 

In some ways, I feel kind of bad, because us having a baby seems to be throwing off a lot of the family's Christmas plans, but at the same time, we didn't plan for a Christmas baby and it wasn't something we were particularly aiming at (granted if the choice had been Christmas baby or no baby then it would have been a no brainer and we would have chosen to have a Christmas baby, but it's not like that was what we were trying to achieve from the start) but it's not something we've hidden from everyone or not been completely open about. I can be relatively tactless and blunt when I want or need to be, so I have said it loudly for months that I'm not committing to anything until I know what the baby is doing and as I'm sat here writing this (which is about ten or so actually it's more like fourteen... days ahead of when it will be scheduled to be posted) he doesn't seem to be in a rush to join us in the world outside, so we'll probably just be sat at home waiting for something to happen. Maybe when we get to that stage I will regret having been so against making plans, but it's something we'll only know when we know, and it's not like we can't put something together quickly when it comes to it.

I Could Be Way Off Base Here, But,

It's another long one; sorry... 

Here's another one of those episodic things of post it now whilst it's actually relevant, and strangely enough it's related to one of the previous ones. I am accepting that I am not a doctor, or a scientific researcher or anyone special in the way of learning or teaching about neurodiversity, so I could be wrong about this, but here we go. 

I had a bit of a rant recently in reaction to the way that Streeting announced the enquiry into ND conditions and possible over-diagnosis, particularly in recent years. I would point out again that whilst it didn't say it was particularly in connection with the increased number of women being diagnosed, the timing of this enquiry is awfully suspect, because it comes at a time when the understanding of ADHD, autism and the like in women is developing, becoming better publicised and therefore more women are putting themselves forward for diagnosis. In recent days, the statistics on methods of birth have also been published and there has been judgemental outcry at the results particularly because there is. a stat that is being pulled out as being particularly of note and that is the rate of C-sections is higher than the rate of vaginal births, for the first time, and apparently that really upsets a lot of people. 

Overall, the stats say that over 45% of births were from C-sections and around 44 to 45% from spontaneous vaginal birth. If you can do maths you might be as confused as I was with that, wondering where else or how else you might get them out, but it's because instrumental delivery (forceps or Vantouse) accounts for around 10-11% of births. Now, as headline figures these seem to be useful in seeing the trends of changes in births over the years, but aside from that, unless there is additional data, beside of it, this doesn't tell you a damn thing about WHY the rate of C-section has gone up, but that doesn't make a good story, so you get rags like the Daily Mail that include buzz words and phrases like 'too posh to push' because it riles people up, and what do riled up people of this day and age do? We react, we comment, we share, we add our own remix and commentary or whatever. Unfortunately, some people do this and share the article which is the source of their rage, and whilst I understand the desire to do that, because there is nothing better than sharing your anger at something when there is something to be genuinely angry about, but it is worth pointing out that the writers and editors of the Daily Mail know exactly what they're doing and whilst the mortality of their actions is questionable, sadly they are not stupid; if they were, they wouldn't do what they do so well as to still be in business when print media has been spluttering along with it's death rattle noise for the last two decades or more. (I do know there is an irony in saying this as a blog writer; I really do.) Interacting with posts and articles. produced by the Daily Mail makes them money. You can be as morally correct as you want to be, but even hate reactions on Facebook, comments where you disbarage them, their writers and their readers just adds to the algorythm thinking something is interesting (because it is) and showing it to more people and sharing it puts it in front of more people's eyes which is good for them because of things like advertising. Honestly, I don't know if their writers actually BELIEVE half of what they write, but if it makes you angry, it makes them money. Some people try and get around it by posting a screenshot of the article, and it works better than sharing a link or similar, but sadly it does mean people may search it to go and read additional sections or to interact with it themselves, however positively or negatively, and so even indirectly it can generate them some traffic. For what it's worth, I'm not just ragging on them for what they're saying about mother's whilst I'm literally pregnant with my son; I have a longstanding hatred of the putrid rot that they circulate from when they decided to pass comment about the suicide of a friend of mine, and honestly, I get mad at myself now for how much I let their words hurt me, but there it is.

Are we too posh to push? Who knows? Has anyone done any quality research, or done a deep dive into the data? Is it recorded as a simple 'this is the method by which the baby eventually came out' or is there an action log which records what each patient went through? I'm not saying you have to suffer for your C because there are many women who a C section works better for. There are all sorts of traumas concerning genitals that mean it's better to be booked in, sliced, stitched and presented with your little bundle (no, I'm not so naive as to think it's that easy, because it's not) or there are medical conditions which necessitate it. Socially, there are women who feel that what happens with them and their friends and their peers is you get booked in, you go in to the hospital in a timely fashion and you are home in a predictable time because everything is planned, everything is scheduled and organised and that's that. And who is to say that that is wrong? Equally there are women that have had a C section previously who would love to have a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After C) and for whatever reason, can't. There are many who have laboured, at home or in a birth centre or in the hospital, for hours or days, and labour has stalled, medications aren't working, or whatever has happened has happened and they have to come to what can be a heartbreaking decision to have a C section, for their own good, for the good of their baby, for the sake of infection prevention, because they're exhausted, because something about their anatomy isn't quite working, because the baby is in distress, or a lot of other reasons as well; are they being lumped in with this idea of being too posh to push? Because even if you accept the fact that it's right to demonise people for being too posh to push (it isn't, but let's pretend for a moment we're all assholes and it is) how is it right to lumber those women who have pushed and pushed and pushed through pain and suffering and tearing and all sorts, into a category of "too posh to push"? How is that not insulting in the highest degree?

I would also like to point out that big babies are getting bigger. Someone told me 8 pounds was a normal sized baby when I was actually pregnant and I wanted to drop to my knees and pray for the survival of my vagina, because that sounds like trying to push a bowling ball out. When we're talking about "big babies" we're talking 10 or more pounds... You can pine for the good old days when women lay back and thought of England to get the baby in there in the first place, and then had to just bare down and push on because the alternative was either not available or not widely so, but they and their little five and six pound infants make some of these stodgy babes look like giants. Do we need to talk about or look into why babies are being born bigger? Maybe, but then you also need to back off of the women who deliver them if the idea of that passing through their pelvis is more than they can bare. Perhaps it's a problem with general fitness, not for the size of the baby, but the strength, meaning the actual physical strength and muscles of a women. We're becoming more and more reliable on cars as a mode of transport instead of our own two legs, so maybe muscles that would previously have been stronger are less cut out for the strains and stresses of labour, but to me that is again a different question than being too posh to push.

I started this blog mentioning about neurodiversity, and it may not be something where the connection matters, but there is a high correlation between neurodiversity and hypermobility, which in turn then contributes to a higher than average instance or probability of pelvic girdle pain. Whilst some may say PGP is just a bit of tummy pain towards the end of your pregnancy, I can assure you, it's not. From personal experience, it's really not. It's an exceptionally limiting condition and it's something which can - I found out unfortunately - get progressively worse. I struggled with getting onto and off of the sofa, I struggled getting up and down the stairs, I struggled getting in and out of bed, and I was regularly up five or six times a night in need of a pee, so it's not like it was practical or possible to just wake my partner every time I needed to pee, because he still had to get up and go to work even when I was able to be signed off because the only thing I could focus on was the pain. As a result of that, I was offered an induction, because I got to the stage where the way I was walking was just not amusing anymore and in terms of the quality of life I had, it was awful and it could have gone on for a number of weeks like that. Higher levels of inductions though - if there are higher levels... it's not something I saw in the data but it's not something I took an overly in depth look for - mean higher levels of C section and instrumental delivery, because a certain number of inductions end up in each one. Is that being looked into? Is that being accounted for? Is patient choice being respected? (It sounds like it is by the doctors and the midwives in maternity, but there is a distinct lack of respect from the press and potentially the public.)

In terms of facilities, staffing and many other things, as a country we are failing. The number of services which are poorly rated is horrendous and doesn't reflect on the work done by the incredibly kind and caring staff who just want to do their best, but are overworked, underpaid, sometimes potentially undertrained and generally taking the brunt of it when things are not going to plan. Like everywhere in the NHS, funding is being focused in some areas and not others, because it's not an unlimited pot, and things like infant feeding teams are seeing a rise in the number of people successfully breastfeeding in most timescales (and it is beneficial even in the shortest timescales) and the success of skin to skin contact in the early hours of babies lives, which encourages a number of good outcomes for both mother and baby. Alongside that, they're dealing with things like an increase in the number of overwhelmed parents and an increase in shaken baby syndrome in certain areas, and the necessary learning for parents in those areas to try and prevent that rise from continuing or being replicated elsewhere. I guess my biggest concern with this data is, and this is who cares, and why do they care, because if it's not for the right reasons - aka, looking into why, carefully examining if there's a problem and how to address that problem or problems etc instead of just demonising women for choosing to give birth in a way that feels safe and comfortable for them - then I kind of don't want to hear it. Especially because, whilst we happen to be on the subject, C sections are hard, and C section recovery can be brutal, and these women are having to return home with a newborn, a scar and, if they're lucky, someone at home for two weeks to help them out, but we all know that the financial strain on people is currently ever increasing so it's hard to judge anyone who decided they simply could not afford to take paternity leave. In that position, a woman can be left at home, alone, with a baby, and even in the situation where this is her first and only child, there are tasks she will need to do for that child that she shouldn't be doing yet because she is recovering from a major operation that is often treated like child's play. We need to do better for fathers or second parents or whatever you want to call them, but that also then means doing better by mothers, birthing people, again, whatever. If people need to use that as a reason, so be it. Not everyone can bounce back in two weeks or less. Not everyone is physically or mentally ready to take on the task of being solely responsible for themselves and another tiny little life who can't ask for what they need, can't tell you what's wrong and cries as their best way to communicate. Life is hard at the moment, finances are stretched, it is a hard time of year to be feeling the pinch, too, and sometimes it feels like everything is just piled on at the point that you're having a baby and if your only reaction to that is "having a baby was your choice" then honestly, you don't realise how f***ed the economy will be if people don't start having babies, because there is already not enough of them.

Okay, It's Time,

I'm currently sat with a glass of zero alcohol prosecco, under a blanket on the sofa watching something on Netflix, because I don't know what else to do at the moment. A lot of people will tell you that you'll know when it's time to go to the hospital, but honestly, I think once you've had a few false alarms, eventually you have to be right, don't you? It's not that we've had a false alarm for labour yet, but I'm sure it will happen before he eventually arrives.

One of the things I find really frustrating is the number of things which supposedly help to induce labour, but it's all anecdotal evidence, and for the most part when you read up on them, people seem to deny any of them work, and it's frustrating when you reach that stage where your body just feels too large and too lumbering and even though you know that the baby is safe on the inside, the promise of that first cuddle, and being able to walk without waddling and all the other glorious bits of no longer being pregnant are calling. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not pushing to have a medical induction any time soon, and I really hope that we don't get to the point where we need to consider that, because none of the procedures or methods sound particularly appealing, but the promise of things like raspberry leaf tea helping, or a particular kind of curry (as long as it was vegetarian) all seem more like a nudge in the right direction without being something that seems like forcing your body into being ready for something which it might not quite have been ready for. I know some people will stick by the idea that babies will come when they are ready, but some get past the point where it is safe to be on the inside and are still showing no signs of moving.

The problem is that you can feel ready and not ready emotionally, physically, mentally so much so that it almost feels like Schrodinger's pregnancy, or Schrodinger's mama.

There are still quite a few things we want to get done in the house before our little man arrives, but some of them are things that aren't really that important. Yes, it would be cute to be able to have his nursery ready, with the walls painted, all of the furniture in and everything completely ready for him, but he won't be sleeping in there for a good few months anyway, so his room is probably just going to be a place where we store his clothes and where I'm feeding him when we have guests over. There are other things that are a lot more important to get done - and no I don't mean getting on top of the garden, or even getting all of the prominent prickly stuff out of there.

Maybe the nesting instinct has gone off of me, and so I should be expecting the little guy to sit tight until at least his due date, if not beyond then, and I don't know that it counts the same if I try and convince myself to be doing things like stripping the wallpaper and getting other bits of his room ready, but I guess the upshot is that I am ready for him to be here already and it seems like he wants to be taking his time.

I've Got My Shoes, And I'm Ready For The Weekend,

I mentioned a post or two ago about having things going on at the weekend, and for some reason everything is triggering music or lyrics in my head at the moment, which going to make sleep fun when I finally try to go to sleep, but I feel like a song about shoes is very apt for me, because I love my shoes...

One of the last weekends before we become or became parents, at the stage I'm writing this he's still on the inside cooking and gaining weight, but who knows what he's up to when you're reading this!, I needed my wellies more than the high heels I used to love or my collection of Converse trainers, because we were out into the garden, in the thick of it with all of the apples that carpet the floor and we were trying to sort out at least some of the mess before the weather fully turns on us and before it's the dead of winter, the ground freezes and there is little to nothing we can do about some of the bigger problems on the land. The biggest problem being that it's essentially been left wild for a while.

The magnificent fruit trees are all a bit gangly and unkempt and a few of them have picked up invaders like ivy that have been there for a long time, and are subsequently a bit tricky to get rid of, but we're determined and we know it's not something we can do all in one go, even if we try to regardless of knowing that!!

Although I've been struggling with pelvic girdle pain and have been limited on the amount of time I can stand before I'm in too much pain, I managed to go to battle with one of the big ivy plants and it's something I want to keep doing because ivy drives me mad. I hate the fact that ivy is one of the most invasive species of plants, it does documented damage to properties, but still when you're buying and selling a house people make more noise about Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan Balsaam than they do about ivy which is literally strangling the life out of the trees and creating damage to them. I love our fruit trees, not just because I'm hormonal and have an unhealthy attachement to anything including inanimate objects, plants and animals whose names I do not know, but because they're a big part of my attraction to the land, so the state that they're in should be clear from me saying I asked for three rather large branches to be cut off one of the trees which was infested with ivy, because of the damage it has already done and continues to do to that tree. Honestly, it was the only thing I could think to do to save it. 

We have another tree further up the garden that is probably beyond saving and a few more further back that I'm hoping just need a bit of pruning, but given that I'm not allowed on ladders at the moment (it's for good reason - I'm not a very well balanced human being even when I don't look like I've shoved a beachball up the front of my shirt) I don't think those will get done any time soon.

This is why I love this place though, because it makes me want to get outside into the fresh air and do things, particularly to make it more beautiful but also to make it more accessible and also to restore it to when it has been more than a decent sized patch of land at the rear of a house that's useful for parking cars on and other than that, as far as we can tell, has been ignored quite a bit. The most important thing to me though is to be very intentional with the decisions we are making, and not just go at the whole lot with a chainsaw, say s** it all let's have a football pitch and then realise that even though the carpet of apples that was there when we first moved in was an overwhelming mess, taking out everything was a big mistake.

What I do know is that we'll be spending a lot more weekends in wellies getting everything sorted to how we want it, and I am really looking forward to the process, as well as the outcome.

Well, That Was Clever,

There are decisions that people make that from the outside, other people can't help but look at and think, how does that work? Or how does that make sense? And honestly, most of the time it's because the reasons for something are completely different because we all have different perspectives and it can take a while for these things to be visible. Obviously, I have an example. 

Next year I will have been vegetarian for around twenty years, so we're past the point it's been over half of my life and a few other significant milestones. With everything with the pregnancy I've also been confronting a lot of my issues around food and the fact that even if I don't have an "eating disorder" in the classic sense of anorexia or bulimia, I definitely struggle with disordered eating and it's most likely connected to the fact I have ADHD, or possibly the fact that several of my mental health team have stated it's highly likely I'm also autistic.

It would be completely untrue to say that I didn't have symptoms of this prior to going vegetarian, but most of them were seen as me just being a fussy eater, but I'm not sure if the problems got better or worse when I went veggie. 

The thing is, I'm not good with change. Quorn and other meat replacements are pretty good because they are consistent and being consistent and reliable is a good thing for me. Knowing what to expect and being able to expect that every time eases some of the anxiety around food. The problem is over the last twenty years a lot of different brands have come into the UK market and released products that have been varying degrees of awful or incredible, but these products don't often stick around. I could write an ode of love to the faux prawn sandwich that Aldi brought out a few years ago; that thing was beautiful. They also previously made a faux smoked salmon that I adored, which came back for Veganuary and then seemed to stay, but I haven't seen it in a little while (but we're on the eve of Veganuary again so hopefully it'll be back in soon...) but equally there was a tuna replacement that I tried once that made me gag and Linda MacCartney sausages taste like rubbish to me because they're too dry and gross. I'm also not big on their freezer mock duck, but the tinned stuff in gravy by Granovita was just incredible, and even that has disappeared. There was the Like Meat Schnitzel, too, there one day and then gone the next... 

I understand that this is because these products get launched and there will be others like me that are reluctant to try them, or that are priced out of some of them because some veggie products are expensive and then there's the really annoying one of products being developed using egg whites, because apparently they're an industry byproduct, so products can be made more cheaply, but then vegans can't/ won't have them, and when it's something like Quorn Fishes Fingers or the other parts of their fish range that died a dead, pescatarians won't eat them either, because they'd just eat the fish... 

Within all of this you've also got the group of vegetarians who don't use meat replacements for various reasons (not liking the taste or the texture of meat, the dishes that they typically cook for themselves not 'requiring' a meat substitute etc) and those who go vegetarian for health reasons, who look on a lot of meat replacement products as they would chicken nuggets - too processed and too beige, so making a new product work in the vegetarian market is HARD. There are some places that do it incredibly well and some that try and fall on their asses, but even the really good ones aren't guaranteed to last. I don't think it's that many years ago (but my ability to timeline isn't brilliant) that Temple of Seitan in Camden was potentially going to shut, and that would have been a total shame because they are beyond incredible!! 

So, what does this have to do with me? Honestly, it's mostly the fact that even when I try new products, which can be a pain to make myself do, then there's no point getting overly attached to something brand new, because the likelihood of it serving long term is... well, it's not great. Though if people avoid it so as not to get attached to it in case it disappears, it definitely will...

Being vegetarian limits my food choices and when I struggle with food anyway, it was probably not the best decision, but it's a decision I made because of loving animals as opposed to hating meat, so the lack of logic between all the change in the vegetarian food market/ scene and my ND brain not coping with change and remembering how good LikeSchnitzel was however many years later wasn't even a little bit of a consideration back then. Now it's just annoying... 

Give Me What I Want,

Originally, I wanted to title this Gimme What I Want, but then I second guessed myself on the band for the song I was referencing and realised that Gimme What I Want is a Miley Cyrus song and Kids in Glass Houses (knew it was them, should never have second guessed myself) titled their song as Give Me What I Want, even though I would swear that they sing it more as Gimme rather than the Queen's English (King's English now?) Give Me... 

And after that brief tangent, let's dive in. A couple of people have asked me, in relation to the impending birth of my little one, when I'm going to have a baby shower, and it has always been a bit of a when are you having one rather than are you planning one, which I guess is to be expected because they are a pretty common occurrence now (as are the dreaded gender reveals!!) but honestly, I never  actually intended to have one, for a few reasons and the biggest one is most of my favourite people like a car ride, train ride or even plane ride away and it wasn't going to be possible to get them all assembled into one room to come and celebrate me and my little guy, sadly. 

Now, I would have loved to pull them all together and do some of the crazy traditions from different countries baby showers, I can't remember if the tasting baby food one was Canadian or American (taste it and guess the flavours, not just taste it for the hell of it, although if you want to, you do you...) but I think the sniffing the diaper (translation: nappy) and guessing what the fake baby poop was made out of was an American one. Apparently a couple of favourites are spread out Nutella in one and green mushy peas in another. Yuck!! But even things like having a guess the baby's weight, or whose eyes or hair or whatever they will have seems like quite a nice way of celebrating with friends before bringing this tiny human into the world, because it helps people think about what's beyond the bump and actually having the little person in their lives as well as the lives of their parents.

Except that very often, baby showers are seen as a bit of a gift grab and it does slightly drive me mad when there is a gender reveal and presents are expected and then a baby shower, and another gift expected, and then some people do something which the Americans have dubbed a 'Sip and See' (sorry, but not everything needs a damn name...) and some people expect presents at that as well, though I believe that's not the norm... Some people will genuinely use these events, and particularly the invitations to these events as an excuse to circulate their gift registry and honestly, I find it tacky for one thing, but also find the idea of doing it kind of knocks my autistic funny bone.

There are just some things that, whilst normal to other people, make me squirm and the best way I can describe them is knocking my autistic funny bone, because it's that same weird sensation you get when you. bang your funny bone that goes along with the pain, but also just makes your legs feel like jelly and your stomach feel like you're going to throw up. It makes me cringe but it's more than that. 

But then again, the NHS advertising screens in the antenatal clinic really encourage you to make an Amazon Wishlist so I did, like a good little soldier doing as I'm told, but then when people started asking me about it, I got the total ick with it. At first it was because I really didn't want any more STUFF to move with, even if it was STUFF I picked out and STUFF I knew that we needed. As it was, we had a VERY BIG truck and it was damn near full to bursting, so God knows what we would have done if there was more, but the bigger challenge of it now is, a, how to go back to those people and say, oh yeah, we've moved now - here's my list - or even sending it to people who are asking me for it now, I'm kind of embarrassed by it, as though I'm either asking for gifts or because I think people are going to judge me for things that are on the list or things that aren't.

Let's face it, the second part of that is really ridiculous, because the reason a lot of things aren't on the list isn't because we simply forgot them or because it hasn't occurred to us to get them for the baby - who needs a car seat for the bub? Just bungee strap him to the roof... - but because we already have them and sometimes, we already have multiples, but I worry that people will look at it and judge my choices. I think the high chair is on there - something I fully intend to buy myself but since the dinning room is currently a cluttered mess still from moving, I'm not doing it yet - but it's specifically a wooden one, and we've had a few friends offer us their old ones and I've declined because it's a plastic one and that's really not my preference. I worry that sometimes it comes across as very ungrateful, but it's not about that, it's about the choices we are making as parents and we really do want to limit his exposure to plastic or microplastics in his food. 

I have a love hate relationship with gift registries for this reason, because at least you know that no one is spending money on things you may or may not like, need or want, but I slightly feel like it does ruin gift giving, because the act of giving a gift should be something from the heart - here's something that I love and I hope you will love, too, or here's something which made me think of you... You don't get that when someone has sent you instructions on what to buy, but you also avoid the awfully awkward interaction when someone gets you something you hate and you have to smile awkwardly, control your face (I suck at controlling my face - it broadcasts every feeling I ever have and the bad ones are on loud speaker) and say thank you, but even worse with a baby, particularly when it's clothes, you're expected to USE the thing, make the kid WEAR the thing, and share a photo of the kid in the thing as evidence or something cute in lieu of a thank you card... And if you don't, you're ungrateful...  And that's even when there are some vile sloganed items in the world like a bib that says "Daddy only wanted a BJ and now he has me..." And yes, I have seen something like that, but no, thankfully it wasn't gifted to me. Hopefully people know me better than that, because that would not be going near my child.

Now, there is the possibility of the fact that Reddit is actually stressing me out a bit because there are so many stories on there of people being called ungrateful for not accepting certain gifts or wanting certain things etc and it's always a bit of a divide between people who think you should graciously accept everything you're offered and others who think you should be able to be very specific, but with the market flooded with baby products, some of which aren't even considered to be safe, it's surely understandable that parents want some element of choice in what they do want and what they will use? If we had had a baby shower and someone had brought a nappy cake, they might have been sorely disappointed to find out that we're actually planning on using reusables so I'm hoping we only need disposables in a total emergency and for baby swimming lessons, so a lot of those would end up going to waste, or being put onto the local Facebook Free group. In terms of clothes, honestly, we have hundreds which we have been lovingly gifted, but babies grow so quickly that I won't be surprised if he shoots through them so quickly that he doesn't have the chance to wear half of what he has for the first year, so doesn't it make sense to look at a list of things that includes books we want to read to him, or bath toys for a little bit down the line or Tonies figures, because as much as I want to be able to read him to sleep every night, I know that there is still a lot of value in having something like that, particularly when he's a bit older and he can just set it up and use it by himself? 

If this sounds like I've talked myself into a love of wish lists, you're sadly mistaken, because I still find them incredibly difficult in terms of sharing them etc, but this is just a bit of a peek into the internal struggle I have with them...