Silent Night (hopefully)

So here we are on Christmas Eve. All is calm and all is indeed bright. We are officially four days away from our lives being turned completely upside down and yet we appear to be remarkably relaxed about the whole thing. Albert keeps reminding us that he's trapped in this twilight world with only a few layers of skin between him and the outside world. The kicks, punches and hiccups are getting stronger and I reckon that all things considered he'd like to be out now. I feel in some ways completely ready for the birth and yet I know that when the time comes I will suddenly remember all the jobs I was supposed to have done and start to panic again. Will I remember all the things I did with child number one to keep her alive or will I have to re-learn everything again? I want to be really relaxed and calm and then I remember the sheer weight of responsibility and wonder if I can do it all over again. Here's hoping!!

As Albert grows and the igloo gets larger, the blessed vessel is becoming more uncomfortable and struggles to find the right position to sleep in. As one side becomes numb her ladyship is forced to turn over in bed and inevitably comes face to face with her arch-nemesis The Sleep Thief. I reckon the creators of Doctor Who have missed a trick here because this creature is more fearsome than the Daleks or the Cybermen because The Sleep Thief actually climbs inside your head and will not let you rest UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Mostly it emits this low level rythmical buzzing which starts off quietly and gets gradually louder but occasionally rises in decibels (especially during the Manflu season) and becomes very tiresome for the affected person. Luckily The Sleep Thief can be made to go away and create havoc elsewhere with a couple of magic commands and a strategic nudge so perhaps it is more annoying than evil.

I am on standby with the car primed and pointed in the general direction of the hospital. We have an alternative plan just in case it snows which involves the new sledge we bought a few months ago but we are hoping this will not be necessary. Equally I am hoping that this will not be an entirely dry Christmas for me (selfish bugger that I am). I may nip out of the house occasionally on a flimsy pretext and have a swig or two from the bottle of Jack Daniels that I hastily secreted in the garden shed a while ago. Either that or I shall have a long chat with Albert and plead with him not to make an appearance on Christmas Day. I'll regale him with stories from friends about how their Christmases and New Years have been blighted by being born on either of those days. It should be enough to threaten to call him Noel if he arrives tomorrow. I know, how ridiculous to saddle a child with a stupid name!!

So, our last Christmas as a threesome. The triangle is set to become a square. Will it be three onto one or two against two in important decisions like what programme to watch on TV? Match of the day or Soaps? One things for sure, our lives will never be the same again.