NIPPLE TWEAKING AND RIGOROUS SEX...and still no peanut

Thursday was my birthday and my birthday wish was for the peanut to arrive before the weekend is out. It is 10.30 on Saturday morning, and apart from the now constant Braxton Hicks that accompany me wherever I go, it is showing no signs of obliging its mother’s request.

Why aren’t I using this time to write the next great Australian novel? I never have enough time to do all the writing I want, and here I’ve been handed the rarest of gifts – time to use however I choose – and I spend it doing online research into pressure points to induce labour, reading articles debating whether raspberry tea really works and whether or not nipple tweaking is a good idea. For the record, sitting on the couch playing with my nipples for hours at a time (as the study suggested) doesn’t strike me as a particularly good use of time. If however, you can incorporate it with another labour inducing suggestion of rigorous sex well then, that would be a fine way to while away the hours indeed.

All you parents out there are probably shaking your heads and thinking; ‘how frivolous she is. If only I had that time again I’d wash the curtains, alphabetise the dvd collection, and finally get around to crocheting that table cloth.’ Lucky for me we don’t have curtains, or dvd’s for that matter and I could only manage to crochet if I’d been locked in a room for a decade with no other stimulus provided.

I do walk. Ten kilometers in fact, and depending on where the baby is sitting, it can take anywhere from one hour to nearly two. (The lower the baby’s head, the shorter and more awkward my gait. I look like one of those old Asian ladies you see in 70’s films). The other day I even managed to jog. 

Jogging is defined by a period of time where both feet are off the ground simultaneously and while this wasn’t necessarily that comfortable, nor I am sure that pretty for those around me who viewed it, it felt fantastic. Abso-bloody-lutely fantastic. I cannot wait to get back out there again, the theme song from Chariots of Fire running through my mind as I stride (or more accurately plod I imagine) around the streets of Sydney, the sweat slicking off my arms, the sun cream mixing with the salt, the familiar burn in my calves as I force myself up the next hill.

Call me crazy, but apart from the obvious of falling more in love with the human we’ve created and getting to know it and spending hours just staring at it and all that, the single thing I am most looking forward to, is tying on my sneakers and going for a run. I’ve run probably on average 4 times a week since I was four years old. That’s a lot of distance. It’s my therapy. My anti-anxiety drug. And it works too – when I was desperate and poor in New York City, lonely in outback Australia, rained on in London, heartbroken in middle America, homesick in Santa Monica, everything was better when I got back from a run.

But for now, I’ll placate myself with a walk. A poor second but it’s the best I can do until this baby of mine decides to come out and meet its anxious parents. If you’re a runner, have a jog for me…