Juggling

I am exhausted. It's so frustrating!! I can't seem to do half the things I need to do, and when I force myself, things I used to do all the time just a few months ago now completely wipe me out.

Sleeping is hard; this weekend I achieved the impossible - I was apparently too tired to sleep. This predicament is not helped by a certain little Cheese being nocturnal. She seems to wake up late evening, and keeps booting me until I go to bed, and then starts trying to turn somersaults. I've been regularly waking at 6am which seems to be when she has jumped on my bladder sufficiently to warrant a bleary eyed bathroom trip. According to the midwife, she is now head-down, ready and waiting, but not actually "engaged" yet. This means that I have her giant feet just under my rib cage, with hands free to punch various vital internal organs, and she can still pivot vertically. I can actually see her moving about inside, my stomach ripples, and if I squeeze in the right place, I can occasionally feel distinct foot shapes in there. This morning, I was woken at 5.10am when she got a rather violent attack of hiccups...

I keep looking enviously at other people's 4d scans, the new ones where you can see the baby in 3D (the video makes it 4D when you see her move in real time, I guess.) There is no way we could afford one, and we've only got a few more weeks to meet her in the flesh anyway, and there is no actually reason to check what is going on in there other than curiousity and impatience. I nearly did end up with another normal scan though - last time I went to the midwife, she said I was still unusually small-bumped. It's true, depending on what I wear I can still hide the fact I am pregnant altogether, let alone nearly 8 months along. Midwife was concerned that Cheeseling might be pretty small and not growing as quick as she should, but she measured me vertically, and apparently my uterus was 33cm high - bang on for 33 weeks. It is just because I am naturally tall and pear-shaped! Nothing to worry about! Not that I want anything to be wrong, but another glimpse of her on a scan would have been lovely.

As uncomfortable as I feel at the moment, I actually think I am going to miss having her wriggling around in there. I first felt her move not long after Christmas and it's been pretty much constant ever since, which is a long time to get used to her presence. It's not going to feel right, having an immobile, empty belly again. I am incredibly excited and impatient about The Big Day, but the thought occurs that I shouldn't be wishing this time away...

Maternity leave starts at the end of the month. Now this I really am looking forward to!! As always, I am juggling several things at once - I was supposed to have got a draft together of my entire thesis before I go on my leave, because as my supervisors rightly point out, I am highly likely to forget what I was on about when I get back to it in January. Well, with three weeks to go, I am still lacking any conclusions (which is acceptable, according to the Powers That Be) and no proper methodology chapter, only very vague notes. But everything else is done. However, I also have to write a presentation for some seminar by this time next week. I also need to chase up the last of my interviewees who not only appear highly reluctant to talk to me, but are also down in London and not easily harrassed. Oh, and then I've got to write another paper for a workshop which I can't actually attend in person, it being in early July.... aaaaargh.

And then I have my coffee van to run. I am have been "lazy" with this recently, mainly because I actually can't physically stand on a market stall all day making coffee without an incredible amount of aches and pains. Cheese is too heavy! We took the van to a charity event last weekend, did extremely well but the whole thing rendered me incapable of functioning as a human being for quite a while afterwards. I've also won a competition about the markets and people are demanding I write biographies of the business for press releases and, more significantly, want me to sort out when I want to trade for free... which may well have to be in several months time.... and thus follows more general aaarghs.
Other worries and side projects include trying to move house, what on earth I am going to do for a job post uni, money worries, driving lessons, yadayadayada....

I tend to get too involved in other things as well; most recently, politics, but also emotional complications with my friends, people I care about are having some pretty tough times at the moment. But one says:

"Ignore me. You have the Cheese to worry about it. Cheese has to be number one priority."

He's right, I know. But I also find him, and others, very difficult to ignore, and I feel terrible about trying to. In truth, I don't know how to stop juggling all of the above any more. There is very little that I can, none of those commitments are suddenly going to cease to exist just because our little one suddenly pops out. Six months maternity leave with nothing to do except Look After Cheese sounds unimaginable at the moment. I don't know what I am going to do with myself! And other than collapsing in front of crap on TV occasionally and moaning a lot, I don't know how to make Cheeseling my priority. I can't hurry her along, and I don't know what to do to make her more comfy for the last few weeks! Any recommendations?