Entering the final straight

On Saturday I turned eight months pregnant. Which in many ways is great - no-one wants the baby arriving too early, and I figure that by now she's cooked thoroughly enough to be able to manage pretty well whenever she does make her appearance. Lungs are in good working order by this stage for example and, while she could do with putting on a little fat, she could survive quite easily without too much intervention from modern medicine.

However, staying in a bit longer is better. For her, not necessarily for me. I shouldn't really grumble too much as it's been a relatively easy pregnancy again (other than the chest infections which weren't really Pumpkin's fault!). No morning sickness, and I'm not too big, or I haven't been up til now anyway. But now that the final month is upon me I'm getting to the "OK, I'm ready" stage, mostly due to various small physical irritations which, when combined, can get rather trying. These include:

• Tension knots under my right shoulder blade, which fade away over night but then are back with a vengeance by about 9.30am and remain there all day
• Inability to turn over in the night without waking up
• Only two possible sleeping positions (on right side, or on left side!)
• Getting up every night to go for a wee
• Persistent low grade heartburn
• Feet in the ribs (Pumpkin's feet, my ribs!)

I think she, and therefore I, must have had a growth spurt again in the last few days, since I'm also now having trouble with trousers. My maternity jeans are OK but I'm just bored with them since I've been in them solidly for three months. I tried a pair of black trousers today but they were too loose with no way of tightening them, and just kept slowly descending - since my stomach is now much bigger than my hips there's nothing stopping them once they start, so I ditched those. And my comfy house trousers (usually PJ bottoms) are all a bit snug now, so I've had to resort to Husbandio's PJ bottoms. Luckily they're really big, and have a drawstring waist. From now to the finishing line, comfort is definitely the name of the game.