NATURE’S WAY

I know it’s not yet spring. This past week’s snow has put paid to that idea. But I’m afraid that unseasonal as it is, I have begun to nest. When I was pregnant with Olly, I remember ‘nesting’ being mentioned, but I just presumed that was to do with getting a nursery ready, and seeing as we had got a cot and a pram ordered I thought I had put sufficient feathers in my pile of twigs.

Not so. Nesting involves something a little more warped than actually making sure you have enough baby grows/nappies/posset cloths. Nesting involves deciding at 11.30 pm that the skirting boards need cleaning. It means getting tearful over a lampshade that you’ve put up with for the past four years that is now actively preventing you from having a happy birth. It means cleaning windows in the freezing cold or standing atop a wobbly ladder to change curtains that have until now done perfectly well. I have found it is one of the behaviour patterns of pregnancy that my old man finds the hardest to understand and the most exasperating. Fine if I want to make sure the house is tidy and organized and that we’ve got the room all ready for the baby. But why is it necessary for me to want to repaint the wicker chairs in the kitchen?

I consider myself quite organized; I’m good at lists and work hard at keeping things straight, and I have prepared quite well for the arrival of number 3. But you can’t fight nature, and there are several things that are not down on my list that are now really bugging me. Hence the painting of the wicker chairs and the need to clean everything at ankle height. And I have been lying awake at night for hours worrying about the light fitting in my bedroom. I can’t say that I’ve ever liked it much - we inherited from the previous owners and it’s a bit rococo for my liking - but it is perfectly acceptable and has survived the two previous babies, but this time it has to go.

I decided to investigate this strange phenomenon further; and my first hit on Google for ‘nesting’ gave me a site on Sea Turtles. According to this site, bright lights along the beach can frighten away or disorientate nesting mothers – so clearly my lighting problems have a precedent in nature and this was enough incentive to carry on the madness. So this weekend I damn well nearly collapsed as I reorganized the attic. The sane part was locating the high chair, baby clothes and changing station. The mad part was re-cataloguing all of Olly’s clothes from birth to the present day, despite the fact that I know I’m having a girl. Steve dutifully lugged all the boxes downstairs while I sorted and labelled. Then he took them all back to the attic. Then he took them all back down again when I decided that the cataloguing system was not up to scratch, and needed breaking down not only into clothes type, but also size, season and colour. All the time two little faces peered up into the ether calling for the mummy bird as she bumbled about pulling more and more feathers out of her chest, stumbling over the twigs and branches that have been thrown up there over the past four years.

When I did come downstairs to be with the kids it seemed my insanity had worn off on them. Once they had been told that we were sorting out clothes for the baby, they both immediately demanded to be dressed in the garments that they had outgrown. Luckily for Bill she could be accommodated by stuffing her into some of Olly’s old pyjamas, Dalmatian spotted ones at that, and she happily crawled off to be a puppy in one of the storage boxes. Olly however, in one of his more Kafkaesque moments, could not reconcile himself to the fact that none of his clothes fitted despite being told over and over that these were old clothes that he’d grown out off. The moans descended into howls of despair and I ended up having to squeeze him into a pair of summer shorts and an old bobble hat.

Even as I put him to bed tonight he was moaning about not having pyjamas with feet in them like the baby’s ones have. And as I sat at the bottom of his bed, I wondered if it was this bad just sorting out the clothes, what on earth was it going to be like when the baby came? Olly had already informed me that he wouldn’t be bashing the baby unless it bashed him, so I wondered if the baby having pyjamas with feet might be incentive enough, or would the familiar sound of the ducky musical box be enough to send Billie into a jealous rage. So perhaps instead of worrying about skirting boards and mismatching cutlery I might do well to feather the nests of my two little chicks so that they don’t mind too much when this latest little egg hatches.

Quote of the Week:

Crying heard from the living room. We go in to find Olly standing by the washing basket (stolen from the kitchen) holding the lid down.

Lifting the lid, a tearful Billie emerges: “I don’t want to be a puppy in the basket anymore.”

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 3) in Hertfordshire.

Read Juliet's previous diary