Quadrant? Astrolabe? Sextant? Equinoctial Ring? Anyone?

“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.” Carl Schurz

Dammit! AO is upside down and wouldn't be turned round, despite the best efforts of the doctors at the hospital.
Time is hurtling towards Friday morning where I get sliced open like a mango and I get handed a baby. The only phrase running through my brain is “ How will I know what to do with it?”
"You'll be alright" Paul softly cooed, but I continue to swim in the waters of disbelief.
I still don't fully believe I'm going to be some person's mum. Even though I know I have a little ally inside me now I am having thoughts that it may rebel and we may become warring factions, i.e. it won't like us. Anyway, too late for that. I'm slowly leaving altruism behind as an out of date, damaging mode of thought.

There is nothing left to do, yet there is everything still to do. For one thing, I'll be an invalid for at least a week after the big C section, so boring but strenuous things like cleaning must be done. Shopping must be ordered and hair must be cut. Yes, it might sound strange but I've thought about it and it is not possible to go to the hairdressers with an infant who needs you to whop’em out to feed it every 5 minutes. Wholly unwelcome in any hair-cutting establishment!

As my anxiety mounts, I'm eating like it is my last supper and curiously, I am sleeping quite well. I am trying to keep calm and of course I do keep it together in front of people, but there are moments when I'm screaming inside "HELP! HELP! How do I do this?", I cry and roll my eyes up to the sky like some innocent creature (which I assure you I am not), as though asking for some deity to deliver me from imminent pain. Then I stop just as quickly as I started, resigned in the knowledge that no one can save me, no one will do this or anything else for me and so I kick my own metaphorical arse back into reality.

I just try to regulate my breathing and focus on thinking positively on breasts, yes, my breasts. If I can crack the breastfeeding, the theory reads, I'm half way to a happy, contented baby. Its all about food and security. Babies don't understand anything else, none of us do really. I've been forced by circumstance to relinquish thoughts of an idyllic home birth, the wonderfully heroic act of pushing a new life into the world is a shelved plan A. Tempering myself, I am embracing the lesser heroism of undergoing abdominal surgery. I know we have to suffer for our children, but my vigorous, ardent, Arian self wanted something more war-like, more valiant and, well, macho, 'ard, if you like, where the birth was concerned. Caesarean sections are cop-outs for pussies, (pun half intended), for vain females who want to preserve their perfectly tight quim or who wish to avoid incontinence, or for rich females who have an army of helpers in attendance to wait on them hand and foot while their wound heals, I thought, or at the very least, that it was the only option as a result of some unfortunate event. But a C section is what the doctors are recommending for me now. They should know. I've never done this before so what do I know. In them we trust.

Thus deflated, I try to forget the fact I will be neatly sliced and then sewn up again and am trying to focus on the person I am going to meet.
This person, a stranger, will be my legacy. We invest so much of ourselves in our kids that we also have to safeguard them from our aspirations as much as from our failings. Will we be loving enough, good guides and teachers and will we be appropriately ambitious? Will we be accommodating enough? Can we ensure some kind of future for them? The answer is that there is no answer. Only that, a vision is needed, we need to set an ideal in our sights. To have no ideas whatsoever about how you’d like to bring up your child, is to be braindead, to have no direction is foolish. I have learned that if you are going to exert some energy you need something to direct it towards or it might be better not to bother. No one likes the feeling of running and getting nowhere.

Well, that is enough. The centrifugal force that is my unborn child is challenging my bodily posture and so I have to get out of this uncomfortable chair. So long, friends and readers. I cannot say with any certainly when I will be back in front of this screen. But I can be certain that life as Paul and I know it is about to metamorphose into something peculiar. We are about to transported to Parentland where I hope we can retain some of what we call 'ourselves'.

Wish us luck!