by Sarah Sheere

THE countdown to D-Day is concentrating minds in my house at the moment.

D-Day is Drop Day; I am due to give birth to my second child in six weeks and six days (I told you it was a countdown).

Georgia, two-and-a-half, is very excited about the prospect of a brother or sister but, to be honest, I think the waiting is starting to become a drag for her little mind.

I can certainly empathise with my little girl's feelings because my rotund state has finally rendered me unable to tie my own shoes, get out of the bath unaided or generally walk around the house in any degree of comfort.

Yes the countdown has started to drag, almost as much as my ever-growing bump.

So much so that the day of reckoning cannot come fast enough as far as I am concerned.

As for my husband, Dave, he will be relieved when the baby finally arrives - he is under the misapprehension that the arrival of a new baby in the house will put a halt to the near incessant moaning from Georgia and I.

I can't pretend I find pregnancy a beautiful time; I don't tend to "glow" in pregnancy.

Don't get me wrong. The prospect of a new baby to nurture is incredibly exciting; and those occasional moments of wonderment when you see your baby on a scan for the first time, or feel the first kick, are to be treasured.

But generally, I find myself looking like a ghost-like image with a white face and black eyes, feeling sick on a daily basis and counting down the days until the baby is in my arms.

Am I on my own here or do others feel similar?

Anyway, enough of my self indulgence, I could easily fill the entirety of this 800-word column with such moans.

To the point of my musings: I read a short piece in The Telegraph on Monday morning that made me chuckle.

The enlightened headline read: "Let new father stay on wards, says report".

A report commissioned by The Fatherhood Institute has suggested that early input from fathers "profoundly" benefited children.

All I could think when I read this was that if my Dave was to stay in the hospital when I gave birth, it wouldn't be the babies keeping everyone awake, it would be his snoring.

When I say snoring, I don't mean a little gentle splutter, nor a wheeze - this is a nostril-busting, high-decibel roar from deep in the thorax which rises every 20 seconds or so with the metronomic regularity of Old Faithful.

So awful is this snore that I am sure the poor babies on the ward would be traumatised for life if their first experience of the world was a first night listening to the pneumatic drill that is Dave in the depths of slumber.

And as for me, it is one of the few nights I get off from the horrendous noise - why on earth would I ever want him to stay at the hospital with me?

These articles do make me laugh. It's bad enough how overcrowded maternity units are as it is, with staff and beds being of such a shortage that women in labour are being turned away from their local unit, without allowing the men to stay taking up beds when the mother and child are more than likely to be at home within 24 hours.

AS you may or may not know, the Watford Observer offices are buried deep within Watford Business Park and right opposite our offices is the new Sentrum HQ which is in the process of being rebuilt.

Cranes, bulldozers, lorries and trucks have poured into Caxton Way since April last year, when the work first began.

This has had an enormous effect on the parking situation for this part of the business park, with cordoned off areas of the road and trucks everywhere, forcing Watford Observer employees to all attempt to cram into our car park, blocking each other in and causing general mayhem.

It is something we have got used to over the past year, but I personally, am really losing my patience with it all now, especially at the prospect of having to waddle my way through the entire business park if I don't arrive at work before 8.30am in order to get a space in the car park.

And it can be hugely embarrassing when you try and squeeze your car into a space the size of a postage stamp in the car park with a dozen colleagues queueing up to take your tiny space if you finally give in and call it quits.

This is all even more challenging when your tummy is the size of a rather large barrel which makes reaching the steering wheel a challenge in itself, and turning to look over your shoulder feels like your most intense workout ever.

And once, if you are successful, you have parked, you have to squeeze out of your car with limited space between yourself and the next car, which again is a huge challenge with a pregnant tummy.

I have threatened that in my current state of hideously heavy pregnancy and unable to walk too far due to the sheer amount of weight I have to carry that if I really can't park anywhere else, I will be forced to park in one of the disabled spots in the car park.

And woe betide anyone that tries to move me along.

Our regular columnist Catherine Cain has taken a break this week. Her next column will appear in the Watford Observer of Friday, April 25.

10:20am Friday 25th April 2008

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