Nearly at my due date....

It's July 1st! July is actually here! I am 39 weeks pregnant today!

I am so stressed about it being July and being 39 weeks pregnant today. Right now I just feel like I want to run away and hide from the inevitable events of the next couple of weeks. Everything feels soooo overwhelming right now.

It's so HOT and humid! I am sooooo bad with hot and humid weather, I just can't stand it. I feel ill in hot weather when I'm NOT 39 weeks pregnant with little ones to look after! I am so beyond thankful for our plug-in A/C unit that we bought from Homebase a few days after Matthew was born (in the last heatwave we had! Why is it only when I'm about to give birth?!). It means we have to hang a hose out of the window and I am not crazy about spiders coming into my bedroom (the boys found a female false widow spider in the garden the week before last (Neil killed it) and then last week Neil found the male and the nest complete with hundreds of spiderlings and a new egg sac (*shudder*) in the pedal of his bike in the garden!). I'm pretty sure a couple of dozen of those spiderlings have not been accounted for! So I'm paranoid about open windows right now. I don't want false widow spiderlings coming in and maturing into adults who will then give my babies venomous bites!! Scary. I found one inside so far already. Anyway, I digress. I'm so thankful for the A/C unit! It means my bedroom is only 76 degrees (25 celsius? I don't speak celsius!) instead of 91 overnight (33!) like it was before we bought it when Matthew was newly born! Crazy! It doesn't cool the other rooms too well, but it's so much better than nothing! We are just having the curtains and windows closed all the time when the sun is on the house, and it's too hot for the boys to play outside. This morning early there was some cloud so I let them out before 9am for a while. They wanted to come in after 40 minutes when the sun came out. It's just so oppressive! We're eating ice-lollies and drinking plenty but generally pretty bored inside.

It doesn't help that I'm suddenly completely incapacitated, it seems, pregnancy-wise. I am healthy and this pregnancy has gone wonderfully smoothly! I feel so blessed! But also, I'm just so huge and exhausted lately, and no matter my night-sleep, I feel desperate for a long nap every afternoon, which I can't get. I am pretty much able to do Nathan's naps, nappy changes for the younger two, and get their meals, and that's about IT. Which sucks for the boys really. There is NO housework getting done, and let me tell you, not doing housework + heat and humidity = fast mould growth, oh yes. And stinky home. We don't even have something useful like a washing line, or anything outside which we could hang clothes on! But I refuse to use the tumble dryer, so the result is lately that we have no clean clothes and a multiplying mountain of dirty laundry all over the house, urgh. I tried last week to do some housework (just basic maintenance!) but spent the rest of the day feeling nauseous and faint and exhausted, and basically had to lie on the sofa for nearly 3 hours that afternoon while the boys wreaked havoc around me! So, Neil said no more attempting to keep up with housework. But then, the house goes to complete ruin! Which is a) disgusting, and b) really upsetting me to look at. Also Neil is doing bits and pieces in the evenings, which I feel kind of bad about. He has enough on his plate really.

The boys' behaviour. Again. I almost don't want to write about it here because I have done so soooo many times this past year and it's always worse and worse and worse, and I always get a ton of advice that conflicts and end up feeling kind of embarrassed about admitting to what goes on in our home in the end! :S

But it's bad. Arthur and Matthew are spitting and peeing everywhere. I kid you not. They are trashing the room daily (more than once usually, especially Matthew). They are drawing on the walls. ALL my glass in the living room has dried spit on it. All of it. Mirror, door glass, windows, everything. It has been running and then smeared about with fingers, and is now dry like that, but today I have not managed to clean the glass in there. I sit in the evening and look at it and just feel so depressed. They do that to the glass every day, several times a day. They get disciplined every single time they spit, but they still do it the same. They are going out of their way to disobey me as much as they possibly can. Neil gets the exact same behaviour from them, it's disgusting really. They are so RUDE to our faces. They use nasty tones and aggressive faces, and blow raspberries and stick their tongues out at us. This is mainly Arthur, but Matthew is learning. I can't fathom how to discipline Arthur, because he is simply not responding to the strongest discipline we know how to dish out, even if it's repeated endless times per day. He is lately lying like crazy, and Matthew is starting to as well. His attitude and spirit is getting so awful, everything is about him and no matter if he has to hurt somebody else or lie through his teeth or blame some innocent brother, he will if it gets him what he wants, or helps him avoid something he doesn't want. I'm so disgusted, and I am struggling because I feel terribly guilty and at a loss about it - I'm the parent and this has to rest entirely on MY shoulders (well, Neil's and my shoulders, collectively). *I* am responsible for his behaviour and attitudes and it's my responsibility to mould and shape that in him, and I'm absolutely MISERABLY failing. The fruit is almost all bad.

We are honestly for the first time reaching a stage where we are feeling desperate enough to need some sort of professional help from a real-life "Supernanny" or someone, and we've never thought that could ever be us, no matter how bad things got with the boys. I can't really understand why, although I'm sure I must be being reeeally naive or just stupid about something, somewhere along the line. People suggest things, like, maybe it's to do with the baby coming? Or maybe they're just too bored and not stimulated enough? Maybe they don't get out enough? Maybe they should be at school? Etc, etc, you get the picture. I'm not convinced one bit about any of the above suggestions - it's been going on too long to be baby-related, although it's mayyybe possible that the behaviour worsening is related to it in some way? I don't know. Arthur is so very excited about Benjamin coming soon and talks eagerly about it all the time. Matthew says nothing about it, and seems not to have made much of a connection yet, so far.

Bedtimes are getting difficult. If Matthew does not nurse to sleep (and he won't be doing that all that much longer because I will probably want to wean him in a few months if he hasn't done so by himself), then it's impossible to get them all to settle properly for bed. Now, don't get the impression that I mean children who won't "settle down" and lay down in their beds, no no. I mean, children who scream and shout hysterically back and forth to each other and say as many rude things as they know how to say, and make sure they do the opposite of what we ask them repeatedly to do, as forcefully as possible for as long as possible, while their poor baby brother sits dazed in his cot next to their bunk bed in complete confusion at their noise, tired and wanting to be able to go to sleep. It makes me SO ANGRY, I can't even describe it. They always end up downstairs in seperate time-out zones, but still shrieking and spitting and laughing hysterically so that Nathan still can't go to sleep and we can't "switch off" their noise to our ears to allow ourselves to calm down and discipline them properly. This kind of bedtime takes 2 hours. Two hours of this continuous behaviour. I can't stand it!

Tonight I just cried and cried at bedtime. I lost my temper with Matthew after about 40 minutes of it and then held him while he cried, and Nathan cried next to us in his cot (while Arthur cried in the other bedroom with Neil) and just could not breathe for crying. I never ever do that in front of the kids, but I just had nothing left to prevent it. They did calm down after that, but urgh.

I have a stressy home visit from midwives tomorrow, well, two. A normal antenatal appointment in the morning and then a big appt at noon where some midwives are coming over and bringing the senior Supervisor of Midwives from the hospital, to discuss in detail my decision to have a homebirth despite being Group B Strep positive (thus declining IV antibiotics). Urrrrgh. My doula is coming (did I say here that I have a fantastic Christian doula?!?! I do! Thank you Lord!) and I'm glad of that, and Neil is going to try to get work to let him be here over that time to take the boys somewhere (shopping centre?! Too hot for outside!) while it happens.

I feel about ready to just have a hospital birth anyway, with the state of the house and the boys' behaviour. More than that though, I am just feeling slightly panicky about the fact that I'm 39 weeks pregnant and due to give birth REALLY soon. I don't want to!!! I want to hide and for it not to happen! I would happily continue my pregnancy for another few months right now! ;) I just can't fathom how it will be when I have tiny Benjamin here AND the house as it is and the boys' behaviour as it is, in such a short time from now. I have no idea how on earth I will avoid postnatal depression with that kind of set up. I had it mildly after the first two boys, mainly due to finding it hard to cope afterwards. None whatsoever with Nathan, possibly because Neil was out of work and home to help all the time. So, I'm anxious.

Well, my laptop battery is about to die and I made a deal with myself to go to bed when it dies! So I must stop for now. Sorry it's just a huge rant. I need to pray a lot. I'll update properly soon.