We went to the free NHS antenatal class yesterday; it wasn't bad, there was lots of info, but it was all a bit haphazardly presented & so I'm not sure how confusing I'd've found it if I hadn't known most of it before. The midwife who was giving the course was very positive about home birth, though, and also answered a question I'd wondered about: home births actually cost the NHS less than a hospital birth (I had wondered if they were more expensive for them because the midwives had to come out to the home).
Still ticking things off the shopping list: we've bought the reusable nappies (all the nappies we will ever need! That is, they adjust in size so you can use them from newborn to age 2-and-a-half-ish) -- we still have a handful of things left on the list but none of them are essential immediately; if baby arrived tomorrow I think we'd be able to manage. And friends/family have been wonderfully generous in lending/giving us things; I dread to think how we'd've afforded everything if we hadn't had so many lovely people around to help us out!
I'm feeling a lot less worried than I was about the actual birth (worrying will not help anything & will probably actually make things worse) but probably worrying slightly more than I was before about looking after the baby (yes, I know, worrying will make that worse too, stress hormones get passed to the baby, I am already a bad mother). Pretty much every book on the subject that I've read so far can be summarised as "the way I did things with my children is the one true way, doing anything else will make your baby grow up stressed and unhappy and stupid and obese (if they even survive)". I suspect in practice I will just muddle through like everybody else does, finding things that more or less work most of the time.
The plan to get the house in order (which should have been started about a year ago, but hey, better late than never) progresses too as we now have SHELVES in the front room! I wish I'd admitted to myself earlier that there was no way I was ever going to put shelves up myself; we finally got a carpenter in and so far he's doing an excellent job for a very reasonable price. One alcove done (and already filled with books), the other to follow next weekend.
Sadly chickened out of going to a schoolfriend's baby's christening this weekend (it would have involved a very early start and a long car journey each way, and I just couldn't face the early rising/sitting/travelling/standing-aroun
jinty (and baby Aphra) called round with a gooseberry bush and a book on breastfeeding; timscience called round to give me a poem about BADGERS (thanks cleanskies!) and to borrow piano music; Duncan and Ruth (& baby Zoë) called round to borrow our Glee DVD (and reclaim a maternity top that Ruth had lent me but which I'm already too big for); and addedentry's oldest friend Pablo came up from London to visit (we took him to the Isis for lunch, & the weather was so nice we sat outside to eat ... and when we got slightly chilly we went in & sat by the fire). Times like this remind me how lucky we are to live so near so many friends, to be in such a nice area, to be able to stroll down to the river in the sunshine. 