I am so glad to be post partum.  Pregnancy was getting me down.  I mean, it’s physically really demanding to be all unbalanced, overweighted, your centre of gravity is not where it used to be, your ligaments are all loosening up and your skeleton feels like everything is moving around.  Then there’s baby kicking and punching… it’s hard work.

But what is less obvious is the emotional side.  The ups and downs, the weird logic that your pregnant brain cooks up for your own retrospective humiliation and your friends’, colleagues’ and families’ bewilderment.

Let me furnish you with an example.

Some years ago I worked in a small office, and a colleague there was around 6 months pregnant.  She had been there for many years, she was a very loyal and hardworking employee.  This was her first pregnancy.  She was thrilled.  But she was also a basket case most of the time.  She started coming in to work an hour or two early, and sitting alone in the conference room, watching and waiting for the other staff members to arrive.  She never said anything, just watched in silence.  Which it turns out is far, far creepier.

I like to think she was also patting a cat while in there.

This was weird behaviour, especially for her.  But we grew accustomed to it, and eventually nobody noticed any more.

Then one day she went to the bathroom.

She was gone for ages.  People were practically lining up to do that “did you fall in?” joke when she came out.  Except when she came out she was pretty much crackling with fury.  She stormed down to her office, grabbed her things, and then stormed even harder into the CEO’s office.

She resigned, on the spot, and went home.  She meant it too, she did not come back.

Later that week, someone asked the CEO what had upset her so much.  He said that there had been no toilet paper in the bathroom.

So, you know, totally worth throwing 8 years of loyal service away.

The fact that there were around 50 rolls in the store cupboard right beside the bathrooms apparently didn’t change things.

Anyway, that’s one of the more extreme instances I can think of, where I have been on the outside looking in, and it looks very much like the proverbial basket case.

However, when you are on inside of that amount of crazy, it’s very hard to see it as anything but logical, rational sense.

Of course, I am above all that.

You just can’t understand why nobody else thinks the same things are as important as you do.

In my defence, I was really, incredibly thirsty.

All I’m saying is, I’m glad that is behind me.  I can go back to being my normal amount of insane, instead of the super-pregnancy-hyper-insane that can cost you your job.  Or your marriage.

Now if the oedema would just go away, I could start to feel like my old self again.