Anastasia and her husband, Nick, have been married for 3 years and are expecting their first baby. Here’s her pregnancy diary for week 34

Great timing

Why is it that human beings choose the most inopportune times to make enormous, sweeping life changes? Here I am, big as an elephant, and we’re moving house. This is the first step on the road to move to America – we’ve sold our house and we’re moving into a rented flat for a few months before we leave London for good.

So here I am, sitting on the floor of our bathroom, going through our Boots warehouse of toiletries, wondering why I never looked here before I re-stocked our toothpaste supply. We have about four full tubes hidden in the depths of this cupboard.

It’s my job to decide what goes on a boat to America, what goes to Oxfam or family and friends, and what goes to our temporary flat. Try making these decisions when your ribs are getting kicked to shreds, your belly is sticking out so far you have to negotiate your way on hands and knees in order to stand up, and your brain is overloaded with information about epidurals and breast pumps. It’s not easy. I’m crippled by indecision….will I fit into my black trousers after the baby? Should I keep them in London or send them away and let ignorance be bliss? What else will I be able to wear? How will the weather be this spring? Will my hair fall out as they warn you it can? If so, do I still need a blow-dryer? Brain overload. Need ice cream.

Nick won’t let me move anything, of course, but it is simply an impossibility to move house and not move anything. I spend four days bent over or on my hands and knees, sorting through vats of stuff and, by the end of the fourth day, I can barely speak. My back is killing me, my muscles ache, and I feel like I weigh about ten tons.

Lugging my hippo frame around is just too difficult, and I collapse in our new flat, unable to speak.
‘What’s wrong?’ Nick asks, genuinely concerned.
‘Nothing. I am FINE!’ I snap with the only energy I have left. When you’re eight months pregnant and you ‘over-do’ it, it takes more than one night of normal sleep to recover. For days I feel tired and lack energy and enthusiasm for anything but rest. But, of course, this state of being has coincided with our moving into an unfamiliar flat, which needs some help to make it homey, and the first twinges of nesting instinct are beginning to kick in. Make no mistake, I have absolutely no desire to clean, but I do feel a dire need to buy some baby stuff and make a temporary baby room, at last. I also feel the desire to wade through the things friends have loaned me.

One of my dear friends is moving back to Australia, and we planned a ‘girlie’ dinner for her, last Tuesday night. As I left the house, I yelled over my shoulder to Nick, ‘There’s some laundry in the machine, if you think of it, put it in the dryer…’ Since it was only our second day in the flat, I was pretty sure Nick hadn’t even located the washing machine, but it didn’t really matter. I’ve received tons of baby clothes from my friends and, at 7pm, I had an uncontrollable urge to wash every single vest and sock, just in case this baby came tonight and its feet were cold. So I threw a mound of baby clothes in the laundry with my newly purchased non-biological laundry soap, and then ran out of the house to go to dinner. When I got home a few hours later, Nick looked excited and proud of himself and said, ‘Come here.’

He took me by the hand into the designated baby room and proudly showed me the array of clean baby clothes, which he’d washed, laid out on the bed, and folded neatly. You have to admit, newborn clothes are pretty damn cute. The socks are so tiny. The vests are so weeny. And the little hats could make your heart melt. The sweetest thing was that, he had done about three loads of laundry in my absence, and the care he took to lay it all out in a Lilliputian display really touched me.

Looking at all the clothes, I realised that my friends have all had boys – virtually every piece of newborn clothing I have for this child is blue. Now, I don’t subscribe to gender roles, and I very much doubt I would dress a girl in pink, but I did feel a twinge of a desire for something frilly. I’m going to hold off – maybe this is a sign that everyone is right. Maybe this is a little boy inside me. We’ll see.

See Josa Young's pregnancy diary for weeks 34-36.