It is a truth universally acknowledged that every set of expecting parents will organise to have some extreme building work done just before they have their baby, and then spend days and days stressing that it’s not going to be done in time and that the baby will arrive whilst the kitchen is only half-tiled and there is a gaggle of sweaty guys galumphing round the house.
Ours was a vital job that needed doing! We’d had this crappy electric shower since we moved in. ‘We’ll whip that out and put a new one in!’ I’d thought, naively, having no idea that building work now costs double (triple? quadruple?) what it used to, and these days any seemingly ‘small’ job costs the same as putting a moat around the neighbourhood. So after putting it off for two years and having very upsetting showers, where it could only really be one temperature which was slightly too hot, I decided that I simply cannot be looking after a baby and starting my days mift because I’m being very slightly boiled.
We organised to get it done!
It was due to be done in the Spring. And of course, the start date got delayed, and delayed, and delayed, until the builder said he could just about manage to start on the 1st of July.
My due date was 15th August.
Fine! It’s only two weeks worth of work. We’ll be well clear of the construction by then, I thought. Bring it on!
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Everything takes longer than you think. Even with a brilliant builder. In fact, because he is such a brilliant builder, his jobs always run longer than planned as people ask him to do more and more things. And to get it done on time, he had to come to us whilst still working with another client. Two weeks spread out over more than two weeks. And I began to get very nervous.
At one point he said he could come back and finish off the job once the baby was born, which is something ONLY a man would suggest. I did not want to be looking after a newborn with cacophonous drilling going on and the pressure to have to put CLOTHES ON.
It got done… but my goodness, it was down to the wire.
Why oh why did I agree to go ahead with the works so close to when I was having my baby?
Perhaps it is part of the nesting instinct. Perhaps I knew that once the baby came along, nothing would get done ever again. I say this having just cleaned a pile of post off a small table that I have been meaning to do since November.
There is no capacity within me currently to choose bathroom parts and colours or send a text to anyone sooner than two weeks too late, so I am certain I could not have handled it now.
And it was worth it. That shower has been a complete life-changer. On those brutal early days of new motherhood, if I had been up all night, living in chaos and also dodging some of the overly-hard electric shower blades that felt they could have spliced one of my nipples, I probably would have have just cried all day every day. Smelling bad.
It HAD to be done. It was then or never. No regrets.
But if you are currently heavily pregnant, listening to welding, sleeping on a camp bed, hoping the baby is not going to be born while there’s still a hole in the front door…
I feel you.
Perhaps you could do what I eventually did, and pretend your baby is due three weeks early.
Gently tell them that if they go over time, it’s fine, but you might need their help setting up your home birth.
This will light a fire under their bottoms.
Tamar's comedy cabaret Plus One about pregnancy and new motherhood is on at: Bath Comedy Festival, Sat 5th April 7.30pm. TICKETS.
Toronto Fringe July 1-13th Edinburgh Fringe Festival 7-24th August.
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