The light at the end of the tunnel...

19 to go! Only 19 shifts remain of my pre-baby working life. Bit scary, bit exciting, but it's the only thing keeping me going at the moment. That and the fact that Mal has surpassed himself and for our first anniversary, booked us in at a luxury spa hotel, and arranged that I get cocooned in a load of mud and have my face polished clean for a whole 90 minutes. Being a good wife, I have reciprocated and arranged for some hardcore pain for him in the form of a swedish back neck and shoulder massage. Hmm.

My ever-growing bump is starting to really feel stretched - earlier on today I was starving hungry but had that post-large-dinner "Oh my god I feel like a balloon" feeling like I had eaten too much. I'm feeling a bit like that now.

Tomorrow I have 2 hours of work before I get some paid time off to go to an antenatal class. I'm doing hypnobirthing. This involves figuring out what I'm scared of about the whole thing, and unpicking those fears, finding out why, and dealing with all of that, and then being able to get myself into a deeply relaxed state which I can then access when I go into labour. It has been proven that mothers who use hypnobirthing techniques need less pain relief in labour, which I think is a good thing for me. So tomorrow is about learning to hypnotise myself, followed by a nice trip on Monday to a Spa hotel and chilling out for 24 hours. Bliss!

Had a good day at work today - laughed a lot and the shop took quite a bit of money. We did our weekly target so it will make next week a bit easier. I hate being in "sale" mode - it's like manning a stall at a jumble sale.

As much as I think I'm going to enjoy the hypnobirthing experience, I don't know how much Mal is going to enjoy it or buy into it. He's not really into alternative therapies much, so I don't know how much of a culture shock it's likely to be for him. It doesn't involve techonology, or need things with require batteries, or plug into the mains, and you don't hit it r make music with it, so it's already on the back foot. I hope he gets something out of it. I'm sure he'll blog it if he thinks it all a bunch of hippy claptrap!