A Scarlett O'Hara approach to home build

When I was 23 I had a boyfriend who called me Scarlett O'Hara. He said I was rubbish at taking the long view and that my "fiddle dee dee, I'll think about it tomorrow" attitude was silly and frivolous.

It will be a habitable room. It will.

I saw nothing wrong with being silly and frivolous, so I'm pleased to say he didn't last long. But in the last few days his words have been echoing somewhat in my ears, as I realise that we have just five days to go. Five days until we move back in to our house. The house that has no back wall, half the hall floorboards missing, a fridge in the front living room, a kitchen with no cooker, a mahoosive hole under the stairs where the top flat will eventually be connected to the basement flat, and a thick layer of builders' dust covering every. single. surface. 

I could be worried. I could be dreading it. I could be wailing "what the hell were we thinking, starting major building work when I was 32 weeks preggers?". A lot of women might have thought the timings through a little more carefully rather than flinging themselves gung-ho into a noisy, messy, disruptive project just as they were having their second child. 

Scarlett ponders her bathroom tiles

But if I'd thought it through for any length of time I probably wouldn't have agreed to it, and then it'd be longer to wait until we had a decent house. And you know, I think it will be fine. Yes, the house is unfinished. There'll be builders around for another 10 weeks. That's okay. There's no back wall in the basement? They'll build one. They'll replace the floorboards. We've survived without a cooker for 6 months before; we can do it again (all hail the slow cooker). We'll get a cleaner to sort out the dust and grime. We'll keep the mahoosive hole boarded up so it's safe for three-year-old boys who like to run around. And the fridge in the living room? Well it's less distance from sofa to snacks and wine, isn't it?

So yes, maybe my ex was right. Maybe there's something of the O'Hara in me. But frankly, I don't give a damn.

Doing it differently

For the second time, I am 37 weeks with child.

When this sprog drops, clearly some things will be the same as for Fred, my first. Like the fact that it will sleep in the same bed as the rest of the family, and the fact that when it comes to weaning, I can't be bothered with Annabel Karmel puree recipes so I'll probably just give it a stick of broccoli to wave ineffectually. And some things are already the same: the fact that we haven't found out if it's a boy or a girl, for example (yes, this child's technical apparatus will be shrouded in mystery until the day it finally breezes into our lives).

Having said that, there are some things I am absolutely doing differently this time round, having done about a million times more preparation and reading than I did in my first pregnancy.

Firstly, I hired me an independent midwife. This gives me continuity of care from antenatal appointments, through labour and birth, and postnatal care. I know that (barring her illness) the midwife who delivers my baby will be the same person I've formed a relationship with over the past 7 months - not whoever happens to be on the shift in the maternity ward. It also allows me much, much more time with her (hour-long appointments, in my own home, on my own sofa!) to discuss the various choices surrounding labour and birth, and to make informed decisions based on statistical evidence. So far, this hands down beats the 20-minute NHS appointments I had in my first pregnancy where I'd have four or five measurements taken, a couple of perfunctory questions about my general wellbeing, and be sent on my way with a cheery wave.

Secondly, I decided to have as few scans as possible. Some people decline all scans because of the possibility that ultrasound carries dangers to the unborn baby. I don't know about that, but I figured that the point of the 12-week scan is to get a date, and I knew my dates. At the 12-week scan you can also have the nuchal fold test to get a probability of Downs syndrome, but having a Downs baby wouldn't have made any difference to my going ahead with the pregnancy, so I didn't need that test. I did have a 20-week scan, mainly just to make sure I definitely was preggers, because I had virtually no symptoms, but that was it. 

Thirdly, I'm planning a home birth. Statistics show that hospital births end up in an increased likelihood of (sometimes unnecessary) interventions like forceps and ventouse and Caesarean deliveries. Been there, done that, don't fancy it again thanks. I'm pretty confident that my fabulous, wobbly booty is capable of birthing a baby without a doctor telling me how to do it. I'm also planning not to have any pain relief, mainly because none is provided, but also because I've been reading up on and practising other ways to overcome the pain (including positions - ie not lying on my back - breathing techniques, and lots of YouTube videos of cats and Vic and Bob, because laughter is apparently an analgesic). And if anything goes wrong I trust my midwife to tell me that actually we do need to go to hospital now, and I can be there in 7 minutes.

Fourthly, not a drop of formula is going to pass my new baby's lips. I will have faith that if the baby wants to feed for 5 hours straight on its first night out (as happened first time around), it's getting what it needs whether that's food or comfort. I don't intend to pay for a product that my body makes for free.

And fifthly, having used disposable nappies first time round, this time I'm going cloth. Furthermore - and this is a real step into the unknown - I'm planning to EC. EC stands for elimination communication, also known as infant potty training, and it's a way of understanding your baby's cues for when it needs a wee or a poo. You end up using fewer nappies because you're getting everything straight into the loo from the word go, you have fewer moments of 'what on earth are you crying for now' and you end up with a toddler who's out of nappies much earlier than the norm. Quite frankly, it's a wee-wee win-win. 

So there are my five Things To Do Differently Second Time Around. Yeah, I think it's going to be fun.

A New Year's R-eco-lution

I'm a week late with this, but thought I'd write something about New Year's resolutions. Now I'm no longer one for making promises (usually regarding alcohol) to myself that I can't keep, and I've mostly made peace with the size and shape of my bottom, so I think 2012 is going to be less about self-improvement and more about home improvement.

Well of course, home improvement; we're renovating a house that not so long ago had woodchip wallpaper holding the walls up, a different pastel colour theme in every room, a sinister concrete block in the middle of the kitchen and a rotting conservatory. Actually it still has the latter two. So improving our home is clearly on the agenda.

Actually though, what I'm talking about is more exciting than newly varnished floorboards or Farrow & Ball swatch cards. I'm talking about making the changes in green living that we've been pondering for a while but for one reason or another haven't been possible until now (mostly due to living in a rented house). That kind of home improvement.

So, we already have lovely new draught-proof windows, but the next part of our planning application also involves a sedum roof (I wanted grass but apparently someone would have to mow it, and I didn't fancy hefting a lawn mower on to the roof every two weeks in summer). This is essentially a layer of living plant growth on top of the roof, which not only provides a living place for insects and therefore attracts birds to the garden, but also insulates the room below and absorbs heavy rain. Nifty.

Next, I plan to cycle or walk any journeys of up to four miles. According to the WWF website, over a quarter of all car journeys in the UK are for two miles or less. Cycling's easy, good for me and fun for Fred in his little Wee-Ride, which I think is the only bike seat that goes in between the adult and the handlebars, making the ride miles safer and the view miles more interesting for the bairn than staring at someone's back). Although obviously if it's raining I'll be hot-footing it to catch the nearest number 33.

Recycling has been a biggy in the Cook household for several years now, and we're pretty good at minimising our waste. Especially since getting all gung-ho about our local Freecycle group and offloading the most random pieces of rubbish; in the last year I've managed to give away a broken kettle, a huge hi-fi system dating from c1989, ten copies of Runner's World, some hotel slippers, a tribal drum and a small pom-pom among many other things. But I want more. I want to go waste free. Did you know the average UK home generates over a tonne of rubbish each year? I'm going to do a trial, a week or a month, where I can *only* recycle - no binning allowed. It'll mean thinking a lot more carefully about my food choices and probably growing a lot of our own veg, but I read about a couple in the USA who did it for a whole year and only generated one small bag of rubbish during that whole time. How cool is that? And depending how the trial goes, I'm going to roll it out baby!

And finally, I'm going to try out some creative projects that have been lurking in my mind for a while. I read an inspiring article about another couple who furnished their entire home from salvaged stuff - I think the only thing they bought new was a loo, because they couldn't find a second hand one in time (and I guess where a loo is concerned, getting it installed before you need to use it is pretty crucial). I won't pretend that we will go as far as that, but I am going to try and reuse stuff as and when my creative juices and time allow. Starting with our newly discarded Christmas tree, which I'm planning to chop, whittle and carve into a fully functioning coat rack. Lord knows how it'll turn out - probably more like a very dead-looking tree with no branches - but hey, it's only going to go in the council chipper otherwise so why not give it a whirl and see how it turns out?

So there you have it. I'm gonna start living the dream, and all I need is a sharp knife, a packet of courgette seeds and my bike. Wish me luck...