The last day

Tomorrow is going to be my last day at work before I go on maternity leave. This seems very, very surreal. I’m going to try to make an effort to get some things done each day that I’m off before the baby arrives, mainly to stave off cabin fever. I haven’t mentioned my due date here (I can only explain this as a vague kind of superstition) but they seem to be quite unreliable anyway. It is an odd kind of limbo – I may be free to do things, I may not. I’m certainly not up for doing most of the things I would probably have done with some time off work in the past! Thus I shall be trying to keep myself from going up the wall from a strange combination of anticipation and boredom – on a budget of course.

I went to Tesco and did some stocking up after work which required allocating a bit of my grocery budget from next week and the week after. I also used up £8.50 worth of vouchers to keep the cost down. The budget mainly went on things like clothes wash (plus seperate non-bio clothes wash for baby things), washing up liquid, baking parchment, flour, coffee – basically a host of cleaning products and store cupboard items. I’m planning on getting a few other things next week too. The idea is that we won’t need to think about buying any of this kind of stuff for a while to give us some space once the baby is here and we are otherwise occupied. I’ll also be trying to make some more home-made meals to go in the freezer for the same reason. So far I have several portions of shepherd’s pie, some tomato sauce to go with pasta, chicken curry and a few portions of bangers, mash and onion gravy. It’s beginning to look like we’re almost ready…