Stealing a crib
The weekend dragged along. I read books, watched DVDs and tried to avoid the only news that was on constant repeat: Oscar Pistorius. There was very little to do except get my blood pressure checked every hour and, nest.
A few weeks back I had what many of you fellow mums have had. You wake up in the middle of the night with an insatiable desire to spring clean your entire house and make sure everything is disinfected. Our house already smelled of mite spray and Milton. Yet, all this time in hospital gave me another go at it. Despite being in a private hospital, that clearly had impeccable levels of hygiene, it simply wasn't good enough.
Firstly, I got David to bring all of the baby's clothes and toiletries to my room. I already had her little bag packed but I insisted on having everything with me. I rearranged the room at least five times and badgered the nurses to get me additional pieces of furniture that I thought we absolutely necessary. Armed with my mite spray, I disinfected everything in site. I created a "baby changing station" and laid out all her toiletries in a row. Her first outfit (babygro) was laid out. I made sure that everything would be ready for her.
As a result of having over 72 hours to examine every nook and cranny of my room, I found many things wrong with it. The lazy-boy couch was rickety - I demanded the nurses deal with it immediately, the air-conditioning didn't work - my parents graciously brought me a fan in the middle of the night, and (most importantly), the crib provided by the hospital was slightly off balance. Needless to say, the nurses were not happy about swapping out this item - apparently they had more pressing matters to deal with. So, quite irrationally, I snuck into the unoccupied rooms in the middle of the night and found one I preferred. A great deal of stealth was required to pull of this stunt, a feat made especially hard because I was pregnant.
I sprayed the new crib down with mite spray, put my own sheet on, put a few soft toys in it to make it more welcoming and finally drifted off to sleep.