I wish I could say I've been putting my feet up and resting since being on maternity leave but I'd be lying if I did! Looking at my diary I realised yesterday that I have been out every single day since starting leave. No wonder I'm tired. Actually it's more just lumping around this hefty load, aching all over my body and not being able to sleep properly more than anything else! I am waddling like a big fat pregnant woman now. I didn't think I could get any bigger. I did. And I'm still getting bigger. All I can say is thank god for almond and jojoba oil which gets massaged onto the bump twice a day, as I have no stretch marks on my belly. Yet. Actually I don't think I can call it a bump anymore. It's more of a mountain now.

The first week on leave I had a massage, manicure, pedicure, wax, hair colour and had several inches chopped off my hair. In amongst the midwife and assorted medical appointments. They told me on Friday the baby had gone breech (wrong way around) so sent me for a scan on Monday. I spent the weekend on all fours wiggling my butt about trying to dislodge Squish and encourage a somersault back again (pregnancy = glamour, every time, not). Something worked because by the time the scan came Squish was back up (down?) the right way.

This week has been better re: going out, as I cancelled everything from Wednesday to Friday and am spending three days at home nesting and getting ready. And making pineapple jam. And washing ridiculous quantities of baby clothes which lovely people have loaned/given to me. I swear I have enough clothing to last until Squish turns 1! At least I can start having a few more naps throughout the day. Sleeping while I can is very appealing at the moment.

I have passed some magical mystical point in my pregnancy where people now fight to give me their seat on trains and buses. I had two people debating on a bus which seat would be most comfortable/easiest for me. And four (count 'em!) MEN in SUITS offered me seats on Tuesday night. Stu thinks they're scared I'm going to give birth on them if they don't give me a seat. I guess I do look scarily big (though I haven't decided if I'm willing to publish any more photos of me looking like I do at the moment).

Hallelujah our sofa just got delivered! No more sodding camp chairs!!

This pic is from the bathroom window of the gardeners planting up the summer beds in the walled garden. The feeling of being lucky to have such a beautiful open space right on our doorstep still hasn't worn off yet. Every time we walk through there one of us invariably comments on how wonderful it is! In fact, I think I'm going to go off now and have a coffee in the cafe I can see from my bedroom window and have a chat to Yvonne the owner!

For those who pray, please offer your prayers for Barry Dow who lost his fight with cancer late last week. He was the long-time partner of a dear friend, and although not a surprise, his death still leaves a gaping, painful hole in the lives of those who loved him.

Saw uber chef Gordon Ramsay in Selfridges doing a book signing for his new 'Fast Food' book. Popular guy, the queue for the signing stretched back more than 50 metres through the store. We ate at one of his restaurants for Stu's birthday last year, and it was absolutely divine. The man knows good food and good cooking.

Spent a lovely weekend with Steph and the kids. Amelia loves going through Steph's bag, pulling out her purse, then taking the notes out and playing with them. No coins for her, it's straight to the big stuff!

I had a hot date with a gorgeous man last week (my husband, in case you were wondering) and we went to see the Little Shop of Horrors musical. It was incredibly silly and light hearted and very very funny in places (with a completely different ending to the movie!). The music was so loud poor little Squishy was awake and moving the entire two hours, and even got the hiccups at one point! Stu had never felt our baby with the hiccups and there was a slightly surreal point where there was this huge puppet of a man-eating alien plant singing about needing to be fed while Squish was hiccuping every 3 seconds or so!

I keep thinking about Michelle. Coming home after the theatre this very drunk girl stumbled into me on the escalator going into the underground. Some part of me restrained myself from unleashing a torrent of abuse at her (how dare you bump into my baby!) but I did still gesticulate rudely at her back as she continued stumbling down to the platform.

Then something about her piqued my interest, I couldn't tell you what, but I kept my eye on her. She was so drunk she was walking into the walls sideways and leaning along them to move forward without falling down, and Stu held me back safely so we stayed behind her as she swayed and staggered downwards and closer to the platform. It finally ocurred to me as she stumbled, and almost fell, down the last few stairs before reaching the platform that there was a very real risk she would walk straight off the platform and onto the tracks. By the time this thought had been acknowledged by my pregnancy-dulled brain, she was on the edge of the platform stumbling from side to side as masses of useless Londoners looked at her in disgust (you'd think they'd be used to seeing drunk people late at night). My legs finally registered my command to MOVE NOW and I ran as fast as I could carry my bump, shouting for someone to grab her before she fell. Of course people just stared at her, lurching within centimetres of the platform edge, and this lunatic heavily pregnant woman lumbering along the platform shouting for help behind her. It must have only been 4 or 5 metres but it felt like an eternity and I finally grabbed her as she was lurching heavily to the right where the platform edge was and used my rather substantial body weight to tackle her back to the left and into the crowd (who parted like the biblical ocean. Gits. Why didn't they grab her when I asked them to?).

With my arm around her shoulders I kept her upright until Stu worked out where I'd disappeared to mid-conversation and came over to prop her up on the other side. We got her to put her purse in her bag before she dropped it and found out her name, that she was a Canadian tourist, and that she'd just been to a work function and was now on her way home. I can't condemn how much she'd had to drink because let's face it, I've been as drunk, and drunker than she was, but I will say I'd like to think I never left myself in such a vulnerable position as she put herself in. We just didn't know what to do with her. We found out she lived on the other side of London (we're north west, she was south west), so we took her onto the train with us, spoke to her to keep her awake, then helped her change trains and put her on the train that would take her home. But the thing is, we didn't take her home ourselves. We put her on the train, I asked someone to wake her at her station, and we left because it was so late and I was exhausted. I now regret leaving a young girl is such a vulnerable state. Was it enough that we maybe stopped her from going under a train? Was that the role I was supposed to play in her life at that time? Or should I have done more? I'll never know, but I'll keep looking out for her around Picadilly Circus where she said she worked, and hopefully see her one day and be reassured...

We attended our first 'Gladstonbury', an annual festival held in the park across the road from us and also had a mini housewarming/look at the baby bump/catch up with a few people afternoon. The glamourous babe in the pic sitting next to me is the beautiful Sarra. It was a lovely relaxed afternoon, aside from my friend Krysta's Alaskan Malamute dog (lying in front of me post-attack) being unexpectedly mauled around the neck and face by some chav kid's unleashed Staffordshire dog (pitbull type), and it happened right behind me as I was sitting on the ground at the time having just had a smooch and cuddle with soft and gentle Duchess (Krysta's dog) - you've never seen a heavily pregnant lady scramble so fast across picnic blankets. Duchess is ok, as is Krysta's husband whose hand was bitten trying to separate the dogs. Luckily for us there were a load of policeman playing a football game about 20 metres from where we were sitting. They took the attack very seriously and the owner was arrested under the dangerous dogs act! His dog was the same breed as one which attacked and killed a 4 or 5 year old girl a few months ago.

On our way to the South Bank a few weekends ago, 34 weeks preggers. Oh lookie, it's Big Ben!

Went to the Star Wars exhibition on the South Bank (opposite Houses of Parliament) and saw Yoda, Darth Maul, Amidala's incredibly beautiful costumes from the most recent Star Wars movies (and boy is Natalie Portman TINY), all the characters you'd expect to see. It was (and yes I am a sad nerd) a load of fun and a great afternoon out. Though I couldn't convince Stu to dress up as a Jedi and be filmed fighting a bad dude for a DVD which we could then bring home. I know he secretly wanted to though ;)

Met a very nice Storm Trooper who offered me his arm to lean on for the photo! Roger roger.

Taken on Friday night next to the bank of pink and white heavenly scented roses near the pond. I have well and truly reached the 'will I ever feel slim and glamorous ever again?' stage of the pregnancy. Although I do try to 'wear' my belly with pride because who knows whether I'll be doing this ever again?!

Mr Gander getting fed chunks of bread from off camera...

Late on a hot summer's night in the park, not long after watching the park's two resident urban foxes slinking along the pathway...

The rose wall outside our walled Victorian flower garden is in full bloom and scent (all 30 metres of it), and is simply stunning!

On a walk through the park at about 11pm last Saturday night we reached the crest of the hill to see bright lights and two emergency vehicles near the footbridge at the bottom. Being a total stickybeak I made Stu walk down the hill for a closer look, and halfway down we started noticing even more weird things - people dressed in black milling around, chairs set up to one side, and then the giveaways, the boom microphone being hovered over the cars and then the rather large tripod with camera atop. No one stopped us until we got right nearby, when a very nice (real) policeman asked us if we wanted to cross the footbridge. I asked what was being filmed, and it was a scene for a comedy series called 'Lead Balloon' starring Jack Dee. And we thought we lived in a suburban boring part of town!

Well it's a good thing that newborn babies apparently prefer to look at black and white objects - I can put my panda collection to good use!

Had my last scan today to check on our little one, and s/he continues to grow well and is healthy and active. I still swing wildly between joy/happy anticipation at meeting and caring for our baby, and a sense of concern/desparate questioning as to what on earth were we thinking bringing a baby into this world and making ourselves solely responsible for their very survival in the early days, and then helping him or her find their place in their world as they grow and develop into a child... adolsecent... adult. All these thoughts have developed depths and layers and complexities that just weren't there when we made the 'let's have a baby' decision. Perhaps that's one of the reasons growing a baby takes so darn long; you need the time to adjust mentally. Or perhaps I think too much; but that's the way I am and I don't want to change it.

In quiet moments (not many of those at the moment as I finish up at work but more planned soon) when I think about my baby's life I find all sorts of unexpected surprises tumbling out of my brain, expectations I didn't know I had, wishes and desires for my baby as s/he grows through life, and this crazy powerful protective emotion beginning to emerge, a lioness protective of her cub whatever the cost.

So much of this is base, raw, biology at work, the human race carrying itself on by triggering powerful hormonal surges of love, protection, empathy towards my unborn child. Basic biology has created and is sustaining this life inside me, and often I feel as though my frontal cortex has very little to do as my body just gets on with it. The same biology will trigger the process of birth and enable me to labour, to birth my child from its cosy womb into this world. I have to trust my body more than I ever have before, I have to allow my 'animal' cortical areas to take over, let the parts of my brain where I reason, rationalise, manage and control sit back for once.

Jodie, as I knew her, has taken on a whole new dimension. This is not something I can simply tack onto the life I had, why was I so naive to think that I could? Ignorance isn't necessarily bliss, but it certainly offers a haven from knowledge and experience sometimes! This is turning the life I had on its head, and in between all the changes, I need and want to create my new life, building on what I am and have and do now while encompassing all that motherhood will be, good and bad. What a journey this continutes to be!

6 more working days to go then I don't have to worry about glaring at nasty commuters who look at my abundant belly then put their newspapers up and continue reading as I stand next to them desparately wishing I could get off my feet. These 6 days include our annual team away day being held at the London Zoo on Monday (I can go and see the new gorilla enclosure!) and a day of coffee and lunching at the rural campus, followed by another day of coffee and lunching at the city campus! Shame I still have a stupid amount of work to get through between now and then... I'm looking forward to being on leave and not thinking about work when I go to sleep and then when I wake up again. I have a few other things I need to focus my attentions on...!

Antenatal classes are da bomb! We had our first class last night in Swiss Cottage (posh part of north London), ten couples, all from a similar (broadly speaking) demographic, and it was brilliant. You never know what to expect walking into a room full of complete strangers, but I think we've lucked out with a really great group of people. There was loads of chatting and laughing, I found it astonishing how easy it was to talk to these Londoners, usually they are a tough crowd to reach into and get to know. The power of the need for peer support! While I know, on some level, that thousands of women go through pregnancy and motherhood, my knowledge of their experience is intangible and removed; last night it was all of a sudden very tangible and accessible, in my time zone and on my turf, and I am so grateful and relieved to have signed up for these classes all those months ago, not really knowing what they'd be like. We're looking forward to next week already!