Maternity leave: time to baby-bake

I'm sitting on the sofa eating crisps and dip, as smells of the curry Thom is cooking up are wafting from the kitchen and straight into my brain.  It's making my stomach rumble and I've had to pull away from the crisps briefly, for my own good.

Yesterday was my last day at work before maternity leave.  It was strange feeling leaving the front doors of the hospital where I work, my bag containing the last of my personal stuff from the office, clutching a big bouquet of flowers from my co-workers.  I made my way home in a kind of haze, finding it hard to believe that this would  be the last time doing this in a while.  Even more surreal, was the knowledge that the next time I commuted to work, my life would be very, very different.

Today, unusually for us, we slept late into the morning before sluggishly rolling ourselves into the day with some strong coffees.  Thom's, a big mug.  Mine, a mini-dose.  We had the whole day with no commitments and beautiful autumn weather.  We eventually strolled up into town to meet with our friend, Bianca and do a little browsing of the shops.

Without work waiting for me on the other end of the weekend, I noticed an urge to get lots of things sorted.  Things that I'd been telling myself, 'Once I'm on maternity leave, I will....'  I made a start on stockpiling toiletries, in anticipation of future months when I would not be so mobile or so blessed with the freedom of spare time.  We got home and I continued organising and getting ready.  But as the sun started to dip below the horizon, and my feet were speaking to me with curse words, I realised that this was silly.

I want to get ready, but this time is also for resting.  Thom refers to it as my 'baby baking time', and in truth that is the real job at hand.  So I changed into my slippers, left the pile of baby clothes in the spare room and parked on the sofa.  Thom got to cooking, as he has faithfully done throughout the 7 months so far, allowing me to just baby-bake.  With this luxury of time and curry on it's way, I'm one lucky baby-baker.

Thom's dinners: yummy and heartfelt