A friend’s kid once came to our home for a birthday party, saw the impromptu Digger World that had sprung up around our digging of a natural swimming pond, and apparently remarked to his mum (about me) “She does everything at once”. I’m starting to feel like he had a point.
So baby’s due this Saturday. Children #1-4 were all at least a day after due date, so I’m not expecting our newest family member this weekend, but however you look at it, it really is quite soon now. I should probably put some sheets on the cot, or double-check we have our cord-cutting scissors, or something.
I have done some prep. The foam mats from the playroom are now clean(ish) and in my bedroom ready for when I’ll need to kneel on the floor (Feline #3 has enjoyed the challenge of chewing the jigsaw-style edges off them). I’ve bought a pack of 16 loo rolls for every bathroom in case we forget such things once in Babyville, and done my best to terrorise the two wild goats who keep hanging out in our field (so many questions, I know. I have no answers. Goats #1-2 belong to no one and sail happily over our newish stock-fencing whenever they fancy🤷♀️) in the hopes they’ll lay low and not give Child #3 too many nightmares while I’m out of action.
Meanwhile, all was quiet on the book submissions front until yesterday. I figured after the initial flurry (I can call 3 a flurry) of requests for material, that was all the bites I was going to get. Which was fine. Some positive initial rejections, some useful feedback, some submissions to agents who typically take months and months to reply. I’d focus on having a baby, let the writing rest a while, take a step back. “Do something new, start a new project” the blogs all said. “Don’t sit around jumping every time the phone rings”. (My phone never rings. It’s permanently on silent, because there’s enough noise already and I’ll get to it when I get to it. But I got their point.)
The Baby Thing is quite the project. Child #4 was an unplanned freebirth, ie the midwife didn’t arrive in time and Husband and I got on with it by ourselves. And you know what? It was so special, and felt so natural and right to let the baby come without inviting strangers into the bedroom in the middle of the night, that this time we’re planning for a freebirth. No need to start having phone calls mid-labour or having to update or have my “progress” assessed by a third party. In normal births, the less disturbed the birth, the safer the outcome. This does seem to fit our experiences of births #1-4.
But it’s obviously no longer a normal approach here. My parents, who are staying here for a month or so (part of a very slow process of moving in to the flat over our garage space. The builders from their latest renovation finally finished today yay 🎉🤪)…they do not know our decision to freebirth. I don’t want to hear all the reasons why they don’t agree with it. It wasn’t made on a whim. So Project (Stealth) Baby #5 is well underway.
Then yesterday the final agent who’d requested the full manuscript and not yet got back to me sent me a very nice and rather long email which amounted to an R&R. Essentially still a rejection of the book in its current form, but not quite a fully shut door. If I am happy to make the significant changes she suggested, she’d love to read the revised version. In this situation, there’s a fair chance that a successful revision would lead to an offer.
Meep. Obviously, joy. Also, fear of hard work and getting it done well, elegantly even, over the next few months, when, incidentally, I’ll be recovering from birth, finding my feet as a “new” mum all over again with feeding and the elimination of circadian rhythms and all the rest of that package, and adjusting to life (and how I can take back the reins of it) as a family of 7.
I have made no mention of my pregnancy in any of my submissions. Apart from the fact it would count as superfluous in a submissions package where every word counts, I don’t want them thinking I’m not in a position to work seriously on my book right now. Even if that may be temporarily true 🧐
So now I’m having a zoom call with Potentially Interested Agent (PIA) this Friday. I’d stupidly envisioned it being audio only, but it appears there’ll be the extra cringe factor of face-to-face talking with slightly larger-than-life, camera-warped noses, and not quite making eye contact because what would feel like eye contact to one of us would mean staring at the camera itself to the other. (I am an unrepentant technofail, can you tell)
AND, if that wasn’t Thing enough, PIA has also got the other two more experienced agents as “optional” invitees to our zoom chat. What does this even mean? That they may pop in? That they’re mentoring PIA? Or just that it blocks her out in their calendar so they know she’s busy? I don’t know.
What I do know is, I shall attempt coherent sentences despite the baby brain. And keep the camera on neck up only 👀 And try not to go into labour until at least Saturday 🤣🙏
Country Mum Writes 