A matter of opinon

Unless you're my doctor, family, or a friend, keep your opinion to yourself!

As I am sure many pregnant women will attest, getting every second person’s opinion on your unborn can be highly frustrating. And by this I mean every second stranger's opinion.

In my current state, mine, my husband’s and my obstetrician’s opinion are the only ones that count at the moment. And after that, once the baby arrives, we’ll take opinions and try things out, but at the end of the day it will be our decision on how to raise it, what things to try etc.

Yesterday, some bogan Barbie who worked at a newsagent decided to tell me in no uncertain terms that I was going to have a huge baby and that I would need all the luck I could get. This is pretty much how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, just the two cards thanks.

Bogan Barbie: Sure (scanning and entering stuff in computer). So when are you due?
Me: In six weeks.
Bogan Barbie: (Cue dramatic eye roll) Oh wow, is it your first? You’re quite big; your baby is going to be huge. Don’t they like, grow heaps in the last four weeks?
Me: Yes it’s our first and the baby is healthy, which is all that matters.
Bogan Barbie: Well, good luck, you’re going to need it.
Me: Thanks.

Gee, thanks for that bit of helpful input, are you a doctor that just moonlights as a rude chick that works at an Ashmore newsagency? You don't even know me!

I didn’t tell her that I thought she should go and see a dermatologist for her awful patchy skin and smoker’s lines all over her face. Nor did I tell her that she was in dire need of a trip to the hairdresser. I just walked away.

I’ve also been told by people who obviously just like the sound of their own voices, what sex my baby will be and how tired I look. Well, considering I AM PREGNANT and due in six weeks, I am not surprised I look tired, because I am! You would think that people should be trying to be overly nice to pregnant women and tell them they look fantastic even if you don’t feel or look it.

I had a business meeting this week at the workplace of a good friend of mine and as I walked in the office she said “Hi Ash, how are you? You look great!” – it was just the boost I needed.

I think hitting the awkward phase of the pregnancy has affected me more than I thought it would. It is hard to sleep, sit, get comfortable in any position and don’t even talk about my inability to dry myself properly, shave my legs or do up shoes… and on top of all that I have to endure the comments of imbeciles who think nothing of sharing their thoughts about me or how it is delivered.

The blessing is that I know in a few small weeks, it will all be over and we will finally get to meet Baby V.  

So for now, unless you’re a friend or family member, keep your opinions to yourself (if they aren’t of a constructive nature) because this pregnant woman may just unleash her inner crazy at you – and that, I can assure, will not be pretty.

Art and Craft - Project Nursery.

Coming up with ideas on how to decorate a nursery can be tricky - there are so many things you can do! But as we are not finding out the sex of Baby V until he/she is born, I had to do something that would be suitable for either a little boy or girl while still being bright and cheerful.

So I set out to make my own artwork to decorate the baby's room. I did some research online and found that lots of people used the paint colour cards that you can get from any hardware store and transformed them into gorgeous, framed pieces.

So one weekend I took myself down to my local Bunnings and loaded up on a bundle of paint swatches. I decided I wanted to concentrate on four colour families - blues, greens, purples and yellows.

Paint swatches from Bunnings

Then I went and got myself a 3cm round hole punch from Spotlight. This set me back around $10 (if you are hunting for one go to the scrapbooking area or buy one online). I chose a circle shape, but you can get any shaped hole punch you like.

$10 Fiskars hole punch from Spotlight.

The next step was simply to punch out the paint swatches and categorise the circles into their colour families. Make sure that when you are selecting your colours, that you get at least a dozen different hues from each colour family.

Next I had to ready my frames. I bought four Ribba shadow box frames for $10 each at Ikea (they are 23cm x 23cm). You can get them in either black or white. For this project, I am using the black frame as I liked the contrast it has with nursery wall colour.

Ribba frames from Ikea - set me back $10 each.

The next stage was simply putting everything together. I already had some some glue tape in an applicator (you can get this from Spotlight or any craft store) to apply to the back of each circle cut out and simply overlayed each of the cirles in random colour order on a piece of white paper which I had traced the size of the frame window (the Ribba frames have a white mat around the edge of the window as you can see from the above pic).

Once I had finished gluing I put the paper with the cutouts face down on top of the mat and attached the backing - voila!

The finished product - yellow, green, blue and purple framed artwork.

All together it cost me about $12.50 per frame to complete this craft project, which is great. Now they just need to be mounted on the wall ready to be admired by our little one. It only took about 1/2 an hour to finish each artwork, so it was a pretty efficient project as well.