30 things to do while you’re not having children

1. Do lunch with other people who can’t sit close to the table either; spill food in chorus.

2. Keep an eye on the blue-tits nesting outside the bedroom window for advice on building nests.

3. Re-discover the video collection, instead of building nests.

4. Wonder why birds might be building nests in November.

5. Consider removing spider from (unfinished) kitchen ceiling, complete with eggs.

6. Re-consider removing spider, for various reasons.

7. Reply to people who are keen to find out whether your parental status has changed without their knowledge and secretly wish you could tell all the others in your life thank you for not asking yet.

8. Work out what your favourite potential date of birth is. Repeatedly change this as days go past.

9. Try and find a way to buy a Poppy online.

10. Consider whether Poppies are suitable in hospital, or whether they might carry MRSA. Consider where the heck you’d put one, anyway and decide it may not be offensive if you didn’t.

11. Imagine all the lovely things you’ll be able to eat and drink soon. Count down to sleeping on your tummy again.

12. Read maths books in bed to get to sleep.

13. Brew raspberry leaf tea and forget you did.

14. Go for a walk around the block and notice the shapes of leaves.

15. Discover raspberry leaf tea and pretend it is still warm enough to drink, otherwise it would be wasted.

16. Wonder what shape raspberry leaves are.

17. Do a google image search on raspberry leaves.

18. Make casseroles and freeze them.

19. Discover so many frozen casseroles you have to start eating them.

20. Try drawing family trees for the scrapbook.

21. Forget you’ve done it, and make another casserole.

22. Go through large pile of baby magazines and literature ruthlessly.

23. Test the baby bath. Once it is full, realise you haven’t proved anything and don’t have anything to wash, and put it back.

24. Consider that you should have used the baby bath to do the washing up for the summer while the sink was out of action.

25. Decide not to be too hard on yourself and brew some raspberry leaf tea – someone’s got to get through the stuff.

26. Watch a re-run of the Simpsons, not knowing whether you’ve seen it before.

27. Drink cold raspberry leaf tea. Because you’re worth it.

28. Find ways to stop overdue baby getting hiccups daily at 10 pm (answers on a postcard).

29. Try and get the word ‘effacement’ into a game of Scrabulous on Facebook.

30. Put odd things in the hospital bag to delight and amuse as they are bound to be forgotten before the bag is opened.