Phone Etihad and request your seat. Whether they will give bulkhead seats before the flight I would guess not - but it's worth a try. I only have experience of requesting club seats.

The experience I have had of Etihad in club has been very good. They changed our seats as they knew that one of the screens was not working. It took some time to sort as they did not want to move regular travellers but we did get it resolved before we flew.