Seeing as it’s Christmas Eve today, I thought it time for a Christmas blog post. I have been accused, in the past, mainly by both my wife and my mother, of being bah humbug when it comes to Christmas. It’s not an entirely false accusation, if somewhat exaggerated. For quite a few years now, the “bad” side of Christmas has been the overriding factor in the runup – the shopping, and being shopped for, especially. I’m useless at figuring out …
Today marks two major, and opposite events in my life. One amazing, and the other quite saddening. Firstly, it’s my very first Father’s Day. My beautiful daughter Daisy (who is 6 months old this week) is too young to celebrate it with me, but the occasion will be marked regardless. She has had a massive effect on my life, as you’d expect, and every day she’s growing up more and more. I don’t know where the time as gone, but …
Tomorrow, my gorgeous baby daughter is one month old. You might be wondering why I’ve not posted much about her here, well, since she was born, but that’s because she has her own (private) website for friends and family. I’m not keen on posting lots of pictures and information about her in a public space like this for obvious reasons – not least because she already appears to have attracted an unwanted stalker. Anyway. It’s amazing how the month has …
But it was worth it!¬¨‚Ć Today, my wife gave birth to out gorgeous baby daughter, Daisy.¬¨‚Ć I’m so proud! And I cried a lot. I’ll type more another day when I’m not knackered. Well, as knackered. 85 hours is forever.
Contractions started about 40 hours ago, and it still isn’t forthcoming. Please come soon!
And with very few minutes of the day left, it seems unlikely it will be today. I’ve been telling everyone the baby will actually arrive exactly on time, but it would appear I am wrong. Of course, I didn’t say which time zone, so it’s still possible…
Today was our final planned trip to see the midwife before the baby is due. We’ve got another appointment for a few days after its due date just in case it hasn’t arrived by then, but all being well today was the last one. And pretty much everything was OK. The heartbeat and size and all that was as expected. We were also told that the baby’s head was now 3/5ths engaged. Hence the picture of Picard up there doing …
Well, it isn’t really a countdown, as usual practice with countdowns involves starting at a number and count down to zero. But although “28” is the start figure, it might stop before 0. Or after.¬¨‚Ć It’s just a guideline! What am I talking about? Expected Baby Arrival Day, of course! Today marks the beginning of the final 4 weeks. Are we ready? Of course not.
No, it isn’t born yet. It’s just over 34 weeks into the pregnancy, and we went for our regular checkup with the midwife today. She used the baby heart monitor thing again, and this time I recorded it on my phone. It’s less wakka-wakka than it was, but it’s still amazing. Baby at 34 weeks
This week’s fourth and final class was all about “meeting baby”. I don’t really like the term, as we’re not going to be meeting him or her, are we? It’s already there, we just don’t know what it looks like. Anyway. We were told about methods and types of feeding, the various advantages and disadvantages of breast feeding and bottle feeding, which did sort of confuse us as only this week we bought bottles to use with breast milk, so …
This week, we had our third (of four in total) anti-natal class. The theme this time was “Pain”. Basically, we were told all about the pains to expect before and during labour, and the methods that could be used in order to help with them. They ranged from “breathing differently” to “omfg we’re putting needles in your spine”. Nice. Then we were told about some complications that could happen, most of which involved yanking the baby out with some sort …
So last Thursday (yeah, I’m running late) was our second anti-natal class. The topic was “what to expect on the day”, and started with all the stuff leading up to going into hospital – preparation, getting The Bag Of Things together, and so on. It then moved on to the pain and contractions and… messyness. Which was nice. Finally, we were shown a video of two births – one “normal” birth (which wasn’t too bad, despite the graphic nature), and …
Well, it wasn’t quite as I was expecting. First of all, due to the area we’re in, I thought it was going to be full of 15 year old pregnant girls, but in fact, it was a mix of people, around 6 pairs in all. It was a bit cringeworthy in parts – the “fathers to be get together and talk about your feelings” just felt wrong, and the video we were shown was full of large-mouthed 1980s Americans being …
We went back to the midwife for the 28-week checkup thing this week. Once again they put the baby on speaker-phone so we could hear its heartbeat (and it was more badum-badum than waka-waka again), and they also measuring my wife’s bump – 31cm. Although not really important, they tend to prefer the size to be 1cm-per-week, +/- 1cm, so 31cm was good. Everything else was normal and as expected! Anti-natal classes start next week!
Last night we went back to the midwife for the 24 week checkup. Thankfully, everything was fine, although once again the baby refused to stay still so it took a while to find him/her with the heartbeat-finding-device-thing that reminds me of those things people with no vocal cords use. But then it was found, and it sounded more like an actual heartbeat and less like Pac-man this time round.