Dave’s Blog

Shopping today. Christmas cards purchased. Few ideas for presents and stuff. No work oomph today. I suspect I may be in a kind of limbo at the moment. Need to try and get everything sorted otherwise I’m going to be trying to get stuff done while Sions and the baby are napping. To clarify, that would not be good.

Real sweepstake countdown kicks in on Monday. I’ll be namechecking people here as they go past.

Twice today Sions used what we suspect will be the baby’s name, rather than calling the baby, ‘the baby’. Although we’re trying not to do it, in case it turns out it doesn’t fit, it did put a big smile on my face!

Brief one. First date in the sweepstake has been. No baby yet. :0)

Yesterday. Er. Camera arrived. With a Japanese plug. Still, it was cheap(er) and from ebay. And they did include an adapter, it just took a bit of brute force and ignorance to get the thing in. Welsh lesson. Sleep.

Today. Midwife visited and commented that the bump wasn’t growing as much as she’d hoped. Not sure Sionedwyn agreed, but none the less a trip to the hospital for monitoring was needed. Training session at work was promptly cancelled, and I high tailed it home, feeling just a little bit sick (‘what if…’ etc etc, despite being told repeatedly not to worry). Some listening, a scan and some monitoring later it appears there’s slightly less fluid in there than they would expect. Nowt to worry about in and of itself, but because we want a home birth it’s better they get the checking done now. Back again Sunday, and then again Tuesday to meet with a consultant who will be able to give us a yea or nei on the home birth. I guess if it chooses to make an appearence before we’ll have to go in, so I’m hoping more than ever that that doesn’t happen.

Sionedwyn says she’s not sure that is the case (she’s also moaning about my inability to spell as I type. I suppose I should have at least got her name right. She just sighed as I mis-spelt suppose, and then laughed as I mis-spelt ‘mis-spelt’ …) I guess we’d have to see if and when that happens.

Scan was weird. We both went in hoping we’d get one,  wondering how much the baby would have changed. Answer… still not sure. It waved a couple of fingers at us (no, not those two, this is polite child!), but because it’s* so large now, you can only see one little bit at a time! (Good shot of the thigh bone at one point though!)

In an hour and a half we’ll be D Day minus 10 days. Saturday we’re into single figures. Days like today come along and slap you round the face with the reality of that fact I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t been through it can ever really comprehend.

* Feels REALLY weird typing ‘it’ all the time :0S

So we last saw the impending parents looking forward to spending some time with their new nephew. Sunday saw another burst of activity which saw the door go back on the Snook, shelves go up in the kitchen and a new light switch for the bathroom. We spent a happy afternoon taking it turns to have a cwtsh with Deio. In the fine tradition of all babies he took one look at me and started balling, however after being comforted he eventually fell asleep on me (cute photo to follow!)

Sions is still having problems sleeping, so I woke up Monday to a completely cleaned and rearranged kitchen. Fortunately the coffee was still in the same place. Monday saw me escaping work on time to find Janet wielding a steam cleaning thing attacking the fireplace, so me and Sions went shopping! Got a few bits including a new stand for the carry cot for naps in the day (for the baby you understand…) Got back and went to bed. At 7.30.  Slept through, completely failing to wake up ‘early’ to get some work done. Still, Sions slept as well, which I think is a good thing.

Sions seemed to get a twinge in Sainbury’s which gave me a real, well, shock I guess. I mean, it shouldn’t be a shock. I’ve eight and a half months to get used to the idea of this baby, but that ‘it could come right now’ was a bit of a kick up the proverbial. I’ve been happily telling myself that it’ll be late, but of course it could just as easily be early. And I need to get ready. So today, I’ve started sorting out the work to leave for my paternity leave. Just need to spend half an hour tomorrow getting the instructions sorted.

Still got a massive marking backlog, but pretty much everything else is sorted. Need to spend some time on the ICT project soon as well. This post has descended to be being a) about me and b) boring, so I’ll stop there and come back tomorrow with something more baby related.

You’ll notice the title of this post has changed slightly, after Amy pointed out that what I was counting down to was actually quite unlike to be the Birth date. So despite the other connotations (however appropriate), we’re now counting down to D-Day!

Got quite a few bits done today, including light shades, dimmer switches and, following one bought of what I can only assume was male nesting, we now have possibly the cleanest kitchen cupboard tops in Swansea. Birthing pool has been deflated, disinfected and packed away, ready to be re inflated whenever that moment arrives.

I think there’s a bit of Sionedwyn that is getting a bit tired of lugging the bump around all the time, and would quite like to have it outside, where it can be put down in a crib every so often.

Still officially not mentioning the gender, although we’ve both slipped up a few times. Most people either haven’t noticed or (and I suspect this is the case) are too polite to mention! That said, both of us are wondering if we’re going to be in “that” 2%!!!

Just finished transferring the latest guesses in the baby sweepstake over to the Babi page. Up to 36 guesses now, with the earliest being Friday (Emma). I’ve also figured how to just pull the babi posts from the blog, so they’re being displayed over there as well.

Off to see Deio again tomorrow for tea. Can’t wait until we can take our little person over there to say hello in person, rather than just have them kicking each other in greeting through Sionedwyn!

Hummm… And I thought filling the birthing pool with air was problematical. Turns out we don’t have one of those boilers that gives us constant hot water, I’ve just never used more than a tank full at a time. If I’m honest, I’m completely in the dark about how our hot water works, so I’ve switched every switch in the vicinity of the tank on, and it seems to be staying hotter for longer. I’m just hoping labour isn’t too short!

In other news, Sionedwyn’s nesting instinct has kicked in she claims. Washing continues apace. More news tomorrow.

Sounding a little like a cross between one of Mao’s ideas and a book by the Dali Lama, this is, in fact, a procedure that we were introduced to at our first antennal class (or ‘parentcraft’ as they are apparently now called). It’s actually quite releaving to hear about moves award from the medicalisation of women and child birth towards a more natural approach, given my concerns about the factory like atmosphere of the hospital when we went for the scans. Of course, it’s easy to me to say releaving, I am, as in increasingly being pointed out to me, not the person that has to get something ‘this size’ through an opening ‘this size’, however I think Sionedwyn was quite comforted by the fact that both the midwife and many of the people there didn’t seem overly keen on the whole ‘strap ’em to the gurney’ approach as portraied by the Daily Mail and some sociology textbooks.

I remain quite calm about the whole thing (although I refer to you to the previous comment about not being the one doing the actual giving birth), although there are times when I accept this could be misinterpreted as a lack of interest (simply not true) or an excess of ignorance (another accusation I strenusly denied on the way home, although possibly with less sucess than I had hoped). I swing back and forward between ‘that’s ages’ and ‘oh my God that’s hardly any time at all’ when we discuss how far we have left to go, and I suspect being back in a ‘try to get that done before the end of the day’ environment is slightly distorting my judgement of time. Still, I remain committed to reading several more books before the end of Novemeber, at least some of which will be about childbirth.

World, meet Ytbn. Ytbn, this is everyone. Some of them may look a bit scary, but most of them are really cool.

It was definitely one of those moments, sat in the corridor staring at picture of my future child. Overwhelming doesn’t really do justice to the complete 360 my head did coming to terms with it. I mean, the news wasn’t new, it was just a new level of reality that I had to adjust to. Sions has had months of feeling rubbish to adjust to, and bond with Junior, but watching it on the monitor, refusing to move and then covering it’s head with it’s hand when it was prodded into moving was just amazing (I can already see which one of it’s parents it’s going to take after…) While for much of the scan the lady with the gel and the scanny thing (I’m sure there’s a title, but I’m just not sure what it is) was focussing on different bits (spine, heart, kidneys – we could actually see the kidneys!) the moments when she zoomed out and you got a sense of this little person in there, clearly trying to get some kip and being slightly disgruntled at being woken up was just amazing.
Anyway, everything seems to be in the right place, and we got a couple of photos to bring home and stare at! Then we wandered round Babies R Us, with me marveling a toys, and then on to Mothercare where the first baby purchase was made!