threescore

Which you probably knew already: those who use Binary, and those who don’t. 

Here are some interesting types of folk I’ve encountered recently: 

 1. I sat next to an Italian mum today in ‘Baby Buddies’ and explained what the health visitor was talking about. Very exciting. I don’t think they have a word for ‘lap’ in Italian. (Shame). I think eleven-year-olds are allowed to actually sit on car seats in Italy. (Intriguing).

2. Like the rest of my ante-natal group, I’ve discovered that at this point in my life I am moulting ridiculous amounts of no-longer-pregnant hair. It looks like the day after Crufts at our house and I’m surprised I’m not bald.

3. Squealy McSqueal had a passport photo taken today, and thankfully we got a good result (after turning round and lunging forward ruined the first two). I am not holding out much hope of it being acceptable however, as I have no idea WHAT the Guild of Passport Blurb Writers think they are on about.

4. Viewing nurseries has proved to me that quality does indeed vary, as testified by expressions on faces and the rule of messiness being inversely proportional to happiness in toddlers. The best places weren’t the ones I expected, but I picked up good ideas for activities and child-friendly furniture from most.

5. Most places that do weekday lunches do not do their fifteen-minute ‘meal or money back’ offers if there are 14 persons present and 7 of them are under 5 months old, but the staff are more smiley than usual and happier to bring drinks to the tables.

6. My mentee and I agreed that the more likely a young person is to have real issues, the quieter they are about them. And vice versa.

7. Blind boys find babies fascinating too.

8. When new people join your church it is interesting to see if you are related, even though you were born in completely different places. And then to see if you are related to the minister. In my case this actually happened last weekend.

9. Health visitors recommend baby products which are good for their skin (15 times thinner than adults’, apparently), but have no problem with them going swimming in chlorine-filled pools with a hint of water and coming out blotchy and red.

10. However much you smile, there are always some people who do not smile back. But most do.

what would you do?

Our days are so short on earth. Why not treat today as if it had been given to you as a bonus gift? Celebrate living. Treasure the details. Don’t worry or complain. Observe. Listen. Love. Find ways of enjoying what is regular and laugh at cheap sentimental blogs.

So, I am doing a bit of admin. I just came across the council Register of Electors letters. You have to contact them to tell them that nothing has changed in your voting status and jury eligibility. Oops. I think this letter has been propping up the inbox for some weeks. So I try registering BY INTERNET as advised, and discover that I cannot. I try calling the FREEPHONE number and get a friendly eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepclick. The click is the noise I make hanging up, but it is integral to the experience.

On the back of the letter I find a tiny telephone number and call it, full of apology for having a baby and not doing my paperwork yet. I discover that the letter was sent in September and that I already registered by internet and forgot to record it. So I apologise for pregnancy brain and forgettery (see May 3rd). Gulpclick.

I wonder what other paperwork I inadvertently did months ago and forgot about?

I wonder whether you have to do jury service if, like astronaut Jack R. Lousma, you were born on 29th February 1936 and are turning 72 today (or is it 18?). Then again, I doubt Lousma would be eligible to vote in Ipswich, being all American.

Yesterday I joined a Baby Buddies post-natal group where we were asked to give our children’s ages, names and reasons for names. I loved it! We had respellings of mother-in-law’s first names, foreign names, respellings of biblical names so they don’t sound too arky, made up names (deliberately difficult to spell and already regretted) and a little boy whose dad got to name him after a member of Pink Floyd if he was a boy. The mum had a girl’s name she liked, and it wasn’t David. She warned us not to enter into these kinds of contracts. It is good to know that the group babies will be exposed to much cultural stimulation, including language and music.

However, admin is not going to get discovered that it has already been done if I sit around one-handedly typing like this all morning. Must get on. Only 24 hours in a day.

I’ve been reading Kipling’s Just So stories. They are very good. Very, very good. I recommend them strongly to all who appreciate a good story.

It got me thinking. You don’t get many Rudyards in the school yard these days. There may be a dearth of Adolfs for good reason, but what’s wrong with Rudy?

We spent a few minutes laughing about naming a child Isambard when we were expecting, but who calls their offspring after the original IKB today, even if there are strong engineering links?

My great-grandfather was born in 1877 and was called Coleridge. He cannot have been the only one with this first name.

There are those who think it is original to be original, but I would protest. New names are lacking originality in the noughties, compared to 150 years ago.

It is enough to make one feel exceedingly cross.

It’s a GIRL..!

(I was sure it was a boy, but am absolutely delighted and love her to bits).

We have named her Elizabeth Juliet. Affectionately, she’ll be known as Lily. Ok, not the ordinary shortening, but it works for us and gives options for initials so that they don’t match mine. I like the fact that Elizabeth’s initials feature on postboxes and that the Queen also signs her name Elizabeth R. I like the sounds and the colours of the letters in my head. I like the flowers. Water lilies included.

There are multiple spellings, but we have chosen the regular ones. There are lots of options for nicknames, which gives her options for the future. There is a bit of sensible and a bit of cool in there, so it should appeal to lots of people, rather than being the kind of name people make instant judgements about. It is long, but it can be shortened, including for school work.

Lily is crying, so I have to de-blog. More soon.

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.

O Raspberry Leaf Tea,

you promise so much

and deliver a taste not unlike Ribena,

or perhaps the smell of raspberry bushes.

Was it only this week I asked dad to go to town for you?

If I wanted to start a religion

I might begin by promising that something natural

might deliver something inevitable.

I do not worship at the altars of herbs.

I sit and brew and consider the heresies of other hot drinks.

Why does coffee taste so different from how it smells?

(Or it does in my mind - I forget when I stopped drinking coffee).

Maybe I’m softening.

Maybe the high priests of Raspberry Leaf would have me believe that delivery follows ripening, as ripening follows brewing, as brewing follows putting on the kettle.

It’s all a little home-made for me.

What am I really thirsting for?

(It looks like rain, but I don’t think it will). I spend more time these days noticing details from the views out of my house than usual.

I recognise my neighbours, postman, binman, local builders, buses of bored commuters all turning to look at me through the window, always with the same adverts for a film I do not want to see. There are car transporters, mothers with every type of fashionable pram, sirens, cars which beep when they get too close and turn the corner. There are the school children who trot at a pace which is improbably uncomfortable as 9:00 approaches, behind mothers of every race, each with a pram, down to the school near us. There is the only mother without a pram who brings a chrome scooter back home with her at 9:10, leaning slightly to let it roll as she walks. There are the mopeds and the loud teenagers, with caps, baggy tops and trousers which aspire to fit. There is the man who wears the same red and blue rugby top into town every day. There are the white van drivers (you have to be fast to see them), the start-stop rush hour queues waiting for the lights to change at the development up the hill and the electric buggies (mounted) and uphill cyclists (dismounted).

Do they all realise how important today is to those of us stuck inside? Maybe today we will go out. Maybe not. Today I’m happy taking it all in.

Cot.

Space to bath the baby, or storage for towels etc.

Blinds in the nursery (and matching light-shade).

Wireless thermostat to ensure temperatures fit for humans in the nursery and kitchen.

New tops for breast-feeding in the hospital.

A few more muslin squares (I only have 5).

Bottles.

It’s not just me doing my swimming exercises. It seems Peanut is not only in the correct position head down, but well engaged and facing backwards. I am so pleased! On the monitor today we even saw the baby sucking its thumb.

The fact that it is engaged now is good, as it is unlikely to ‘come loose’ in a first pregnancy. The amount of squirming and waggling I am feeling is down to exercises the baby is doing to keep active (a wriggler, like its cousin and uncle) and doesn’t seem to be an issue. Between you and me, if someone asked me to stand on my head in water for the next 2-4 weeks with no movement other than my neck and torso, I’d be wriggling too. 

I do not mind the fact that I was just too old to take SATs at school, and too young to take the eleven plus. I do not mind that I had fewer exams at GCSE than today’s year 11s, because I did more coursework. I do not mind the fact that I have never taken a test in Mandarin, tank driving or flying space shuttles.

I have had plenty of tests in any case, and am not at an age where I want to invite more.

Today I discovered that I have an untested pelvis. It hasn’t failed, but it hasn’t passed either. No certificates of proficiency or licence to birth for me! This is not necessarily a big deal, but my new lovely midwife has a hunch that Peanut is lying breech, and having an untested pelvis matters now. I haven’t given birth before, so we don’t know what my pelvis can do. Personally, I have high expectations of my pelvis. However, if

i) it can be proved on a scan that the baby is breech, and

ii) the baby doesn’t move despite three attempts at external cephalic version, I have to have a Caesarean section. I will be 38 weeks pregnant tomorrow. I don’t know when they would do a C-section, and I am happy for them to do it if appropriate, but I’m not looking forward to the ECV. The scan could be good though.

I have been exercising!

Admittedly, I should be doing a lot more exercising which the physio prescribed. But I conquered my fears and attended my first aqua-natal class yesterday. It was brilliant fun.

Most of the pregnant ladies were wearing the same swimming costume as me, and together we looked like a troupe of synchronised hippopotamuses. Think BBC. We were given woggles. It is amazing what you can do with a woggle. We swam with them, tied them in knots, pushed them under the water, hopped and jumped on them. We swam in circles and people in the swimming lanes beyond splashed us with butterfly stroke. Grannies waiting for the aqua-pause group after us watched and giggled. Teenaged life-guards in yellow and red US-fast-food-outlet-style attire tried not to watch, and failed. I can now say that I have ticked another life-ambition on my list, and actually really enjoyed it. The instructor, a midwife-fitness-instructor, said ‘let’s go!’ more often than was truly necessary, and was fanatically happy and enthusiastic. She didn’t think we looked silly at all. She had a Madonna-microphone and a long aerobics track playing with French hip-hop, which didn’t scare away the lane swimmers. We did 43 minutes, at 10p a minute. She claimed that it helped women give birth faster. It is certainly helping me tone up my maternity-leave bank balance.