A conversational attractor

Now that most people know, the pregnancy seems to be at the centre of most conversations – conversations seem to just revolve around it. Well, at least those that don’t seem to orbit it instead.

Friday I had lunch with a male friend of mine. The pregnancy seemed to hover on the periphery of much of the conversation, and every now and again it would touch on the pregnancy, dwell a bit, then fly off to some other topic for a while, but eventually coming back for another go. Perhaps this is the birds and the bees that metaphor is really supposed to be about.

Today I had lunch with three pregnant women: my wife and two others. All of them are due within 3 weeks of each other. This was actually a bit of a relief in the sense that I didn't have to steer the conversation away from my baby all the time. There were plenty of other present or forthcoming children to keep mine from dominating the conversation.

It's not like I don't like talking about my wee one, but I don't want to be one of those people who, once they get a taste of parenthood, it dominates their life and they never talk about anything else. This is cake is excellent. You know, it's the same colour as my kid's poo this morning — stuff like that. I'd like the kid to remain an integral, but not exclusive part of life. Besides, I doubt I'll run out of topics to talk about. Between turning 40 this week, all the repairs on the flat, me losing my job, and all the interviews I've been on, I do have plenty to fill the conversational lulls.

The beast stirs!

I felt it move!

It wasn't a kick or some other sudden obvious movement like I'd expected. It was just a slow moving along the inside of the belly. Like a light stroke.

Wow. This does make it all the more real. That and we're just about to start week 20 — we're just about halfway done. I need to start tidying up the place and making room for all the stuff we're going to have to get.

I can see 40

In under a week will it be my last child-free birthday. To be honest I have no real sense of what the impact of a child will be on having a festive time. Obviously the main impact for this birthday is that the wife won't be able to drink (sorry hon). But, for now, I'm really pondering on what future birthdays will be like.

I'm guessing from watching friends that it means only one of me or my wife will be able to make it out for a night on the town. So we'll have to get used to being antisocial with other people or antisocial with each other.

I'm not so keen on that.

This assumption does come from seeing friends who had kids much younger than the rest of the crowd they hang out with — so maybe it doesn't have to be that way.

How many babies can one solitary person handle at once? Is it possible to have one person look after 2 or 3 babies, so the 3 or 5 parents can have nice care-free night out on the town? Rotating baby-duty could save many couples from premature middleagedness.

I could just have parties at my place. The bloody flat cost enough, I should take advantage of it. How long do I have before the kid is too old to just spend the night zonked out or oblivious to mildly-tipsy adults having fun in another room?

I suppose I just want everything. I want my birthday cake, and a nice slice of my kid's dinosaur-shaped cake too,

Now they know

I've finally come clean and have told the world about her pregnancy. Everyone knows except work: mine and hers.

She's keeping it quiet since they might renew her contract, and we could use the extra 3 months income. If they know they might not bother.

I'm looking for a new job. I'm being made redundant in the current job, so there's no point in telling them, unless, of course, I want to make them feel bad. I suppose I could have mentioned it before they made the final decision, but, to be honest, I'm better off leaving. Though it is still tempting to tell them just to guilt my soon-to-be-ex-management.

The question is when to tell the next employer. The law here is that they're not allowed to ask in an interview, so I can only assume there's a reason for it. I suppose I'll just have to wing it and see what kind of feeling I get from them. I do want to try to talk them into giving me paid paternity leave, so I've got to bring it up at some point in the hiring process.

Besides all that, at least the cat is out of the bag. Which good since the number of baby books and pamphlets around the house have reached a critical mass, and I don't think I could possibly hide them all.

Now we have books

The downside of telling people about the forthcoming birth is that we now have like 30,000 books on dealing with pregnancy. Every time we visit someone they give us more books. It does not matter if they're helpful. They'll smile, say I found this useless and hand over a small stack of books.

I, of course, always nod, smile back and graciously accept it.

In the mix of inane and informative, I finally found a book which contains practical advice for partners. It's not quite a Useful Things a Partner Can Do During Gestation book, but it does have a section on How to Deal with an Emergency Birth. That strikes me as something that would be quite helpful for a partner to know: what to do when a baby comes out and there's no one medically trained around. How to get the baby out, draining fluids the lungs, how to dispose of the placenta, etc, etc.

It also has a few tips for during the pregnancy that actually make sense. Like try to start getting along with your in-laws and let your partner sleep late. This is such a welcome change from the keep it quiet that you actually wanted a boy and stop sleeping with other women comments in books I've been getting used to seeing.

Planning past week 30

I'm beginning to discover that a child is a disruption to anything planned, even weeks before it's born.

The first spanner in the works was my plan to go to my cousin's wedding in Boston in May. Travel insurance says that they won't cover the wife from week 32. Which means she must be back before week 32 starts. Of course, depending on how you do the maths, week 32 starts 2 or so days before the wedding.

However, if she gets a note from the doctor and the airline agrees, she can travel. And insurance will cover her for everything except childbirth. The last thing our finances need is to give birth 2 months early in a hospital in the US. I may as well just declare bankruptcy on the spot and give the hospital the keys to my flat.

Of course, I can still go to Boston by myself. But then I run the risk of being out of the country when the birthing starts. I'm not going to miss that!

Or we could try to find someone at the insurance company to do the maths themselves and see if they count the trip as being in wk31. As long as we can get their bad maths in writing we should be ok.

The other potential spanner is having the grandparents-to-be around for the birth (both sets live in the States). If they come for the due date then there is a small chance they could be around for the birth, get to see the grandkid, and help us prepare and recover. Even if they arrive after the birth, they'd at least be able to meet the wee one and maybe change a few nappies and help with meals. Worst case is they just sit around reading books with us and have to up and go before it's born.

How long should they stay around? How long can they stay around? It can't be trivial to up and go to another country for an unknown indeterminate amount of time. Airlines hate that. Or, actually, airlines love that and all the extra hundreds of pounds it rakes in for them.

So, needless to say, I'm at a bit of a loss on this one.

Starting to show

She's starting to have actual signs of pregnancy. The bump is starting to show – though you'd not tell if you didn't know her. The one thing that really makes it clear is that her navel is getting shallower. We didn't expect that to happen until near the end, but apparently it's happening now. This is making it obvious she's not just getting fatter – that would just make the navel get deeper. But now it's shallower. I can see the bottom of her navel for the first time. Neat.

One thing I find odd is that the uterus is hard. It's not like palpating the belly, which is soft with firmer muscle underneath. The uterus actually feels like a bit of armour under the skin – which kind of makes sense, since the foetus does need to be protected. I just always assumed before that, if people can feel their child kick, it must be soft. It's definitely not soft.

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In other news, I did what felt to be the weirdest announcement of the pregnancy so far today. We had some friends over for dinner. One of them brought up the difficulty of finding their way in a hospital. I, of course, was immediately reminded of our attempt to find the right department at UCH at our first appointment. It being a fitting anecdote, I wanted to bring it up, but needed to give that essential bit of context. I ended up saying On that note, I have an interesting story. But first, she's pregnant [much congratulations and suchlike follows] So anyway, we were at UCH trying to find the right pre-natal department…

At this point keeping it quiet is actually getting in the way. Having to delete the occasional Facebook wall post, hiding books when people come over, etc. I really do need to make a public announcement, and soon, before someone else lets the cat out of the jar for me.

Seeing the GP

She had the wk16 appointment on Monday. A minor event which consisted only of getting the GP up to speed with what the midwives at UCH have done so far. I joined her, as usual, since two brains remember things better than one. For the most part it was going through what paper work the UCH had and what the GP needed, and how they kind of, but don't really talk to each other except via the folder we take to the appointments. So the wk16 appointment appears to be more administrative that medical.

However, Our attendance was rewarded at the end, when the doctor asked do you want to hear the heartbeat?

Of course, the answer was yes, so she spent the never several minutes waving a small wand over the wife's belly trying to find the heartbeat. We got to hear the placental blood flow plus the various standard noises the innards make, but the foetal heartbeat was being elusive. Eventually she found the little tyke, and we got to listen to the rapid thumping for a little bit before the batteries finally gave out. Which makes me rather glad she found it when she did.

It was nice to hear the heartbeat. Any reminder that my offspring is still in there is a good thing – there are not enough clear external signs yet. It seems to cheer me up as well, so I spend the rest of the day in a fairly good mood.