Work and labour

I've been rather silent for the past few days as real life has gotten in the way of me writing anything beyond cover letters.

I'm keeping myself quite busy with the job hunt and in bringing my skills up to date. I do wish I could have spent all this time off work after the baby is born when I could really use it. As it stands, I'm spending too much time contemplating the future rather than doing something with it. I'm still rather concerned about all the time off work I'm going to need to take. Paternity leave is only ten days, and, since I'll be too new at the job, I won't get any paid leave. And since I won't have much holiday accrued yet, I'll probably need to spend all of it just on baby.

All the stuff I've been reading lately has got me afraid of how long the wife and kid will spend in hospital. If it is two weeks, there goes all the paternity leave in one fell swoop. Unless things really go wrong, I don't want to spend my days in hospital waiting for test result after test result to see if they'll let us go home. I'm just picturing the wife and I going stir crazy with no sleep waiting for result of a blood test they took 12 hours ago to drop or go above some magic number an NHS manual considers to be healthy.

I'd voiced my concerns to the wife earlier and she asked if I'd reconsidered doing a home birth then. I though about it and then realised that at least in a hospital we only ran the risk of the staff not knowing what they were doing. At home it would be guaranteed.

The wife's superpowers were in full force last night at a house party. Various smells from foods, drinks, people, etc, were starting to annoy her, while being undetectable from everyone else. Or at least the first real day of spring here was blocking my nose enough that I wasn't able to tell at all. It was good getting out and being socialable. And even though she spent most of the party in a chair, she did noticeably have a good time.

She got a bloody nose today. Every year I can tell the first day of spring since I get my first (and often only) bloody nose of the year. I am wondering if the offspring is passing my allergies on to my wife. Is that even possible? Or is this just an oddly timed pregnancy symptom.

The little one's been moving around quite a bit lately. Today I put my cold hand on the wife's belly and I could feel it shift and squirm under the skin. I drew my hand back quickly and said I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I didn’t realise it was so cold. The wife said It's ok. Your hand isn't so cold. You can put it back. Um. I wasn't talking to you — I'd managed to offend them both in one gesture. I'm off to a good start.

And finally, words have started to take on the special birthing meaning. When I hear the word "engage” I immediately think of the proper positioning of the baby's head just before it starts coming out. And the song Express Yourself now just makes me think of lactation.