Paternity leave

I started paternity leave today. No baby yet, so now we have an unspecified countdown to the birth and a 4 week countdown til I'm back in the office.

Last time, with R, I started my leave on the due date and took 4 weeks off. My plan this time was to start on the day L went into labour, so I would get maximum time with the newborn. Turns out, that was impractical. Since the baby did not come over the bank holiday weekend, I went back to work on Tuesday. I won't say it was a mistake, but I did find between the monitoring and inducing and actually getting work done, I was spread too thin to be useful. So I tied up all the loose ends I couldn't resolve last week and said goodbye to everyone. And that was that. All that's left is to figure out how to turn off notifications on the various work apps on my phone.

Labour hasn't started yet. We've had 3 sessions of 20 minute monitoring in hospital (which, for some reason takes 4 or 5 hours end-to-end) and two sweeps. The waiting game we're going through now is how long can we go before we go for stronger intervention? And how long until we've can't do the planned home birth and have to do full-on labour ward?

On the other hand, this child seems much more interactive in the womb than R was. She would push and kick as usual, but this one seems to do things like responding to rubbing legs by moving feet. Perhaps we're just better able to recognise body parts through the uterus, but it does make it more like there's a real baby in there.

Induction

We've gone with the sweep. It's the most innocuous induction method on offer. L got swept yesterday. So far nothing beyond the sudden desire to bake a cheesecake. Clearly it's having some effect, though no birthing yet. Which means I'll be back at work tomorrow. Which, in this heat, might be a good thing. We'll likely got for another sweep tomorrow.

In other news, R is tired of the indirect attention. Are you excited to be a big sister? used to meet with silence. Yesterday, she just got up and walked away when asked. Today she just rolled her eyes as far as they would go. Why not ask her something that she hasn't been asked 10,000 times already? Like What toys would you like to give to your sibling?, or something like that. Asking a real question goes get R involved in the conversation and she'll think and give an honest answer. It's good to know it's not just me that's done with the more monotonous questions.

Induction or no?

Still no sign of birth. Head looks more or less engaged. All vitals are healthy.

We saw a doctor 2 days ago who wanted us to go for daily monitoring. Now it's clear that daily monitoring is pretty much a full time thing, taking at least 4 hours to do 20 min or heartbeat monitoring. I'm not sure it's worthwhile. On the other hand, the doctor also told us Remember, it can die suddenly and for no reason at any time. Have a nice day. Bye! Thanks doc.

At this point we need to decide if we want a sweep to kick start the process or we just wait. hopefully today's observations will give us more data on how ready to we are naturally, and if intervention will make a difference.

Birth plan and waiting

We actually got a chance to go over the birth plan with a midwife. Well... sort of. I held the birth plan in my hand, asked questions and made notes. The midwife had some practical suggestions for things to have on there that we'd not considered before.

The new birth plan is just a modified version of the one we had for R but never go to use. So we've deleted some of the parts we now know to be useless ("maximum possibility of enjoyment") and added some things we now know are useful ("fresh o batteries for Tens machine"). The midwife suggested some terribly practical things we'd not have thought of:

• 7 towels (why 7? does each have a specific purpose? Or do they know that if they ask for less they'll get none?)
• parking permits
• a hand mirror (for checking on progress without making L move)
• portable lamp (for the same reason)

Note: this is not a complete practical guide for would-be at-home parents

Also she gave us instructions for what to do if the baby comes before the midwives arrive. It's pretty much: call 999 so you have someone to guide you, then make sure to catch it and keep it cuddled til someone arrives.

So every few days we make some edits to the Plan, then print it out again so it's nice and legible. And repeat. In the end well have some well formatted and crafted thoughts about the birth, but I suspect it'll just sit on the clipboard in a corner of a room when the time actually comes.

In other news, every day at work I've been treating as my last. It's pretty much Bye. Maybe see you tomorrow. at the end of every day. So every day I try to have everything wrapped up as much as I can assuming everyone has to carry on on their own without me.

I'm getting lots of questions at work. I get a lot of Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? To which I always answer Yes. followed by nothing. It's fun to see the awkward pause expand til the person feels the need to say something. I always explain how we've got so much time after their born to fill their world with gender. It's nice to have these few months in advance of that to just be nicely gender neural avoiding gifts of bright pink or with guns and sports equipment.

The other question I get a lot is Are you excited? How do I answer that? I mean, not excited. Nervous? Apprehensive? I could just say that all the miscarriages took more of a toll on me than I thought and I'm still kind of numb on the inside. I want to be more excited, but not being excited also keeps away the spiraling disappointment of when things go wrong. But it's not a direction most people want that question to go. So, in reality, I usually either say Yes or, in the more unguarded moments It's been a long road getting here. I suppose it's like my stock answer to Do you want a boy or a girl?, which is A live birth. I'd just like to get to the point where things are ok and we can get on with being an expanded family.

Last Scan

Yesterday was our final scheduled ultrasound. This time we brought R along with us so she could see her sibling. Unfortunately since it's such a late scan, the wee one is too big to see overall and too uncooperative to see any detail. Not even a nose.

R watched for bit and started to get bored. L asked R to take photos of the ultrasound screen.

to RHere. Take my phone. Can you take photos of the screen?

R gets up close to the screen

Don't get close. Stand back there. You can take some good photos at the end.

Moving to the back of the roomI'll stand over here and take selfies.

grinningShe's a millennial.

Um... the millennials are in their 30s now

their jaws drop

She's like 2 generations later

jaws can't fall any further

What generation does that make her then?

trying to remember 'Alpha'. It went to 'Zed' and then wrapped around again.

Never before have I had such an opportunity to make people younger than me feel so old.

Regardless, the scan went well, despite the lack of any visuals more interesting than a ribcage and maybe some hair. While at the last scan everything was bang on average, things have started having some variation now. Head is a bit bigger than normal at 11cm across – the magic number at which birth starts to sound a litter scarier.

We're on the final road now. We're term soon and then it's the waiting game. Does the kid come before or after I start paternity leave?

New clothes

We have quite a few hand-me-downs we've gotten from various people over the past few months. Today we organised the baby clothes, separating everything by size. This time remembering that they get big pretty quickly and that 9-12 month pile is going to get used sooner than we'd think, and to make sure we remember where we put it.

It's starting to really home that there will actually be a baby soon. We've only a few weeks left. I kind of miss last time when I was so paranoid I spent the whole time reading up on everything and making sure we are prepared. This time, well, I remember what I read last time, and I'm pretty sure I recall what we need. Nappies. A birth plan. A bed. A changing table. Something to carry the child around in. Something to carry the stuff around in. some kind of pump/bottle/steriliser situation. And a hefty supply of panic attacks that I can pick up and use when I realise I've forgotten something rather critical.

On a similar note, I've been continuing the pre-midwife cleanup to get at least my bedroom tidy and ready. Or at least pretend there is an away for everything in the room. I even cleaned under the bed. It's a pretty high up bed, so we store boxes under it. Somehow, after cleaning, there was more storage space than there was before. This is just encouraging me to do more cleaning.

I found a bag of my clothes I put away. I recall one t-shirt and one pair of trousers I hated enough to put away, but not throw out, but I've no idea why I stashed away the rest. It's all reasonable stuff that seems to fit. I worry that if I try to wear any of it, it'll turn out to have a hole in an awkward or embarrassing place that only reveals itself when I'm far from the house and have no backup.

The other downside of the big clean, is I've vacuumed up so much dust into the air, I've been constantly sneezing with a sore throat for days whenever I'm in the house. With luck that will settle down soon.

Meet the midwife

The home birth team came to the house on Monday. The team was a midwife and student midwife come to take various measurements and answer all our questions about home birth. It's rare enough a medical professional comes to your home, so that was in our thoughts above everything else.

Of course we spent the entire week before cleaning the place just so they wouldn't end up saying I'm afraid your place isn't clean enough to give birth in. It’s the labour centre for you! before giving an evil laugh and dropping a smoke bomb to hide their escape. But that didn’t happen. We sat around the kitchen table having a pleasant discussion. The downside being, the whole time I was tempted to say And why don’t we go down to the bedrooms and see how clean they are, but perhaps them thinking me sane and not at all creepy is the better approach.

Of all the people we've met at the various hospitals during this pregnancy, these were the first to actually try to convince us to do a home birth. Everyone we've come across so far has told us the dangers and other problems associated with giving birth at home. The closest we'd come was a consultant who essentially said well, it's your choice, you know what you're doing, so do what you want.

This was different. They spent half the time telling us all the ways that a home birth is good for the mother and good for the baby. And that we should expect a faster, easier birth. They made it clear it would not be a home invasion – though they did say they require tea and snacks, so we have to take their orders in advance. How we chose to do the birth in the house was up to us. They don't require a specific room, it's all about the mother being comfortable.

They also suggested renting a birthing pool, but, given the only place we have enough space for it is the balcony, L decreed that an al fresco birth, while primal, would not qualify as "comfortable".

It was nice to hear at what stage to call them, how many people would be there, what happens if things go wrong, how long they stay after, what paperwork we get at the end, how to register the birth and so on. They also actively engaged me in conversation, rather than looking up surprised with a Oh you're still here look when I speak. All in all, a fairly comfortable experience which has left me much happier about the whole plan.

Also in the good news is the baby is no longer breech. So that’s a win too.