Diary of an (ex)London mum

Woke up this morning with a sensation that my waters have broken.  Being a first time mum, I had no idea how much water to expect and the books gave a range of volumes which didn't really help me decide whether my impression was correct.  So, erring on the safe side and taking the mid-wives' advice, I called the birth clinic to ask and they told me to go in for a check up.  This turned out to be the perfect opportunity to test the route to the birth clinic from home; you would probably have guessed from the blog title that I was not ready to give birth on this occasion. A number of fortuitous errors helped us along.  In the first instance, my partner thought I was going to the doctor's clinic rather than the birth clinic- not sure why he thought that since I told him who I had called, or why he thought that would be appropriate in any case.  So he took the quickest route to the doctor's clinic with me thinking he had chosen it because there were roadworks ...

... was a bit of a disappointment in that it didn't happen.  It was a rainy day in London yesterday and I thought it would be a good idea to spend it doing something indoors.  So I thought I'd pick up the car and go to the country's most popular furniture store to have a look at a few things that we needed for the flat- we are still shifting things around and redoing bits-and-pieces to fit around Baby's claim on his own room.  The hire cars nearest to me are visible from my flat window and as far as I can tell they didn't budge at all yesterday.  Yet they were shown to be unavailable on the reservations website.  I didn't fancy walking to the next nearest car(s) as it was chucking it down with rain and I would most probably have been soaked by the time I got to it so gave up on the idea of furntiture shopping.  Was it a blip on the website or were both cars reserved but not used by the hirers?  How often does this happen? Well, its a beautiful, s...

First day on maternity leave.  Well, technically I am on annual leave because I decided to stop work a week early- the sore wrist and fingers have made it rather difficult to concentrate at work so I thought I might as well stop and try to do something less taxing.   Today's task is to go shopping for nursing tops.  I have already had a brief look online yesterday and found some interesting looking tops from various online stores.  I quite liked what I saw on this one .  Although I now do have quite a lot of time on my hands, and can afford to spend a bit of it on this, I don't really want to immerse myself fully in nursing top purchasing and would prefer to have bought what I needed by the end of the day.  In fact, I have come up with a list of 'tasks' for myself for the next six months.  Most people I have spoken with have said they found themselves so busy with looking after their babies that they didn't have time to do anything else....

Its two weeks till my due date and three days till I go on leave.  In the last few days I have been feeling some tingling on my fingertips and pain in my wrists; today my hands swelled up and I left work early to see a doctor.  I don't have any other symptoms of pre-eclampsia so I thought it probably wasn't that, but it did look a bit like carpal tunnel syndrome , which can occur late in pregnancy.  I thought it wise to have it checked out just to be sure.  We've invested 8+ months of our lives to keep this baby safe, i.e. it would have been ridiculous to take a gamble on a guess.  I've been told everything is fine- normal for this stage of pregnancy- and to keep an eye on it in case it turns red and painful.  Doesn't make it more comfortable but at least my mind is at ease.  For all the criticism aimed at the NHS regarding their lack of efficiency, I was seen by a doctor within an hour of calling the clinic.  In fact I have always had attentio...