False alarm

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 and he was trying to avoid the worst of it.  It was only as we took a turn that wouldn't be sensible for avoiding the works that I realised something else was amiss.  We discussed this again later and decided that the route we took this morning was partially correct and we decided on one if we were to have to make the trip again in the next few days.

The reason we took the car was because my partner thought we were going to the doctor's clinic where there are no parking issues.  I thought we took the car because we had tonnes to take with us and there was parking for patients next to the birth clinic.  We were both partly right: there are parking issues and taking the car was probably the more convenient option for carting things.  So we found a private parking lot reasonably near the clinic that charged less than a taxi fare for a day's parking; this would probably work out best for us on the day.

Although I was not ready to give birth on this occasion, going to the birth clinic with my mother, who is going to be one of my birth partners, and talking to the midwife was a useful experience for all of us.  So, all-in-all, a good thing to have done even though we didn't get to come home with a baby at the end of this particular runaround. 

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