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Another year, another............
The decorations are down, the tree has gone, Christmas is done and dusted for another year. Well, not quite cos I'm going to my sister's tomorrow being a very late Father Christmas, my excuse is that they were away over the Yuletide, and it has taken me until now to get what I was bidding for on E-Bay. Jack will be accompanying me on my visit as his Mummy is working and his Daddy is out 'wetting a baby's head'. I hope her house rabbits are prepared for the attentions of a loud toddler, he is going to love them.
Amy has acquired a new skill, she doesn't bottom shuffle, she bottom bounces. It is actually quite a discreet way of becoming mobile, watch her and she doesn't appear to move, look away for a minute and she is heading out of the room. My feminine, passive Grandaughter has become loud and capable of repelling Jack with one shove. I suppose it is necessary for her survival, and it ensures that he no longer takes her toys away.
The Christmas Fairy
My house is still an extremely cold place to be, the heating is still almost non-existant, the gas board think they may have it sorted in two weeks, although the price goes up every time we speak to an engineer, inflation is soaring in the household energy field. They know they have us 'over a barrel', it gets to the point where you would pay anything just to feel warm again.
Hopefully I have juggled my off-duty so I have got 6 days off work, bliss. It has been so busy, babies being born, full clinics and students requiring assessments completing, that 9 hour plus days have become the norm. Last night I was trying to decide whether I should go off-sick with swollen glands, my painful wrist ( Hubby's therapy has not worked), or just throw myself down the stairs and hope that I just sustained a bad sprain rather than break my neck. I realised that this was all a bit pathetic but, that since I was standing at the top of the stairs at the time seriously estimating where I would land should I jump, I really needed to reorganise things slightly and allow me to regain my sense of proportion. I'm feeling far more positive now, so my ploy has worked.
A personal reflection
I started blogging two years ago, 20six was not my first site, initially I went with Blogger but once I found 20six, Blogger became an extremely rare place I used to give vent to frustrations I didn't want to share with people I felt I had formed an association with. Now I find changes are in the air, and the air is due to hit me quite soon. I have to admit I'm concerned. I can use a computer, but it has to be simple. I have heard of HTML, but I have no idea what it is. At the top of this page there is a button that says ' remove HTML', I've never clicked on it, I don't know what might happen, I might not like what happens, and I might not be able to rectify the change it initiates. Other bloggers are talking about 'backing up', I do that in my car, I also do it when I'm nervous of something, it's not a concept I associate with my blog. I'm assuming it means saving my entries. How? Can I just save my entire blog to disc, if I try will it just save that page or the whole thing?
Assuming that I can understand the changes when they happen, and I can continue to blog, how many of the people I interact with will be left? This blog has become quite important to me, I have communications with so many varied people and through those appreciate many aspects of life away from my tunnel-visioned little world, there's MJ in Argentina, More Than in Australia, Nicola in Canada. Professionally it has been wonderful to follow people through their pregnancies, births, early days with baby, and then to still be involved when those babies become toddlers. I think it has also widened my perceptions of women's experiences during the whole pregnancy etc. cycle, and has certainly made me understand better the need for individualised care.
Personally I find blogging a huge relief, and I gain valuable support and advice from comments. When I started blogging I had just found out that I was to be a Grandmother for the first time, my emotions were all over the place, 20six gave me a place where I could let them out. Over these two years there have been many times when I was really down, problems at work, cats dying, house-fires but I always knew that I could set out the feelings I was having and receive good advice from fellow bloggers. It's lovely though as well to send out the good news, to use my computer megaphone to shout out to people how happy I am.
I'm going to be optimistic. Things will be okay. The last two years will not be a fond memory, it will carry on, it's got to, I really don't want to have to visit a shrink, blogging is far better therapy.
I got tagged
After due consideration, I have come to the conclusion, that the answers are -
7 things to do before I die
Fly in a Tornado
See an active volcano
Keep my desk tidy
Become more computer savvy
Finish landscaping my garden
Enjoy cooking
Learn to play the piano
7 things I cannot do
Sleep through the night
Give up smoking
Eat any meat/fish that looks like what it is
Rise to the trot
Drive an automatic car without attempting to change gear
Watch people embarassing themselves
Cope with being higher than 10 feet off the ground
7 things that attracted me to blogging
A different, more interesting way of keeping a diary
Useful as a form of reflection
Giving vent to frustrations
Interaction
Communicating with lots of different people
Expanding my perceptions
Feeling that in some small way my voice is heard
(Last 4 came once I started blogging)
7 things I say the most
Oh my God!
How are things going?
That's what babies do, it will get better.
Keep calm (said to myself)
Where's..........? (always losing things and getting lost)
Noooo! (To Jack, Amy, cats)
I told you that the other day/earlier (Hubby has problems retaining information if it doesn't involve the word 'golf')
7 books I love
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
The Falling Angels John Walsh
Sarum James Mitchener
The Red Tent
The Glass Lake Maeve Binchey
Love Story Erich Segal
The Green Mile Stephen King
7 Movies I love
Philadelphia
The Sound of Music
Good Morning Vietnam
Schindlers List
Romeo and Juliet (Leonardo de Caprio)
Little Women (Liz Taylor)
One Flew over the cuckoo's nest
7 people I want to join in
geepeemama
Waffle and Musings
DerbyDave
Stoppycow
IanB
FlightBuff
Matilda the Skivvy
Right, I've delved into the deepest recesses of my psyche, bared my soul and now I'm exhausted .
My very needy lady had her baby, emergency section but really one of those 'emergency sections' where everyone knew it was coming so really it was not an emergency at all, more a case of 'lets avoid litigation'. Anyway, she went home for 24 hours and then, yes, she and baby were readmitted, baby had lost too much weight. Apparently she is home again now, I've got until Saturday before I'm due to visit, in her world that is a very long time without being in hospital so the chances are she will be back in by then.
Amy's Mummy had her return to work interview, which she was dreading, but apparently they were really lovely, agreed to three days a week, and the three days that other daughter and I can look after Amy, they also put her in charge of Scotland and Ireland. The suspicious side of me wonders if this is deliberate in that it could involve a lot of travelling and staying away from home, and they are fairly confident that she will find it too much and say goodbye. I must stop being so paranoid.
Having sorted out the heating, and being warm and able to turn on a tap and have hot water, I went into the utility room yesterday and discovered a constant, fast drip of water coming from the inside of the boiler. Rang up the Gas Board who said 'was it a drip, or a leak'. What??? There's water coming out where it shouldn't, yes it is dripping, but it means that the boiler is leaking. Anyway the boiler made the decision viz a vie urgency by declaring lock-out, the Gasman came and diagnosed a cracked heat exchanger which....is not covered under our agreement. Perhaps it was my sagging shoulders, or my sad smile but he phoned to his boss and they said they would replace it free tomorrow. The open fire is now roaring and saucepans are lined up on the cooker heating water. In some strange, perverted way its quite romantic.
I so nearly blogged in fury the other night. Instead I sat and shouted at the telly. Yes, CBB had me all fired up, that horrid bully, Barrymore and his childish, boorish behaviour to Jodie Marsh. OK, so I probably wouldn't want to spend too long with her but even so I felt that he was way out of line. Repetitive shouting would have made me thump him one, I would have been very likely to shout back something that included the words 'swimming pool', 'coward', 'freak' but not Jodie, somehow she remained almost calm, I take my hat off to her for that. Another thing, when Barrymore, George and Pete (who is he?) were sitting discussing tactics regarding the nominations why didn't BB call them to the diary room, the programme couldn't be a fix, could it?
Visited my 'needy' lady today. Should I be worried that her husband had a full size, professional video camera set up in the room? I couldn't see any lights on it, perhaps he's just very proud of it. Anyway, a sort of informal arrangement has been made, I visit alternate days, in between she goes into the hospital. I really put the wind up the Registrar this evening when I went back onto Labour Ward and was relaying her latest physical complaint. I phrased it in such a way that it seemed as if the outcome of my advise to her was to come back in, the Reg leaped out of the sitting-room pleading ' No, no, please don't send her back in, I couldn't take it.' I laughed (I love winding people up!) Needy lady and her Hubby are busy putting together a formal complaint against staff in the hospital, for all I know it will include me. I have a feeling her notes will tell it all though and if the Board have any sense they will say the right things, and do nothing. Here I am assuming that the Trust Board is not peopled with bureaucratic morons so I may find myself in deep do-do's at some point in the future.
Boiler is dry, and we have water and heat.
Millie is Billy. The jury is still out on Flo.
Hubby did his back in again. Valium and Voltarol soon sorted that one.
My ?fibrositic wrist gave way again and I succeeded in scalding my forearm. X-Ray on Wednesday. I'm just worried I might drop a baby.
20six now officially have a miracle in their midst.
New experiences
Finished blogging yesterday and the phone rang. It was Jack's Mummy, ' I've just had a really sharp pain', I reassured her and carried on watching Hubby preparing my Roast Dinner, lamb, with all the trimmings. Just as he was making the gravy the phone rang again, I answered it, all there was for a few seconds was crying and someone trying to speak. Then daughter managed to say ' I'm bleeding, I'm really frightened'. Quick question and answer session followed and then I promised to phone her back in 5 minutes. I paced, while scratching my head, b****r, it's the weekend, no EPAC (early pregnancy assessment clinic), casualty?, out of hours G.P? I was lost, utterly, totally out of my depth. I made the decision and phoned labour ward to have a word with the obs/gynae Registrar, yes, the one had I wound-up a couple of hours earlier. 'Bring her in', she said without hesitation. So having phoned daughter back and arranged to meet her there, off I flew, dinner abandoned. I sat and played with Jack for what seemed like an eternity, but was in fact only about half an hour. Seems fine, but come back in the morning for a better scan.
Daughter phoned after her scan to say that all appears well, heartbeat seen, no obvious cause for bleeding. This is good news, but only reassures at the time. The bleeding is continuing, daughter is frightened and in need of constant reassurance, and here I am scrambling around trying to find the right words, hoping to calm her concerns, but not build her expectations up too much. I've done this before with patients, but these are women I have never met, they've been given my number as 'the midwife', they are a voice at the other end of the phone, not my daughter who, until twenty-four hours ago, was certain that she was going to be a Mum again. I have never experienced what she is experiencing, and I really wish we weren't experiencing this together now.
New experiences are not always good.
Today we are keeping our fingers crossed, Jack's Mummy is being positive, and nauseous, hopefully there will be no more to blog about, coffee bean wise, until early February.
Having visited my 'needy' lady on Sunday, we agreed on no visit Monday, she was going to breast-feeding clinic, and I would see her on Tuesday. So on Tuesday I visit and she tells me that she felt tired on Monday so went to the G.P's. Apparently she had phoned the hospital and they had steered her in the direction of her Doc, I inwardly chuckled, imagining the reaction on the unit when she phoned in saying that she felt tired and wanted to be seen. Long-suffering G.P played the safe card and gave her antibiotics in case she was brewing an infection. Health Visitor is now visiting, baby is gaining weight so I am stepping back, no visit until Friday, if all is well then I shall say a fond farewell, accompanied by copious advice about contraception.