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The festive season
What is it all about?
I sat and thought about this. Well, even that's not true, I didn't sit, I carried on doing my day to day things and thought about it and on a positive note what I came with was family, a special day together.
That took about an hour because interlaced with what I enjoy about Christmas was the rampant commercialism, starting with my big bugbear, Christmas cards. Jokey, saucy, quality street, robin, polar bear, etc. Christmas cards, they are for me the best example of how we have created a new festival which replaces the original excuse for a day off. CHRISTmas, there it is, the 25th December in the last few centuries was there to celebrate the birth of a saviour, a prophet, whatever your belief, what have skidding penguins got to do with it? If you are going to celebrate the day, and particularly if you are going to mark the day with cards I feel that they should be relevant to the occasion. I suppose there could be the arguement that other faiths, or those having no faith also celebrate Christmas, fine, but I would ask why are they celebrating it and, given that it is a Christian festival, would they really find it offensive if they received cards with 3 wise men depicted on them? I know that if I received a card for a Jewish or Muslim festival which had an associated symbol or event on it I wouldn't question it and my Christian upbringing wouldn't be outraged, in fact I would be pleased that I had been included in their celebration.
Then suddenly, I'm brought up short. Christmas trees. We have one but why? I don't know the true reason, we just have one because they look good and it's a family tradition to argue about which is the best one for us. Hypocrite. Being so busy getting irate about cards I didn't think about the tree. Just goes to show Christmas means something different for everyone but it is definitely just the best thing ever for the commercial sector. Bah, Humbug.
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Family life
Today Hubby has gone to Son's and DIL's to help repair their front door. Apparently the door step, or threshold, has rotted so they are going to replace it, it's hard work having offspring who have their own houses. Pregnant one, Jack and I are going to 'pop-in' (just found out that this is a 'Grumpy Old Woman' saying, appropriate) and see the workers and try to encourage Jack to stop being scared of their dog, Mabel. Mabel is some type of spaniel, pretty little thing, 18 months old, but bounds all over the place, and barks, loudly and almost constantly. Amy is not at all bothered by this, mind you this is the toddler who grabs geese by the neck if they come too close, whereas Jack is extremely cautious, of geese and Mabel.
Pregnant daughter has suddenly gone into a panic about the fact that her partner is going snowboarding 3 weeks before baby Poppy is due to enter the world. I assumed that she had done her sums and realised that if Poppy follows Jack's example Daddy will be in Canada, apparently she hadn't so now a second set of plans are having to be drawn up, she even asked me about webcams and video links, I would be asking 'how can you rearrange your snowboarding?'
Looks like Autumn has finally arrived, and it is truly depressing. There are days when almost the minute I get up I have the 'black dog' lurking around me, and today is one of those low points. The weather is dark and damp, I drip the gravy from the cat-food on the carpet, Hubby can't find his reading glasses, again, and Amy is teething. I come to my computer to pour out my woes, my desk is really messy and those nasty unopened envelopes have all positioned themselves on the top, today is not the day to gird my loins and open them. My Google alert on Maternity Services tells me about another 3 maternity units under threat, my newspaper this morning had already informed me that your maternity services are only likely to be safe if you live in a labour controlled constituency, bad news for those in middle England. My fingers are sore from, stupidly, putting my hand into my broken fog light to see if the bulb was broken, it was intact but my fingers are shredded. It's a good job that it takes 10 days to get an appointment to see the Doc otherwise I would be down there today demanding some 'happy pills'.
Tomorrow Amy and her parents move in with us whilst their kitchen is being re-vamped, I hope my mood has lifted by then. If only they hadn't closed down our local sun-bed place, that always gave me a boost. Look on the bright side, what's positive? My arthritis has calmed right down, strange really as I always believed that damp weather made things like that worse. Baby Poppy is really growing well and daughter is positively blooming. The property developer has exchanged with us on the option to buy our house, doesn't mean he is going to buy it but it does mean that he gives us £1,000, just in time for Christmas. Job-share and I had our first 'meeting' yesterday to plan our setting-up independent antenatal classes, venues, finances, equipment and our name, hopefully more on all that as things take shape, fingers crossed.
There, things seem better already. Who needs Prozac when you have a blog!
Sitting down
It has been really hectic round here, my feet have hardly touched the ground, or my backside has hardly touched a comfy chair!
Amy and her Mummy and Daddy have moved in temporarily, I really wish she wasn't such an early bird, 5 o clock and she's in full flow, even my earplugs are not capable of shielding me from Amy when she is wide awake and full of life, she is rather like a highly tuned F1 car, asleep to full power in 5 seconds.
I was working, and on-call over the weekend, bad timing but could have gone a lot worse. Saturday saw me just about to finish a full, but not manic day, when my mobile went telling me about a rapidly progressing homebirth. For the first time I put my new car through her paces, apologising to her as I flung her around tight corners and down narrow lanes, as it turned out I could gone via the whole of the M25 and I still would have been there in time. The womans two previous births had been weeks early, and had been very short labours, this one was a week over and although it went quickly initially, it then slowed right down, and after her pushing for 2 hours we transferred her in, and she gave birth 30 minutes later. The couples first baby has cerebral palsy, a fact which immediately has you on hightened alertness, so, even though Mum and baby were both coping well with labour, the longer second stage made our antennae far more receptive, it may be too receptive, to indications that there may be trouble looming. My main concern was that her other two babies were small, 3lbs and 4lbs, and this progress in labour was starting to hint at problems with this being a larger baby. There is an emergency called shoulder dystocia, basically baby's head is born and then the shoulders are too large to follow through the exit from the pelvis, and get stuck. At it's worst this is truely catastrophic, baby dies there and then, even if all ends well it is a frightening and traumatic experience for the woman and her partner, and also the medical staff involved. One of the clues that shoulder dystocia may happen is that progress is good, often quick during the first stage of labour. but then everything slows dramatically during the second stage and although the woman is pushing well baby makes little downward progress. Thankfully I fretted unnecessarily, once baby decided to descend he squeezed out relatively easily, and, although much larger than his siblings, he was an average weight, 7lbs 11ozs.
Shall have to return to my blog tomorrow, I'm wilting so much that I am imagining curling up tightly in my bed, earplugs installed, pillow over head and.......
Refreshed
Today is a lazy day, apart from a supermarket shop and Jack staying tonight. Amy was brilliant this morning, she slept until 7.15, we were spoilt!
After my homebirth that wasn't on Saturday, Sunday was quite a sedate day. I had a student out with me so it was great to have breathing space in which to discuss cases etc and encourage her to do the examinations. We went round and checked the baby from the home/hospital birth, they had gone home 2 hours after the birth so I needed to do the newborn examination as the paed was not available that night. All was well with Mum and baby. We visited another woman who had just been discharged following a caesarian section, 3 days after the op. I think that it is really too early, and in this case I was sure of it. She was extremely short of breath, had chest pain and seemed unwell. Looking in her notes, she had been complaining of these symptoms before coming home but the Doc had queried anaemia, taken blood, prescribed iron therapy, and discharged her. Baby was incredibly jaundiced and not feeding well, the hospital had asked that they both return on Monday so baby could have a heel prick blood test, an SBR, to check the jaundice. I was unhappy, I mused, eventually I phoned up and spoke to the Paed Registrar, he sounded resigned but agreed I should send baby back. Truthfully I was far more concerned about Mum, that little alarm bell was sounding in my brain. In they both went, baby put under phototherapy, SHO thought that perhaps Mum had a chest infection, thank heavens they kept her in and Registrar saw her, he decided pneumonia. I then went in and wondered to them as to why she had no raised temperature, just then the Consultant walked up, she took the notes and summoned us to the bedside, listened to the womans chest, asked a few questions, demanded more blood tests, phoned the medical team and we now have a diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism. I am currently thanking my inner voice for making me edgy.
Tuesday saw a full clinic, with all the women being 31 weeks, the same as daughter, January is going to be so busy. All were well, apart from one lady who was measuring large for dates. 3 weeks age I had done a glucose blood test for her as she was leaking glucose in her urine and her bump was slightly larger then, I was querying Gestational Diabetes which causes large babies, but the blood test had come back fine. I still felt cautious though, and then she told me that she thought she had been leaking fluid for a couple of weeks! Bad, that her waters may be trickling, but good for me as it gave me an excuse to send her in to the hospital. Obviously my inner voice was malfunctioning, I phoned A later that evening to see how she had got on, everything alright, the hospital went so far as to tell her that I had measured her wrongly, I hope that hasn't affected her faith in me. I still have a nagging doubt though, that baby feels huge. I shall await January with interest.
Energy low-point
Inner voices. Strange how they work. Following the clinic on Tuesday when 'the voices' nudged me, erroneously it would seem, I received a call on my work mobile. The gentleman introduced himself, and then assured me that I wouldn't know him but I had seen a member of his staff earlier at clinic and he was phoning for advice, she was bleeding, a lot. I knew that her work was 45 minutes away from the hospital she is booked at, but that she works 5 minutes away from another maternity unit, which also has a high level NICU. I told him to contact them, tell labour ward she was bleeding, and take her straight in. The question of an ambulance rushed through my reasoning but I decided that him driving her there would be quicker than waiting for an ambulance and them transporting her. When I phoned her home that evening she was home and all was well. They had monitored baby, examined her, not scanned her but decided the bleeding was not a concern. I was happy. Reflecting upon what had happened I remembered her saying, whilst I was seeing her that morning, that the day before a colleague of her's, she lectures in beauty therapies, had given her a back massage and used the high frequency unit to ease her backpain. At the time I had asked how baby had reacted, I thought that it may not have appreciated the vibrations from the unit, she said baby had become very active, and I also pondered on whether it may irritate the uterus. I suspect we may never know, but I wonder if this would be capable of causing the bleed. I shall have to discuss with the Docs and Physios.
Away from the work front life has been frenetic. Amy and her parents are still with us and, at the rate the work on their kitchen is going, they will still be here in a months time. This Nanny is finding the early, early waking of beloved Grand-daughter hard going. Last night we had Jack staying as well, so when Amy woke at 3am, and screamed for ages, it woke him as well. I ended up getting into bed with him, which at least let me sleep until 6.45am when Hubby's alarm clock woke them both up and my day began. How older Mums cope I don't know, especially if they work as well, by the time I get to work, I'm taking Amy with me and then other daughter is picking her up, I'm shattered.
Wednesday we went out to an extremely expensive restaurant for a friends 40th, what a rip off. Huge prices, small portions, staff with attitude, and the most annoying feature, bearing in mind the exorbitant prices, one of our group having to vacate, and move, his chair everytime they wanted to get past with the sweet trolley.
All is serene here now. Amy and her Mummy have gone round to friends, the men are working on the kitchen, Jack's Mummy has just collected him and I have just tidied up the mess created by 2 toddlers. My next action is to haul my aching bones into the sitting-room, recline the sofa, and flop.
That's better
Back to inner voices, or more like co-incidences. Jack has a kitten, Scruffle. He is really cute, 7weeks old, teeny-tiny and really playful. Bearing in mind that Daughter is 31 weeks pregnant I was worrying about litter trays and toxoplasmosis. The advice is to wear gloves to help avoid the risk of infection when sorting out the litter tray, since we have always had cats the chances are that daughter would have acquired an immunity but I'm not about to take chances, so I collected a supply of gloves for the next time I saw her. So, beginning of the week, I had a visit to do near her house, and decided to drop in for a coffee. Feeling slightly peckish so stopped at corner shop where they have fresh baked bread and cakes and chose some muffins. Arrived at their house and handed over my offerings, daughter turned to her partner and told him I had brought round some gloves and muffins. He laughed and said we must have a really strong bond, apparently daughter had said she was going to ask me to get her some gloves, and that she had just told him she was going to buy some muffins for their pudding. I can explain the gloves, but the muffins......they are not really something that I eat.