NotSheep

I’ve probably done more today than I have in the last two or three months put together. I’ve certainly been out of bed for more hours in a row today than I have for ages - probably since mid-Octoberish. It’s now almost 10 p.m. and I’m still wide awake and while I wouldn’t say I’m brimming over with energy, I haven’t fallen over yet. That could be a sign that the fatigue is finally lifting, I suppose, or it could be that I’m going to pay for this big time in the next few days.

Yesterday and Wednesday were pretty much like most days have been for the last while, with me struggling to stay awake and upright long enough to actually do anything with the boys, then collapsing into bed at the first opportunity - which makes it all the odder that I’m still awake and upright now.

I woke about 7.30 this morning to the sound of rattling in the driveway - the lids had blown off the recycling bins (which were at the end of the driveway, waiting for collection) and all the recycling stuff was blowing around the street. After the boys had breakfast and were dressed, I sent George and Freddy out to collect the strewn contents, with a reminder to watch for cars, since it was about 8.20 - fairly peak-time for traffic here, with people leaving for school and work. I thought they’d complain about the cold and wind and having to go out and pick stuff up, but when I went outside, they were grinning and told me “We had fun!” Cool. So now I know what to do next time they complain of being bored: throw the rubbish out and arrange for a bit of a typhoon.

Meanwhile Barney dressed Toby for me and I gave instructions to Jack in between cleaning my own teeth and getting dressed and gathering what we needed to take with us. We were out of the house by 8.40 a.m. - yes, 8.40. In the morning. Kind of blew my mind I couldn’t get the boot of the car open; it’s still not been permanently fixed since the switch in it went at the beginning of December - it’s now supposed to lock and unlock manually with the key, but that didn’t seem to work either this morning.

Our first stop was the barber’s shop - it’s a one-man operation, and while he does a good job, he also takes his time - about half an hour per customer, even little ones - so I wanted to get us in first. There was already someone waiting at the door when we arrived at 8.50 though, so that didn’t quite work. Then at about 8.58, the barber stuck his head out of the upstairs window and told everyone he was just out of bed and would be down in a few minutes I decided to leave the three older boys (who were the only ones getting haircuts anyway) and go off and do some errands, but first I phoned the local community midwives and asked the head of the team (L) if she’d have some time to swing by my house sometime today. “Oh, it’s lovely to hear from you - are you pregnant?” she said. Anyone would think I had a reputation.

9.20 found me sheltering in the doorway to the bank, which is right by the open water, so the typhoon was certainly making itself felt there. I made a phone-call to a friend who’s about to go off to tour the US for six months and had a chat with her while we waited for the bank to open. After getting some money in my pocket, I phoned Barney to see how far they’d got - the barber was still working on the first customer (the man who’d arrived before us) so I went and gave the boys some money to pay for the haircuts and brought Jack and Toby home to do some tidying up. Discovering how disgusterous (that’s Merry’s word but I like it) the downstairs of the house was, I vacuumed and mopped and cleaned out the dogs’ crates. Other people do vacuum in this house, but it doesn’t seem to occur to them to move things while they’re doing it, so disgusterous was definitely the right word.

Barney phoned me at about 11 to say that both George and Freddy had had their hair(s) cut and that he was just starting to get his done - I’d told him to ring me at that point, figuring it gave me plenty of time to get Jack and Toby into the car and go back down to collect the other. I’d left extra money with them in case they were done just as L (midwife) was due, or while she was here, so I could tell them to get a taxi, but since she wasn’t due until 11.30, I drove back to pick everyone up.

Semi-shorn (i.e. half of us had had haircuts), we came home and finished tidying up, then we heated up some leftover pasta for lunch. L arrived and we had a lengthy chat, starting with her asking if I wanted more or less the same thing as last time, and was I planning to have a pool again - which I am. With a grin, she said, “You notice I didn’t even ask if you were planning a homebirth?” - well yes, I had noticed that she’d just skipped over that bit entirely The meeting with her went well; she’s got the measure of me, I think. In other words, she knows not to assume anything, and not to do anything without asking, and she knows that I’m pretty well clued-in about my options and the pros and cons of them all. She didn’t mention anything at all about me being over 40 by the time the baby arrives, nor did she mention anything about grand multips (I think I do just qualify for that description now). Even better, she told me that the community midwifery manager has moved on - to a different job in a town about an hour-and-a-half from here - which as I had planned to make it clear that she was to have nothing to do with me, not even paperwork or being present when my name was mentioned, was very good news. Good riddance - though I do feel for the people where she’s working now.

Anyway, a very positive appointment. L asked if I was willing to have any bloodwork done, and was surprised when I said there were some things I actually wanted checked - mainly my iron and B12 levels, since either or both of those could be partially or fully responsible for my current knackeredness, and if they are, it’s a relatively easy fix. I’m declining most of the other stuff though - it wouldn’t do to get too cooperative Wanting those bloods done was one of my reasons for contacting L now, rather than waiting. My other main reason was that although I’ve felt lots of things that might have been fetal movement, I haven’t felt anything that was definitely thus - I wasn’t very worried, since I’d felt the fundus (top of the uterus) and knew it was about the right height for almost-18 weeks, but I thought it would be reassuring if she could pick up a heartbeat. She offered a choice of pinard or doppler; I chose pinard because I’m really not keen on routine ultrasound exposure. Unfortunately she wasn’t sure of what she was hearing with the pinard, so I agreed to a very fast listen in with the doppler, and she found a good strong heartbeat of about 140/minute, which is just about absolutely perfect. I also felt some is-that-baby-moving-type movement while she was doing it and she agreed that it was indeed baby moving

She agreed to come back and take blood for tests next week (I think the B12 needs a tube which isn’t a routine one for them to carry in the community) and after that I’ll see her again about four weeks later. There’s a new midwife on the team (the primary midwife who was here for Toby’s birth has retired) and a new student, so I’ll get to meet them, and I was reassured by L that if I don’t feel comfortable with any member of the team, I only have to say so and it will be arranged for my care to be from the others - which I knew, but it was very positive to hear someone on a midwifery team actually say so without even being asked. One of the other team members, G, is doing a lot of work with the GP practice that Toby and I have just registered with; I’ve only met her once, but on that occasion she had a good old rant about routine tests and procedures which aren’t justified, so I took to her rather well - I’m quite pleased to hear she might be more involved this time. L left to go and check when her holiday-time is booked next summer, as she’s very keen to be able to attend the birth this time - she was really disappointed to not be on-call when Toby arrived. She’s one of those soothing, supportive midwives, and if she is on-call when I go into labour, I might just call

So…that over, I told the boys to get ready to leave the house again, as I’d plans to go and check the cookware section of Ikea and had to collect Scratchy. But George had locked the car when we got home, and didn’t know what he’d done with the key. We only have one key, and we only have one car, so its un-findable-ness was a bit of a worry. After 20 minutes or so, it turned up between the ottoman in the front hall and the wall. At that point, I discovered that Toby was shoeless and sockless - we found socks (the boys all having received character-socks in their stockings, that particular bane of my life seems to be much diminished for now - thank you Sally!) but one shoe remained stubbornly missing - and still has not been found. Eventually we gave up on it and left the house with a pair of much-too-large wellington boots for him instead. We do own a pair of wellington boots which would fit him much better (they are very little and very cute) but those could also not be found - it only occurred to me hours later that they were probably already in the bag in the boot of the car. Not that I could get the boot open anyway…

By that point there was no time for Ikea before collecting Scratchy, so instead I scooted into town to check the charity shop for cheap blankets for the dogs’ crates, them having pretty much eaten most of the blankets that were in there before - but parking in the afternoons is at a premium, and I ended up joining the line of about nine other cars which were double-parked. I told Barney to run in and get me if he saw a traffic-warden, but apparently the traffic-warden came up from behind and “just popped up at the window”. Maybe he felt sorry for me when he saw All Those Children, or maybe he was having a good day, or maybe he’s just a nice bloke, but whatever, he didn’t give me a ticket - instead he came into the shop and found me and asked me to move my car. Quite a nice surprise, that!

Scratchy, having been taken out for lunch by his boss, had told me to meet him outside a certain shop, so I went there and waited…and waited…until he phoned and mentioned that he hadn’t meant that shop, he’d meant another shop in the same chain - not the nearest one to where he works, not the one opposite the other shop he’d mentioned needing to go to, but an entirely different branch. Hence my twitter wondering if I speak the same language as the rest of the world.

We decided to go to Ikea anyway. Scratchy hadn’t been before, and I wanted to see if they had any pizza-stones (for baking bread as well as pizza). They don’t sell pizza-stones, but I bought some plant-pots at 99p each and Barney bought a £2.99 stool to fit under the roll-out desk under his bed. Freddy announced to all the people in the lift that his favourite age was 16. It must be really cool to have a favourite age which is exactly twice your current age

We decided to eat in the Ikea restaurant, partly because there wasn’t going to be time to get home and feed everyone before the Cub Quiz, partly because we didn’t like the idea of driving across the edge of the city at rush-hour. The menu is limited, but I must admit that being able to feed my entire family for about £9 is fairly impressive. (Actually it wasn’t the entire family - Scratchy was still stuffed from having lunch out - but even so…) With respect to time and travel, it would have made sense to take George and Freddy’s Cub uniforms with us when we went out in the afternoon - and I did think of that, but was already running so late that I decided not to stop and get them - in retrospect, that was not the best move. We got home, George and Freddy shot in and got changed (and George cleaned his teeth, having “forgotten” this morning) and I shot off with them again. We got to the Cub Quiz with about 90 seconds to spare, then waited for 10 or 15 minutes while the stragglers from the other teams arrived…

Our Pack had two teams in the quiz; Freddy was on one, George on the other. One of the Cubs on George’s team was sick, so they were down to three members - but still managed to come second, which meant that they got medals, and also that they’ll be attending the next round (county, I think) in February. Freddy’s team tied for 8th place (out of 17). The leaders and parents had their own mini-quiz in an adjoining room (a tactic designed to stop them cheating helping their Cubs) and I think we did quite well. Okay, so I sent Scratchy a text-message to get him to find out the name of an actor, and okay, so I convinced the rest of my team that another photograph was of Kenneth Branagh when it was actually Ewan McGregor…but none of the rest of them had come up with any names at all so it’s not like I made them get it wrong. In my defence, the photos had been specifically chosen to make them harder to identify. We got Edmund Hillary and Somebody LightSomething from Snow Patrol though, and a couple of sporting figures whose names fell out of my head as soon as I’d written them on the page…

And now, I think it’s time I did that falling-over thing I’m getting so good at. Night all