Check up day... we're engaged!

We bought a blood pressure monitor last week (only £15 from Maplin and very nice and portable) so we could keep an eye on Ola's (and my!) blood pressure on a daily basis. Ola's was a little high these past few days, and she's been a tad puffy in the hands and feet. Naturally this required urgent treatment - not because of any danger to the baby but because it meant Ola was reduced to only one pair of shoes she could fit into. We made an appointment yesterday morning to go and see the GP, who reassured Ola that her blood pressure was OK, but the swelling and the fact Ola had a headache yesterday morning meant it would be a good idea to go to Wycombe General's Day Assessment Unit in the maternity ward. So she's been there this afternoon (and saw two of our Ante-Natal group mothers there, one of whom is definitely post-natal now with twin boys. That makes 3 boys from the 2 births in our group so far) and been given a clean bill of health, which is very encouraging. Even better news was that Junior has engaged, and is lying in a very good position, the right way up (or down, I suppose) and even facing the optimum way (to the side). We're clearly having a very clever baby who's been absorbing all the info Mum's been reading!

Oh, while I was ironing, Ola was packing the bags, at the moment we have two to go to the hospital (one for Ola's stuff, one for the baby's stuff) with a few things still to pack or buy. The bags aren't by the front door, ready to go, but I'm sure they will be soon...

Domestic Bliss

Nope, this wasn't me last night, but I did spend the evening in that most manly combination of activities - ironing the baby's stuff while drinking beer and watching Liverpool win then watching Stanley Baker and Michael Caine take on those nasty Zulus.
I'm sure we need 10 muslin squares, and when they're used Ola will be delighted at how well ironed they are. Between you and me, I was perfectly happy to spend my evening like that, but don't tell Ola. SSShhhhhhh!

Wycombe "The Ritz" General Hospital

OK, maybe I've built it up a bit much there, it's not the Ritz, but we were impressed by the maternity unit when we had a tour on Sunday evening. There are eight delivery rooms, each with en-suite bathroom (all except the specific Waterbirth Pool Room have Patientline too), and assuming there's a room free when we arrive, we can stay in that room the whole time, it's pretty big, and you can move all the furniture around and play with the lighting to make it feel less like a hospital room.
It was reassuring to see how the room looks, and what the post-natal ward looks like.

All that spurred us on last night into really starting to think about packing "The Bag". So Olga picked out most of the things she wants to take for the baby and washed them, and they'll go into "The Bag" tonight, if we have time after Ante-Natal class. Just so we don't feel like we're taking too much, there will be a "Reserve Bag" on stand-by at home which I can come and get if we feel like we've run out of anything. One of the benefits of living just round the corner!

More equipment has arrived too - last night we worked out how to put the Baby Bjorn baby carrier on me (no point trying to fit it around Ola's bump at the moment!) and I had some fun seeing how far up the dial I could go on our TENS machine (electrical pulses through the skin to help with pain relief). It's all a bit theoretical at the moment, as neither of us are in pain, and we can't use it on Ola until labour actually starts, so I can't say how much it will help, but if nothing else it will give Ola something else to think about.
For the record I stopped it at level 4 out of 10... if you believe some people, it's likely to get stress-tested up to 10 when the time comes!

Would you Adam 'n' Eve it?

Here some more pics of ickle Eve. How come she's got more hair than Dad already?

Practice makes perfect

We had a morning Ante-Natal class today; I was the only man able to make it, Olga was very proud :-) We're such a team! Part of the class was the inevitable "nappy" lesson. We split into two groups and could choose between trying to describing how we would change a nappy (what we'd need, how we'd do it, etc..) and how we would bath baby. I jumped in for the nappy scenario, I know even less about bathing a baby than changing its nappy, and there seemed more things to get wrong with bathing, and I didn't want to be the first one in the group to drown the doll.
Our little group of myself, Olga & one of the other mums-to-be, Susie, got most of the theoretical things right in the end, it was only the practical aspect where we tripped up. Those nappies should have Front and Back written on them, otherwise it's far too easy to put them on back-to-front. Would that be too much to ask? At least put that on the "newborn"-style of nappy, or put a pretty pattern on the front, so we know. It's not immediately obvious that the fastening tapes should go at the front, is it? If you were being neat and tidy, wouldn't you put them at the back, out of sight?
Anyway, one of us put the nappy on the doll back-to-front, and I'll never reveal which one of the three of us it was.

Besides that, it was a very useful session, and things are moving quickly now; on Sunday evening we're all going to the Maternity ward at Wycombe General for a look around.

At home, more things that Olga has ordered on the internet are arriving. Last night the dining room table looked like it had come from a UN Refugee Camp, so abundant were the blankets and towels. We had a little play with the Quinny pram, trying to work out the brakes - that could prove useful in Wycombe, although chasing a pram down a steep hill is a quick way to lose those post-natal kilos.

We're going to have fun trying to work out how the car seat fits in the car this weekend....