Class action

The last two Monday nights have seen us heading up to the JR hospital for our two instalments of antenatal classes, care of the NHS. Week 1 kicked off with tour of the delivery suite. Since last years Christmas babies are being born right now, there was only one room free! Which just so happened to be the "birthing pool" room. I think Chris could imagine himself reclining in a what is essentially a jacuzzi for a few hours while I squeeze the baby out. However, this didn’t hold his attention for too long; after a cursory check over of the facilities, Chris spent most of the time with his ear to the wall, listening for the howls of women in labour. He was quite disappointed to not hear much at all!

Following this, we had a 2 hour class on the birthing process, which included 5 free puffs on the gas/air mixture before we talked about mucus plugs, the colour of babys' poos, and other fun stuff. We were also told to study the birthing position poster, which looked like a page out of a fat camp Kama Sutra manual.

Week 2 started out well with all sorts of ‘alternatives’ to inducing labour: pineapple, curry, raspberry leaf tea, clary sage oil etc, but rapidly deteriorated into a show-and-tell of assisted delivery tools are used today to ‘help’ the baby out (trans: various medieval torture instruments inserted into mom to pull/suction out the little tyke inside). Then we segued into breastfeeding techniques (involving a woolen booby) and nappy contents – more show-and-tell but with peanut butter and marmite. I leave the details to your imagination.

To heir is human

Since I last posted, there’s been an addition to the Flaim family – the arrival of Miles Flaim Kenyon! He was born at 2.55 pm, Thursday 13 September at Cedar Sinai Hospital in LA. The little lad weighed in at 7lbs 13 ozs and measured 21.5 inches. We heard the little tyke give a bit of a gurgle down the phone last night.

Meanwhile, we had a fantastic time on our whirlwind trip to Scotland – apart from the time spent in the car! I must be a lot more fidgety now - sitting still for several hours is no fun at all! I can practically feel the skin in my legs stretching from venous pooling. Also, the be-she-moth is still growing in utero at an exponential rate. Previously I speculated about being confined to Oxford from now on; now it's a commitment.

Anyway, I digress. Kate and Steve's wedding was incredible; Kate was the storybook radiant bride, Steve the handsome groom.

Photos from the weekend can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/sarah.healy/KateSWedding

From here to maternity

I can’t quite believe it. Neither can Chris. I’m STILL getting bigger. And there are a fair few weeks to go. Not that I want the baby just yet. I just think I might be reaching the limit of my skin’s elasticity.

Other than the fear of giving birth to the hugest baby ever, everything is going fine. Acupuncture and the occasional massage is working wonders on my back, and I can still sleep fairly well, despite the feeling of a basketball being strapped to my tummy.

One more pre-baby mini vacation: a trip to Edinburgh for a friend's wedding. After that, my destination of choice may become the couch for several a weekend.

Every pregnant woman's nightmare

Updated bump

Same t-shirt as in Italy... just stretched a little more tightly!

What's growing on?

So now we’ve reached the ¾ mark. It's still quite a long way to go until B-Day, but I guess you could say we’re in the home stretch (no pun intended). Every day now, I get frequent reminders that there is a wee creature in there, alive and kicking (with the emphasis being very much on the kicking). Right now, for instance, it appears that she is reaching back to her Celtic roots and doing the river-dance… on my bladder! Maybe it is because I’m hungry (and therefore she is hungry) and this is her way of making sure I go and get food. Typical woman – she knows how to get what she wants!