So far so good

As Fortycoats' beautiful assistant used to say.

Rob has just left for work, late, with a streaming cold. He has a pocketful of hankies. Emer is in the bouncy chair grinning madly at Linnea, who is kissing imaginary hurts on her arm better. They get on beautifully sometimes. We've all had breakfast and I'm dressed. I've even got as far as brushing my hair. I need to go to Altimus and ask them to give me new shoes; the sandals they fitted me with in April are the only things that don't leave me with aching heels and shins at the end of the day, even with gel insoles. Walking around barefoot is very painful. I may have to stick to fitted hiking footwear forever, at this rate, at least for everyday wear.

Thing is, the others don't hurt when they're on - only afterwards, when I take them off at home.

Yikes

Library and dining room tidied, kitchen cleared, one counter and draining boarded cleaned, dishwasher filled, run, and emptied, morning snack and lunch both had, plenty nappies changed, laundry turned on the airing racks, found a large fleece for Linnea so can now launder and put away too-small one.

Also told a lot of stories about Linnea, Emer, Charlie, Lola, Miffy and Maisie. Nyargh. I am so, so tired of the swimming one, but she loves it. And corrects me, god help us, if I get it wrong.

Critical Friends

The Head of Midwifery at my hospital has started up a group called "Critical Friends." Basically, while I was recovering from Emer's birth Rob found a bit of paper in the room asking mothers who had had a baby in the hospital in the past 12 months to volunteer for "service user" feedback group, to meet three times over six months.

The first meeting was on Friday.

There were three mothers, and three members of staff other than the HoM. I was a little late, but when I got there there were only the HoM, one midwife, and one other mother - who happened to be the woman in the third paragraph of this entry. I thought her face was familiar, and then she spoke, and I asked if she'd been in on 15th August, and she had, "and I had some issues," she said. "I know, you were in the bed next to me, your issues were some of what I was going to raise today." It is to laugh.

So. Eventually everyone arrived. The HoM explained what we were planning to do, and then we all introduced ourselves, someone arrived, we did it again, twice. Yargh. That won't need to happen next time.

First she asked the three mothers to discuss our experiences, and then asked the staff (who were far briefer), and then handed us a list of Issues raised by various people, mainly through the complaints system. It had stuff like "never any clean bedlinen," "poor or inadequate breastfeeding advice," "staff don't wash their hands," "the window blinds were broken," "staff were rude," and so on. She asked us to choose three points on the list and prioritise them. Then we compared priorities.

So now they have three points they know they need to fix. We discussed some means of fixing them, but they were all things that should be happening properly anyway, so there wasn't a lot we could suggest. I got to say my line about "enduring unnecessary pain is not morally superior." We're meeting again in January to see how they're getting on and set more targets.

And the HoM did forward my nomination for my midwife to the Midwife of the Year people.