ailbhe | Midwife appointment, and glue (Reply)

I love my midwife with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. She came today, had tea, did my notes, socialised and chatted like mad, and took my blood pressure (100/60 or thereabouts). Then we listened to the baby's heart - first we heard the placenta, which is very loud and busy - but the baby sounded like, of all things, a windfarm.

We're not going to bother with the 16 week blood test for AFP to check for spina bifida, because it would show up on the ultrasound anyway, and there's no reason to know 4 weeks earlier. So I'll probably get all my other bloods done when I'm in hospital for the 20-week scan.

She's very chatty. So am I, when I meet the right person. She also fixed Linnea's portable easel, which I broke. It needed brute force in a space too large to anything but finger-pressure. My fingers are no good at brute force. So I offered to babysit her boys for an hour this afternoon while she goes to participate in some research up at the university. It's wine-tasting research, so most important that she gets to go. She's going to see if they boys' father is around, but he might be stuck in meetings. So we don't know yet if we're going to be invaded by great big lollopping boys.

Linnea lay down to have her tummy listened to, but didn't like it. Oh, and she and I spent some time this morning glueing pictures to coloured paper and hanging the mounted artwork on the walls. We have three new ones up now. She likes glue.

Lunch was leftover bolognese sauce on toast. It was fab.

AND her new shoes actually fit and don't leave red marks anywhere. She even wore them in the garden while I hung up the laundry, so we can't take them back now. Hurrah!