This waiting is killing me..

I know I am in no position to complain. 

I'm not the one who's having contractions. 
I'm not the one stuck in hospital. 
I'm not the one who is going to have to squeeze out a baby through an opening roughly the size of a lemon. 

But Christ, this whole pregnancy and awaiting labour stuff seems long winded now.  I've been lied to by television and film again!  In the media, the woman is pregnant, she starts having contractions, they make a dash to the hospital (in, usually, a comedy manner, optionally with a police escort) and a few hours later baby pops out.  What they don't have on telly is a whole month of being in and out of hospital, before a consultant says "let's induce the baby" (which is, again, going to take at least 6 to 12 hours, possibly) leading to a basic inability to plan any further ahead than your next piss.

I'm sure when junior arrives, I'll smile continually for a week but, at this moment in time, this waiting around for it to be evicted from it's womb is a nightmare.

Surely it was all a lot easier when the Stork just turned up with the newborn baby?  It all went wrong when he got made redundant, I tell thee.

DEFCON 5

Well we've thought that the end was near several times this month already, but today we've been given the clearest indication yet that baby is ready to make its way into the world.

Actually that isn't strictly true. 

Baby certainly isn't ready to make its way into the World, it's quite comfy and happy where it is thank you very much.  But now the consultant has decided otherwise, due to high blood pressure and high levels of Uric Acid, and the birth is going to be induced.  So it'll be injection time this morning and then wait (again!!) to see if anything happens.  I am currently awaiting the phone call to say "proper" labour has begun, until then I will be in work, coding away, listening to "Stadium Arcadium" (fabulous album).  But if you pop back sometime this week, baby K will make it's internet debut.  So watch this space.

Been around the World and I.. I.. I..

So, she's home again.. although for how long this time nobody is quite sure. I'm telling you though, it's the last time she's coming out of there empty handed. The admission price from now on after these post-hospital jaunts will be one newborn baby thanks very much.

It's odd though to think at one point I was fretting about whether the baby's imminent arrival would stop me getting to Cardiff and the F.A. Cup final and now the last weekend of May is imminent and still no little 'un screaming down the house. What gives?

Obviously he/she wants to be born in June. Understandably. All the best people have their birthdays in months beginning with "J".

Guest of the NHS (again)

So yesterday's work day got cut drastically short, as about midday my mobile rang and Liz's blood pressure was sky high again (despite the fact that she's on medication). 

So once again it was drop everything and make a rush into the hospital.  There much initial talk of inducing on a labour yesterday, and for a while we were quite excited.  Now, however, it seems that we'll be going back to the waiting game, as they have decided that inducing poses too much of a risk to both mother and baby.  Meanwhile I'm left just going a little bit mad trying to juggle work, hospital visits, dropping Dan off at school (and getting him ready for school) etc, etc.. Boy is this the wrong time to be off the booze.

Lull

It seems at the moment that life is dragging it's heels..

Although we're not quite in the hard shoulder, life's definitely in the slow lane right now and it's barely getting out of third gear.  It could be that I now notice the passage of time with a little more clarity due to the complete and utter absence of alcohol in my system.  It could be that with over two weeks to go to the World Cup, the FA Cup won and only the minor distraction of the Champions League final to see me through (although I hope Arsenal snot Barca this evening), life without footy seems a bit drab (I hate the off season).  It could be that work continues to become even more pointless, thankless and bureaucratic, filled with too many chiefs and not enough indians (again!! Why does this always happen!?) and an abundance of red tape that prevents any genuine progress from being made.  It could be that, despite being May, the weather continues to be dull, cold, rainy and generally just a bit shit.  Or it could be that everything just feels like it's "on hold" whilst we await the arrival of the baby.

Whatever.

Whatever it is, it is making it increasingly difficult to drag myself out of bed on any given day.  Particularly so if it is a working day.  The biggest excitement of work today, for example, derives from the fact that I've not brought lunch in and will therefore have to choose where I go when dinner time rolls around. Woo, and indeed, hoo!  So will it be a trip to Subway, or McDonalds, or Morrisons or Baguettes?  Decisions, decisions.  It's like a bad episode of Alberto and his Amazing Animal band (you simply must remember that?  It used to be in the middle of Bod?  No?  Shame on you): the elephants think I'm going to baguettes, the lions think I'm off to Subway.

Anyway..
I'm ranting..
I do apologise..
It's frightfully inappropriate of me, and ever so slightly rude. 
Pull yourself together.  Stiff upper lip, and all that.  Worse things happen at sea.  Best foot forward.  Up the promotion ladder lickity split.  Pack all your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, boy, smile (do you remember that episode of "Sapphire and Steel" where they were trapped in a railway station and someone kept on whistling that?  Was well spooky).

I'm going now.. even I cannot follow that.. Err.. laters, yeah?

We're all going to Cardiff! We're all going to Cardiff! Na naa na h nah! (Hey) Na naa nah nah!

This morning saw us returning to the hospital, despite the fact that we'd only (just) managed to escape the place late on Monday evening.  It was an appointment with the consultant today though (the grand fromagé of the antenatal clinic).  Blood samples were taken, blood pressure was measured and we even went for another ultra-sound scan (which was way cool as, obviously, we'd not seen the baby since 20 weeks).

The upshot of all this checking and testing is that it looks like it will be at least a week (and most likely two weeks) before K comes kicking and screaming into the World (bad news for some who had early dates on the "Birth Date Sweepstake" at work) and it will be safe for me to head off to Cardiff for the F.A. Cup final!! 

Hurrah!!

So seven of us are piling into a people carrier early doors Saturday morning, to make tracks to the Millennium Stadium.  What the game will bring, who knows?  Should be a cracker though.  As long as we outsing the cock-er-neys ("We Larve It") and generally have a party for a day it will be brilliant.  It also will be nice to have 24 hours where it isn't the pregnancy that's at the forefront of my mind constantly.  A bit of respite before the chaos!

Home.. Home Again

Well she's back, thankfully.. good to have her home.
There are still worries though, although the drugs are controlling the blood pressure, we now have worries about Pre-eclampsia as Uric Acid levels are high. So it's al a bit scary and we're not out of the woods yet..

Discharge..

No I'm not going to be discussing seepage or puss, not even weeping sores, so the squeamish amongst you need not turn and run away from your monitor...

It does appear, however, that Liz will be allowed out of hospital today (for two weeks at least) as the blood pressure tablets seem to be doing their job -at last!  So I can finally breathe a sigh of relief..  Funny thing is, we'll be back at the hospital on Wednesday anyway to see the consultant.

I guess Wednesday's visit will let me know whether I can risk a jaunt to Cardiff at the weekend.  Although it's not an overnight stay in Wales' capital city, it will be a long day and some considerable miles between me and home.  So do I take the risk?  It's a dilemma and a half, I can tell you.. I mean it's the FA Cup final ffs!

What to do.. what to do..

Under Pressure..

"Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you no man ask for"
..as sung by David Bowie and Queen.

But it's blood pressure that is at the forefront of my mind at the moment, not "people on streets Dee da dee da dee da dee da", as it continues to be the thing keeping Liz in hospital.

(but did you see what I did there?)

Fortunately they started giving her medication this morning to try and stabilise the readings they were getting. Apparently its the variance of the figures that is concerning them.. (one minute it's a wee bit high and then the next it's blahdy-hell!). If they can stabilise the BP then there's a chance (key word here: chance) that she may be allowed home tomorrow.

Bloody hope so.. it's too quiet here. The novelty of having the remote control to myself has now worn off and instead I'm just left in this horribly empty feeling house.

Even the cats have abandoned me. They keep looking at me suspiciously, like I've committed murder and buried the body in a field somewhere, and no matter how many times that I explain Liz is actually in hospital, they still have this "yeah right" look about them. Bastard turncoat felines. Where's the trust?

The doctors have also said they don't want this baby delivered in the next two weeks (hell, I've got F.A. Cup final tickets, I don't want it coming quite yet!), so they're going to do everything to keep the B.P. low. However it is unlikely Liz will go full term.. so expect some developments on this front in the third week in May?

Til then, maybe Freddy Mercury said it best when he said:
"Um boom ba bay
Um boom ba bay
Um Um boom ba bay bay"

The waiting game..

So.. she's still in hospital..

No baby yet.. Well it's there, obviously, but it's still on the inside, and the parole hearing has been rescheduled for the foreseeable future.

There's still the nastily high blood pressure and the practice contractions.

So I'm left at home wondering, "I wonder if the baby will turn up this weekend? Or maybe this week?".

Tis quiet here.. even the cats are making less noise than usual I'm sure.

Still at least Doctor Who was pure class. Again.

Tick, tock, tick, tock - how fitting.. the passage of time is very much in my thoughts at the moment.

False alarm.. Or false start!?

I don't care who you are, I don't care how brave you think you might be.. There's just something about waking up in the early morning, opening your eyes and having the first words you hear be: "I think I've been having contractions for the past two and a half hours" that makes the World fall out of your arse for a second.

Even more so when that phrase is heard four and a half weeks early.

So I clenched and I gazed across at Liz.

I thought: "She's not winding me up here. Arse."

I knew from our one and only antenatal class (so far) that the fact that she could actually tell me quite calmly that she thought she was having contractions (as opposed to screaming it whilst simultaneously pulling my scrotum over my head) meant we had a bit of time. So I suggested calling the hospital whilst I had a shower, as no matter whether we were headed to the hospital or I was heading to work, there was no way I was going anywhere without a shower.

Whilst in the shower I'd convinced myself that these were at worst the very early stages of labour (which could mean hours before we got near a delivery suite anyway) or, and most likely, practice contractions.. and I began looking forward to the yummy breakfast I had ordered at work..

Imagine my surprise when I got out of the shower, and I found out that the hospital had told us to go in.

I'm not ready for this, thought I, this is at least a month too early.

It turns out that it's a good job we did.. Liz's blood pressure was sky high when we got there (for sky high read dangerously high). Over the day it has fallen, but some anomalies in her blood tests have meant she's been kept in.

So we are not quite at DEFCON 5 yet.

But, fuck me, we were close

It's gonna be a dry month..

This is not, I repeat not, a prediction about the weather..
So before you rush out to grab your designer sunglasses, and your sun block stop and finish the entire posting eh?

No it's just that I've stopped drinking this month..
Okay, let's be a bit more specific (there are some right pedantic bastards out there, after all).  Seeing as it's well documented that you'll die of dehydration if you drink nothing at all (after about three days, I believe), I should make it clear that I have not ceased drinking altogether, I have merely ceased drinking alcohol.  I could claim this was me being concerned about my health and the long-term affects on my liver, but I'd be lying (and would I lie to you, gentle reader?)

I've quit as, as many of you regular readers will be aware, we're now on DEFCON 4 when it comes to the whole pregnancy thing.  Under 5 weeks to go, who'd have believed it?  So it is entirely possible that I could be called on, at any time of day or night, to drive to the delivery suite in a timely fashion. 

The downside of this sudden and uncharacteristic responsible side emerging in my character is that I may have to go to the F.A. Cup final and remain completely sober -this is, of course provided we get tickets tomorrow.  Anyone who points out that it's not exactly responsible shlopping off to Cardiff three weeks before the due date obviously knows nothing about football (and doesn't want to go on the "stand by" list for my ticket should I not get to use it).

So a month (well potentially five weeks) with no beer, no wine, no brandy (Gadzooks!), no whisky, nothing.. nada.. not even a cheeky alco-pop when no-one's looking.

The baby's not gonna be the only one "hitting the bottle" when it eventually makes an appearance at the beginning of June, I tell thee!!

Day Two

Well, there are some developments today as you can see, there isn't quite as much exposed brickwork as there was yesterday. Additionally, the house isn't quite as covered in as much dusty shit as when we got home yesterday, which is nice..

Apart from the toilet bowl and a few exposed taps, however, there isn't actually a lot to give away the fact that it is a bathroom that the above photo was taken in. Anyway, at least I can see some progress.. Although hope is fading of having this anywhere near done by the end of the weekend (which is bollocks, really).

Still, although I only got around four hours sleep last night (due to the unborn son or daughter giving my better half painful indigestion all night which kept both of us awake, albeit me indirectly) I am in a slightly more chipper mood today.

You see, despite it taking all day to get a result with what I'm doing at work at the moment, I think I'm beginning to make real progress with that now, so that's good. It's been sunny all day (although it's still a little chilly, but it's not bad for March), so that's good. Got my Car Tax sorted on line, so that's good and I'm still rejoicing after seeing the reds score seven against Brum last night (in case you hadn't guessed from the previous posts!!!), so that's good. So quite a lot of things are good at the moment.

What is surprising is that there are so many eager Carcass and Paradise Lost fans on eBay as these auctions are doing really well at the moment. However all quiet on the Prodigy, Garbage, Pigface and S.O.D lots so far - boo! Does no-one remember how good "Suck" and "Speak English Or Die" are??? Shame!