Alder's Tone

Sod all in the early part.

The Fat Lady has finally slowed down, now lounging in bed until lunchtime like some chavtastic dole dossing swampy. Or is that politically incorrect? Sorry, I mean my darling wife has been lounging in bed until lunchtime like some chavtastic dole dossing swampy.

We thought the only delivery this week would be the pram. Whoo-hoo, that's us just about there. One more thing needed, but can't figure out what it is. Hmm, baby? YES - THE BABY! And that should be here next week, subject to x,y and z. Only nobody knows what x, y and z are.

The Fat Lady's maternity leave started this week, after last week's little panic over whether she was on holiday or not. The new car's been signed off financially, and there's more plans to make around that than the other new arrival. Do we get the new car at midnight on the 12th of August? Whoops, wrong date, but the implied association with The War of the Worlds is quite apt. Or do we wait until an opportune moment? Will Ripley be early, on time, late, how will we get to the dealer to pick up, when do we get the insurance swapped? AAARGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

We're not alone in this, one other new mum at the same ante-natal class gets a new car on 1st September, and she's due on 1st September. Great timing. Thankfully Ford give us 7 days drive-away insurance so we can convert at leisure. One less thing to worry about, on to the number of nappies in the hospital bag.

A boring week waiting? Not on your life. Until Saturday it was, then it was like that famous line from Gladiator - "On my command, unleash hell".

In the very early hours of Saturday morning the Fat Lady decided to wake me up. First thought through a haze, "was I snoring?", but then soon realise she's out of bed. "Do me a favour" she started, "is this it?" I replied. "Yes". She never thought to tell me earlier in the night she'd had a show at 7pm, no no, wait until I'm fast asleep then hit me with it. To be fair the show wasn't anything special, but the 01:10 business was - waters gone. So as the bedroom light went on one bulb blew. It was this brilliant white light that turned everything in the room like a freshly painted ceiling, working out from the middle to the outsides. And it seemed to take forever, it got me thinking "is this heaven?", only to come crashing back to earth when the filament went pop and the darkness returned. It tripped the upstairs lights with comedy timing.

All systems goRight, what's the drill, where are the notes? There's nothing worse than the Fat Lady telling me to calm down when I already am and just want a straight answer to a straight question - "Where are your fucking notes?". "Don't know" doesn't help at this point. I only needed the hospital number from them, I remembered the drill from the first ante-natal class - waters gone and clear with no contractions = phone for advice, may be called in for a monitor and sent back home. And after we got to hospital around an hour after kick-off that's what happened. The Fat Lady's blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat were monitored, all well. So now we face regular checks until something happens, and if it doesn't within a couple of days then things will be helped along. One of the healthiest foxes I've ever seen cut across in front of us as we left the hospital car park at 03:30. He was clearly lost, you can't look that healthy on hospital food!

Three hours after being woken up we were tucked up in bed again. We are expected back in for 9pm Saturday for the next one, unless things start to happen sooner. The only certainty now is that we're not going to make the fourth ante-natal class on Wednesday. So no week 40 round-up will be required, and the week 39 round-up has been well and truly hijacked! So far nothing's happening, so it's odds-on favourite for the Fat Lady to be induced on Monday.