Sunday, January 22, 2006

Maybe baby

I haven't really talked much about the baby and its impending arrival in April. I remember reading that Norman Cook asked his label boss to drop him should he produce an album of peans to his son and I'm acutely aware I could fall into the same trap. I'm paranoid of talking incessantly about 'precious gifts' and 'special times'. In truth, six months in, the whole pregnancy has been rather uneventful. Emma is slowly changing shape (though still in her own clothes she'd want me to point out), and I have sung more songs to her belly than anyone else's (December: Christmas carols, January: Beatles, February: I'm thinking Yardie ragga). Otherwise, you tell people, then you wait a bit, then the baby turns up.

Sort of. As the year turns, our thoughts are becoming crystalised on getting ready. Once you enter the baby economy, you realise the baby business is big business. Put 'baby' in front of a product name and you can mark it up by about 10 times. Take this baby bath from Bloomin' Marvellous. According to the blurb, it puts the baby into a position that simulates the baby in the womb thus providing a sense of safety and blah. In essence it's a bucket; 99p from B&Q, £18.99 from Blooming Marvellous.

We're also booked onto ante-natal classes; albeit several months late. We're going with the National Childbirth Trust classes rather than NHS. This was recommended by the mid-wife who viewed our uber-middle class house as a sign that we shouldn't be pitched in with the teenage mothers on the NHS class (lesson one: how to tell your headmaster you'll be missing next Tuesday's double French). Apparently you should be booked on after three months, we left it until 6 months so now we're on an overflow class at the end of March. I'd like to go in with no pre-conceptions; but try as I might I can't.

Most recently we had a tour around the hospital. Well, nearly. We went last week with Vicki (due March), arriving at 6pm and then waiting nearly an hour to be told that the hospital had sent out leaflets all over the county saying that the tour was every Thursday (it's actually Wednesday). An hour in a maternity ward gave us ample opportunity to observe the many freaks and dweebs who are populating the country (says the man who, from an outsiders point of view, looked to have fathered two children with two women without any apparent problem to either party). Watching the enormously pregnant fourteen year old waddle out the door to have a cigarette makes you realise how lucky you are. Still, this is not as surprising as hearing from one of the people complaining to the big boss of the maternity ward about the tour mix-up that "It's disgusting, there are heavily pregnant women here".

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