(Birth story hidden behind the break for those of a delicate constitution – easier to write than the others as I have actually been treated like a grown up – that’s lovely independent midwives for you – and been allowed a copy of my notes)

[Gah, why isn't the break thingy working? Ignore all below if you don't want to read about birth. Sigh.]

So. It started with a few nights of what felt like proper contractions, nice regular intervals, strong enough that I needed to move, for a couple of hours…which petered out just about when I was starting to think maybe I should get up. Very tired, very grumpy. On Friday, the last day of term, the pains continued every 20 minutes or so all morning, through a trip to the market and coffee at Cathy’s house – not bad enough to even make me catch my breath but distinctly uncomfortable. Cameron had his work Christmas lunch so I dropped him into town with strict instructions that he was to have his phone where he could see it at all times, and was not to drink too much. No need though, as I watched Dirty Dancing, had a glass of wine and wrapped all our Christmas presents then went to bed as normal ready for a re-run that night: up at 5 blah de blah.

Very fed up, I texted Verena, our midwife. She suggested I pop in to the clinic later for a spot of reflexology, maybe a sweep, see what was what. Arranged for Sara and Ian to have Maggie and Tamsin for a bit in the afternoon, and, eventually, over we went. Pains were coming and going, nothing to get excited about until we were on our way to the clinic when I found myself gripping the dashboard for a good breathe every 10 minutes by the clock and getting very narked at bumps in the road. Arrived at the clinic, things settled again. Sarah had a bit of a poke of my feet; we were offered a bit of homeopathy (“does it still work if you don’t believe in it?” – “probably not”); tried for a sweep but cervix still too far back. Sarah could see I was starting to get pains though, and suggested I might get hold of a TENS machine to give me a decent night’s sleep if necessary. Drove to Boots; retail park heaving, it being 5 days before Christmas so C had to drop me to limp into Boots then drive round to pick me up; they had none. (Pharmacist – we can’t let you have it until you are 36 weeks. Me, through gritted teeth – I am 12 days overdue and need it now!) Texted Verena who had one in her pocket (?!) and said she’d pop it round later.

Went to Sara’s to collect some very messy children and eat the baking they had done, all the while having pains but not Pains. Fully expecting it all to fizzle out. Came home, had tea – then things started to kick in properly such that I had to walk around and hold bits of kitchen work surface every so often. C put the girls to bed and I texted Verena again. V arrived around 8, having skipped her pudding, to find me kneeling in front of the sofa so I could shove my head in the cushions when I felt the need. She put C straight to work filling the pool and got the TENS machine out which worked like a dream; all backache soothed away. Cameron, all practical assistance, lit the fire. Around 10, we put the hypnosis music on. Very odd effect: drifty drifty drifty then when the track ended, about every 20 minutes, I spring back to alertness. Pool! Hooray. Ahh, relax. Well sort of. You know. Water feels amazing. Second midwife, Sarah, arrives. Hello again. Horrible horrible pain in one hip (which is later explained by the baby keeping one hand up by her face!) and lower back: Sarah rubs it which helps enormously. Starting to get a bit pushy: panicky about pushing too early (see previous births) but hell what can you do. If you need to push you need to push. Also, you puke. And you shout a bit: if you shout too loud then you wake next-door’s dogs! (Sarah says she’ll throw them a bit of placenta later.) Struggling with hip/back pain; gas and air offered and gratefully accepted then everybody went away! Presumably to get canisters from car but C was fannying about with the kettle in the kitchen: I have a very clear memory of shouting to him because a big contraction was coming and I was scared on my own. Lovely lovely entonox. Tum te tum. Still not quite convinced it does anything but it gives a lovely focus. Conversation; V: do you feel you absolutely have to push? me: mmmm (confused mumbling). Next contraction: ok now I am properly pushing. Soon don’t need entonox any more. Midwives can see membranes over baby’s head and I can feel it moving down.

(from my notes:)

01.11 head born into water

01.12 birth of a beautiful water baby!

01.16 Cameron went to wake up girls to meet their new sister. Two tired girls peeped over the pool to say hello little sister and gave mummy a big kiss.

01.25 baby is very content filling pool with poo!

01.36 cord cut and clamped. Baby keen to feed.

Eventually I got out of the pool which is when I realised I had no energy or strength left. Very shaky, very glad for the intensely chocolatey cake the children had made with Sara that afternoon! Cameron took her off for a wander about, during which time he dreamt up a name for her – although we didn’t agree until the next morning. Eventually (after another hour) managed to get rid of placenta, was asked what I wanted to do and said I just want to go to bed! Took paracetamol (better late than never ha ha) Next day, could barely move. Legs hurt from kneeling, arms from holding onto the side of the pool. Girls piled down and into our bed “is the baby here?” – they wanted to call her Lily.

A harder birth than Tamsin, though my shortest. I blame that pesky hand up by her face because she weighed precisely the same (and just an oz or so different from Maggie).  First things I noticed: small ears and elegant fingernails (and oh yes it is a girl).

You must tell the mums! Tell them! I was urged by our oh-so-hippy ex-GP. (He now runs the village farmers’ market and is gung-ho about unpasteurised milk and passionate about the village pig project.) I’m not entirely certain which mums he means, given that surely anybody who was interested would be quite capable of googling – these days there is an enormous array of websites dedicated to the black art of what I refuse to call babywearing – or approaching me on the street; an event that occurs about once every 3 weeks. (In between I am approached by elderly people who wish I would carry them.)

With hindsight, I should have started selling baby slings when M was tiny: if only a fraction of the people who enquired actually went on to buy one from me I’d still be well ahead. There just weren’t the options then; these days there are millions of different sling designs and manufacturers and websites. Unlike some dedicated shoppers, I only have four slings, and one other passed briefly through my hands before being sold on. The one in this photo was our first; bought in Japan (and look, here is baby Maggie in it), it is an Israeli-design stretchy wrap. A sling of some sort was essential in Tokyo, where subway stations often had two or three flights of stairs and no lift (and I learnt from bitter experience that you could stand at the bottom of a flight of stairs looking plaintively at your buggy for a really long time before anybody offered to help.) It’s just about 6 metres of black jersey with a pocket at the front and rings to fasten the ends together. Cameron’s sling of choice, as it is fast and easy to put on; my favourite for a tiny baby. The stretch means you can put the carrier on first then put the baby in – so great for a newborn who might pop up and down over the course of a day – but also makes it less supportive so it isn’t so good once baby is heavy.

My current favourite for Jenny is a didymos, a woven wrap (no photos of this one yet but it is stylishly black and silver). I wrap it in almost the same way as the stretchy, but around the baby as it doesn’t stretch to accommodate. I like it very much but wish it too had rings to fasten as I end up with a bulky knot at the back when I tie it.

Number three is a maya wrap, which I have yet to put Jenny in. I did use it for a newborn Tamsin but it really comes into its own for older babies and younger toddlers; I keep it in the back of the car, or carry it if we go for a walk, as it is so easy to just pop them in and out. I dislike the one-shoulderedness of it and am aware you should swap sides but like my handbag only really feel happy with it over the right side.

I’ve just come to number four and realised with a blush that actually we seem to have five. Blame baby brain even if it no longer officially exists. My fourth style of sling is a meitai, basically a square of fabric with four strap attached to the four corners (you can get meitais with wrap-style straps, padded straps, unpadded straps, head rests, rain covers… mine is just basic.) It’s pretty, in pink spotty satin, and I like it best to put babies on my back. In principle one can wrap onto one’s back but I don’t find it that comfortable; the meitai just feels right. (This is Tamsin again.)

(Lastly, I have a second woven wrap; it’s a turquoise and silver gauze which is supposedly cool for summer but was fundamentally bought because it is pretty. The only photo I have of this one – the curse of being the family photographer – is appallingly hippy.)

We have a new car, so can all leave the house simultaneously and not in convoy. It is a Toyota so may well be recalled for weirdy accelerator issues:  it will have to go back anyway as they have not fitted the reverse parky beepy things that we requested. Not sure if it is the fault of the lease company or Toyota; frankly I don’t much care as long as it is resolved before I reverse into something. Cameron sold his at the weekend and is now driving my old one, muttering under his breath about the yogurt and crumbs and mud and general unpleasantness of it: he tried to get it valeted on Sunday but was turned away from two places. We are not sure if they were scared by the state of it or just about to close.

Jenny** is growing and growing and I know this is a good thing and what babies are supposed to do yet couldn’t help feeling sad as I realised I had to stop cramming her little feet into newborn-sized babygros and get out the next size. It is a novelty for me to have a big baby (she’s not huge, just biggish) after the other two tots, and she is such a happy content sweet thing with bright eyes and a double chin. Maggie is reading, properly – just discovering the Secret Seven and really not that interested in being read to or even in reading out loud but just wants to be left in peace with her nose stuck in. Just like her mum. She’s a sensitive soul who was upset when Granny went home. Tamsin is, well, three, and didn’t give a monkeys. Very three. She’s enjoying preschool but still refuses to speak there (but will whisper, with some sort of 3-year-old logic) and is great at jigsaws -oh, and she has started ballet lessons which she loves.

* Essential = one hot meal a day, clean plates to eat it from, clean clothes.
**Links are to photos

All sorts of lapsed bloggers have been crawling out from the woodwork and behind stones this Christmas period. I feel inspired to join. If anybody out there isn’t on FB/my text list/the grapevine and is thus unaware, baby Jenny joined us on December 20th (just: 1.11 am). I may be a biased and rose-tinted mum – and it may be early days – but she’s a pretty perfect baby and her big sisters are thrilled. More photos can be found here, including one of M&T dragged from their beds to meet the new arrival, and for those of you who enjoy such entertainment her birth story will follow just as soon as I can bear to put her down for long enough (and as soon as I find time without a babe-in-arms that isn’t immediately claimed by another child or some essential household task. Or sleep.) All I will say for now is that independent midwives rock, and are worth every single penny.

Her first couple of days of life were spent on the sofa snoozing and feeding (she is a champ and has gained a lb already, at 10 days old) and generally getting over the whole pushing out a baby at way past one’s bedtime thing (didn’t get to bed until after 3 the night she arrived). My favourite event was surprising Sara, in whose house we had been at 5 pm on Saturday (no baby): her face was a picture when she walked into our living room at 10 am on Sunday to find a whole new human being had arrived overnight! On day 3, we finally managed to put up the Christmas tree and were visited by a different midwife; this one had wondered the day before J arrived if it would be worth trying a wee bit of homeopathy: we had discussed whether it would work if you didn’t believe in it. She maintains it clearly does (I think she’d have arrived regardless). Day 4 my milk arrived – I need say no more for anybody who has been through it – as did my parents.

A pleasant if necessarily quiet Christmas: mum and dad came and cooked goose and trimmings (and now they have gone I can put selected leftovers in the bin but shh don’t tell!) and occupied M & T with games and crafts. They (the girls) had clearly absorbed all the propaganda about santa not coming if one didn’t go straight to sleep: when I went up to tuck them in and fill their stockings, I found two girls lying perfectly straight under completely undisturbed duvets, clearly neither of whom had twitched a single muscle since bedtime. Both slept until 745 which was quite a present for us, too. [Aside: at a week old I find it hard to evaluate whether J is "good", but I am getting a lot more sleep now than when I was pregnant, which probably means she is. I was asked today whether she was sleeping through, which struck me as a bit nuts.]

J and I had our first outing yesterday – her first ever trip outside the house, my first venture beyond the garden shed for 10 days. Lovely to get walking not waddling and I so enjoyed getting the baby sling back out. Today was busy with the health visitor (a profession of which I have not been given cause to revise my opinion), a trip to the hospital for J’s hearing test (all clear) and a new tumbledryer as mine picked the perfect time to break down. J has experienced three short car rides so far and has screamed through them all which does not bode well for next week when we must go to Surrey.

The middle weekend was spent with about 20-odd people (friends and friends-of-friends) at the very lovely park hall; highly recommended if you need somewhere to accommodate so many people in the middle of nowhere, want a small pebbly bay within walking distance and a lovely sandy beach a 10-minute drive, don’t mind having no phone reception and fancy fresh air and silence. The girls had a whale of a time, I got loads of sleep, what more could we have wanted?

The second week actually passed surprisingly peacefully, despite me having a  looming deadline (which was supposed to be my last as I have awarded myself some maternity leave). Oh, and we just won’t mention me locking the keys (car and house) into the car boot and spending a good 3 hours organising and then waiting for my rescue service. If I hadn’t been quite so pregnant, and hadn’t had 2 small children to watch me, and had thought of it (!), I could have probably managed to get up onto the roof and in through the bathroom window. It wouldn’t have been elegant.

Friday morning, Cameron had to get a train right across Switzerland to catch a plane: this got him home a mere half-hour later than anticipated which allowed us an overlap of approximately 25 minutes (I wrote a briefing note) before it was my turn to go! On the train to London to meet Pewari and attend TAM.

Great weekend. Great. Even though I am truly abysmal as a modern woman and missed my children (we are all supposed to be champing at the bit to get away for some Me Time.) All the speakers were exceptional, without, um, exception; a couple of the comedians on the Saturday night were not entirely my thing but given that we were at the conference centre from 8 am and didn’t get back to the hotel until 1130, I was feeling quite jaded by then anyway. My quote of the conference goes to Glenn Hill (son of the Cottingley Fairies photographer) who described people of religion as “human goslings”, imprinting on the first thing they are told. In context it was quite brilliant. My heart was warmed by the delegates’ reaction to Simon Singh announcing his wife was expecting their first baby: proof positive that sceptics are not cynics.

In no particular order, my impressions were as follows: great shoes, wacky slogan T-shirts, i-phones, twitter. Geeky yet pleasant and very friendly. How can they expect you to eat sausage and mash without a knife (and why no ketchup?). Dehydration. Bad coffee; good choice of teas. “Breakfast” does not equal coffee and a pastry in my book. Richard Wiseman hilarious.

Maggie asked Cameron on Saturday whether I would be home this week. Apparently if I was (I am, obviously) we would “be like a proper family”. Way to layer the guilt, child. May I just point out that the last time I went away overnight leaving Cameron to do childcare, I was expecting Tamsin?

She declares she doesn’t believe in dinosaurs because it doesn’t seem very likely, does it. Well no it doesn’t – and how to explain that they are not like fairies or, you know, dragons, or something that you can choose to believe in a bit if you like but really we all know they are not true. Or Santa – and we’ve had some interesting chats about the juxtaposition of him and Jesus, also, thanks to the church school she is attending.  The Christmas when Jesus was born was indeed the first Christmas, after a fashion, but was it the first time Santa brought presents? And if not, why not?

So. We established rather reluctantly that dinosaurs had existed a long time ago (we saw the skeletons, remember). But – here’s the science bit – did the monkey things** evolve from the dinosaurs? Or did they evolve from the other mammally things that were around at the same time (I think), mammoths and, um, sabre-toothed tigers and suchlike? And if that is the case, did they share a common ancestor? I am pretty firm on birds (and I imagine reptiles) evolving from dinosaurs, but didn’t some fishy thing crawl out of the swamp on its fins at some point? Was the pre-dinosaur, and did that then evolve into us or into birds?

*A thing that goes in and out a lot. No idea; ask my mum.
**She’s fairly unquestioningly happy about us having evolved from monkey things, and I am reasonably happy about hominids and Lucy and missing links. I think. We haven’t got into that in depth yet.

Moan moan whinge whinge.

We travelled from Chester to London, arriving around lunchtime – dumped our bags at the hotel and made our way to the Natural History museum. Brilliant, but unfortunately the entire under-13 population of London had chosen the same day to visit so although we spent time in the fascinating geology section and saw the whales, some of the mammals and some ichthyosaurs, there was a huge queue for the dinosaurs. Of course, with hindsight and post-disney, a 45-minute wait is nothing and we should have just queued and looked on it as good practice and getting our eye in.

The next morning saw us trundling cases to board the Disney Express!(I seem to have neglected to photograph children with backpacks, which is a shame because I may be biased but they were damn cute). Momentary excitement at the Eurostar terminal as Cameron spotted half of the Magic Numbers (I didn’t come over all groupie and ask for autographs, though I was tempted), then later, on his own, the other half, the Cooks (?) and Damon Albarn (he also refrained from gazing star-struckly, but only just). Then major excitement as we spotted a million small children and heard a jazz band pom-pom-pomming the Bare Necessities. The disney express, naturally, was a riot and nobody cared about noise; although it was very kind of the little girl the seat behind to give my children a lolly each, I could have done without her grabbing Tamsin repeatedly by the hair.

We arrived, greeted by Chip and Dale (T very nervous of dressed-up characters, as predicted), dropped our luggage, had a ludicrously overpriced panini, and headed into the park, where we also spent the next full day.

Hits: lunch with the princesses, the flying elephant ride, the small world, Aladdin’s cave, and most of all the old-fashioned carousel* and the parade, which we had to see twice. The fountains.

Misses: the Peter Pan carpet ride, the Alice maze, ice lollies (?), walking

(*Sigh. We could have stayed here and gone to the fairground.)

It was gloriously, almost too, hot and sunny. Unexpectedly, queuing didn’t faze the children one little bit: while C and I balked at the idea of standing for 45 minutes in order to go round and round and up and down 5 times, they couldn’t have cared less. Tamsin disliked most of the characters, though was really keen for them to sign her autugraph book – Wiggley** Pooh being her absolute favourite, although she did not want to approach within a few feet. All she really wanted, for the entire 4 days, was for Minnie Mouse to sign her book…fortunately we spotted her on the last morning! I was braved ready to pick T up reassuringly and help her but for some toddler-logic reason, Minnie is not scary and she rushed forward very confidently.

We spent part of Friday in the Walt Disney Studio Park, for some variety and because there was a High School Musical show, which clearly was not to be missed. Here, we traumatised the children by taking them on a ride where they demonstrated special effects – so we were nearly drowned, caught in an explosion, then singed by dragons. The “animagique” show was mixed – pink elephants bad, fish good – and the cinemagique one was also very scary (you shouldn’t have taken us to that should you mummy). All soothed by a cuddle from Daisy Duck and a trip on some flying carpets.

I suspended all cynicism – to be honest I don’t have that much anyway – apart from this photograph, which I had to take and share joyfully with Mia and Karen in particular – and found that I loved it’s a small world. Even C found things to enjoy…at the end of the day, if the children are happy, we are happy.  All that said, by Saturday I was ready to go somewhere where we could relax a bit – there were so many people at Disney that I was hawklike over the children the whole time, both so as to not lose them and so they wouldn’t annoy anybody (I have no idea why I am so sensitive to this. Uniquely so, it seems.) – I felt I was having to reign them in more than I wanted.

(**Winnie the)

Selected rest of photographs here.

I think I have to bundle T into the buggy and we have to go to sports day. While hoping she doesn’t have anything wildly contagious and that I am not being horribly irresponsible. This is only going to get worse when there are three of them, isn’t it?

In other news, while I am keen that this blog doesn’t become a “cute things about my kids” thing, I have two things to share. The first, Maggie trying to decide what everybody’s hobbies are* – mine, apparently, are knitting, cooking, gardening, and getting things off high shelves.

The second, and this makes me so proud, is this piece of work she brought home from school yesterday. I assume she did it herself in the writing corner, rather than it being a teacher-supervised activity, as it reads: The monsturus** monster had a willey. The pig had a willey. The pig had a wee and a poo. The Watson had a car***.

*It is rather like being back in Japan, where everybody who remembered their school English inquired “what is your hobby?”

**Good use of adjectives.

***No idea.