Anti-Natal appointments, sound easy right??? Maybe if your not me!
Firstly I got into the doctors surgery to find the waiting room full of babies!! Crying babies!! Way to put a girl off before we even start!! So I get into the consultation room, with the midwife feeling have run gauntlet of toddling children, breastfeeding mum's and gawping babies, and the worst thing is the babies have a better grasp of what is going on than I do!!!
And the questioning begins, my history the fellas history every birth in either family for the last 500 years or so it feels! Amazingly enough I can answer them, but couldn't remember my boyfriends address, how dumb did I look??? I mean I know he's got a horseshoe shaped kidney and his blood group, but not where he lives!! About half an hour into the appointment my brain has turned to mush and I've stopped taking in anything she's saying. Anyway we make appointments for some blood tests and she tells me my scan date will come through in the next week and finally after an hour I'm free to leave.
Carrying a huge bundle of leaflets, magazines and badly photocopied information, I begin the long walk home. (At this point I feel I should explain that I live in a village in the middle of nowhere, that gets a bus every two hours, in theory!) So here I am trying to sneak up to my own house without the token gossipy neighbours who have nothing better to do than hang out on doorsteps and scrutinise everyone else's movements for gossip fodder, seeing the glaringly obvious see though maternity wallet! No doubt the joys of the text message would have the information flying across the channel to my Nan before you could say 'baby bump'.
The good news is that I'm allowed up to 6 cups of coffee or Coke a day, way hey! So I settle down with a coffee some choccie biscuits (hey I found one benefit, I'm off the diet for the first time in 18 months) to read the pack. First the important thing, what can I eat? No soft or blue cheese, no shellfish, no pate, only well cooked meat the 8 page pamphlet listed pretty much all my favorite foods! Not a good start on to the next pack in which I discovered Sickle Cell Anemia, Down es Syndrome, Syphilis, the possibility my body may develop anti-bodies to the baby's blood and many more exciting complications. By this time I've completely lost the plot. When the fella having finished work calls. He asks me how it went then starts on a comedy routine about how I may as well get used to a life without Stilton and Rare Steak 'cos once Peanut's born we'll be so skint we'll have to live off toast and baked beans. Just typical of his humor which normally makes me giggle hysterically before joining in, but boy did he misjudge the mood! I went off like an atomic bomb, 'Do you really thing that's funny?', 'Am i supposed to sort that as well while you swan round up there eating curry and going to theme parks?' (He'd had a weekend away with his friends last week) before slamming down the phone.
I ran round the house ranting to myself scaring the bunnies in to hiding in corner's before finding myself coming to my senses crying on the stairs with the rabbits desperately trying to make friends with licks and nose taps. Of course I called the fella back and spent 10min justifying my totally irrational behaviour, rather well even if I do say so myself.
Note to Self: Take a deep breath, count to 100 and let rip anyway!