Personal

One Flu over the Rooster’s Nest

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So I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit warm. Pleasantly warm, like my old “heat vampire” days when I used to snuggle under the duvet until I was red-hot. And I was feeling a bit sore, (I thought) because I had been putting shelves up in our new shed the day before. I was maybe a bit tired, but you can’t really tell that until you’re up, and of course I often wake with a headache.

It wasn’t until Alex touched me and said “Ow!” that I realised that I was maybe a bit on the excessively warm side. And it wasn’t until I got up and started shivering uncontrollably that I realised that I was sick.

Great, I thought. Just great.. Martin’s been doing so much for me and for the household since Fiona was born. So when I’m finally getting over all the various aftereffects of the birth, from hospitalisation to anaemia to the baby blues, I suddenly fall ill.

My in-laws were over to see Fi and Alex. I came downstairs for their visit, but I can’t swear to the coherence of my conversation. Apart from that, I spent the day in fevered reverie, drifting in and out of sleep. Martin did everything, from hoovering to cooking a magnificent Sunday roast to keeping Alex going, while I lay upstairs in some alternate universe.

Fortunately, the symptoms only lasted a day or so. I’m still feeing pretty weak, and Fi seems to have caught some snuffliness from me, but it seems to have been a brief illness. Dramatic, but brief.

Now can I get back to feeling normal?

Family

Baby Time II – In the Zone

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that newborn babies don’t sleep through the night. Indeed, their schedules bear only the remotest resemblance to the way most of us live. It’s all dictated by stomach size and blood sugar levels. A newborn’s stomach is about the size of a walnut, and it can’t maintain its own blood sugar for more than a few hours at a stretch.

So it needs feeding. Over and over again. Most newborns run to a 3 or 4 hour cycle of eating and sleeping, punctuated by bouts of crying. Fiona is no different – she’s slept for as long as 5 hours in a stretch, but most of the time she needs a good feed every three or four hours, day and night.

Naturally, this schedule is totally incompatible with adult life, and indeed drives some people into a state of mild psychosis. With Alex, I tried to live normal hours, and really suffered for it. But with Fi, at least for the first week and a half, I’ve given that up. Every night, at about 10 or 11, I leave Grenwich Mean Time and move into her world: Baby Time (there is no “standard” or “mean” to it).

We’ve been sleeping in the master bedroom, while Martin has been crashing in the guest room (he runs on Martin Standard Time, which seems to involve staying up really late at night, getting up with Alex at 7 or 8, and miraculously being OK). I turn my dimmable bedside lamp down low and lie Fi down on the bed beside me. Then, when she wakes, I turn the light up and feed her, usually while reading a book. She falls asleep at the breast, but wakes up when laid down on the bed. So I turn her on her side, lie on mine, and give her another drink, which sends her off again. I’ve turned the light down when laying her down, so when she goes to sleep so do I (usually – this instantaneous dropping off was easier before my blood transfusion reduced my anaemia and upped my energy levels).

Three or four hours later, we do it all again.

It takes 10 or 12 hours’ sack time to get a liveable night’s sleep in Baby Time, leading to something like jet lag when I try to mesh with GMT again. And Martin wants to move back into his own room before he starts his new job. So this pattern is going to have to be modified, starting tonight (when she goes into the Moses basket and falls asleep on her own rather than being nursed down – expect crying baby and tired parents). In the end, she is going to have to move out of her own time zone and into ours.

But I’ve lived ten nights in Baby Time, watching her sleep, lying on her side facing me, with me on my side curled around her, in the dim light of my nightlight. That time will be with me always.

Family

Baby Time – and about time, too!

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Martin has described Fiona’s birth from his point of view. Mine may or may not match his – I was present, and conscious, for different portions of it than he was.

Tuesday, January 27 had been a bad day. I was worried that I would have to have another Caesarean section (not that I mind C-sections) if Chenoweth didn’t emerge soon. They don’t induce labour if you’ve had a section previously, but by the time they were done waiting for spontaneous labour, they’d be scheduling me for a section the week before Martin started his new contract. If you can’t tell, I was beginning to doubt whether Chen would be born normally at all. I hate waiting. It makes me pessimistic.

That evening, I was doing a jigsaw puzzle, which always soothes my emotions. I felt an intermittent crampiness from about 11:00, but didn’t mention anything to Martin at first. No sense giving him false hopes or false alarms. By midnight, I decided they weren’t just my imagination and told Martin, then started timing them. For me, the rest of the labour seemed to have been timed and measured. Like a timetable:

All times are approximate, most are deduced rather than based on checking the clock, and recall of many is influenced by drugs and/or altered states of conciousness.

23:00 – 0:00 Vague crampy feelings, on an off. Didn’t pay too much attention to them lest they prove imaginary.
0:00 – 1:00 Painful, but bearable, cramping feelings every 5 minutes
1:00 Called hospital materinity triage. Told that I should wait longer to ensure labour was established. Call back if contractions were still coming every 5 minutes in a few more hours, or if waters broke.
1:00 – 2:00 Timed contractions – they backed off to every 10 minutes, but remained painful.
2:00 Went to bed to try to get some rest.
2:00 – 4:00 Contractions got stronger, more painful, but still only once every 7 or 8 minutes.
4:00 Threw up from the pain. Called the hospital, told to take paracetomal and a hot bath, and call back when contractions every 5 minutes or waters broke. I don’t think they felt labour was well enough established. Asked Martin to call his parents to come down from their home (about an hour away, plus getting-up time). Whatever the hospital thought, I knew this was it.
4:00 – 8:45 Intermittent pain is an odd thing. The pains came every 7 – 8 minutes, lasting a little less than a minute each. I drifted in and out of dreams for the off times, then was intensely aware during the contractions themselves. It was like living at seven-times speed, really paying attention for less than 10 minutes each hour. Unable to keep any fluids down, starting to vomit bile from the pain. Never knew digestive juices could be so colourful.
8:45 Waters broke. Called hospital – they were still being off-putting. I wasn’t taking any more hints to stay at home though, because I knew there was pain relief there and I wanted it.
8:45 – 9:15 It’s amazing how long it can take to get out of the house when you’re in labour. Contractions sped up drastically – one every three or four minutes – meaning I had to get up, get dressed, get the necessary paperwork together, etc, in short bursts, then sit down and whine for a while, then throw up more bile, then go on with preparations.
9:30 Martin dropped me off (contraction in dropoff bay – not very reassuring for pregnant women in for antenatal checks) Found my way to labour triage and was taken to an examination room, where they hooked me up to foetal monitors. They clearly thought I was being too dramatic when I was howling during the contractions (and demanding pain relief). Then an internal exam showed that I was 5 cm dialated, and they started to take me more seriously. They gave me something for the nausea (still vomiting bile, to the consternation of a medical student observing). Still took them ages to get me up to the labour suite.
10:00 – 11:15 The options for pain relief are generally entonox (“gas and air”), a variety of opiates, and an epidural. I had already decided not to use opiates, since they cross the placental barrier. I had high hopes for entonox, but was also intending to use an epidural to get me through the end of labour. As it turned out, gas and air would have been fabulous earlier on, but despite giving me a quick high every contraction, it didn’t really take the edge off of the pain. They started an epidural fairly early, but even after two top-ups it wasn’t covering the peaks of the contractions.
11:15 I didn’t realise how much the signals that your body sends you in labour vary. They asked at the triage room if I had an urge to push, and I didn’t. But when the urge to push comes, there is no mistaking the sensation. I’d been feeling the desire to push downward since before 11, mentioning it every contraction, and getting very little reaction. An internal exam showed that I was fully dialated, at which point they let me begin pushing (try to stop me…)
11:30ish The doctors noted that the amniotic fluid contained a lot of meconium (baby poo), and that the baby’s heartbeat was getting faint during contractions. They decided to try a ventouse extraction, which is basically putting a suction cup to the baby’s head and pulling it out. (Sounds awful, but better than the alternative of forceps.) They made an episiotomy cut for ease of access and started assembling the equipment.
11:30 – 11:56 The midwives and doctors seemed to be in a race. With every contraction, I could feel the baby moving down, and I was certainly doing my best to push it along. Meanwhile, the doctors were assembling the ventouse as fast as they could, in case the baby got stuck again.
11:56 The midwives won. Fiona Chenoweth Sutherland was born while the ventouse was still half-assembled. They gave her to me, still covered in blood.
11:56 – 13:00 It can take a long time to stitch an episiotomy. ‘Nuff said.
13:00 – 13:30 Once the embroidery session is over, tea and toast are served. I was feeding Fiona, so Martin had to help feed me. The hospital provides enough for the labour partner (Martin) as well as the mother, which is (a) a good touch, and (b) a violation of one of the longest-running stereoptypes of the NHS. Meanwhile, everyone comments on the vast amount of blood on the floor under the bed.
13:30 Martin goes away to make a lot of phone calls and buy a pink hat.
14:00 I get offered a shower. All I need to do is walk into the shower room with Lynn, one of the hospital staff.
14:01 I faint dead away in the shower room. Lynn catches me, despite her bad back. Lynsey, the midwife, hits the emergency alarm, and every available member of medical staff races to my room.
14:02 I regain consciousness to the sight of four midwives and one doctor standing in the doorway to the shower room, all saying, “Abi! Are you all right?”. I am sitting on a stool, looking at a pool of blood at my feet, and listening to the ringing in my ears.

At this point, things melt into a kind of timelessness for me (can’t think why…)

I remember spending a lot of time sitting on the stool in the shower room, supported by Lynsey, while she took my blood pressure and pulse every 10 minutes. After a couple of tries on each arm, we concluded that the automatically-inflating blood pressure machine can’t register low enough and Lynsey switched to the manual system (pressure of 78/53, well out of normal range, even for me).

The fluid drip they set up for me after delivery wasn’t getting fluids into my arm, and my veins collapsed enough that it took four tries to get enough blood to check my haemoglobin levels. All I wanted to do was to lie down, but the medical staff didn’t want to move me yet.

Finally, I convinced Lynsey to let me lie on the bathroom floor, despite her horror at the unsanitariness of it all. She spread a sheet from the bed on the tiles, then I engineered a slow collapse into blessed horizontality. They were still not sure about moving me to a bed, so I stayed where I was for some time, presenting an alarming picture to anyone coming into the room. At this point, I was well past caring about either sanitation or alarm.

Fiona was asleep in the cot the whole time, which made me care a lot less about what happened to me.

Finally, an orderly came and helped me into bed again, and the doctor came to give me another stitch to close a leaking blood vessel. Martin came back to find me in bed, looking pale, much as I had been when he left. They took me up to the postnatal ward then, rolling on a bed with Fiona in the crook of my arm.

I spent one night in hospital, then made such a pest of myself that they discharged me home. (Considering how well Martin takes care of me, the daily midwife visits that are standard on the NHS, and how close I am to the hospital, this was not a foolish decision. Even for someone whose haemoglobin count was at about 70% of normal.)

So here I am home now, with Fiona, Alex, Martin, and a severe case of anaemia. I look like a Goth without the makeup, and despite taking iron tablets three times a day, my haemoglobin has dropped to 67% of normal. According to the midwife, I should be having trouble breastfeeding, though the fact that I’ve already frozen 200ml of breastmilk as well as feeding Fi kind of flies in the face of that. I am, however, utterly exhausted and frequently faint.

We discussed my medical situation with the midwife this afternoon, and agreed that this can’t go on. It’ll take weeks and weeks for me to feel better, and I need to be able to cope with both Alex and Fiona a lot sooner than that. So sometime over the next couple of days, I will be going back into the hospital to get a transfusion. Three units of blood should get me back on my feet again.

On the one hand, I’m looking forward to having the energy to climb the stairs more than twice in a row, and to being able to give Alex the attention and reassurance he needs. On the other, I feel selfish, using up blood that could save someone’s life, purely for my own convenience. This is particularly selfish because I haven’t given blood for some time. (The last time I did so, I fainted in a bus stop an hour later. Kind of put me off.)

Personal

On walking with a cane

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I’ve been using a walking stick for just under three months now. It’s a silver(tone) handled, black wood cane, almost classy enough to be an affectation. Martin and Alex gave it to me, when my attempts to buy one off of ebay were failing.

I knew that to get a stick would be to join a subculture I hadn’t been a member of before. I’ll call us the Tripods.

I’m not a typical member of the tribe. I’m 33, and have been in good health all my life. If this pregnancy hadn’t triggered sacroliliac joint dysfuction (translation: my hip joints don’t work), I wouldn’t expect to need a walking aid for a good 40 years. And I plan to put the cane in the umbrella stand as soon as the baby’s born. So I’m an anticipatory Tripod, a temporary Tripod.

So do you get a seat on the bus now that you walk with a stick?

Heck, no. Are you kidding? Even with a bulging belly and a walking stick, I’ve had exactly one person offer me a seat on a crowded bus.

But at least you can sit in the “elderly and disabled” seats?

Only if I club the young, fit and surly types who can’t be arsed to walk one meter further back into the bus first.

But surely the fellow-feeling among the Tripods counts for something? You always see them chatting away on the bus, friendly as anything. Doesn’t the cane act as a ticket in?

Perhaps I’m too young, or too perceptibly an interloper. Maybe my cane is too classy. But I suspect that the fellow-feeling we see among the elderly on the bus, even among strangers, is more generational than based on ability.

Do you use your cane all the time, or only when you’re in pain?

Well, things usually start hurting halfway through an expedition or partway through a day. I have to bring the stick along from the start, so it’s there when I need it. And actually, I’ve found that using it from the start means that the pain takes longer to settle in. I wonder how many other Tripods are using their sticks prophylactically, or simply waiting for the pain to start.

So how is it walking with a stick? Does it slow you down?

The mechanics of walking with a stick turn out to be more complicated than I thought. You have to synchronise it with one leg or the other. If neither hurts, then you can alternate which leg you rest. And you can either go “crosswise”, holding the stick in the hand opposite the leg you’re helping out, or you can “lurch” with the stick right next to the assisted side. I’m always conscious of the eyes of fellow Tripods on me as I make my clumsy way, alternating between supported legs and arm synchronisation styles.

The one thing about a walking stick is that it doesn’t slow you down. Quite the opposite. I can get going really fast by using it almost like an oar, pushing me along the pavements. Bipeds beware!

What’s the hardest part of walking with a cane?

Walking with a cane, an umbrella, a toddler with an umbrella, and a handbag slipping off your shoulder. I wanted to be an octopus that day as well as a Tripod.

What did you do?

I got very wet.

So will you miss it?

Yes, in a funny sort of way. No matter how much people ignored it overtly, they saw the stick as a sign of weakness. Some of the barbarians in our neighbourhood made off comments, it’s true. But most of us, no matter how unwilling to show it in public, are protective of the frail. It comes out in hundred tiny things: a door held open even after I had my hand on it, a little extra space in a crowded shop, an extra small smile on a shop assistant even in the pre-Christmas shopping.

And there was never more of anything than I could shake a stick at. I have the stick to prove it.

Personal

Up or down?

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I was waiting for the lift on the ground floor of Jenners, one of Edinburgh’s oldest department stores. With me were four little old ladies, all with white hair in that “set and styled” look that seems to be the fashion in the over-70 demographic. The “up” button was already lit, and one lady was pressing the “down” button over and over again while talking about lift journeys. She, apparently, wanted to go to the third floor.

So why the down button? She explained as she stabbed away.

“Most folks think you’re supposed to tell the lift where you want to go. But that’s daft, you see, because the lift doesn’t know how to take you there. It’ll be on the third floor – like this one – and know you want to go up. But it doesn’t know that it has to go down to fetch you first. How could it? It’s like driving a car – you tell the lift where you want it to go. We’re on the ground floor, and it’s on the third floor. So we want it to come down to fetch us. We’ll tell it which floors to go to when we get on. Like a car,” she nodded again, clinching the argument.

Listening to her, I experienced a sudden, seismic burst of cognitive dissonance. I suddenly doubted whether I had been using lifts correctly all my life. How did I know how to use a lift? My parents taught me, and I’d watched colleagues and strangers. In essence, lift usage is an oral tradition, and like many oral traditions, may be wrong. Maybe this woman was right? Who was to know?

The lift came, and the “down” arrow went dark. The “up” arrow was still lit, but we all got on. I would have stayed back, suspecting it was en route to the lower ground floor, but I didn’t want to offend the woman by doubting her thesis with my actions. (Or was I simply insecure, unsure the lift would stop at the ground floor again on its way back up? The cognitive dissonance was pretty strong.)

We both got off at the third floor, and I left her energetically explaining something to a saleswoman. I went on my way, still a little dazed.

Even after leaving Jenners, I couldn’t quite shake the underlying doubt. Had I been using lifts wrong all this time? I mentioned it to my father, who provided the clinching evidence. Most lifts have only one button at the extreme ends of their runs. If you’re on the bottom floor of a building, the only lift control instruction you can give is up, please. If the lady was right, then you could never summon the lift to the ground floor, because you could never give it the instruction to go down.

I should be convinced. I should be sure. But last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up certain that I lived in a world where lifts were like cars, and we were all doing it wrong.

Personal

Too Roman by Half

A colleague and I were talking about the forthcoming film Troy the other day. I said something like, “Well, I always sided with the Trojans against the Greeks, but then I’m too Roman by half.”

The first part, certainly, is true. I have always sided with the Trojans. Not Paris, who was an idiot. (Top tip: if you have to choose from among three goddesses, you will have one powerful friend and two powerful enemies. 2 > 1. You will be sorry. Make applesauce, or throw yourself on the mercy of Zeus, or jump off a cliff.) But the story of Hector, and the image of his body being dragged round the walls of Troy, won my sympathy more than Achilles’ spoilt brat behaviour ever did.

But the second part is true as well. I am too Roman by half. Admittedly, I’m not Roman enough to mind having my own first name (Roman girls didn’t), and I’m glad my paterfamilias didn’t have the power of life or death over me (not that Dad would have done anything awful). But as time goes by, I find myself succumbing to Roman-style superstition.

The Romans believed that there were “auspicious” times and “inauspicious” times. Indeed, the superstitious Roman matron (or man – this one spanned both genders) was as much of a stereotype as the boasting soldier or the virtuous girl of good family barely saved from prostitution. Juvenal, in his Satire 6, spends a good 40 lines on the subject of superstitious women. (He was always much gentler on his own sex.)

This is not limited to Romans, of course – the main character with Asperger’s in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time judges the auspiciousness of the day by the number of red cars he sees on his way to school. And millions of people read, and even make decisions based on their horoscopes. But it feels very Roman in me.

I’ve always had the feeling that there are “good days” and “bad days”. Over the last five years, as I’ve learned to deal with Seasonal Affective Disorder, I’ve been wryly conscious of the fact that my perceptions are as much a part of this as my luck itself. But after a few weeks like I’ve just had, something in me does wonder if the auspices are against me.

In addition to the usual slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, there have been several major irritants lately:

  • The carpet thing
  • My work situation, which is crap, but which I don’t want to discuss in public since it’s still going on.
  • Sacroiliac joint dysfunction
  • Being messed about with by an ebay vendor about a cane for the above. Again, still ongoing, so not the time to discuss.
  • Attempting to buy a particular sofa bed in IKEA, only to find that our penny-ante Edinburgh shop doesn’t stock it. I could have hoicked all the way out to the Glasgow one, but we were going to get it shipped, and shipping from Glasgow is much, much costlier than shipping the few miles from the Edinburgh branch. There goes my carefully composed room design…

All in all, bad luck seems to plague me right now. You’ll note, as well, that three of the five items listed there have been my attempts to spend money. Dealing with British vendors of any sort is often a trial – they usually assume that you, and your time, are of no value whatsoever, and that you’re happy to stay in the house all day waiting for deliveries that never come, or to pay through the nose for shoddy work and outright rudeness. (This is not universal, by the way – Hewit’s, my local bookbinding supplier, for instance, is a pleasure to deal with. Which is why I have too much leather under my bed, but that’s another story.) This disappointment with major purchases is leading to another great Roman virtue: frugality, since I can’t seem to spend my money anywhere.

Much more of it, though, and I’ll be tempted to follow yet another fine Roman custom, the proscription, where you write out a list of all your enemies and post it as a suggestion for the mobs…

Who can categorise everything?

Offshoring Redux, or, what does a sporran have to do with software?

The IT industry has been gripped by anxiety over the last few months over the growing trend towards “offshoring”. More and more companies are moving their software development to countries like India and China, where a highly educated workforce is willing to code for a fraction of the costs of North Americans and Europeans. This is a Bad Thing according to pundits, but, I suspect, an inevitable one. UK call centres and directory enquiries are already frequently staffed from the Indian subcontinent (with operators given “cultural training” so they can chat about the latest happenings on Eastenders.)

I also suspect that my own specialty, software testing, is going to see a renaissance in the US, Canada, and Europe. At present, software testing seems to be moving offshore along with the development. But I reckon a given company will try an average of one offshore implementation without onshore testing before we testers become very, very popular. Even “onshore” offsite developments need acceptance testing. How much more will projects developed across time zones, continents, and language barriers?

But some industries are supposed to be offshoring-proof. Right? Right? Wrong. sporran makers are under threat from offshoring.

Is nothing sacred?

Personal

Ouchy Head

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Well, if Martin’s recent sufferings weren’t enough, I appear to have developed the capacity for migraines. Imagine my delight.

It is apparently not uncommon for women’s migraine status to change in pregnancy – sufferers may experience some relief, and non-sufferers may start getting them. This ties into the theories that migraines are hormonally based.

I don’t know if the two killer headaches I’ve experienced in the last month are true migraines. In both cases, my head was throbbing so badly it felt like it would explode, particularly behind the eyes. Any light caused stabbing pains in my eyes and temples, adding to the pain even more. Eventually, it hurt so much that I got nauseated, sometimes uncontrollably.

Yesterday’s headache was preceded by an unpleasant series of sensations as well. I went up into town at lunchtime, and while on my way back, I began to feel somewhat faint. (Since I have low blood pressure, I am familiar with the symptoms that lead up to fainting, though I have only once passed out. Specifically, I sometimes experience dizziness, ringing in the ears, sweating palms, nausea and a trailing off of extreme weakness. Yesterday I had three of the five, but managed to avoid the nausea and sweating palms by sitting down for a few minutes.) Then I got back to the office, and began to feel an incipient headache.

That feeling of faintness matches some of the symptoms of an aura, such as often precedes a “proper” migraine. Not being a doctor, I don’t know if my guess that this was an aura before a migraine is accurate (though as far as I can tell, the medical profession sometimes uses “migraine” to mean “bad headache we can’t otherwise explain”. It’s been the default diagnosis for Martin a couple of times.)

My head hurt all evening, meaning my poor Martin had to put Alex to bed. (I couldn’t bathe him, because the bathroom light was too bright. I took my shower later by candlelight.) I was better in the morning, but still too light-sensitive to take Alex to nursery; Martin had to do that too. Work was right out of the question.

Finally, about 24 hours after the first faintness, I’m feeling better. The light sensitivity has gone, the headache has vanished, and apart from a dragging tiredness, I’m back to normal.

The bad news is that, being pregnant, I dare not take painkillers. The worse news is that some pregnancy-onset tendencies to migraine don’t go away after the birth…

The good news is that Martin is wonderful. Thank you, Bun.

Family, Personal

The Quickening

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Hooray! The quickening!

Say “Quickening” to a science fiction fan and they’ll cringe. It’s one of the worst, tackiest films ever, a disgrace to the otherwise excellent Highlander series. So why am I so pleased about it?

In pregnancy terms, “quickening” refers to the moment when the mother can first feel the baby move. It tends to occur between 18 and 22 weeks for first pregnancies, and somewhat sooner in later ones (I’m at 16 1/2 weeks). There are two main theories why second pregnancies quicken earlier. Either the mother knows what she’s trying to feel for, or the uterus is more stretched and conducts the kicks better. I tend to believe the latter theory – neither Alex nor Chenoweth* has felt like anything other than something inside kicking out. (Note to self: time to watch Alien again.)

For many women, the quickening happens a week or two before the kicks are externally perceptible. This hasn’t been the case for me. Martin felt the third Alex kick I did, and I can already feel Chenoweth from the outside as well. (Haven’t yet timed it for Martin to feel. Probably over the next day or two.) This probably means I’ve missed the earlier movements in both cases, but I don’t really care.

In the days before ultrasounds, or even pregnancy tests, pregnancies weren’t announced until the baby was felt to move. Originally, it was thought to be the time the baby first moved, rather than first time it was perceptible. The quickening was the moment when everyone knew that a pregnancy was viable. If the pregnancy was a politcally important one, it was cause for public celebration. Look what happened when Jane Seymour felt a few kicks one day.

On 27 May 1537, Trinity Sunday, there was a Te Deum sung in St Paul’s cathedral for joy at the queen’s quickening of her child, my lord chancellor, lord privy seal and various other lords and bishops being then present; the mayor and aldermen with the best guilds of the city being there in their liveries, all giving laud and praise to God for joy about it.

Now, I’m not going to book St Paul’s, or even St John Vianney’s over the hill, but I am very pleased. Of course, we knew Chen was viable and moving after the scan (it was doing barrel rolls onscreen). But the quickening is still emotionally important. It’s the first time a baby becomes real, the first time I feel like there’s actually someone there. It’s also the beginning of the best thing about pregnancy for me: the feeling of closeness with the baby. In the years since Alex was born, I have often missed the slow, seismic roll of baby in the tummy, the feeling that he was right there with me all the time. That’s when I fell in love with him, and now I get to fall in love with his sibling.

Welcome, Chenoweth.

* We’re referring to the baby as Chenoweth, which is the planned middle name regardless of gender. It was my paternal grandfather’s mother’s maiden name, and I have always loved it. It’s Welsh in origin.

Bookbinding

Bookbinding Conference!

Though it was rather overshadowed by subsequent events (scan, tenth anniversary), I did actually go to the Society of Bookbinders biennial Training and Education Conference.

I was deeply intimidated by the entire thing. I’d never met a bookbinder before, ever. And the bookbinding world is still deeply rooted in the traditions of apprenticeship and mastery. Self-taught amateurs are like orphans among the hereditary nobility. Add to that that I’m crushingly shy about talking to strangers…

Of course, my fears were entirely groundless. Like any group of enthusiasts, the bookbinders were keen to talk to a fellow addict. I fell in with the Scottish contingent almost unintentionally, when I struck up a conversation with a woman from Aberdeen while touring the Reading University library bindery. Soon we had an accustomed place at the refectory tables for meals, and were chatting at tea breaks.

It was the first time I’ve ever had to listen to people talk about binding, watch demonstrations of bindings, and get a good in-person look at a few (very) fine bindngs. I even managed to buttonhole Mark Ramsden for some feedback on my green book. I’m still reeling a bit, digesting it all.

A few preliminary conclusions:

  • I’m not so hot on forwarding (book construction) as I thought. This is actually a good thing, because it means I need more practice, which means I have an excuse to bind more books. Previously, I was more conscious of my need to practice finishing (cover decoration), so the effort of forwarding (while pleasant) felt like a distraction from the learning process.
  • I have become increasingly conservative in my binding efforts. It’s time to reverse this trend. My interest in a lot of the more adventurous structures and decorational techniques was reignited by the things I saw, and heard about, in the conference.
  • I have a real taste for modernity in bindings. Most of my books on binding focus on the traditional styles, from about the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries through to the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s. Some of these binding styles were very gaudy, and my taste runs more to simplicity. But until I saw some of the slideshows of modern bindings, I didn’t really see how to marry that taste for simplicity with fine binding. Now my head is full of ideas, visions of simple, restrained bindings. They’ll even cost me less in finishing tools!

a blog by Abi Sutherland