No gods, no kings, no billionaires
Not much I can say that isn’t probably said better in pictures on B’s pages. I might be able to string together a few coherent thoughts by the time the weekend rolls around…
Abi is recovering hugely well, and we’re hoping that she may even be able to come home on Saturday!
I bought myself a copy of the game Black & White on Friday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it up & running on Friday evening. Although the systems requirements insert in the box of the game said that it supported the Voodoo Banshee chipset, this turns out not to be the case. I found this out–much to my disgust– when I started scouring the web for info on Saturday morning.
An angry letter to EA followed.
(But then later in the day we went out, and I got myself a nice new ATI Radeon with 64Mb of DDR memory. Very tasty.)
After the computer shopping, we took the bus to Kinnaird Park, and bought a pram at Mothercare. The, we indulged ourselves with a final evening out before B arrives. We had dinner at “Frankie and Bennie’s” (which used to be the Deep Pan Pizza Company), and then saw 15 Minutes at the Cinema.
It still doesn’t seem quite real that we won’t be able to just do that kind of thing, without any forethought and planning, any more.
Yesterday evening’s Barenaked Ladies concert was amazing
Support act: The Lilac Time (Stephen (formerly “TinTin”) Duffy). He started off playing a slow song on his own, with just an acoustic guitar. For the next one, Steve from the BNL joined him on backing vocals, then a few songs later, Jim, Kevin, and Tyler came on stage, too. Ed was the last to fall in, and they kicked the whole thing up a gear with an up-tempo version of Duffy’s 1985 hit “Kiss Me.” There was a break of about 25 minutes before the BNL came back on, all dressed in simple patterned shirts and black trousers.
Main Set:
Encore 1:
Encore 2:
Plus, of course, lots of little snippets of (semi-)improvised lunacy, such as “Steve’s Cock/It’s A Family Show (We’re Just A Messed Up Family)”, the Darth Vader version of Britney Spears‘ “Oops!…I Did It Again“, “34? 36? Do my Thighs Look Big In This?” and the “Canadian Blues”
The guys had an absolute blast on stage. You could see they were genuinely enjoying themselves. This is the first time I’ve seen them live, but it won’t be the last!
1: Gordon
2: Maybe You Should Drive
3: Born On A Pirate Ship
4: Stunt
5: Maroon
Barenaked Ladies concert tonight! I’ve been so wrapped up in the whole B thing that I haven’t had time to get properly excited about this! (I’m listening to their latest album “Maroon” at work today, though, to get myself warmed up.)
These days everything’s just so exciting!
Well, now we know when B will be born: Wednesday 11 April!
We had a visit with the consultant (Dr. MacPherson) from Simpson’s this afternoon. She poked around, and thought that B was lying more breech than oblique breech, which is the way it has been for the last two months. If it had been fully transverse, apparently Abi would have been trundled into the hospital straight away. But the degree if tilt involved, we had the option of trying to get it turned via ECV (External Cephalic Version).
Turning it would be done by a registrar at Simpson’s, in the labour ward, and with full baby monitoring equipment in place. The success rate is approximately 60%, and the risk of the baby getting distressed, and having to be extracted by emergency caesarean is 1 in 1000. However, if it didn’t turn, but instead moved to full breach, the consultant said that they could still try to deliver it normally.
This isn’t quite what we want, though. Abi and I have thought about it a lot, and we would both prefer to just have a simple, straightforward, elective caesarean. A) it’s less painful, and B) we can plan it. The recovery time will be longer, but the whole process is much more controlled, and we both like control. (We consider this whole vaginal birth thing to be a bit, well, primitive. Lois McMaster Bujold writes about uterine replicators in her Barrayar books, in which babies grow to full term outside of the mother’s body. These sound like good things to us.)
So, that’s what’s going to happen. Next Tuesday (10 April) we go in to Simpson’s to see the anaesthesiologist, and to get some blood samples taken (from Abi, not me), and then on Wednesday morning we show up at 09:00, and wait to be seen. We’re third in the queue, so we figure that by Wednesday afternoon we’ll have a baby.
I’m so excited! I had to stop myself from bouncing up and down in the doctor’s room this afternoon. I tried to put on my calm, unruffled face, but Abi said I just looked pale and nervous. Oh, well.
The picture below was taken during the scan on Friday. (And no, we don’t know the sex yet. B has its head stuck under Abi’s right ribs, its tiny little tushie under her left ribs, and its feet planted firmly in the pelvic cavity. This means that the ultrasound wasn’t able to scan B’s private parts. As per usual, B is proving to be an awkward customer.)
In case you’re wondering what the picture actually shows, this B’s head in profile.