Blogbert - Baby

New site for photos

Daniel Probert — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:29:46 GMT

Hi all.
It's proved too hard for me to keep updating the blog with photos, so I'm now using Picasa.
So all the latest photos (plus those from this blog) are now here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/daniel.a.probert

Happy viewing!

Little Evie - Day 28: 4 weeks old

Daniel Probert — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:14:23 GMT

Hi all.
I'm very sorry about the lack of updates.
As any of you that have children will know, the first month is fairly hectic!!!
I just haven't had any real time to upload photos.

And the problem I have is that I now have sooo many photos to upload!

So here's a small selection, and I'll do more in trickles as I get time..

Both Evie and Karin are doing well.
We thought Evie might be getting a touch of colic, but that seems to have settled down with the medication we bought her.
She's still such a beautiful little girl, our bright little button.

I also have a small movie of her on the changing table.
Download the movie here.

Here are the latest photos:

Little Evie - Day 3: Karin comes home

Daniel Probert — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:18:51 GMT

I went for a little walk up to the village playground with Marc and Clare (Karin's brother and sister-in-law) and their little boy, Luca.
We then went to the local garden centre/cafe for a coffee - and when we got there, I received a surprise call from Karin saying she was ready to be picked up!

So I rushed off to the hospital to bring my wife and beautiful baby girl home.

As one of Karin's friends (Emma) said: you'll never drive so carefully or slowly as you do that first drive back from the hospital with your new baby.
I think I did 10 mph the whole way back...

Anyway, Karin and little Evie are now safely back at home, and Karin is doing so well - I can't get over how mobile she is, 2 days after a c-section.

We had a lovely sleep together, the 3 of us, on our bed this afternoon - I really understand what people say about how you can spend hours just staring at your baby.
She's simply captivating!

And here are some more photos...
(click to enlarge)

Little Evie - Day 2: We have a name

Daniel Probert — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:55:31 GMT

OK, so we have finally named our daughter.

Her name is Evie Leigh Probert, or 'Ev' for short.

Given Karin's French heritage, this works out well - she can say "ma petite ev"...

With luck, Karin will be home at lunchtime tomorrow, as she is healing well.

Little Evie passed her paediatrician exam with (almost) flying colours: she has a litlte of bit of misalignment due to being in breech position, but we're told this can be easily remedied by a physio and some special exercises.

I changed my first nappy today, and made a complete balls-up of it, but managed to hide it under the baby clothes - I'm sure Karin will find the results of my efforts later today and have a few words to say tomorrow...!

So here are some pictures from Day 2, including pictures of proud Mummy and Daddy
(click on them to enlarge):

Pregnancy Week 42 - Day 296: Introducing Miss Probert!

Daniel Probert — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:22:29 GMT

Our beautiful baby girl was born at 9:30am this morning, weighing 7lb 2 oz (3231g).
Karin endured a 12 hour labour at home, before our midwife decided that it would be safer to have a cesarean section. We were picked up by ambulance at 8:30am, and our daughter was born at 9:30am.

She greeted the world by peeing all over the surgeon, and then emitting an almighty scream. Good on ya girl...

When she was held up for us both to see, we were in floods of tears. Definitely the most emotional and important moment of my life so far.

No name yet - we haven't worked out what fits, but will let you know as soon as we do.
I'll provide a fuller account of the labour/birth etc later, but at the moment I've slept for 40 mins over the last 48 hours, so will post some pics, and then hit the sack.

Karin and daughter are very well - Karin is radiant in her new role as a mother.
I couldn't be more proud of them both.
And, isn't she adorable?
She started breast-feeding immediately, and (so far) doesn't seem to be a cryer.

Without further ado, here are some pics
(as usual, click on them to enlarge them):

Pregnancy Week 42 - Day 295: We've been breeched

Daniel Probert — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:11:57 GMT

Hi all.
Sorry about the lack of updates.

Things have taken a funny turn this week.
We're now 15 days over due date (40+15).

On Monday we discovered that our baby is in a breech position - this was a complete surprise as up till now we've believed it was head down (cephalic or vertex).
(apparently it's very easy to mistake certain types of breech as being head down when feeling for the baby, but ours was confirmed with ultrasound).

Our baby is in the Frank Breech (or Extended Breech position) with its legs extended.

Hospital policy over here in the UK (at least at our local hospital) is to automatically do a caesarean section for a breech.
Although we'd prefer to have a natural birth if at all possible, we have to accept that we're unlikely to have a home birth anymore, and definitely won't be having a water birth. But there we go - the baby is now calling the shots, not us!

In order to know that things were ok, we went to a private hospital in London and had a "foetal wellbeing scan" (also known as a "placental scan") which showed that the baby and placenta were all fine. The reason we had to do this privately was that the local hospital refused to do such a scan as they only support caesarean sections for breech births. Talk about being inflexible...!

We were hoping to wait until Sunday and see if labour started.
However, Karin has had her "show" and some of her waters have come out. According to our midwife, this means that if labour doesn't start tonight, then we should look at having a caesarean section tomorrow.

So there we go!

I have a *lot* more I want to add to this post, about the research we did with post-term breech babies, and the whole "natural birth vs caesarean section for breech babies" debate, but that will have to wait till later as Karin is now in early labour and having some quite painful contractions.

I imagine the next post will be to say we have a baby.

Pregnancy Week 41 - Day 290: Why are we waiting, we are suf...

Daniel Probert — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:16:27 GMT

OK, so no news yet.

Karin is still happily chugging along.

Although we've had some positive signs that something is happening: the Braxton Hicks contractions that Karin had been experiencing for the last 3 months have changed to what we think are real contractions – and we even get groups of regular contractions (about 10 mins between them) – but then they disappear.

Still, the first time it happened (last night at about 1am) was enough to have us think that we were in labour!

Interestingly, there are two other women from our ante natal class in the same situation. For all three the question of the moment is: are we in labour yet??

We've spent the last 4 days or so doing housey things. I finished work on Wednesday (two days early) so that I could be around to help Karin a bit more.

We did what we thought was a short walk yesterday (another lovely country walk), but ended up exhausting Karin completely – in fact, Karin was praying that labour wouldn't start last night as she was too tired!

No photos this time – the last 3 walks we've done, I've forgotten to take the camera! Also, the weather has been dismal, so not good photographing conditions anyway.

Two funny little incidents to relate:

When we were in Kingston last week, Karin wanted to rush back in to John Lewis to use the toilet just as they were closing. The doorman said "sorry, we're closed" and wouldn't budge – until another woman who was coming out said, "you stupid man, can't you see she's pregnant?" – at which point he sheepishly let Karin in...!

The other was that Karin discovered that National Rail have an unwritten policy of not charging pregnant women if they forget to buy a ticket on the train, which is a *very* useful thing to know. I wonder if I could apply under the laws of discrimination to get them to change it to pregnant men/women, and then put a balloon down my suit and get free travel. Just a thought...

We went to see the NHS midwife yesterday at the local GP surgery. She was lovely, and was explaining the NHS policy on going over term: apparently they're happy up to 42 weeks, but their policy is to not really support going beyond 42 weeks. Because we have an independent midwife, we can go beyond 42 weeks, but if we do will go in for monitoring of the baby every other day.

The reason for the NHS policy is that there is a slight chance of the placenta breaking down or the baby being stillborn.
The midwife said that although this was a very small chance, the NHS had decided not to risk it: for this reason, if you have an NHS midwife (i.e. a public midwife) you can't go beyond 42 weeks without being artificially induced.

Interesting that in Germany (so we're told) they calculate the due date of a baby as being 42 weeks, not 40 weeks – and that even in the UK, you're not considered over term until you go over 42 weeks.
Which is reassuring.

So there we are – I'll keep you updated with any other news.

In the meantime, Karin and I are off for a posh dinner (flash dinner, for the kiwis) out in town tonight.

Pregnancy Week 40 - Day 285: Waiting for Godot's Baby

Daniel Probert — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:00:21 GMT

Well here we are, 5 days after the due date, and still no baby!
He/she seems happy to take their time.

Actually, Karin was remarking the other day about how damaging the concept of a due date can be - in our modern world where we're used to things happening at the prescribed day/time, it's easy to forget that your "due date" is more a tentative "average due date" and the actual birth can be 2 weeks either side!

Having said that, Karin has been experiencing a lot of stronger Braxton Hicks contractions the last day, which seem to be getting more and more regular... so maybe baby is finally on the way!

Still I know that you're all eagerly awaiting the start, and you've paid all this money and the main act still has yet to come on stage.
So I'm going to have to try and distract you for a while with some light entertainment.

Saturday
It's a long weekend this weekend (second May Bank Holiday) which is great, apart from the fact that the weather is supposed to be miserable.
Still, today doesn't look too bad.
So I made the 10 min walk up to the hill behind the village to get some photos of the village in which we live (mainly for my mother, but feel free to look at them, y'all...). I just wish it were a sunny day, as the view is lovely with the sun starting to set, as it provides a lovely glow. Still, gotta take what I can get!

This is a view of the village from the hill behind it (Click to enlarge)
(Rach: this is where I was whilst talking to you on the phone)

The local kids play ground (Click to enlarge)

Looking down the main street (Click to enlarge)

The village hall (Click to enlarge)

The local shop (Click to enlarge)

A view down the street behind our house (Click to enlarge)

The top of our street (Click to enlarge)

The other end of the terrace we're in (Click to enlarge)

That afternoon, we followed the advice of Karin's father, and went on a lovely long walk (it's supposed to help stimulate labour).
We went to another village about 30mins drive away - I've never spent much time in the county of Surrey, but it really is a most agreeable place (yes, I've been watching a bit too much Pride and Prejudice I feel).

This is an amazing field of barley we found - hard to see but there were
these amazing patterns as different clumps moved in different directions (Click to enlarge)

Baby cow! (Click to enlarge)

Me and cows and cheesy-grin (Click to enlarge)

(Yes yes I know, there are no photos of Karin - I did take a lot of them, but she wasn't happy with me putting them on the blog - sorry!!)

Afterwards we had a nice dinner in a village pub, watching all the locals arrive for a 50th birthday party, wearing some quite strange fancy dress (including one odd toothless local drunk guy who was trying to sell me some weed in the bathroom, and was convinced that I had a tongue piercing. Surreal much?!).

Sunday
On Sunday the weather was a bit worse, so we thought we'd try and venture to the shops in Kingston upon Thames (which is where the local John Lewis is - I know, a bit posh, but we wanted a decent desk fan for the birth).

Although only a 40 min drive away, it still felt a bit daring leaving the house this close to the birth! Still, we were short of items that will be needed for the birth, and it wouldn't be the wisest thing to let Karin go by herself.

Afterwards we went wild... and went to a *movie*! Oh I say. Talk about pushing the boat out.
Wow, even *I'm* boring myself now.
Ho hum.
I get paid by the word, you see.

Monday
Today. A thoroughly miserable day - heavy rain and wind.
Karin has spent all day (so far) in bed in her pajamas reading. And I'm so glad! It can be very difficult to get her to take any time to relax, but I think it's exactly what she (and baby) need, so I've been pottering round the house, making lunch, getting the shopping in, etc etc.

It looks like I'm nursing my inner female, as I spent 2 hours watching the (superior) BBC adap of Pride and Prejudice - I have fond memories of watching it at home in NZ with my mother, but not sure if those memories are entirely accurate.

One other series I've been watching is Brideshead Revisited - I remember it being a family event to watch it when it came out in the early 80's, and remember loving the theme tune, so it's very exciting to be able to watch it now.
I can't believe they're making a film of it - how can they do the book justice in a 3 hour film?

It's interesting having this extra time before baby arrives - it gives me a chance to reflect on what the coming months will hold. I'm very excited, of course, but also slightly apprehensive (as to be expected). Other parents talk about what a momentous event having kids is: we've had this constant companion with us for 9 months, with it's own definite personality, and I can't wait to meet him/her.

One of the things that it truly brings home to you is that your parents went through all of this - as a child, you think of your parents as knowing everything, and yet you realise that they were in the same boat that we're in now - and you also realise the sacrifices people make in order to have children. So Mum, I have a much better appreciation of what you went through and I'm sure this appreciation will get stronger and stronger as we experience having a child. Anyway, just wanted to say a big Thank You to my mum for the sacrifices she went through (and a post-humous thanks to my Dad).

One of the other things I did today was to get the lounge ready for the birth - which pretty much means a waterproof cover over the rug, and a nice soft area in front of the pool.
Carrie asked for some photos - so here they are!

Pics of the lounge area

Rightio, that's enough waffling on for now.
I'll go make a nice up of tea for Karin, and then order up a nice sizzling hot curry for her (apparently another way to bring on labour).

Fingers crossed everyone!

Pregnancy Week 40 - Day 280: Hitting the Due Date

Daniel Probert — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:06:01 GMT

Well, today is the due date.
We're exactly 9 months since conception (or whenever they start the measurements).

And still no sign of the wee bairn.

So looks like he/she will indeed be late!

Karin has been having *lots* of Braxton-Hicks contractions, much stronger than before, which I'm sure is a sign that stuff is about to happen.
She also says that when the baby moves, it's a bit like having a large puppy in your tummy!
There can't be much room in there now, so come on little babiche, make your way out.

We can't wait to meet you!

Pregnancy Week 39 - Day 277: Filling the Pool

Daniel Probert — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:15:39 GMT

Howdy all.

Another uneventful weekend (labour-wise!) and only 2 days left now.

We filled the pool on Saturday, and had a lovely swim in it on Sat night.

Filling the pool (Click to enlarge)

Still filling the pool... (Click to enlarge)

Karin was saying that it was amazing to not feel the weight of the baby - we can't understand why we didn't get one of these pools earlier!

The pool took 3 hours to fill, and given that we're not going to start filling it until the early signs of labour, I'd better hope that Karin doesn't have a 3-hour labour…! ;-)

Karin enjoying the pool... ;-) (Click to enlarge)

We did a bit of rambling on Friday/Saturday to explore the local footpaths, and discovered some lovely walks, including the fact that we can walk to the local farm shop/garden centre/café/pick your own berries/catch your own fish place.

(For those of you outside the UK, a footpath is a track that goes across public and private land, which has usually been in use for at least a few hundred years and is protected by law. There are thousands of them criss-crossing the country, and they provide a great way to explore parts of the country side you can't reach by road. People that walk them as known as ramblers).

Karin is still bearing up well, though has a sore back and feels like a lie-down after walking up the stairs!
We've finally setup the loft room, and cleared enough boxes out of the ensuite so that guests will have their own bathroom (assuming they don't mind being surrounded by boxes!).

We've started the process of trying to encourage Karin to go into labour, so now we just have to wait.

The Business of Being Born
Our midwife sent us a link to a movie about Home Birth made by Ricky Lake - I had thought it was going to be released at theatres, but maybe they decided not to.
At any rate, you can watch the entire movie on GoogleVideo (I'll download a copy as well).
Actually, the movie has its own website, and the have viewings in various cities around the world.

It's very interesting as it compares the experience of home birth vs hospital birth, and is well worth a watch
HOWEVER it does contain footage of births, plus a caesarean section, so be warned.

What's interesting is the history of birth in hospital, plus the stats on thing like when c-sections happen (more likely at 4pm and 10pm, which is when obstetricians tend to end their shifts…!) plus why woman were forced to give birth on a bed in hospital (which is a recent thing and is now being discontinued in the UK, although is still common in the US).

Anyway, link to the video is here:
The Business of Being Born (video)
The Business of Being Born (website)

Enjoy.

Pregnancy Week 39 - Day 275: The Dad's guide to Labour

Daniel Probert — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:26:06 GMT

Nothing new to report today, just a few thoughts.

One of the weird things (for me) about waiting for labour, is how to know when labour has started (yeah, ok, so I'm sure Karin will know, but I'm thinking from the man's perspective here).

Before I started reading the pregnancy books and attending ante-natal classes, I hadn't realised how much mis-information about labour we pick up from movies/TV/books - and how little men seem to know (or want to know) about labour.

So without further ado, here is Daniel's List of Labour Facts for Men ®
(note: I offer no guarantees that what you read here is 100% accurate - it's simply my understanding of how things are...!
Plus, I can almost guarantee that my view on labour will change within the next few days after I've experienced Karin go through it):

Contrary to what you see on the movies, labour does not start with your partner's waters breaking. In fact, in a lot of pregnancies the waters are the last thing to break. They normally break because the baby's head is pushed down hard enough to rupture the membrane that holds them in place - and this usually only happens after enough contracts have happened to get the baby's head to the bottom of the pelvis. Once the waters have broken, you normally have 12-24 hours before the baby has to be born due to risk of infection.
Labour has three (classical) stages:
The 1st Stage (early labour) is when the uterus starts to contract to force the baby down into the pelvis - during this stage the cervix is starting to dilate.
The 2nd stage is all about pushing the baby out, and is when the baby is actually born - at this stage the cervix is fully dilated.
The 3rd stage is the birthing of the placenta.
When you hear someone talking about a "48 hour labour" or something like that, they're usually talking about the length of the first stage.
There's no easy way to tell you're in labour until the contractions become regular (once they're 5 mins apart, and about 30-50secs long, you're regarded as being in Established Labour).
This was one of the hardest things for me to grasp: like most men (I suspect) I want things to be black and white: what signs do I look for to tell that we're in labour? How do I know we're definitely in labour? The answer is: you can't. At least, not until you're in Established Labour.

[In our ante-natal classes, we did a great exercise which demonstrates this: we were given a number of playing cards, each describing a sign of labour (e.g. irregular contractions, cramps, waters breaking, the "show" (ejection of a mucus plug), burst of energy (nesting), etc etc. We then had to shuffle the cards and "deal a labour". In some cases, after seeing all the signs, labour would stop again. The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate that labour doesn't follow any sort of preset pattern, and you have to be prepared for any eventuality - including labour stopping and you having to go back to waiting for a few days again.]

The fact that labour can go *backwards* really threw me.
Between the 1st and 2nd stages is something called Transition. It's called this because this is when your partner's body is transitioning from a contracting phase to a pushing phase (and is where the cervix is dilating the last few centimetres). Remember in the movies when they refer to your partner swearing or acting very differently than normal during labour? This is the what Transition can cause... if your partner is going to feel like giving up, this is when it will happen, and this is when they need your support most of all. Having said that, apparently some women don't even notice transition.

Books
Most of the books I read were Karin's books.
However, I did read one book targeted at Dads/Men which was fantastic.
(I also read a lot of mediocre ones, and this was the best of the lot).

It's called:

The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year by Mitchell Beazley Health

And if you want some light reading (and lots of play ideas) check this one out. It's absolutely brilliant:

Dad Stuff: Shedloads of Ideas for Dads by Steve Caplin and Simon Rose

That's all for now.

Pregnancy Week 39 - Day 274: The story so far

Daniel Probert — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:44:49 GMT

Well I guess I should have started a pregnancy blog round Week 1, but I didn't think of it! Hey ho.
Anyway, this is just an attempt to keep y'all updated with Karin and Babiche's progress. And it's easier (and less intrusive) than a mass mailout!

OK, so for those of you that don't know, Karin is now 39 weeks pregnant.
The due date is Wednesday 21st May 2008 or thereabouts – first babies are more likely to be late (so I've read).
Ironically, of the 8 couples in our NCT class (National Childbirth Trust - the UK's equivalent of the NZ Plunket Society) five have now had their babies – 3 of them before their due dates. So who knows!

So anyway, a brief rundown of what's been going on, plus some photos (to try and make up for 273 days of missed blog posts!).

Buying a House
Following the realisation that Karin was pregnant in September 2007 (we can even date the night of conception to camping in a field in Wareham, Dorset!) we decided that living in a top story flat in London wasn't the best place to have a baby.
So we decided to start looking for a new place to live.

We have been living in Lewisham, London for the last 18 months, in a lovely top-floor flat.

Living room in Lewisham (after we moved out)

After a brief fling with the idea of living in Bath, and then Brighton, we settled on the Reigate/Redhill area of Surrey (just south of London).
It offered the best combination of countryside/access to London/house price for us.
We started looking in the area in December, and put an offer in on a place in early February. However, due to the 2008 Credit Crunch the surveyor valued the house at much less than what the offered price was - and since the bank would only lend to the valuation, it left us struggling to either find the shortfall, or negotiate a new price.
In the end we managed to get the vendor to come down a bit, and made up some of the shortfall ourselves.

So as of April 18th 2008, we are the proud owners of a 3 bedroom mid-terrace house in the village of South Nutfield, 4 miles East of Redhill.
You can see the village on a map here.

We're about 200 yards from the local train station, with direct services to London.
As it's a village station, there are very few trains, which is great from a noise point of view, but crucially there are enough direct trains in the morning/evening so that we can get into London if need be (37 mins by direct train).

Because we only completed 5 weeks before the due date, we didn't think we'd have time to paint or renovate the house - Karin wanted a clear month before the baby to be settled in the house.
However, after moving in, we decided that we should at least paint the house, so that it felt fresher than it did - so we got a local painter (Sheik is his name - I can highly recommend him) to come in the evenings - he did every room other than the loft room, which I did.

We finished the painting last week (which involved a lot of late nights for me!) and the majority of the furniture and boxes are unpacked - the exception to this is a whole bunch of "to unpack later" boxes that we stuffed in the ensuite bathroom upstairs, I'm not sure if we'll get to deal with those before the birth.

We've had some great help from family - my Uncle Tony came up for a day, Karin's dad came for 3 days, and Karin's mum has been a star - she came for two 3-day stints, and did a lot of mucky painting work without a single complaint - we're so thankful for all the help we've had.

The house itself is a standard English 2-up 2-down terraced house, but it is a wider than a normal terraced house which makes a massive difference. Additionally, it has a kitchen/bathroom extension added out the back, and has had a loft conversion.

Although the back yard is fairly small (by NZ standards) it's big enough for a shed and patio and, more importantly, a paddling pool and slide!
Just *having* a garden is a relief - although we loved our flat in London (Granville Park) and were very sad to leave, it does make a difference being able to walk outside into your own back garden.

We're having a home birth, using a Birthing Pool.
After a few false-alarms last week, we finally setup the Birthing Pool on Sunday (although we have yet to fill it):

(click image to enlarge)
The pool is currently sitting in what would be our dining room, which is attached to the lounge.

A virtual tour of the house so far...

Front of house

The lounge (click image to enlarge)

The nursery (click image to enlarge)
Karin has done a great job of getting in all the supplies/clothes that we think we'll need.
That wardrobe is full of very cute tiny outfits - hard to believe there'll be a baby in them soon!

The master bedroom (click image to enlarge)

The loft room (used as a guest bedroom/office) (click image to enlarge)
This is the last room to be completed, and still has a few boxes lying around.
I managed to assemble the guest bed last night though, so we're in much better shape.
We just have to clear the ensuite of boxes, and we'll be ready for anyone that wants to come and stay!

Local countryside
On Sunday we had some friends round, and went for a lovely walk though the local countryside.
In fact, sitting down on Sunday with a coffee at home was the first time I have sat down and relaxed since moving in - it's been that busy!

We had a great lunch at a local pub, and then went for a little ramble.
What should have been a 90min walk took 3 hours, partly because we're a bit slow, partly because we kept stopping to look at things and take photos.

Karin, Me, and Bump (click image to enlarge)

Walking in the countryside (click image to enlarge)

Karin and a garrulous goat (click to enlarge)

View of the surrounding area (click image to enlarge)

We ended up having ice-creams on the local village green - the perfect end to a lovely day.

How Karin has been
I think Karin has been incredibly lucky with this pregnancy (so far - touch wood).
Apart from some nausea in the first trimester, so hasn't suffered from too much swelling or other uncomfortable-ness.
In fact, she's put on no weight at all - from behind you can't even tell she's pregnant.
People keep commenting on how nice and compact her bump is - apparently the baby is very "inside" which means the bump comes out the front but not around the sides.

Additionally, she's been following a natural birth plan (The Gentle Birth Method by Gowri Motha) which says that you only need an additional 200 calories per day - according to Dr Motha, most women tend to do the "eating for two" regime, and put on a lot weight - which means a bigger baby, which is harder to give birth to.
Not sure how accurate this is, but I'm sure we'll know in a week or two - the perfect weight/size would be around 7.5 pounds according to our midwife.

Speaking of midwives - in order to have a homebirth, we've had to go with an independent midwife (i.e. a private midwife, as opposed to a free midwife under the public NHS system). Our midwife (Deborah from Birthing Solutions - we found her via the Independent Midwives website) has been fantastic - she specialises in home births, and has a very very good rate of intervention-free births. She also inspires confidence with her easy-going manner.

We went on a tour of the maternity unit at the local hospital, which was useful in case we have to go to hospital for any reason.

[Warning: start of rant!]
One thing that surprised me was just how many people seem to think that a hospital is an ideal environment in which to have a child... when we've told people we're having a home birth, most people say "how brave" or "that's different".
I don't understand this - the hospital seems like such an alien place for birth: a pregnant woman isn't sick - why should she need to be in hospital?
Surely a home birth is a natural birth, and a hospital birth is an "unnatural" or "intervention" birth, only needed if you need intervention.

However I think most people have been brought up on a diet of movies/tv programmes/books which portray hospitals as the normal place to have a baby.
I'm not so sure this is a good thing.
[end of rant]

Sorry about that...

The Birthing Pool
The birthing pool is a portable spa pool, pretty much.
In fact, some companies over here actually rent ou a portable spa pool, complete with lights and jets...
In our case, we went with a company in Brighton which customises the pools. The woman who runs the company used to be a midwife, so uses her experience of birth to modify the pools - the main changes are that the pools are shallower (so that your partner can easily put their arms over edges when squatting/sitting in the pool) and the heater/filter unit has a softer cover on it i.e. no sharp edges.

We decided to go with a rented pool rather than one of the inflatable pools you can buy (see BirthPool in a box) for two reasons:

We decided it was more environmentally friendly to get a pool which can be reused, rather than one which we'd just throw in a cupboard somewhere (and which the manufacturer would then have to replace by having a new one made)
I wanted a pool with a built in heater - although more expensive, this means that once labour starts I don't have to faff around trying to get the pool to the right temperature. If you're birthing in the pool, then it needs to be very hot (37-39 deg C). Keeping it at this temperature by filling it via a hose from the kitchen tap, or via the kettle is not what I want to be doing during labour - I want to be supporting Karin!

We set the pool up in the dining room, as it's out of the way and is also close to a water source and a drain.
We haven't filled it up yet, so I hope it doesn't leak.
Apparently, once filled you can keep the water in it for up to 7 days (they supply you with some Ozone chemicals, which are much friendlier than chlorine-based ones).

Hopefully we'll get a chance to use it as a spa pool before the baby arrives - it could be quite fun to watch a movie on the telly from the pool!

Righto, that's it for today.
Keep checking back for more news/photos.

This is where you'll find photos of the new arrival as they come to hand!