Sunday, 8 February 2009
She's all grown up now...
Earlier this morning, the dried up remnant of her umbilical cord fell off, and it looks to be healing very nicely.
The world's cutest baby girl
This photo was taken when she was around 11 hours old... isn't she the cutemost, ever?
The birth of little Anneli
We’d moved to our new home, in Onsala, just south of Göteborg (Gothenburg) in my native Sweden, at the end of December 2008. We were expecting a baby, of unknown gender, around the 13th of February.
Having recently moved, everything is upside down at the moment, and the shipment with all our belongings had just arrived from London on the 23rd of January, so we were in the middle of unpacking, thinking that we’d have plenty of time to get our stuff in order before becoming parents. Everyone knows that first born babies are always two weeks late, right?
Shortly after 9, on the evening of Sunday the 1st of February, I was in the basement, having just carried down an old hi fi system, to make room for the one that had just arrived from London. I heard the voice of my wife from upstairs, and although I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I could tell from the tone of her voice that something was going on, and thought at first that maybe she’d banged her toe into something again, so I ran up to see what I could do to help.
“Baby, my water just broke”
What? Really? Are we going to be parents already? (well, I’ve no idea what I said, but those were some of the thoughts going through my head)
I felt excited, nervous, happy, scared, and ran up to her, giggling to myself. There wasn’t really any doubt, but I still asked her if she was sure, then if the water looked clear, and if she felt anything else.
The water was all clear, so no cause for concern, and we decided she would have a quick shower, and then we’d call the hospital for guidance. We called the hospital around 21:20, and they said that if she wasn’t having any contractions, then there’s no hurry, but they did want us to come in the next morning for a check-up. Pretty much the second that we hung up, the contractions started, and they were regular from the first one. Not painful, but she could feel that something was going on. We started keeping track of the contractions (in a spreadsheet, obviously), and they were 4-6 minutes apart and lasted for about a minute and a half. A bit later, we called the hospital again, and they said that we could come in if we wanted to. If she wasn’t actually in labour yet, then we could still spend the night there, to see how it would progress. We didn’t hesitate to take them up on the offer, since the regular contractions and the speed at which things were happening suggested that it might not be long, and I really didn’t want to take the risk of having to drive down to Varberg (over 50 km, or 30 miles) in the middle of the night, sleep deprived, especially if my wife was then in serious pain and with chance of the baby being delivered any second.
We started to leisurely prepare to go, thinking that we’d wait for the dishwasher to finish before leaving. After a while of running back and forward getting packed, contractions started getting stronger and more regular, so we decided to stop faffing, and just get going. As I was carrying stuff down to the car, I realised that the rear seats were still in the house, from when we were lugging around dishwashers and fridge/freezers, so we had a bit more delay while I was trying to get the seats back, in the dark, whilst feeling sorry for my poor wife who was waiting to get going.
Eventually, we got going, and after a careful drive (I don’t think I’ve spent that long sticking to speed limits since my driving test), we arrived at the hospital a couple of minutes past midnight. During the last five or ten minutes of the drive, she was starting to get quite uncomfortable in the car seat during the contractions, as they were getting stronger and stronger. We parked in one of the three delivery suite parking bays, and navigated the labyrinths that take you from the A&E entrance and up to the delivery suite. After ringing the bell a few times, we were let in, greeted by the same midwife who took our phone call, and showed to one of the delivery rooms.
We were told that she would check the baby’s position, then health, and then do an internal exam to see how the labour was progressing. The first task was to check that the baby was head down, and since she wasn’t 100% sure, she did an ultrasound scan, and could see that the head was engaged, and that everything looked fine. We then had two devices strapped on to the belly, one to measure the contractions, and one to measure the baby’s heart beat , both plugged in to the same monitoring station, showing graphs of the two together, so that they could see that the baby was handling the stress of the contractions. This apparently needed to be plugged in for half an hour to give a good picture of what was going on, which gave me an impression that there was more focus on playing with electronics than the task at hand – delivering a baby. Yeah, I might be an IT and technology geek, but I’m also a sceptic, and believe very strongly in keeping it simple (some would say I’m lazy, but they don’t understand). I knew that the midwife was experienced and that we could trust her, but felt that the focus on the machines was stressing me a bit, so I tried to ignore the electronics. After all, it was my wife who was about to deliver a baby, and humans, as well as all other animals, have done this for squillions of years, without advanced machinery. Yes, it’s good to have medical backup if it’s needed, but we’d both rather avoid unnecessary interventions. Anyhow, after a bit of faffing, the midwife was happy enough with the pretty graphs, and went on to the internal exam. She informed us that my wife was indeed in active labour, and dilated 4 cm. I wasn’t surprised, but very pleased. The midwife suggested that we try going into the shower, as the warm water tends to help relieve pain, and so we did. We stayed in the shower for a while, then came out, and got back onto the bed. It’s all a bit of a blur, but both the nurse and the midwife stopped by a few more times, at some point I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee, we had some cakes that my wife had baked, and then the contractions started getting quite painful.
The average speed for a first time mother is to dilate approximately 1 centimetre per hour, and it’s not uncommon for labour to last for 24 hours before being fully dilated and starting to push. I remember at some point thinking that if this was to go on for 24 hours, it really would be one hell of an ordeal, because it was so intense. I was also expecting the famous “transition”, which is around 7-8 centimetres, which is when the woman tends to want to give up. “Screw this, I don’t want a baby, I’m going home” or “I don’t want a baby, we’ll have puppy instead”.
At around 3 am (not that I had the presence of mind to look at any of the clocks in the room until a few moments later), the midwife came back into the room and said she would do another internal exam to see how things were progressing. I remember mentioning that my wife had thrown up earlier, which typically happens at transition, and asking if she thought it was possible that she had progressed this far already. The midwife said that it’s not uncommon to throw up from the pain, and that that was probably what had happened. I was totally in disbelief when the midwife proclaimed that my wife was fully dilated, 10 cm – when she said that “you can just follow your body now”, it didn’t even register that what she was saying was that she could start pushing. Ten centimetres? Already? But it’s only been half an hour since it was four? It’s been two hours? Really? What time is it? Yes, between 1am and 3am she’d gone from four cm to ten cm, so things were really moving along quite fast.
I can’t remember what position my wife was in, but she got on all fours, which is a good position for pushing, since gravity can help. The midwife and I saw on the screen that the baby’s heart beat went down slightly, and the midwife asked her to change positions, and the pulse went up again. She said that since it was the first time, pushing would normally take one to two hours. The nurse came into the room, and they started preparing all the stuff that they needed for the delivery, while I tried to do what I could to be there for my wife. The weekend before, we’d been to a Profylax (pain management / breathing exercise) course, and I was trying to support my wife by breathing with her, listening to the advice from the midwife, and making sure that she was breathing deep and slowly enough. In a way, I felt like I wasn’t of much use, but at the same time, I could see that my wife was handling it all very well, and probably only needed to know that I was there by her side. After a while of pushing, the midwife said that she could see the head, and I looked down to see what was going on. I could see something small, pale yellowish white, that didn’t look like I what I had expected from brand new life. Part of me worried, but at the same time, I knew that if anything was wrong, the midwife would have acted on it. More and more head started protruding, but I was still mostly looking at my wife’s face, since I wanted to share the moment with her. When the head fully emerged, and she started pushing out the rest of the body, I decided that I’d wait until my wife could see the baby, before I looked, since I didn’t want to cheat by looking first. The midwife then placed the baby on my wife’s chest, and I lifter her feet up and we could see that we had a little red, shaking, slimy baby daughter. The feeling was unreal, and again, the time immediately after delivery is a bit of a blur. I was so relieved that it had all gone so smoothly, without undue pain or difficulties, and so proud of my wife, who coped so well and stuck with her wishes to not be induced, and to not use any pain relief other than nitrous oxide (AKA laughing gas, or gas & air).
Like many other people, my “understanding” of childbirth was largely based on movies and TV – the water breaking during a shopping trip or in a taxi, everyone panicking, the father, who was somewhere else when it all started, is either getting stuck in traffic, caught for speeding on the way to the hospital, having an accident, turning up at the wrong hospital, or all of the above. The woman generally tends to be screaming at everyone, in particular the husband. As pregnancy progressed though, I realised that all this doesn’t have to be the case, that you generally get a fair bit of advance warning before the baby is suddenly born, and that it’s not generally a great big panic. We’ve been discussing what we wanted the birth to be like, and as my wife is a generally very relaxed and calm person, who doesn’t get herself worked up over things, it seemed likely that she’d probably stay calm during delivery, and not have a complete personality transplant. I was also fairly confident, and determined, that I myself, would also keep my cool, and be there for my wife, giving her someone to depend on. As the due date was getting closer, I was more and more confident that we’d have the type of birth that we wanted, and that everything would go well – I just couldn’t really have imagined that it would go so quickly – as a father, I really don’t believe it could have been any easier. I believe that my wife’s attitude, and her preparations, went a long way to ensure that the birth was such a pleasant experience for all of us.
A few days later (I’m writing this on Friday the 6th of February), I’m still overwhelmed by feelings, and the fact that I am a father still hasn’t sunk in. It’s just completely unbelievable that we’ve got such a perfect, beautiful little baby girl, and that my wife delivered her, just that way that she (and both of us) wanted. I am so lucky, and feel so thankful to life that it has all gone so well, I’ve really got everything I could ever wish for. Well, there’s a few cars, bikes, boats and other crap that would be neat to have, but compared to having a baby with my wonderful wife, I’m really not bothered about anything else.
I know perfectly well that we’re far from the first couple in the world to ever have a baby, but nevertheless feel uniquely privileged. I don’t think that anyone can understand how happy I am, and I just want to run out and tell the entire world. Every time I look at her, my heart just melts.
Having recently moved, everything is upside down at the moment, and the shipment with all our belongings had just arrived from London on the 23rd of January, so we were in the middle of unpacking, thinking that we’d have plenty of time to get our stuff in order before becoming parents. Everyone knows that first born babies are always two weeks late, right?
Shortly after 9, on the evening of Sunday the 1st of February, I was in the basement, having just carried down an old hi fi system, to make room for the one that had just arrived from London. I heard the voice of my wife from upstairs, and although I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I could tell from the tone of her voice that something was going on, and thought at first that maybe she’d banged her toe into something again, so I ran up to see what I could do to help.
“Baby, my water just broke”
What? Really? Are we going to be parents already? (well, I’ve no idea what I said, but those were some of the thoughts going through my head)
I felt excited, nervous, happy, scared, and ran up to her, giggling to myself. There wasn’t really any doubt, but I still asked her if she was sure, then if the water looked clear, and if she felt anything else.
The water was all clear, so no cause for concern, and we decided she would have a quick shower, and then we’d call the hospital for guidance. We called the hospital around 21:20, and they said that if she wasn’t having any contractions, then there’s no hurry, but they did want us to come in the next morning for a check-up. Pretty much the second that we hung up, the contractions started, and they were regular from the first one. Not painful, but she could feel that something was going on. We started keeping track of the contractions (in a spreadsheet, obviously), and they were 4-6 minutes apart and lasted for about a minute and a half. A bit later, we called the hospital again, and they said that we could come in if we wanted to. If she wasn’t actually in labour yet, then we could still spend the night there, to see how it would progress. We didn’t hesitate to take them up on the offer, since the regular contractions and the speed at which things were happening suggested that it might not be long, and I really didn’t want to take the risk of having to drive down to Varberg (over 50 km, or 30 miles) in the middle of the night, sleep deprived, especially if my wife was then in serious pain and with chance of the baby being delivered any second.
We started to leisurely prepare to go, thinking that we’d wait for the dishwasher to finish before leaving. After a while of running back and forward getting packed, contractions started getting stronger and more regular, so we decided to stop faffing, and just get going. As I was carrying stuff down to the car, I realised that the rear seats were still in the house, from when we were lugging around dishwashers and fridge/freezers, so we had a bit more delay while I was trying to get the seats back, in the dark, whilst feeling sorry for my poor wife who was waiting to get going.
Eventually, we got going, and after a careful drive (I don’t think I’ve spent that long sticking to speed limits since my driving test), we arrived at the hospital a couple of minutes past midnight. During the last five or ten minutes of the drive, she was starting to get quite uncomfortable in the car seat during the contractions, as they were getting stronger and stronger. We parked in one of the three delivery suite parking bays, and navigated the labyrinths that take you from the A&E entrance and up to the delivery suite. After ringing the bell a few times, we were let in, greeted by the same midwife who took our phone call, and showed to one of the delivery rooms.
We were told that she would check the baby’s position, then health, and then do an internal exam to see how the labour was progressing. The first task was to check that the baby was head down, and since she wasn’t 100% sure, she did an ultrasound scan, and could see that the head was engaged, and that everything looked fine. We then had two devices strapped on to the belly, one to measure the contractions, and one to measure the baby’s heart beat , both plugged in to the same monitoring station, showing graphs of the two together, so that they could see that the baby was handling the stress of the contractions. This apparently needed to be plugged in for half an hour to give a good picture of what was going on, which gave me an impression that there was more focus on playing with electronics than the task at hand – delivering a baby. Yeah, I might be an IT and technology geek, but I’m also a sceptic, and believe very strongly in keeping it simple (some would say I’m lazy, but they don’t understand). I knew that the midwife was experienced and that we could trust her, but felt that the focus on the machines was stressing me a bit, so I tried to ignore the electronics. After all, it was my wife who was about to deliver a baby, and humans, as well as all other animals, have done this for squillions of years, without advanced machinery. Yes, it’s good to have medical backup if it’s needed, but we’d both rather avoid unnecessary interventions. Anyhow, after a bit of faffing, the midwife was happy enough with the pretty graphs, and went on to the internal exam. She informed us that my wife was indeed in active labour, and dilated 4 cm. I wasn’t surprised, but very pleased. The midwife suggested that we try going into the shower, as the warm water tends to help relieve pain, and so we did. We stayed in the shower for a while, then came out, and got back onto the bed. It’s all a bit of a blur, but both the nurse and the midwife stopped by a few more times, at some point I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee, we had some cakes that my wife had baked, and then the contractions started getting quite painful.
The average speed for a first time mother is to dilate approximately 1 centimetre per hour, and it’s not uncommon for labour to last for 24 hours before being fully dilated and starting to push. I remember at some point thinking that if this was to go on for 24 hours, it really would be one hell of an ordeal, because it was so intense. I was also expecting the famous “transition”, which is around 7-8 centimetres, which is when the woman tends to want to give up. “Screw this, I don’t want a baby, I’m going home” or “I don’t want a baby, we’ll have puppy instead”.
At around 3 am (not that I had the presence of mind to look at any of the clocks in the room until a few moments later), the midwife came back into the room and said she would do another internal exam to see how things were progressing. I remember mentioning that my wife had thrown up earlier, which typically happens at transition, and asking if she thought it was possible that she had progressed this far already. The midwife said that it’s not uncommon to throw up from the pain, and that that was probably what had happened. I was totally in disbelief when the midwife proclaimed that my wife was fully dilated, 10 cm – when she said that “you can just follow your body now”, it didn’t even register that what she was saying was that she could start pushing. Ten centimetres? Already? But it’s only been half an hour since it was four? It’s been two hours? Really? What time is it? Yes, between 1am and 3am she’d gone from four cm to ten cm, so things were really moving along quite fast.
I can’t remember what position my wife was in, but she got on all fours, which is a good position for pushing, since gravity can help. The midwife and I saw on the screen that the baby’s heart beat went down slightly, and the midwife asked her to change positions, and the pulse went up again. She said that since it was the first time, pushing would normally take one to two hours. The nurse came into the room, and they started preparing all the stuff that they needed for the delivery, while I tried to do what I could to be there for my wife. The weekend before, we’d been to a Profylax (pain management / breathing exercise) course, and I was trying to support my wife by breathing with her, listening to the advice from the midwife, and making sure that she was breathing deep and slowly enough. In a way, I felt like I wasn’t of much use, but at the same time, I could see that my wife was handling it all very well, and probably only needed to know that I was there by her side. After a while of pushing, the midwife said that she could see the head, and I looked down to see what was going on. I could see something small, pale yellowish white, that didn’t look like I what I had expected from brand new life. Part of me worried, but at the same time, I knew that if anything was wrong, the midwife would have acted on it. More and more head started protruding, but I was still mostly looking at my wife’s face, since I wanted to share the moment with her. When the head fully emerged, and she started pushing out the rest of the body, I decided that I’d wait until my wife could see the baby, before I looked, since I didn’t want to cheat by looking first. The midwife then placed the baby on my wife’s chest, and I lifter her feet up and we could see that we had a little red, shaking, slimy baby daughter. The feeling was unreal, and again, the time immediately after delivery is a bit of a blur. I was so relieved that it had all gone so smoothly, without undue pain or difficulties, and so proud of my wife, who coped so well and stuck with her wishes to not be induced, and to not use any pain relief other than nitrous oxide (AKA laughing gas, or gas & air).
Like many other people, my “understanding” of childbirth was largely based on movies and TV – the water breaking during a shopping trip or in a taxi, everyone panicking, the father, who was somewhere else when it all started, is either getting stuck in traffic, caught for speeding on the way to the hospital, having an accident, turning up at the wrong hospital, or all of the above. The woman generally tends to be screaming at everyone, in particular the husband. As pregnancy progressed though, I realised that all this doesn’t have to be the case, that you generally get a fair bit of advance warning before the baby is suddenly born, and that it’s not generally a great big panic. We’ve been discussing what we wanted the birth to be like, and as my wife is a generally very relaxed and calm person, who doesn’t get herself worked up over things, it seemed likely that she’d probably stay calm during delivery, and not have a complete personality transplant. I was also fairly confident, and determined, that I myself, would also keep my cool, and be there for my wife, giving her someone to depend on. As the due date was getting closer, I was more and more confident that we’d have the type of birth that we wanted, and that everything would go well – I just couldn’t really have imagined that it would go so quickly – as a father, I really don’t believe it could have been any easier. I believe that my wife’s attitude, and her preparations, went a long way to ensure that the birth was such a pleasant experience for all of us.
A few days later (I’m writing this on Friday the 6th of February), I’m still overwhelmed by feelings, and the fact that I am a father still hasn’t sunk in. It’s just completely unbelievable that we’ve got such a perfect, beautiful little baby girl, and that my wife delivered her, just that way that she (and both of us) wanted. I am so lucky, and feel so thankful to life that it has all gone so well, I’ve really got everything I could ever wish for. Well, there’s a few cars, bikes, boats and other crap that would be neat to have, but compared to having a baby with my wonderful wife, I’m really not bothered about anything else.
I know perfectly well that we’re far from the first couple in the world to ever have a baby, but nevertheless feel uniquely privileged. I don’t think that anyone can understand how happy I am, and I just want to run out and tell the entire world. Every time I look at her, my heart just melts.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Better rarely than never?
I'm still here, there's just SO much to do...
Before talking about the millions of projects we've got going on, I'll start with a few pictures.
So, back in the summer, we got the house:
There's a pile of trees and stuff in the foreground, from when I was clearing out the garden a bit back in the summer. The lawn is slowly turning in to a jungle...
As mentioned in a recent post, we also got ourselves a car (a blue one):
We're starting to get things in order, and this is what the lounge looks like, when it's not too messy... We've got ourselves one of those big, clever, flat television thingies, but we're still waiting for the big, clever sofa that we'll be lying on when watching it, and whenever we decide to sit down and relax, there's nothing on that we want to watch anyway :)
We've painted what is to become the baby room, and laid down some new floor that we picked up for free (well, nearly) from IKEA.
Once the new floor was down, we bought a cabinet/changing table...
The main project we've got going on at the moment is rebuilding the cleaning cupboard in the kitchen into a general-purpose kitchen cupboard, for all our pots and pans that will hopefully be arriving from London later this week. We're also waiting for a new dishwasher, so I've got a bit of a plumbing exercise in connecting that. There's been loads of little electrical things that I've needed to sort out, and a few that are still on the list, like adding some more lights and making the electrical installation in the carport a bit more permanent...
We've just started unpacking the stuff that we shipped back in August, and as I'd feared from seeing the look of the boxes (crushed and nearly coming apart), quite a few things are broken. Like all shipping companies, the company we used (Nova Transport) don't take any responsibility for their work, so there's no way that we can get any compensation from them, despite it being obvious that they've been negligent when handling our stuff.
On the baby front, we've been to see our midwife a few times now, and been to two antenatal classes (föräldragrupp). It's been quite good, and it's nice to meet some other soon-to-be parents in the area.
Wifelet has been having some trouble with her hands going numb, because of what is known as the carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by nerves getting compressed because of general pregnancy-related bloating. Not much fun, as it's making it difficult for her to do stuff with her hands, such as typing, knitting, or anything else involving hands and fingers.
On Friday and Saturday, we're going on a Profylax course - breathing techniques that are intended to relieve pain during labour and delivery. According to the midwife who holds the antenatal classes, it's very obvious in the labour wards what couples have been to one of these courses, and who hasn't. My parents went on one back in the seventies, and they've been reasonably common in Sweden since then, or so I've been led to believe...
This weekend, we had a (married) couple of architects over to look at the existing house as well as the garden and suroundings, so that they can draw some suggestions for the upcoming rebuild. It's going to be a very big project, and might simply be a case of knocking the existing house down and building a new one... it all feels slightly daunting right now, and I'm not too excited by the idea of packing all our stuff down again, having barely started to unpack...
Only four or so weeks to go now before little squirt arrives, and so many other little (and big) things to do, that we keep forgetting about it. I hope that most of the big things will be done, so we can forget about other crap, and just focus on the baby when that day comes...
This post is likely to be riddled with typos and other fat-finger issues... Because of issues with my laptop, I'm using my wife's one, which doesn't have the touchpad disabled. I really really f***ing hate touchpads. It's completely impossible to type on a laptop with a touchpad, since the pointer just keeps jumping around all over the place, and suddenly you're typing in a different part of the page. I've also got a sticky plaster on one of my fingers, having managed to cut myself on an unusually sharp kitchen worktop at IKEA today... I'll hopefully get the little pregnant one to proof read it later, since I can't be bothered to re-read it all right now....
Let's see if I manage another post before the baby photos start arriving :)
Before talking about the millions of projects we've got going on, I'll start with a few pictures.
So, back in the summer, we got the house:
There's a pile of trees and stuff in the foreground, from when I was clearing out the garden a bit back in the summer. The lawn is slowly turning in to a jungle...
As mentioned in a recent post, we also got ourselves a car (a blue one):
We're starting to get things in order, and this is what the lounge looks like, when it's not too messy... We've got ourselves one of those big, clever, flat television thingies, but we're still waiting for the big, clever sofa that we'll be lying on when watching it, and whenever we decide to sit down and relax, there's nothing on that we want to watch anyway :)
We've painted what is to become the baby room, and laid down some new floor that we picked up for free (well, nearly) from IKEA.
Once the new floor was down, we bought a cabinet/changing table...
The main project we've got going on at the moment is rebuilding the cleaning cupboard in the kitchen into a general-purpose kitchen cupboard, for all our pots and pans that will hopefully be arriving from London later this week. We're also waiting for a new dishwasher, so I've got a bit of a plumbing exercise in connecting that. There's been loads of little electrical things that I've needed to sort out, and a few that are still on the list, like adding some more lights and making the electrical installation in the carport a bit more permanent...
We've just started unpacking the stuff that we shipped back in August, and as I'd feared from seeing the look of the boxes (crushed and nearly coming apart), quite a few things are broken. Like all shipping companies, the company we used (Nova Transport) don't take any responsibility for their work, so there's no way that we can get any compensation from them, despite it being obvious that they've been negligent when handling our stuff.
On the baby front, we've been to see our midwife a few times now, and been to two antenatal classes (föräldragrupp). It's been quite good, and it's nice to meet some other soon-to-be parents in the area.
Wifelet has been having some trouble with her hands going numb, because of what is known as the carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by nerves getting compressed because of general pregnancy-related bloating. Not much fun, as it's making it difficult for her to do stuff with her hands, such as typing, knitting, or anything else involving hands and fingers.
On Friday and Saturday, we're going on a Profylax course - breathing techniques that are intended to relieve pain during labour and delivery. According to the midwife who holds the antenatal classes, it's very obvious in the labour wards what couples have been to one of these courses, and who hasn't. My parents went on one back in the seventies, and they've been reasonably common in Sweden since then, or so I've been led to believe...
This weekend, we had a (married) couple of architects over to look at the existing house as well as the garden and suroundings, so that they can draw some suggestions for the upcoming rebuild. It's going to be a very big project, and might simply be a case of knocking the existing house down and building a new one... it all feels slightly daunting right now, and I'm not too excited by the idea of packing all our stuff down again, having barely started to unpack...
Only four or so weeks to go now before little squirt arrives, and so many other little (and big) things to do, that we keep forgetting about it. I hope that most of the big things will be done, so we can forget about other crap, and just focus on the baby when that day comes...
This post is likely to be riddled with typos and other fat-finger issues... Because of issues with my laptop, I'm using my wife's one, which doesn't have the touchpad disabled. I really really f***ing hate touchpads. It's completely impossible to type on a laptop with a touchpad, since the pointer just keeps jumping around all over the place, and suddenly you're typing in a different part of the page. I've also got a sticky plaster on one of my fingers, having managed to cut myself on an unusually sharp kitchen worktop at IKEA today... I'll hopefully get the little pregnant one to proof read it later, since I can't be bothered to re-read it all right now....
Let's see if I manage another post before the baby photos start arriving :)
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
"It's so weird that we're going to have a baby..."
And then she had a bit of a giggle attack...
Yeah, despite her now being really large, and quite clearly very pregnant, it still hasn't really sunk in.
We're having quite a hectic time, but I've just finished laying new floor in what will be the baby's bedroom tonight, and we're done with all the painting in the house, so it's starting to feel like we're making some progress.
I keep meaning to post a proper update, including some photos, and I should get around to doing so sometime this week.
Yeah, despite her now being really large, and quite clearly very pregnant, it still hasn't really sunk in.
We're having quite a hectic time, but I've just finished laying new floor in what will be the baby's bedroom tonight, and we're done with all the painting in the house, so it's starting to feel like we're making some progress.
I keep meaning to post a proper update, including some photos, and I should get around to doing so sometime this week.
Monday, 22 December 2008
We're here!
We arrived on Friday night on schedule, picked up the rental car and drove to the house. It felt pretty unreal when we arrived (and it still does), driving the roads that are so familiar, but trying to remember that we're not just here on holiday, we've actually moved here now.
We've had quite a busy few days, since there's so much stuff to sort out - not just the Christmas shopping, but also getting things like wardrobe rails, towels, pyjamas, curtain rods... oh, and a car! (Aunt A, don't read the rest of this paragraph, as it's all blah, blah, car, blah, and you'll get bored ;-) ) As mentioned, we'd eyed one up before coming, and we went to buy it today, after looking it over and going for a quick test drive. It was in great condition as expected, and is a real pleasure to drive, although we haven't driven it much yet. The engine is really great, and although it's a heavier and a hell of a lot less powerful than the M3 was (it is a family estate after all, and it's not an RS6 or an M5), I think I'll be quite happy with it. It's "only" got 185/210 bhp (depending on if you run it on petrol or E85 ethanol), but thanks to the turbo, the torque is quite reasonable when you put your foot down, so it should be good enough now that I'm settling down as a family man. It's a very comfortable and luxurious feeling car to drive, and I'm actually quite looking forward to long drives up to Dalarna to see our family up there.
On Saturday evening, I started going through the letters and packages from Telia (the previously state owned telephone company), relating to the broadband connection that we were expecting to have installed sometime in mid-January... it turned out it was all ready to go, and as soon as I plugged in it all just worked... it's nice being in a country where stuff just works (well, apart from getting a mobile... more on that later). As Lou Reed said in the movie Smoke, "I get scared in places like Sweden, where everything just works". So, we've now got our ADSL connection, which is not great by Swedish standards, since we are in a fairly rural area, but it's still faster than any ADSL connection I've ever experienced. We've also got digital TV over the broadband connection, but we'll hold off buying an actual TV screen until the mellandagsrea (most shops in Sweden have sales between Christmas and the new year), and in a few days our phone line will be switched over to run over the broadband connection. All in all, it will cost us about the same as the BT phone + very poor ADSL connection that we had in London.
One thing that wasn't as straightforward as I thought was to get ourselves new mobiles... Since I'm still not registered as a resident, it seems that credit checks just fail, and most companies aren't clever enough to let their staff use a bit of common sense. We could prove to them that we don't have a mortgage on our house, which does suggest that our finances are mostly in order... they can also check with our bank to see that we've got enough money to probably pay for the phones for about as long as mankind is likely to survive, but that doesn't help... One of the large mobile operators, 3, apparently won't talk to anyone who hasn't been a permanent resident for the last 6 months, regardless of their financial situation. That's lost them both of us as customers, as we were going to go with them, and they'll probably lose my mum as soon as her contract is up for renewal, since she wanted to be on the same network as us, for free inter-network calls. So, admittedly, not everything is perfect, even in Sweden...
The other night, the bump seemed to have another growth spurt - we'd just gone to bed on Saturday night, having enjoyed a nice steak with cream sauce (since we can get lactose free cream here, I can make cream sauces again, yay!!!), and both thought that the bump suddenly looked a lot bigger... it wasn't just gas, and it's stayed that way, so I guess the little squirt is still putting on weight.
This morning, before going to pick up the car, we went to Skatteverket (the Swedish tax authority) to register ourselves as residents. We caused a bit of confusion, for various reasons, including that Mrs Preggers' name change hadn't gone through here when we got married, but we hope that it's all going through, so that when it's all been processed, we'll both be entered in the population register as living at our new address, and Mrs Preggers will get her national ID number, so that she actually starts "existing" in this country. Without an ID number, you don't exist, and no companies or authorities know who you are...
On our shopping trip today, we got a Christmas tree foot, but since the boot was already filled up with the summer wheels (us Swedes tend to have one set of wheels for the summer tyres, and one for the winter tyre), there was just no chance of stuffing a tree in there, and we'll have to get one tomorrow. We even bought a tarpaulin so that it won't make the inside of the new shiny car all grubby :)
There's still so much stuff to do around the house, and before doing much else, we really need to paint the two small bedrooms. We haven't even unpacked most of the stuff that we shipped back in August yet, except for one box with a few CDs, before I realised that the broadband was active, and that we've got all the music we could ever need on the Interwebs.
It's getting late, so it's time for some rooibos and an episode of Desperate Housewives. And that's rooibos flavoured rooibos - not raspberry flavoured, or cactus and lime flavoured, or liquorice and mustard flavoured. Well, the last one was made up, but the Swedes (the rest of them, not me), are totally obsessed with flavouring stuff... there's so much mineral water that has been contaminated with lemon, grapefruit, cucumber, blackcurrants and all sorts of other things. Since those books about a bunch of old ladies who drank rooibos or something (haven't read any), rooibos has gotten quite popular here, but when we've seen it in cafes, it's always been flavoured with something, presumably making it taste just like all the other millions of flavoured "teas" that don't actually taste like tea at all. Silly Swedes... Oh, and Mrs Preggers have gone all weird, and suddenly started drinking her rooibos with milk and sugar, something she previously would have seen as a clear sign of mental illness. I'm not complaining that her taste is changing though, especially since she's recently started enjoying the smell of Islay whisky, and in particular Ardbeg (the best whisky in the known universe, if you ask me). She's wet her tongue with it a few times, without spitting, so I've really got my hopes up that we'll be able to enjoy a wee dram together after she's given birth, and maybe go on holiday to Islay some time - I spent a couple of days there with my father in 2006, and really enjoyed it.
Anyway, I think I said something about tea and telly...
We've had quite a busy few days, since there's so much stuff to sort out - not just the Christmas shopping, but also getting things like wardrobe rails, towels, pyjamas, curtain rods... oh, and a car! (Aunt A, don't read the rest of this paragraph, as it's all blah, blah, car, blah, and you'll get bored ;-) ) As mentioned, we'd eyed one up before coming, and we went to buy it today, after looking it over and going for a quick test drive. It was in great condition as expected, and is a real pleasure to drive, although we haven't driven it much yet. The engine is really great, and although it's a heavier and a hell of a lot less powerful than the M3 was (it is a family estate after all, and it's not an RS6 or an M5), I think I'll be quite happy with it. It's "only" got 185/210 bhp (depending on if you run it on petrol or E85 ethanol), but thanks to the turbo, the torque is quite reasonable when you put your foot down, so it should be good enough now that I'm settling down as a family man. It's a very comfortable and luxurious feeling car to drive, and I'm actually quite looking forward to long drives up to Dalarna to see our family up there.
On Saturday evening, I started going through the letters and packages from Telia (the previously state owned telephone company), relating to the broadband connection that we were expecting to have installed sometime in mid-January... it turned out it was all ready to go, and as soon as I plugged in it all just worked... it's nice being in a country where stuff just works (well, apart from getting a mobile... more on that later). As Lou Reed said in the movie Smoke, "I get scared in places like Sweden, where everything just works". So, we've now got our ADSL connection, which is not great by Swedish standards, since we are in a fairly rural area, but it's still faster than any ADSL connection I've ever experienced. We've also got digital TV over the broadband connection, but we'll hold off buying an actual TV screen until the mellandagsrea (most shops in Sweden have sales between Christmas and the new year), and in a few days our phone line will be switched over to run over the broadband connection. All in all, it will cost us about the same as the BT phone + very poor ADSL connection that we had in London.
One thing that wasn't as straightforward as I thought was to get ourselves new mobiles... Since I'm still not registered as a resident, it seems that credit checks just fail, and most companies aren't clever enough to let their staff use a bit of common sense. We could prove to them that we don't have a mortgage on our house, which does suggest that our finances are mostly in order... they can also check with our bank to see that we've got enough money to probably pay for the phones for about as long as mankind is likely to survive, but that doesn't help... One of the large mobile operators, 3, apparently won't talk to anyone who hasn't been a permanent resident for the last 6 months, regardless of their financial situation. That's lost them both of us as customers, as we were going to go with them, and they'll probably lose my mum as soon as her contract is up for renewal, since she wanted to be on the same network as us, for free inter-network calls. So, admittedly, not everything is perfect, even in Sweden...
The other night, the bump seemed to have another growth spurt - we'd just gone to bed on Saturday night, having enjoyed a nice steak with cream sauce (since we can get lactose free cream here, I can make cream sauces again, yay!!!), and both thought that the bump suddenly looked a lot bigger... it wasn't just gas, and it's stayed that way, so I guess the little squirt is still putting on weight.
This morning, before going to pick up the car, we went to Skatteverket (the Swedish tax authority) to register ourselves as residents. We caused a bit of confusion, for various reasons, including that Mrs Preggers' name change hadn't gone through here when we got married, but we hope that it's all going through, so that when it's all been processed, we'll both be entered in the population register as living at our new address, and Mrs Preggers will get her national ID number, so that she actually starts "existing" in this country. Without an ID number, you don't exist, and no companies or authorities know who you are...
On our shopping trip today, we got a Christmas tree foot, but since the boot was already filled up with the summer wheels (us Swedes tend to have one set of wheels for the summer tyres, and one for the winter tyre), there was just no chance of stuffing a tree in there, and we'll have to get one tomorrow. We even bought a tarpaulin so that it won't make the inside of the new shiny car all grubby :)
There's still so much stuff to do around the house, and before doing much else, we really need to paint the two small bedrooms. We haven't even unpacked most of the stuff that we shipped back in August yet, except for one box with a few CDs, before I realised that the broadband was active, and that we've got all the music we could ever need on the Interwebs.
It's getting late, so it's time for some rooibos and an episode of Desperate Housewives. And that's rooibos flavoured rooibos - not raspberry flavoured, or cactus and lime flavoured, or liquorice and mustard flavoured. Well, the last one was made up, but the Swedes (the rest of them, not me), are totally obsessed with flavouring stuff... there's so much mineral water that has been contaminated with lemon, grapefruit, cucumber, blackcurrants and all sorts of other things. Since those books about a bunch of old ladies who drank rooibos or something (haven't read any), rooibos has gotten quite popular here, but when we've seen it in cafes, it's always been flavoured with something, presumably making it taste just like all the other millions of flavoured "teas" that don't actually taste like tea at all. Silly Swedes... Oh, and Mrs Preggers have gone all weird, and suddenly started drinking her rooibos with milk and sugar, something she previously would have seen as a clear sign of mental illness. I'm not complaining that her taste is changing though, especially since she's recently started enjoying the smell of Islay whisky, and in particular Ardbeg (the best whisky in the known universe, if you ask me). She's wet her tongue with it a few times, without spitting, so I've really got my hopes up that we'll be able to enjoy a wee dram together after she's given birth, and maybe go on holiday to Islay some time - I spent a couple of days there with my father in 2006, and really enjoyed it.
Anyway, I think I said something about tea and telly...
Friday, 19 December 2008
So far, all is well...
The moving truck arrived, and the cars had still not been moved... when the truck had pulled up, a woman came walking down the street and asked if we wanted her to move her car, but unfortunately she was the owner of the car in the middle of the space we wanted, and since a big truck can't quite squeeze into the space taken up by a Saab 9-3, it wasn't of much help...
In the end, they parked in the bay in front, just before the start of the bus lane, by the big sign that says "No loading, 7-10am"... I kept a nervous eye out for traffic wardens (thieving little bastards, I hate them), and the movers started working. The next thing was for someone to come and pick up our old bed, which the buyers had asked for to be removed, and we had advertised on Freecycle. Someone had arranged to come and pick it up at 9:30, and by 9:50-ish I was starting to get a bit nervous, since if we didn't get it picked up, we would have had to arrange to have it removed somehow, which would be both a hassle and an expense, plus we really don't like the idea of a perfectly good bed ending up at a landfill site.
Eventually, the traffic warden turned up, a new guy who I haven't seen before, and he was actually quite helpful. Mrs Preggers had already called the council to ask them to move the cars that were in our way, but they didn't actually do anything until the warden called them up on the radio. They started calling the owners of the cars, and we got enough cars moved to be able to park the truck in the suspended bays, and we didn't get a ticket for being parked in the right place. Shortly after the traffic warden, the guy who was taking the bed turned up, and we could mostly stop worrying for a while... That's until I got the bike up on the truck, and the movers started tying it down... first off there wasn't anything for them to tie the bike down to, and secondly they didn't really seem to know what they were doing. Since the bike is in absolutely perfect condition, I really, really don't want it to get damaged, and hope it will turn up in Sweden the same condition as when it left London.
Yesterday we cleaned the flat out, and then decided to call the estate agent to make sure that they were open before heading there with the keys, but they weren't answering! We decided to go anyway, figuring that we could drop the keys through their letter slot if they weren't open. We got there, and the lights were on, the opening times said that they close at 7, no sign saying "sorry, no-one's in at the moment, we'll be back at Xpm", but there was no-one in the office... we got slightly worried, but decided to drop the keys off with a note, and had a call later in the evening to say that they'd been received.
We're now getting ready to leave for Heathrow in an hour and a bit, and we've had the call from our lawyer to say that the money for the sale is in her account, and they're transferring it to us, so we should have it shortly! It's such a relief, and after a really hellish journey by bus and tube yesterday, we couldn't be happier to finally leave London...
The next post will be made from Sweden :)
In the end, they parked in the bay in front, just before the start of the bus lane, by the big sign that says "No loading, 7-10am"... I kept a nervous eye out for traffic wardens (thieving little bastards, I hate them), and the movers started working. The next thing was for someone to come and pick up our old bed, which the buyers had asked for to be removed, and we had advertised on Freecycle. Someone had arranged to come and pick it up at 9:30, and by 9:50-ish I was starting to get a bit nervous, since if we didn't get it picked up, we would have had to arrange to have it removed somehow, which would be both a hassle and an expense, plus we really don't like the idea of a perfectly good bed ending up at a landfill site.
Eventually, the traffic warden turned up, a new guy who I haven't seen before, and he was actually quite helpful. Mrs Preggers had already called the council to ask them to move the cars that were in our way, but they didn't actually do anything until the warden called them up on the radio. They started calling the owners of the cars, and we got enough cars moved to be able to park the truck in the suspended bays, and we didn't get a ticket for being parked in the right place. Shortly after the traffic warden, the guy who was taking the bed turned up, and we could mostly stop worrying for a while... That's until I got the bike up on the truck, and the movers started tying it down... first off there wasn't anything for them to tie the bike down to, and secondly they didn't really seem to know what they were doing. Since the bike is in absolutely perfect condition, I really, really don't want it to get damaged, and hope it will turn up in Sweden the same condition as when it left London.
Yesterday we cleaned the flat out, and then decided to call the estate agent to make sure that they were open before heading there with the keys, but they weren't answering! We decided to go anyway, figuring that we could drop the keys through their letter slot if they weren't open. We got there, and the lights were on, the opening times said that they close at 7, no sign saying "sorry, no-one's in at the moment, we'll be back at Xpm", but there was no-one in the office... we got slightly worried, but decided to drop the keys off with a note, and had a call later in the evening to say that they'd been received.
We're now getting ready to leave for Heathrow in an hour and a bit, and we've had the call from our lawyer to say that the money for the sale is in her account, and they're transferring it to us, so we should have it shortly! It's such a relief, and after a really hellish journey by bus and tube yesterday, we couldn't be happier to finally leave London...
The next post will be made from Sweden :)
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