Special birthdays, festive breakages, masses of knitting, and new year hope

 Here we are on the 13th January in the year twenty twenty one............ HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? It sounds more like a sci-fi title....... 

I remember many years ago, trying to work out how old I would be in the year 2000, the year 2010...... did I get as far as 2021? I don’t recall. I think I remember wondering how I would feel when I was that old!

Here I am aged 64 - (going to be 65 this birthday in April) ........ and happy to be here!

 I do know that in the distant past when I was doing those mental caculations, I was anticipating receiving my state pension at the age of 60 - that was in 2016! And I was one of those women who were possibly ‘cheated’ by the vagaries of government policy - no notification - just a gradual dawning that it wasn’t going to happen as we’d been led to expect.

I decided some fifteen years or so ago that I would work as long as I felt able to. I love being a midwife (much, much better than those years of teaching, Charlotte......... this is referring to a conversation I had yesterday with one of my old students, who is making a fantastic job of home schooling, but asked me how I stood being a teacher.....). I have been fortunate to really revel in the position of community midwife - it was my absolute calling, and I never really wanted to do anything else after discovering how much I loved being in the team at St Helier. I’m not too sure how many women in London that I’ve had the privilege to care for over the two decades that I’ve been doing this now. Countless - and every one special in some way or another. 

Today is the fourteenth birthing day of one of those women....... I was asked to care for her by her husband,  a friend in the ice hockey world, and I agreed..... she booked with our trust and I took on her care. She won’t mind me telling you that she is very “precious”, and I feared that we’d be having conversations about elective c sections as her time approached....... she surprised me.... the more I nattered on about ‘normality’ and the ‘wonder of endorphins’ as I palpated her growing bump, I could see the expression on her face changing. She decided, at around 32 weeks, that she’d like to have a home birth..... WHAAAAAT? Really? I didn’t ever imagine that we would go ahead with this...she’d be yelling for an epidural with the first contraction! I vaguely chatted about hypnobirthing and didn’t really think about it any more - but late at night on the 12th January, she called me telling me she was ‘bleeding’..... I had been asleep and told her to call the labour ward - they’d probably bring her in for monitoring........ She called me back after half and hour or so, telling me that she’d had a chat with a midwife on labour ward and they suggested that she was in labour...... I had pre-empted this conversation, as I’d started to wake up, I had begun to think much the same. She told me she was listening to her hypnobirthing tape (was it a tape? Not sure, might have been a disc.......) and that she was doing fine. No waters broken, just that one episode of a bit of blood. Baby moving well, and no signs of anything amiss. I was already getting dressed at that point and decided to ‘wander’ in to the unit and fetch my stuff,

and make my way slowly to the house, by which time the need for the epidural would have kicked in......  I did that, but had a few slightly more panicked phone calls from hubby who told me that she’d moved to the loo, and wouldn’t get off it. I did the old midwife routine of soothing noises and reassurance and started to speed up a bit..... and by the time I’d arrived in SW19, the phone calls were coming thick and fast.

As I ran through the front door, I said “I’m just going to call my colleague as second midwife” which was greeted by wails from upstairs “NO! NO! Don’t  do anything.! Just come up here and tell me what this is!!!!” I dropped everything and ran up the stairs (much to dad’s relief) and saw my ‘special’ patient sitting on the loo clutching a pad of bloodstained loo roll in her hand.......

“That’s ok” I reassured her “It’s just some bloody show.” (Midwife speak 😏)

“NO.No.Nooooooooo! What’s this coming out of my bottom?” She wailed. 

As I supported and tipped her forward to take a peek,  I was amazed to see that the baby’s head was indeed right there. I was thankful for many things right at that point.

Firstly - thankful for the underfloor heating in the bathroom....

Secondly - thankful for my midwife’s intuition - which had speeded me up at some point during the process

Thirdly - for those hypnobirthing courses I’d recommended

And fourthly? I’m not soo sure what the fourth reason to be thankful was....... possibly the fact that I had indeed arrived in time to prevent that perfect tiny creature going round the u bend........ more likely for the heated towel rail and the mass of beautiful John Lewis towels to hand, beautifully warmed........

Baby was born in that lovely warm bathroom with her mum kneeling in front of the loo. Perfect. Just goes to show. Never write anyone off! 

I’ve told that story quite a lot over the years. And she’s fourteen now. Happy birthday gorgeous girl! 

We had a lovely lockdown Christmas. Lou had gone to stay with her parents in Toulouse (managed to fly out the morning of Boris’s Tier 4 announcements) so Ned was here on his own. Josh was able to come with Zephy and stay with us here, as he is a single parent and we constituted his bubble. Sadly Rupert and Jaye had to stay away. So, I realised at some point during the festivities that once again, I was the only female and had a houseful of blokes. Brilliant...... roll up those sleeves. We had lovely food, of course. Beef wellington on Christmas Eve, and turkey and all the trimmings on Christmas day. I remembered, during the culinary preparation, why we don’t have Beef Wellington more than twice in a decade... that fillet of beef cost me £54. Yes. FIFTY FOUR pounds. And that was before I’d added prosciutto and pate to the bill. It was delicious mind. It’ll need to be remembered - we’re not having it again for a good few years. 

I realised at some point that I had forgotten to buy crackers, and sent two sons out on the hunt on Christmas Eve........ not a cracker in sight in Addiscombe....... had to resort to home made hats, and made up jokes (Zephy has quite a good repertoire, mostly involving poo or bums) . I have decided that this will now become our new Quiney tradition - you’ll have to make a hat for another member of the family........ Thanks to Who Gives a Crap toilet paper, I had a ready supply of perfectly sized coloured paper.........

We had the normal quantity of breakages in the kitchen - one of the problems of having a slate tiled floor is that nothing bounces when you drop it....... 

but we had further malfunctions too......... the shower stopped draining at some point over the holiday, and I only discovered this fact when I poked my nose in the bathroom and discovered every towel in our possession drenched on the floor soaking up the water......... I cannot describe what came out of the drainage trap...........

New neighbours moved in next door just before Christmas and our internet started misbehaving. I then realised that our landline wasn’t working either, and after two visits from Virgin Media engineers, it transpires that a new connection for the neighbours was taken off our cable in the street. This remains unsorted, and I am girding my loins for a battle with Virgin Media that will probably result in me saying “and why exactly am I paying for this service?” One of the visiting engineers popped a booster behind the television which restored the internet to some level. But still not the megadocious speed that Virgin claim in their advertising campaigns. 

During the internet-down period, Peter and I decided to re-watch Game of Thrones (we have the DVDs) and this has become our nightly routine since then. I would advise anyone to watch if for a second time! SO much easier to understand. I would also tentatively suggest that watching with subtitles is good too? I can spell all the characters’ names now! Unless you are like my Ned (who has read the books) it’s a revelation to discover that all those important warriors are SERS and not SIRS........ I also think I might adopt the spelling of Petyr too....useful for a dyslectic. 

On December 29th, someone decided to try to steal my identity......I didn’t realise straight away - took me a couple of days before I spotted the e mail from Facebook asking me if I had changed the main e mail address associated with the account...... By the time I tried to act, I was locked out and couldn’t access it. I foolishly set up another account. BAD MOVE! No-one wanted to befriend me because they assumed the new account was the hacker, and I couldn’t then contact facebook because all communications thereafter related to my new account. 

I am so grateful to my old friend Sid’s daughter Hannah...... Hannah the Spanner..... who has spent literally hours sorting out the problem for me, and is also cleaning up my MacBook for me too! I am forever in your debt, Hann! And I can repay you in the meantime with a little something I have knitted up for baby George.........

Ah... knitting.... I have done so much knitting that I now have callouses on various digits! 

I decided that I would make all the boys jumpers for Christmas . This is a big undertaking when they are the size of my sons.......... I managed it - but only to have Josh tell me that he preferred his brothers’ jumpers, and could I possibly make him one, in black, like theirs? 

here is Ned in his massive jumper: 

You can see the size here - nice perspective........

I have to say that it was worth the effort to make Josh his new jumper - I don’t think he’s ever thanked me quite so much - and also called me a legend (which is normally a moniker reserved for Petyr........)

And here is Josh in his black variant, hat to match: 

Clever pattern - all knitted on one needle only - so there are no seams to stitch up....... however - after four massive sweaters, I’m happy to return to knitting for babies and little chaps!

I was grateful for the Monstrous amount of knitting I committed myself to because last Friday we had the final calamitous breakdown of the festive period...... the boiler stopped working. On the coldest day of the year so far (we hadn’t had many, to be fair)...... no display at all on the boiler unit. Nothing, just a whirring sound. 

After numerous abortive attempts to speak to someone at British Gas, and after an emergency run to Screwfix to purchase two oil heaters, I eventually lost my temper with the automated voice on the other end of the telephone (not the landline, you understand, because that isn’t working either 😩)  and swore loudly, and at great length. At this point, there was a long pause, and the voice said “we’ll have to call you back, we think you have a problem” ......

The long and the short of it is that British Gas Engineers were on strike. It was the coldest day of the year. I used the cancer card to move myself up the priority list. An engineer came and diagnosed a non-functioning circuit board and ‘ I’ll have to get the office to order a new one’... It was a Friday. I didn’t anticipate getting one over the weekend. And by the Sunday when I’d heard nothing, I resorted to Twitter. What a result! I was contacted within 2 minutes! They have their social media team working 24/7.....do  have a Twitter account everyone - just for complaints!

A lovely engineer called Ben came yesterday and got us back up and running - only 5 days with no heating. No heating, I can actually cope with (reminds me of my childhood) but no hot water???????? NO! Don’t want to do that agin in a hurry.

SO you’ll understand now why I was grateful for the knitting challenges - when you sit and knit a jumper in one piece for a large man, Its like having a blanket on your lap as it grows!. Perfect solution when you have no radiators working!

I cannot finish this blog without mentioning another special birthday. Petyr (Quiney, not Baelish) was sixty on January 3rd.

We were supposed to be celebrating at a huge converted barn in Monmouthshire with all the family, but Covid and Lockdown put paid to that! Which reminds me - I don’t think they’ve reimbursed me for that yet! Another telephone rant coming........ might just hand that over to the credit card company - save my blood pressure..........

Here he is - the legend is now Sixty - he keeps calling himself a pensioner, and I have to remind him that this is not the case - he can however apply for an over 60 Oyster card! Whoop-di-doo!

That leaves me with the hopes for the new year. I was enormously grateful to receive lovely messages in christmas cards endorsing better things to come...... let’s hope the world returns to normal as soon as possible. We should all give thanks to those specialists who devote their lives to making this world a better place - using science and technology to correct wrongs and put the world back on an even keel, create life rescuing drugs and healing those of us who need healing......... let’s not dwell on the bastards (who are equally clever) doing malicious things to tip us into chaos...... 

Had my vaccine ✅✅ thank you Pfizer......

Happy new year everyone!