Baby Boiler

The day after my last post was D's birthday. We were woken up at 5.45 to a very loud and terrifying noise coming from our heating system. The baby was leaping about all over the place because I gave it such a fright waking up so suddenly with my heart pounding. I was still on holiday from work and so was able to get the boiler man round in the afternoon. Turns out our pipes were blocked. They think. It was either that or the pump. Except he couldn't find the pump. In a two up, two down, tiny terraced house, he couldn't find the pump. So he said we didn't have one. In any case, the system was pretty screwed and there was no simple way to fix it in the long term.

So we chose to just replace the 26 year old boiler and be done with it. With a baby on the way, it's probably for the best although it will totally blow our hard earned savings.

I spent all the following weekend drawing up a baby-boiler budget spreadsheet. With hindsight, I could have named it better. All frivolous spending has been banned. Supermarket shops are to be strictly monitored and no more coffee at work for me or posh sandwiches for D. Sigh! And of course, no spending money to have Lost prints professionally framed.

Anyway, the boiler is in now and everything seems to be fine and the pump was safely located and replaced. It's good to be warm. And we get a £400 rebate from the Scottish Government to help pay for it. Thank you Scottish Government.

My next project is to think about getting a tumble dryer. Even though we haven't much space. We'd need to get rid of our kitchen table. But with a baby coming and taking up our current clothes drying room, it may be the only option when my life becomes laundry-tastic. It's not going to look good for re-sale of the house to have what is a quite spacious kitchen filled with white goods that aren't neatly under the counter top (freezer is taking up floor space since D let me have a dishwasher). But I guess selling is a long way off.

In other news, we finished HypnoBirthing last Sunday. Or I should say, we had our last class. We met with the other 2 couples for lunch beforehand just as we did last week and had a good time. At the class, we saw a video of a British water birth at home. It convinced us to ask the midwife about a home birth. She is going to come round in early March to chat about it properly.

At my midwife appointment, I had blood taken again and got my anti-D injection - in my backside!

That all went fine except she had to draw blood twice because she wrote my name wrong on one of the vials. It was the first time she'd EVER done that. Lucky old me. At my appointment there was also a midwifery student. She got all the good jobs - like testing my pee. She also got a shot at palpating my tummy. I felt for her as she wasn't too sure what she was doing and the midwife left her with me alone for ages. But she found the heartbeat of the baby with the doppler while the midwife was out the room. Then the cheeky baby moved so the midwife didn't believe that she'd heard it when she came back in and asked where the student had been holding the doppler. The baby is breech at the mo but there's plenty of time for it to move.

Since my last post, I bought a nursing chair for the baby's room. It's a modern rocking chair which glides rather than rocking. We now have far far too much stuff in the house and that's only going to get worse.

This week the baby is the size of a butternut squash (!) and I am 10 stone, 6.75 pounds. That's only 0.25 pounds heavier than two weeks ago although I'm definitely way huger. So the six jumpers I had to wear the last fortnight were probably masking my true weight.