4 weeks pregnant

I woke up early this morning and took a pregnancy test.  The result is that I am 4 weeks pregnant!  I had a miscarriage 3 months ago so maybe posting about this (even though I won't publish it until the second trimester) is tempting fate.  However, if everything goes well then this will be my last pregnancy, my last baby, and I want to honour, memorialise and say goodbye to this part of my life properly.

I haven't had the opportunity to tell Phil yet because the lazy bugger is still asleep (almost 11am!)  I have alluded to it on Facebook, which is naughty of me.  But then I never was patient or subtle.  As the mum of three little boys, I fully expect people to assume that I was trying for a girl.  I am regularly the subject of pitying comments "You've got your hands full!"  "I don't know how you manage!"  My boys are really lovely.  I won't lie and claim they are little angels, but they are funny, friendly, bright, cheerful and love each other, and us.  I don't need pity.  I was not trying for a girl. I would be thrilled to have another boy.  I was a tomboy as a child and if I had a real pink-and-glitter daughter, I don't think I'd know what to do!

So... let's see what's in the news headlines today.  Let's see what kind of world I'm bringing the Littlest Gleghorn into:

Hurricane Isaac hits land for the second time and is heading for New Orleans seven years after Katrina devastated the city
Nick Clegg wealth tax the politics of envy says senior Tory
CCTV fitted to stop stingray theft

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has just died.  US President, Barack Obama, is up for re-election this autumn (good luck with that...)  Greece may be forced to leave the euro.  The economy for pretty much every country on the planet is in the toilet thanks to the banking scandal back in 2008.  This year we have enjoyed the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and London has hosted the Olympics.  National pride is at a level I haven't seen it at in my lifetime.  I hope it lasts.

Please stick around, little baby.  The news may not always be great but we'll make the sun shine for you!

Nightmare

I had a terrible nightmare last night.  I dreamed that my Oz - the one I call my sunshine because he has filled my life with such light since the moment he was born - had died.  I have the sense that the dream was very prolonged and it centred around my trying to understand what had happened to him and to accept that he was gone.  I met with disinterest and dismissal at every turn and wasn't allowed to see his body.  I remember thinking of the photograph Phil took of him at Christmas 2010 - of his beautiful blond curls and mischievous, joyful smile.  The nightmare ended with my screaming again and again "Who will cuddle me now?"  He's an incredibly affectionate little boy and his comfort object is my necklace, that he calls 'neck neck'.  His favourite place to be at three years old is the same as it was when he was tiny - he'll curl up on my lap with his thumb in his mouth and his other hand clutching my necklace.  It has a Saint Christopher pendant on it.  When I woke it took a few moments for me to realise that Ozzie wasn't dead and that he was sleeping peacefully in his bedroom, under his In The Night Garden duvet, across the hall.  I've had dreams in the past where I've lost loved ones and on waking I've been relieved, momentarily unsettled but have invariably drifted back to sleep (with a fourteen month old baby, sleep is regularly a rare and precious thing).  On this occasion, knowing that he wasn't dead wasn't enough - the distress was so extreme that I cried and cried until my eyes were sore.

Why am I mentioning this?  I've always felt very lucky to be Ozzie's mother.  Even when he was a tiny baby he could make being awake at 4am ok, no matter how tired I was.  I'd find myself smiling and chatting to him when I should have been encouraging him to sleep.  Today, however, I felt more acutely than ever just how precious he is.  Every smile, every sweet observation, every stroke of his head.

Mother of three steps, blinking, into the sunlight

It's been three years since I last updated this blog.  I posted the birth announcement for my second son, Ozzie, and then vanished.  In that time I have had a third son, Aaron, who is 11 months old and we've relocated to England, just in time for Michael starting primary school.  My days are slightly less hectic now than they used to be because Ozzie is at pre-school in the afternoons and Aaron has been persuaded to nap during that time, so I would really like to start blogging again.  The difference being that I've decided to be a more honest blogger and stop deliberately avoiding posting about my extended family for fear of offending some distant, dusty relative.

Well, as  a re-introduction, that will have to do because I've got to pick the boys up from school and pre-school.  More later.  Don't believe me?  No, I probably wouldn't either...

Announcing the arrival of...

One son was so much fun
We thought we'd have another one!

We proudly announce the arrival of
Michael's baby brother

Osric James Gleghorn

on Friday 22nd August 2008 at 2:55 p.m.
Weighing 4636 grams
and measuring 53 centimetres

Philip and Catherine Gleghorn

Bump photo at 41+5

We haven't taken many photos of my bump this time around. Here is one of me taken today at 41+5.

The best commercial ever made

41 weeks and 3 days...

...and yes, I'm still pregnant. I thought I'd make this information as public as possible in the faint hope of avoiding answering the question multiple times a day. Family members are even starting to sound exasperated, making me feel like a naughty school girl who has missed a homework deadline. I think I'll stop answering the phone...

To update properly, the baby is absolutely fine. I had to go for a series of tests on Wednesday to check his condition. I was on a fetal monitor for half an hour, which Baby O did his best to kick off every 10 seconds. Michael endeavoured to help him by tripping over the monitor cable and pulling the thing off my belly altogether. Baby O is what is called a 'jogging baby'. Happy as a clam, and very active. I then had an ultrasound which revealed that he has a lot of amniotic fluid so still has a lot of space to luxuriate. It is possible that the amniotic fluid is the reason why I haven't gone into labour - the baby is so buoyant that the uterus just isn't recognising that he is full term and it is time to kick him out.

The tests will be repeated at the hospital on Wednesday 20th and then I will be induced later in the week if he hasn't made an appearance. I'm happy with that, as the risk of the placenta starting to degrade increases when a pregnancy goes over 42 weeks. I'm also concerned with the potential for him to be over 10lbs. I'm going to request a scan to measure his shoulders - I don't want to discover midway through an induction that there was never a chance of him being born naturally.

There are no signs whatsoever that labour is imminent, and that is another question I am sick of answering.

Here is a letter I put together earlier for Baby O:

Dear Baby,

OK... you've been in there for 41 weeks and 3 days. Don't you think it is time you parked your bum somewhere else? It may well be like The Ritz in there - all marble staircases and plush furniture - but the exterior is rather more like a tumbledown shack... falling to pieces a little more with every day that goes by...

Do be a dear and consider it, won't you?

With love,
Mummy x