Birth Story

I need to write this down before thousands of years of evolution and my genes' only chance at further replication erase my memory of events completely. If there ever was a post that written with an audience of one in mind, it's this one.

My story really starts on Wednesday the 23rd. I was due on Friday the 18th but for the first time in my pregnancy I was unable to get an appointment for the same week I called and thus my 40 week checkup was almost a 41 week checkup. My midwife looked me over and confirmed that there wasn't even the slightest sign of labour starting. She tried a "cervical sweep"* which sometimes can get things started, but my cervix hadn't come forward at all and was unreachable. Yay.

Thursday morning I woke up around a quarter to 6 on with a wet trickle between my legs. It doesn't feel anything like peeing (except for the warm wet running down your legs) but it does feel a lot like leaking while menstruating. That's the best description I have for what it's like to have one's water break. I'm told that outwith Hollywood, one's water breaking is the first symptom of labour for a relatively small percentage of women and in most cases it breaks or is broken by the midwife when the cervix is already several cm dilated. I am that stereotype.

Chris woke up when I turned the bathroom light on and immediately figured things had started. My waters were clear, no signs of Little Djinn having moved her bowls in utero which can be a sign of fetal distress. I had passed the mucus plug which I had imagined more as a gelatinous plug but clearly the emphasis is on mucus as it looked like something large had cleared its sinuses in my knickers. I cleaned up and changed into clean (dry) clothes and climbed back in bed for our regular morning routine, Chris bringing tea and a satsuma for me and coffee for himself, checking our phones and nattering away until we were ready to get up, only this time with mild but noticeable contractions approximately ever five minutes. The adrenaline of rushing around to get to the hospital can cause labour to halt** so we waited until 7 to call the labour ward (calling the maternity ward first by mistake) and the midwife on duty said to go ahead and come in for an exam. And my contractions magically stopped.

My mother, who is still jet-lagged and not sleeping through the night, saw our light was on and when she heard us get up rushed out to ask us to give her a chance to get ready before going to the hospital. I assured her that she had plenty of time, that we'd not yet called a taxi, and that we wouldn't be doing so until my contractions had established themselves again. Personally we would have preferred to sneak out, leaving the phone and a note with a number to call, but I recognize that sitting in someone else's house twiddling one's thumbs while one's baby has a baby is a much longer day than being there for it, so I let her come and even repeatedly requested (each time we changed rooms) that the one person in attendance rule be bent to allow both Chris and my mother to be present.

After half an hour my contractions started up again, again about 5 minutes apart, so we called a taxi and went to the labour ward where I was examined*** and pronounced to be a mere 2cm dilated. This didn't count as labour. Baring a pressing need they wouldn't examine me again until 12:30 (4 hours later) and not wanting to take taxis back and forth all day I opted to leave my bags (one with stuff for me, one with stuff for Little Djinn) in the room and go to the cantina and wander the hospital for a while. It became clear that my contractions, still five minutes apart, were significantly more painful when sitting than when standing (and that it wasn't possible to switch from sitting to standing when I felt one coming on) so I stood at our table, then paced around it, with frequent trips to the loo to urgently pee an ounce at a time.

We hung out in the cantina as long as we could (past the point when they'd closed after breakfast and hadn't yet opened for lunch) and then took to the halls. I mostly tried to keep walking through the contractions, though I stayed close to the wall and clung to the handrails or Chris' hands as needed. By noon I was exhausted from standing for almost 4 hours and I made the executive decision to return to the labour ward a little early. At this point I didn't realize the was a 4-hours between exams policy and thought the half noon timeline more of a suggestion, a round number, but they let us back into my room, had me pee in a bucket****, and eventually did another round of exams, this time hanging around so she could feel a contraction which was a lot less fun than it sounds. I was still only 2cm (!!!) and one is not considered to be in labour until 4cm so they gently kicked me off of the labour ward and down to the maternity ward and the pre-labour room.

They were serving lunch as we got there, but we'd had second breakfast not long before, and having just arrived I'd not ordered anything but they had me fill out a card for dinner and breakfast the next day, and we waited. My timeline gets a bit fuzzy around here as I wasn't looking at a clock, but not terribly much later my contractions got a lot closer and a lot stronger so that I was having contractions about a minute apart and didn't feel like I'd even relaxed between them before the next one started and they really hurt. I started crying out with the pain (I remember saying "Ow" and "Owie" a lot when trying to breath) and it put a noticeable damper on the ward. Sitting or lying curled up on my side (I can't lie stretched out on my side) hurt more than standing so I stood, braced against a chest of drawers, rising up on tiptoe with each contraction, urgently requesting that we explore my pain killing options. Turns out the only option on the pre-labour ward (and they wouldn't take me back upstairs for another exam until half four, four hours after my last one) after paracetamol/Tylenol is diamorphine but the midwife had to call upstairs to check with the sister on duty***** before she could administer it, and then she was going to explain how it wouldn't effect my being able to use the birthing tub but I cut her off and begged her just to give me the injection already.

It took the promised 10-15 minutes to kick in and here my timeline gets really fuzzy because I was able to lay on my back which reduced the frequency of my contractions and the drugs took the edge off just enough that I could handle it, and had the side effect of letting me fade in and out of consciousness between contractions. And as I faded in, I blurted whatever dream-thought had been in my head, and I knew I was saying things that made no sense such as "but the mice don't like the colour purple" and as soon as I said them I knew, in the small pause that always followed such ejaculations, that they made no sense and I tried to remember what I thought was going on (because that would make it better, right?) and explain but the dreams faded too quickly and I eventually gave up and just went with "sorry."

At the appropriate time I got another exam (almost 3cm but not quite there yet), and dinner showed up and it was a shame I wasn't in a position to do more than pick at it as it was the best meal I got on the ward, and at some point we tried letting me take a bath but the water was warm, not hot, and didn't cover enough of my belly to help so I gave up on that rather quickly. The diamorphine wore off almost exactly four hours after administered, shortly after I inquired how long it would last and could there be more please, but it took a good half an hour after it wore off to get more in me. It must have been around 8:30 when they did another exam and announced that I was 3cm (finally!) and that was far enough along to use the birthing tub so they were going to transfer me back to the labour ward.

That took until almost 10, which was just as well as around 10 is when my diamorphine wore off again and they didn't want me in the tub, even supervised, if I was still fading in and out of consciousness. My mother, up since the day before, and Chris since a bit before 6 that morning, opted to head home and get some sleep after seeing me safely transferred back to the labour ward. They tried to get me to pee in a bucket again but I couldn't unclench. My new midwife, with shift and ward changes I was on my fourth now, examined me again before sending me into the tub and announced that I was 8cm and we should probably call my husband to come back, which we did and he got there just after I got in the tub.

I don't know how long I spent in the tub. My timeline suggests it was somewhere around 11 when I went in and that I was out around 1am, but it doesn't feel like I spent two hours there. I was having trouble not pushing when my contractions came but the midwife said I was probably 10cm by then, she thought I might have been expanding to 9cm while she was examining me earlier, and that if I felt like pushing I could. Being in the tub was nice, it was warm and big and deep, but as I moved into the second stage of labour I didn't feel like I had anything to push against so I got out and we returned to "my" room.

At this point the only painkillers I was allowed, the diamorphine having worn off before going in the tub, was laughing gas which I didn't think was doing anything for me except make me hoarse, but kept using because it was something to do and sometimes you don't realize something was helping until you stop. Anything stronger could make my baby drowsy at birth and then they'd have to give her something to wake her up and possibly take her away for observation so I conceded the point. I was still unable to pee so they stuck a catheter in and drained me, which was I remember was uncomfortable but have no specific memories of. And having officially examined me and measured me at 10cm, I got to take a break and lie down and try and sleep between contractions again for an hour before they, my midwife would be joined by another, asked me to push starting at 2:20am.

It hurt. Worse, I knew it was going to hurt more so I really didn't want to push. I begged them to use the suction cup and pull her out and they just kept telling me I was doing fine. My mother says the worst thing I yelled was "oh, God!" which I remember and she and Chris agree that I occasionally cried when I don't. I started with kneeling and clinging to the back of the bed, then switched to lying on my side, then stood up for a while over the midwives' protests including the request that I at least stand in the middle of the floor (I wanted the rolling chest of drawers/fetal heart monitor to lean on, which they objected to in particular because of the rolling bit). Then I got stuck standing because, again standing made my contractions closer together and stronger and they wanted to check the baby's heartbeat while I was there and it took a fair amount of time before there was a pause in contractions long enough to let me climb back onto the bed and lay on my other side.

Eventually we were crowning (oh, how that hurt - and I got to hold it with her head starting to peak out of me while the midwives got ready, putting aprons on and doing who knows what while I lay there wanting her in or out, but not halfway in between. I did make them fetch a mirror so I could see what was happening a plan somewhat hampered by having taken my glasses off some hours before. But seeing her head helped, even if less was sticking out than I had imagined. They took the mirror away and I pushed and I pushed and my mother says she could see me split but going forward, not back, which isn't something I ever considered, and I felt her slither out and the dumped her slimy little body on my belly and at 4:05am Friday I had my baby.

I held her naked body to my bared skin and we nursed a tiny bit while Chris cut the umbilical cord (which was further trimmed by the midwife), and they gave me a tiny injection to hurry the third stage of labour, the afterbirth, which I didn't feel nor do I recall pushing for, and then they were ready to sew me back up. "It's just a little tear" wound up taking forever to sew up. The second midwife leaned over the first's shoulder and gave pointers on how best to go about it. I ignored the proffered gas and air as I still didn't think it did much for me and a few injections of local anaesthetic, however sensitive the region, wasn't that big a deal. The midwives told me that I was clearly mistaken when I said I was afraid of pain, but I think that's the sort of thing you say to comfort people because a few jabs is nothing compared to 22hrs of unofficial and official labour, including 90 minutes of pushing a watermelon through a lemon. And just when I was thinking it was taking a long time to sew up "a little tearing" the midwives looked up and said that was the muscles done, now they'd do the skin. And when that was done they explained that there was also some "grazing" which hadn't required stitches. Lovely.

I can't remember if they took Little Djinn to clean (though not bathe), weigh and measure her before or after I took my shower, but either way I left her with Chris when I did and he got to do skin to skin, too. At some point we got tea and toast, enough for all three of us (not Little Djinn), and they swaddled Little Djinn in two towels and a cellulose blanket and I wheeled her little cot down to the maternity ward where I was given a bed (and eventually the breakfast I'd ordered the day before) and Chris and my mother had/got to go home and sleep.

~ * ~

* two fingers up my vagina, wiggling them around and because I was pregnant she couldn't even buy me a drink first.

** a very reasonable evolutionary precaution

*** see *

**** a cardboard bedpan placed over the toilet

***** is this an honourary title? Or is she also a nun?

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

Kristina Abigail was born exactly one week ago, at 4:05 am, after 22hrs of labour*. She was 3.35kgs (7lbs 6oz) and around 20 inches at birth, though at her five day weigh-in she was down to 3.15kg, an almost 6% loss which is entirely to be expected. Because my water broke more than 18hrs before delivery they kept us in the hospital for 24hr observation to make sure she didn't have an infection and we got to go home Saturday afternoon, Chris' birthday. He was amazed that Little Djinn had already had time to nip round to the shops and get a birthday card for him. She's pretty amazing like that.

Our first night got a bit rough with her not wanting to settle and me not having slept in two days, but since then she's been a peach, only fussing when we're actively thwarting her will, say by not letting her nurse. As soon as she thinks she's headed towards an active nipple she calms right down.

Mother and baby are doing fine, passing our daily midwife check-ups with flying colours. Grandma is over the moon, and Daddy is quietly stressing about everything except when actually holding his daughter and then he's calm and happy. Granddaddy hasn't met her yet, but sent a truly extravagant bouquet of flowers. People who know Chris think she looks like him and people who know me think she looks like me, so I suspect she's just a baby and we're all reading too much into it.

~ * ~

* 11hrs of "official" labour, counting from about 4cm dilation, 2hrs of hard labour, eg deliberate pushing. Believe you me, I'm counting from the first contractions.

Due and Over-Due

My due-date, Friday the 18th, has come and gone and now it's just the waiting game. People keep asking me if there is "any sign" which I understand means "do you think it'll be soon?" but is literally "tell me about your vagina" and thus making me twitch. My mother says you lose all sense of privacy about such things by the time you've had the baby but I'm pretty sure I'll still be uncomfortable with the idea let alone the reality. So, yeah, no updates about my nether region beyond possibly "I think things are starting" or "It's time to go to the hospital". We'll see how extroverted I'm feeling when it happens.

Speaking of my mother, she arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon having left her house around 11am our time the previous day. I do not envy her that trip. The weather held clear until after she got here though it snowed most of Friday and hasn't yet melted. She's from Chicago originally and seemed charmed by our millimetres/day snowfall, being more accustomed to inches/hour. She's not well pleased by the cold. I had advised her to bring at least one pair of thermal long undies but she figured I'm always cold when I'm at her house and she wouldn't much go outside so she didn't need to find room for bulky warm things. I couldn't tell her what temperature we keep our house as we don't have a thermostat (our heat is on a timer) but Chris and I do spend most of the winter wearing long-underwear in the house. When I moved over my mother gave me a bulky Aran sweater she'd bought on her Ireland trip which I've now returned to her use. I wore it once as it's too warm to wear inside and when I go out I prefer a coat, but she's worn it every day. She did warm up enough that I could turn the fire off. I do think jet-lag affects one's ability to regulate temperature, so it's not just that she's unused to the cold. And I have a space-heater strapped to my torso and have not been the coldest person in a given room for the first time in my life, so it is possible that the house is as cold as my mother thinks and I'm just not noticing.

In knitting news, my mother has decided that she wants to knit socks for herself, and toe-up ones at that, so I loaned her circs (she had DPNs but not the right size, plus I couldn't figure out how to start Judy's Magic CO with DPNs), cast on for her, and explained Magic Loop. For the next sock I'll teach her the cast-on but I didn't want to throw too many techniques at her at once.

My baby blanket is almost done. I'm about halfway down the last border and could possibly finish today. I no longer have space in my house to block it properly (I used to use the floor of my office, now the nursery-cum-guest room) but I can wash it and at least stretch the stitches into evenness and shape. I hope. But if Yarn Harlot is right that an unfinished baby blanket can keep the baby from arriving, then the end is in sight.

If I do finish and have time before Little Djinn shows up, I'm going to switch back to the socks for my mother though I've still not had her try on the one I'm convinced won't fit. I did start the second sock though, so that's something. I think it's big enough around but too long and too tight to go over the heel, so working on the up-to-gusset part of the second sock won't be wasted.

That's life in the largely-pregnant land. Chris is working through the weekend, "up until Little Djinn arrives" so he can have some hours stashed for when Little Djinn is here plus his two weeks' paternity leave. My mother has cleaned a few little things around the house which I know is meant as "I'm here to help" but feels like "you don't keep house to my standards". Plus I am uncomfortable with the idea of sitting around while someone else cleans which means even though I'm tired I have to get up and do something, too.

Next weekend is both my husband and my father-in-law's birthday's. We're hoping to go to a seafood restaurant with my mother for Chris' birthday and have Aged Parent over on Sunday for his. Chris wants a chocolate mouse cake with coffee custard. There's always the chance that one or the other of them will get a child or grandchild for their birthday, though I think we're all hoping for sooner rather than later.

39 Weeks, Oh My!

Apologies for the particularly bad mobile phone/mirror picture this week. Chris came for a snuggle and I didn't want him getting bored and wandering off (his forbearance for being photographed is greater than that of the kitties, but not unlimited). We've made it to 39 weeks, 6 days to go (give or take actual arrival date, of course). I'm hoping to be a few days to a week late but not need to be induced so next Saturday is when I start eating pineapples or spicy food, drinking raspberry leaf tea, and bouncing up and down on my exercise ball all day. Until then, it's lying on my back with my feet up and my knees crossed. Or cleaning the house in preparation for my mother's arrival on Wednesday, whichever actually happens. The sad thing about my mother arriving is that I'll have to move out of the nursery/guest bed and poor Chris will be kept awake all night with my snoring. Even in a non-adjacent room, wearing ear plugs he can sometimes hear me. This is why I try and read for an hour or so after going to bed, to give him a chance to fall asleep before I do. Honest, it's for purely altruistic purposes and not because I'm a bookworm

Speaking of books, Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy has been my latest form of crack. It's about a(n adopted) brother-sister team of bloggers and their crew some twenty years after the cure for the common cold and the cure for cancer got together to turn the recently deceased into zombies and the government conspiracies they unearth. I'm not a fan of the zombies, this and World War Z (has that movie come out yet? I live under a rock) are pretty much the entirety of my exposure to the genre. Oh, I've seen Shaun of the Dead and that movie where the kid has the rules for surviving a zombie apocalypse. Anyway, Newsflesh is as good as everyone said and if her urban fantasy series published under her own name, Seanan McGuire is anywhere near as good, I will be a very happy bunnybookworm.

On the knitting front things are looking less optimistic. The baby blanket/shawl is coming along nicely, I've knit the border along the first side and turned the corner, but everything else is in the frog pond.* The socks for my mother, I'm convinced, are not going to fit. They're a little long and too tight to go over the heel. I can't really try them on because my own feet, ankles, and legs are swollen but I'm convinced they're all wrong. Plan A is to knit the second sock to be the size I think it should be and then when she arrives I can frog whichever sock is the naughty one and reknit it. Chris' pullover otoh just needs to be frogged. I knit a gauge swatch but I'm not happy with the size it's coming out. I had him try on the body and it was quite snug which, combined with the denseness of the fabric, means it'll be too hot and not comfortable enough for him to actually wear. It took forever to knit in the first place, but I don't want to finish a sweater just to have it finished and not be worn. So I'll frog it and go up half a mm on the needles and start again at some vague point in the future.

On the more optimistic side, I have acquired *cough* yarn to knit Ravi Junior which is another Carol Feller pattern. It starts at the 6 months size but I think I'll do the next size up for Little Djinn to wear in the Autumn/winter. Not that a cardigan would go amiss in our Scottish "summer". I also acquired yarn for Snawheid and the matching mitt(en)s, Snawpaws. I don't actually know that I have enough yarn for both, but I'll knit the hat and see how much I have left.

~ * ~

* unravelling knitting is known as "frogging" because the stitches make a small "ribbit" sound as one pulls them apart. This sound used to make my husband cry, but he's become jaded to hours of knitting wasted.

New Year's Resolutions

Last year, I set for myself two goals: acquire more sock construction techniques and knit two (adult) sweaters. Then, as is often the case, life got in the way. I did fairly well on the socks, trying out several different heel and toe techniques, of which the most recent was short-row heel and toe for a pair of baby socks that will sadly be frogged as I ran out of yarn. Oops. My favourite techniques are most likely the Dutch or square heel and Kitchener stitching a wedge toe. That said, I like toe-up socks best.

I did less well on the sweater front, at least as far as adult sweaters go. My husband's sweater is maybe 70% finished - I've knit the body up to the arms and am working on the sleeves. I bought my husband a pullover for Christmas. My own jumper got exactly nowhere for obvious reasons. I'll take measurements again some point in the future, at least three months post-partum. As far as baby sweaters go I knit 4.5 sweaters, one of which was a pattern I'd done before (teal). Most were knit top down in one piece, one was knit flat in one piece and then seamed up the sides and under the arms (green). As baby sweaters, especially for a theoretical baby, aren't expected to fit the same way adult sweaters need to, I don't count them for my NYR.

I have 22 finished projects for 2012, 4 still in progress, 1 frogged, and 2 hibernating. Oddly, both of the hibernating ones use the same yarn. Most types of projects goes to cowls of which I knit 9 (three using the same pattern) thanks almost entirely to the Great Cowl KAL last February and March. Second most projects was socks, with 5 finished in 2012 (two started in 2011) and another two on the needles. One pair is maybe an hour's work from being finished so I may make it to 6 finished pairs of socks yet.

I am not setting any resolutions for next year although I suppose "finish the things I currently have on needles plus the nursing cardigan" count as goals. That would be 5 projects: husband sweater (70% finished), socks for my mother (almost done with first one), baby blanket/shawl for Little Djinn and the Wishbone socks for me that I mentioned were close to finished, and the just mentioned cardigan for nursing. They're all also things I'd like to have before Little Djinn arrives in 3 maybe three weeks which no doubt explains why I started a new cross-stitch project today.

Christmas & Boxing Day

Christmas got off to a slightly rocky start after a night of not sleeping particularly well. Chris was sad that he'd not gotten me a stocking* or filled it up and then he was frustrated that he'd have to spend half of the day cooking for his father just like he'd done for the last however many years and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We have tentative plans to be elsewhere next Christmas, just the three of us, as soon as we figure out where we want to go (hint, somewhere quiet and easy to get to).

Pressies started with exchanging Christmas cards**, in our case the traditional matching Boofle*** cards with messages of preprinted and hand-written affection. In addition to the socks, I gave Chris a new pair of fuzzy lounge trousers and a cable-knit jumper from the kittens. Chris gave me a book of Fair Isle patterns and a mug with a knit Fair Isle design, the soundtrack from a French musical, a potato ricer, a set of rectangular teaspoons that fit into spice jars(!!!), and from the kittens, a satsuma and tickets to see the panto. Chris was sad about not buying things for my stocking, but it clearly wasn't because he didn't think to get me presents. And, while the cooking utensils were "for me", thus far I've been on the receiving end of riced (mashed) potatoes, which are really good - extra fluffy and light, but have yet to use the ricer. So it all works out about even.

Aged Parent came over around 2, shortly before dinner was ready and we had a turkey breast wrapped in bacon and stuffed with sausage stuffing, roasted potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, Brussels sprouts, and rolls followed later by the Christmas pudding I made earlier this month, served en flambé and with brandy whipped cream. After dinner we gave Aged Parent his presents, a warm woolly cardigan and the mitts I knit for him (he also got a folding cane which we wrapped and delivered when it arrived so he could start using it sooner rather than later).

We spent most of the rest of the evening discussing the possibility of his moving into a local community for retired persons, an idea that Chris and I like a lot as we'd been looking for properties with a ground floor in-law unit but had been unable to find anything that wouldn't require selling both our properties. Unfortunately when we went over on Boxing Day, Aged Parent announced that he has absolutely no interest in moving out of his 5 bedroom house and was sorry he'd ever brought it up.

Chris again spent most of the day cooking, making pastry puffs with cheese in, (riced) mashed potatoes, and a sausage and cranberry roast which he cooked at our house and then reheated at his father's. Thus the need to go away next Christmas and avoid cooking altogether****.

Oh, and we gave Oliver and Libby a water fountain to drink out of. It's hand-thrown and burbles up, and they've both drunk from and played in it but Oliver still thinks water should come out of the tap in the bathtub. We're weaning him off of that.

And lastly, I am now 37 weeks along which means Little Djinn is full term. The midwife thinks 41 weeks is the perfect length for gestating so I've still got 4 weeks before it's a diet of nothing but pineapple and days spent jumping up and down. Meanwhile my feet have swollen beyond recognition, sausage toes are the order of the day, and my blood pressure is starting to climb. And getting showered and dressed seems like sufficient accomplishments before going back to bed.

~ * ~

* We don't have official stockings yet. For the last four Christmases I've given Chris a pair of socks, one stuffed inside the other with the rest full of candy. This year he got two pairs of slipper/socks and a Green & Blacks 75% dark chocolate bar and I gave myself a pair of slipper/socks and a multipack of Nerds (American sugar-based candy). I was even able to hang the socks up using my sock blockers.

** Not a tradition we observed in my family. Fortunately(?) the first Christmas I was here Aged Parent was convinced he'd never see us again and gave us our Christmas cards the first week in December, saving me a fair bit of awkwardness Christmas day when everyone (Chris and his father) had cards for everyone (Chris, his father, and me) and I'd be sat there saying in a small voice, "I didn't know we were supposed to get cards..."
Don't worry, there was plenty of other awkwardness.

*** I just discovered that there's a Boofle app. I think Chris is going to die of squee. I see lots of Boofle-addended baby photos in Little Djinn's future.

**** Yes, I could do some of the cooking (and did for Christmas dinner!). I could even do all of the cooking or most of the cooking, or some of the cooking. You know this and I know this and the reasonable part of Chris knows this but somehow when it comes to the day and everything needing to get done, he always puts on his Project Manager torque without remembering his Delegator Apron and locks himself in the kitchen.

Weekend in Edinburgh*

Last night as we lay in bed, before I moved to the nursery so Chris could sleep in peace and quiet, we reconstructed how our overnight to Edinburgh was supposed to have gone:

Our direct train to Edinburgh went directly to Edinburgh. It took the expected less than four hours, not seven, and we didn't have to change over-crowded trains twice all the while being told things about the rest of our journey that, frankly, were lies. We dropped our bags at the hotel and had a quiet afternoon tea before I went for my bra fitting (they were able to see me right away, I didn't have to make an appointment for the next morning) and Chris went to meet with a prospective client (who emailed him first thing the next morning to say "when can you start?"). We wandered around the German Christmas market which wasn't loud with shrieking people and conflicting music blaring from past-their-prime speakers. The weather was lovely, really, not bitingly cold with high winds and an edge of rain, so we rode the Ferris wheel again like we did on our first trip to Edinburgh four years ago and were quiet disgustingly schmoopy.

By then it was time for dinner, Mexican of course, being in a city with a Mexican restaurant, and Chris liked his entrée as much as his starter and I got to have horchata and Mexican hot chocolate, neither of which they stopped serving some years past. We stumbled back to our hotel and spent an snuggling in the bar, ordering fruity drinks with or without rum in. Back in our room, well you don't need to know about that, but it was followed by a deep and restful night's sleep in which I didn't snore at all, not even a little, and certainly not enough to wake myself up and be heard through Chris' earplugs.

Our breakfast place in the morning was as charming as one could hope. We both had the pancakes and Chris' cappuccino was as nice as my Darjeeling and we had pleasantly full tummies on which to face a day of wandering around Edinburgh, visiting yarn shops stocked with the specific size needles I wanted, nibbling and purchasing at the Cheese Monger's, and trying on silly hats at the hat place. We collected our bags, bought a picnic lunch for the also uneventful train ride home, and I was able to read my Kindle and listen to my ipod as I'd not left them in the drawer of the night stand at the hotel.

Home was toasty and warm, the heat having come on shortly before we arrived, the kittens were delighted to see us, and we ate on the sofa in front of the fire having not put half of our planned leftovers in the outside freezer and forgotten about them until everything else was ready. The whole weekend was a rousing success.

To be fair, some of those things did happen if not in the ideal time or manner (Chris had his interview; I was fitted for and bought a bra; we had Mexican for dinner; I got pancakes for breakfast) but a lot did not. We really did not want to be outside in the push and shove or the wind and wet. There's nothing you can do about the weather and the crowds of people were inevitable. Our reasoning for going the week between Christmas and Hogmanay were sound; I'm off work but not likely to go inconveniently into labour, and at my breast-size being properly fitted for a bra necessitates a trip to Bravissimo which isn't going to happen any time soon post-baby. Thus Edinburgh in the busy shopping season.

And, importantly, I can now put Operation: Don't Leave the House into proper effect. I am currently trying to decide if going to the detached garage counts as leaving the house or not. I did go outside to pick up the bird feeder, knocked over in last night's high winds.

~ * ~

* not actually a weekend, but it felt like it and that's what counts. Also, I am so far removed from the notion of weekdays and weekends as to make no difference.