yes yes
Yes yes, you've probably guessed
there's a new baby on the way.
Due one day in February
Near the beginning of the month
Maybe a boy this time, or a girl
We're excited very much.
Yes yes, you've probably guessed
Tuesday 04/04/06
As I stated earlier, when I got up on Sunday morning and realised I had slept through Sicily’s waters broking I had felt guilty, and the story of the disciples sleeping, after Christ had asked them to watch over Him while He prayed, flashed through my mind.
After one excursion I pushed the buzzer and Bridget came and let me into the Maternity ward. As we walked down the corridor I asked her if I could use the shower in the suite while Sicily slept. Which was fine as long as no one knew.
(Bit Proustian but something about the way that Madeleine bread tasted reminded me.)
By this stage, Sicily’s Linda, Anna and Glennis were in the waiting room. They had brought some burgers from Wisconsin. Mine was BBQ which had a very runny sauce in it, which spilled down the front of me. I realised I felt quite dirty. I hadn’t had a shower in the past three days incase we needed to fill the pool and then for three days before that I was bed bound.
When we arrived at the Hospital I parked in a space I shouldn’t have, so after we got Sicily settled in the room, I went back to move the car. I went out the toll bar and it opened without me needing to pay. As it was after five pm I figured it must now be free to park in the hospital grounds so I turned round to go back in. I pushed for a ticket but nothing happened. I pushed and pushed and nothing came out so I gave up and parked on the road. As I walked past the little toll booth I saw a guy in their taking the exiting cars tickets. I walked over to him and asked why I couldn’t get in. He shrugged his shoulders and said it played up sometimes and said he could open it for me but he was charging people to exit. I said I had exited not more than three minutes ago and it was free. He shrugged his shoulders.
Monday the 3rd of April:
After I got back from my mission my mother rang so I told her Sicily’s waters had broken and she said she would drive down. Then Sunita turned up and went out again to patch the holes in my supply missions. Sicily still hadn’t gone into labour but her cough had developed to quite a degree. In fact she was now wracked by coughing fits that left her eyes watering. I wondered if it was a coughing fit that had broken her waters. Possible.
When I left the house on Sunday, I was aware the baby was going to come soon and I noticed, aside from the state I was in from the evil demon in my stomach mixing bad elixirs out of KFC, that other things were going on. I was feeling, I have to admit, quite tearful and emotional and my normal ability to think logically was tenuous to say the least. I first went to the party hire place and picked up the tea urn, then I went to the Warehouse in Petone and tracked down the big cheap pot made in China. As I did so Bridget rang on the cell phone. We had a quick conversation and she said she would be around early evening to check on Sicily and drop off the birthing pool.
Sunday the 2nd of April:
As an aside to this, while bed bound, Sicily and I watched several DVDs. ‘Garden State” which I recommend and so would Sicily. It was written and directed by Zach Braf, ‘that guy from Scrubs’. We watched ‘The Aviator’ which wasn’t too bad, mainly because for once Di Caprio didn’t do that crying whining bit done to it’s worse in ‘The Basketball Diaries’ where he de-hipsterfies Jim ‘I’ll be a good boy mama’ Carroll. It was good to see for one reason, which was a conspiracy theory I had come across that Onassis kidnapped Hughs which made no bloody sense to me, and still doesn’t, except now I know who Howard Hughs is. We watched Kinsey which was an interesting story but did nothing for the biopic genre. We watched ‘Startup Dot Come’ which was morbidly fascinating and I was so fascinated I watched in again. We started to watch Hotel Rwanda on Saturday but Sicily didn’t want to watch it. She was getting twinges. That evening she feel asleep but I couldn’t. I got up and watched Hotel Rwanda until 3 am sunday morning. I guess I would recommend the film but based as it is on recent factual events it’s quite depressing. One bunch of people hack another bunch to pieces with machetes because they identify themselves by different words. Millions are killed.
“...for stories, as histories, must be past, and the further past, one might say, the better for them as stories and for the storyteller, that conjurer who murmurs in past tenses. But the problem with our story, as also with many people nowadays and, indeed, not the least with those who tell stories, is this: it is much older than its years, its datedness is not to be measured in days, nor the burden of age weighing upon it to be counted by orbits around the sun; in a word, it does not actually owe its pastness to time -- an assertion that is itself intended as a passing reference, an allusion, to the problematic and uniquely double nature of that mysterious element.”
This is just one of those, "Did-you-know?" posts. We are at about 30 weeks now, and according to a study by H.P. Roffwarg et al, published in 'Science" (1966) called 'Ontogenetic development of the human sleep-dream cycle', the authors claim that at 30 weeks a baby spends it's entire sleeping time in REM sleep. The authors of the study think this helps develop the nervous system. This means the little monster goes straight into dreaming when it's asleep. What sort of dreams does a little monster have?
As I mentioned, the little monster is doing nothing but growing now, and so room for frolicking is getting to be prime realty; so much so that the said frolicking is quite visible from the outside. It’s like watching one of those inflatable castles at the carnival when it’s full of kids in their socks bouncing off every surface. Sometimes I think this puts a bit of a strain on Sicily and I have found a way to make the little monster quieten down. I simply lean in close, so my lips are almost touching Sicily’s belly, and I say:
Xmas and all that, it's been a while since I've said anything here. We are in the third trimester now and all the baby seems to be doing is growing. There's billions of neurons firing apparently and from experience there's plenty of movement. Sicily is tired and hungry and a bit Demeter-like all at the same time it seems these days.