Month: September 2008

It’s been a busy couple of days, it has. We were in Leicester last weekend to meet up with Anna and Rho, who had come from Manchester to catch up with Katy. That was a fun morning – those two are always good for a laugh. Rhona always seems to be complaining about something in a very loud and emphatic sort of way. Always makes me giggle.

The cot bed we wanted was finally back in stock at Ikea so Mel and Stu did a run up to Nottingham on Friday to avoid the madness that is Ikea on a sunny Saturday. We might have made a convert of Stu, who seems to have seen a table he likes in there. Yay, Ikea :)

This means that we now have all the big furniture pieces that we wanted for the nursery and we now simply need to build stuff and put everything in its final place.

We had a lazy Sunday morning. Katy had a lay-in and then proceeded to get pissy with the impossible puzzle we’d gotten for Mel’s last-last birthday. He’s been working at it for over a year (and has just informed us that he’s wimped out, admitted defeat and broken it down). I was, to be honest, bored senseless for most of the day.

While the world was shitting its collective pair of pants on Meltdown Monday, I was experiencing Migraine Monday, so I didn’t go into work and spent the morning in bed. I was feeling better by the afternoon so I started building furniture. I must admit that Mothercare flat-pack furniture is not up to Ikea standards. There is one bolt that doesn’t want to screw in and it’s pissing me off.  It is offensive in my sight  because the whole crib seems rickety because of it. I’m going to go to B&Q to get another bolt and see if that helps. If not, I’ll just use nice, large wood screws. Esthetics be damned, I want the thing secure :)

Katy had an appointment at the antenatal diabetic clinic on Tuesday. Her blood tests the previous weeks had indicated that she had gestational diabetes. Given that she’s a big girl, is Asian and has a family history of diabetes, this wasn’t unexpected. The good news is that the dietician said that our diet was already very much on the good track (complex carbs, lean proteins, lots of fruit & veg). The bad news is that she has now cut Katy off from any processed or refined sugar until Ben is born. This is, for those who know Katy, very bad news indeed. At least it’s only for a few months, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition though, and Katy’s blood pressure really threw a spanner in the works. It’s been borderline for weeks now and never seemed to make up its mind if it was high or normal. The doctors finally decided that enough was enough and told Katy that she was going to be admitted for observation and possibly put on medication. The timing of this was, in our opinion, possibly the worst time possible. We hadn’t planned for this, so Katy only had the clothes on her back and nothing else. I also had to get the car out of the Park & Ride parking and back home to avoid from getting it clamped – an interesting feat given that I can’t drive. In the end, I called some lads from work, who picked the car and myself up from the Park & Ride and drove us both home. Michael, the pinch-driver, had a bit of fun getting used to a right-hand drive car, but got us home safely. It’s interesting to note that we might be seeing him on Thursday when his partner is being admitted to the same ward as Katy to get her twins induced.

I had time to pack an overnight bag for Katy while I waited for Tesco to deliver our groceries. I managed to get a lift back to the hospital in the evening and spent time with my very bored wife and her new friend, Felix the serial blood pressure machine. She named it because she figured that shed probably get to be really well acquainted with it.

I stopped by the office to talk with the powers that be and, in the process, pick up the two parcels that my mom had shipped to us from Canada. It seems that everybody had been commenting about the 62$ worth of stamps affixed on the parcels :) I need to bring them back into work for somebody’s collection next week.

The plan now is to take regular blood pressure readings to establish a baseline and see if the meds they’ve prescribed lower it enough to get to a stable level they’re happy with, but not too low. I’ve loaded her up with grapes and strawberries, oat biscuits she’s allowed to eat and enough trashy magazines to rot her brain multiple times over. My boss has given me carte blanche to spend time with her at the hospital so I won’t be getting much work done this week. Having said that, if I were at the office, I doubt I’d be getting anything done, really.

Most of today was spent trying to find ways to kill time. I went out and got myself fish & chips for dinner – something that I’m still regretting hours later because it’s sitting like a lead balloon in my gut and giving me all sorts of unholy gas.

The good news is that the meds seem to be wanting to work in the right direction. The bad news is that they need to tweak the dosage and/or timing of the doses – which means that Katy will probably need to spend another day in observation. This does not make her happy. She’s getting to the point where she just wants to come home and relax in familiar surroundings, with the cats (who are being right little attention whores at the moment – Reenie is sleeping on the couch with her head on my foot as i type this).

We both know that this is the right thing to do and the right time for it. Spending a few uncomfortable days now could potentially save lots of hassle later on if we did nothing and things went pear-shaped and required more aggressive treatment in the future. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a pain in the ass and it would have been even better to have been able to avoid the issue altogether.

Like the song says thouggh, you can’t always get what you want.