juliet

Announcing the arrival into the world of Leon Patrick Chin-Kemp, born at home, 12:25pm on Sat 3rd March, weighing 8lb6 (3.8kg). Photo here until I locate a better one.

Unfortunately I had a bad tear & had to transfer to hospital for repair and an overnight stay, but we got out again on Sunday. All doing well now if a bit knackered!

In case there's anyone else on my FL who might appreciate this: it turned out that my midwife, who was AWESOME and very much in tune with what we wanted, did a week-long workshop last year with Ina May Gaskin on the Farm :)

So, hey, I'm 16 wks pregnant[0]! uon and I will, if all continues to go well, become parents sometime in early March or thereabouts. This is both exciting and somewhat terrifying, which I think is an entirely reasonable set of reactions to have to the upcoming reality of being responsible for a whole new human person.

The first scan was a couple of weeks ago & the foetus is looking fine in there. I kept going "holy shit there's actually a real life proto-human in there" (because what was I expecting, a puppy?); it still seems a little bizarre, tbh. The foetus woke up halfway through and waved its hands around at us which was, again, both awesome and terrifying.

( obligatory blurry photo behind cut )

I am mostly done feeling sick, now, except for when in a car (thankfully not likely to be a problem again)[1] or when I haven't eaten for a while (also not, as a rule, a big problem). There were a bad few weeks early on, though. I now await further exciting physical developments as my entire insides are reconfigured for my temporary internal guest. (Pregnancy is weird.)

In other news, in the last few weeks I have moved house; done quite a lot of painting, DIY, etc; had huge numbers of Competent Professionals through the house to fix boiler / do more painting / put floor down; spent a fortnight in Devon learning about permaculture, which was awesome & v v interesting but INCREDIBLY hard work; and spent a week in Aberdeen for my parents' ruby wedding anniversary, which was absolutely lovely. Now I really need to do some damn work, and also to get the house sorted properly before e.g. March. BTW anyone who has visited since we moved will be pleased to hear that as of today our sofa has finally migrated up to the living room, courtesy of some exceptionally buff & very professional chaps from a company called SofaAssist.


[0] 17 wks according to the scan, which is wrong. Let's hope I don't wind up going lots overdue.
[1] I reckon I spent more time in a car during my trip to Aberdeen than I have in about the last 2 years total. Possibly 3 years.