Pregnant women at full term are often described as being ‘hot and bothered.’ You ask an expectant father how his other half is and this is the reply, ‘Oh, she’s feeling a bit hot and bothered, she just wants it over with.’ ‘Hot and bothered’ in this case seems to be a euphemism for being a sweaty, bloated, red-faced, screaming monster. Lynne is not ‘hot and bothered’; rather she is ‘glowing.’
Reading through yesterday’s post I realise that far from sounding unconcerned I seemed to be verging on moderately-concerned-to-slightly-hysterical. My apologies, concern is not the aim of this blog. Lynne is healthy and happy, ‘glowing’ as I said, and the baby still has room to kick about. But we still want to avoid having her induced if we can help it. The free book from the hospital Ready, Steady, Baby! contains only 3 lines on inducing pregnancy. This could mean that, hey, there’s nothing to it, but it seems more likely to me that they couldn’t think of anything good to say about induction so they left it out. Your Pregnancy Bible is more forthright, mentioning vaginal tablets and gels, and also a ’25-cm (10-inch) long plastic instrument with an end like a crochet hook.’ Mmm, maybe give that a miss, thanks all the same.
Reading through yesterday’s post I realise that far from sounding unconcerned I seemed to be verging on moderately-concerned-to-slightly-hysterical. My apologies, concern is not the aim of this blog. Lynne is healthy and happy, ‘glowing’ as I said, and the baby still has room to kick about. But we still want to avoid having her induced if we can help it. The free book from the hospital Ready, Steady, Baby! contains only 3 lines on inducing pregnancy. This could mean that, hey, there’s nothing to it, but it seems more likely to me that they couldn’t think of anything good to say about induction so they left it out. Your Pregnancy Bible is more forthright, mentioning vaginal tablets and gels, and also a ’25-cm (10-inch) long plastic instrument with an end like a crochet hook.’ Mmm, maybe give that a miss, thanks all the same.
So, with that in mind, today’s mission was to find a pineapple and some raspberry leaf tea. Curry for tea tonight, and possibly a bit of nipple tweaking, but Lynne says this is too silly. Old wives’ tales are the way forward, no matter that this article says they are just myths. What the hell does the Telegraph know anyway? It’s a right-wing comicbook!
The pineapple was no problem, but just try finding some raspberry leaf tea in Glasgow. Every shop and supermarket has some kind of raspberry flavoured tea, but made out of dried fruit or some silly shit. Now, I like a herbal tea as much as the next hippy, but you don’t make tea out of fruit. You make juice out of fruit. Juice not tea. (I would allow banana tea though, because as any pedant knows, a banana is a herb).
I was getting quite cross, it was raining and everything, but I kept my cool. I have a rule never to moan at people who work in shops, since I worked in shops myself for so long, and I have stuck to that rule, even that time in Iceland when the girl tried to tell me creme fraiche was just a posh name for cottage cheese. I finally tracked down the tea in Napiers on Byres road, a wee packet of spongy green leaves for the reasonable sum of Fucking Hell! I mean £4.50.
The girls in Napiers are very helpful. Aparently the curry thing is nothing to do with fenugreek, which I had a vague idea it was, but is all about the spices stimulating something and getting the bowels moving. It's important to keep the bowels open. Lovely. Pineapple is meant to help release some hormone in the cervix that brings on labour. The girl steps closer to me and lowers her voice. I'll not shout this across the shop, she says, but sperm has the same effect on the cervix.
Interesting.
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