The Birth of Eric

I've lost a lot of weight since I last blogged, and I did it all whilst eating biscuits. Yes, its time for a birth story. The prequel to this is Percy's birth story from 2 1/2 years ago, but to sum that up it was a ridiculously painful induced labour where I had an episiotomy (when someone chops your bits to make way for the head) and ventouse (a little baby hover that sucks the baby out). I remember sending out the "I've had a baby" text and the main point I tried to get across was the pain. Everyone ignored that and texted back "congratulations", they really missed my main point of the text. I said to Dan at the time that the only way I would ever give birth again would be by planned c-section.

So this time was a bit different THANK GOD! I was quite scared about it after my previous experience, I had had a bit of birth trauma counselling with a doctor friend who has just set up this as a business. I wanted to make this birth experience as different from the last one as possible, I considered home birth but then when I thought it through it involved my mum being there to look after Percy while I made mooing birth noises, and I really didn't want to moo in ear shot of my mum.

So I decided on either the hospital pool or the epidural (which numbs all your bits) the problem is that neither of these are guaranteed. It depends on if the pool is available at the right time and if the anaesthetist is available in the relatively short window of time that you can inject the magical epidural. There's two bits of the hospital you can give birth in (unless you're my mum: she'll give birth anywhere in or out of a hospital, the rebel). So there's the Midwife Led Unit, which they claim is a "home from home" for lower risk patients. I mean, if at home you have gas and air hidden under a picture frame and limited access to good drugs then I guess "home from home" is an accurate description. Then there's the high risk bit with doctors around, where you are likely to need continuous monitoring with straps that go round the bump to track the heartbeat, which means you can't go in a pool but they do store the Magic E there.

They sort of imply you have a choice of where you go, but you don't really. If I was being induced, which was the plan for today, I would be high risk but if they had let me go naturally, which was the plan a few weeks ago when the baby was deemed normal size, then I would be low risk.

So I started having mild contractions early in the morning of Tuesday 2nd May. It was annoying because the adrenalin starts going as I packed bags ready to go in, but also I knew it might be nothing, which it turned out to be when I eventually went back to sleep. Dan went in to work as normal on the Tuesday which I kept changing my mind about whether that was the right decision. I had a bit of pain but carried on with a normal day looking after Percy. When Dan got home contractions had started again and Dan started recording them. We contacted our emergency childcare people to see who was free and Rachel became the chosen emergency person. She got the bus over to ours after work, we told her to come straight here as we were worried it had started to get quicker, and then we felt a bit stupid when she got here and it all slowed down a bit. Dan later drove her back home so she could get an overnight bag, and I warned my mum to come up for 7am to relive Rachel and get Percy up in the morning. Finally around 10:30 we decided this was actually going to happen and we phoned the hospital who gave us permission to come in.

There was some discussion as to where I should be because this was natural non induced labour but the baby was still measuring small. In the end I had to start off in the Midwife Led Unit because there was no room in the other bit, and then they said they would transfer me to the other bit when I was ready to deliver. I was measured at 3cm dilated, but you need to get to 4 to get taken seriously and given drugs and you need to get to 10 to start pushing. So we had a walk round the hospital and I spent a lot of time sitting on a big bouncy ball. After a few hours and much more painful contractions the midwife said she could examine me but she doubted I would be more than 3 because the contractions still weren't following a regular patten. I'm glad I asked her still to do it, because I was 7-8cm! At that point she started taking me seriously and got me some gas and air. This is the 3rd time I'd used gas and air. The first was when I dislocated my elbow aged 16, I somehow managed to swallow the gas and air which resulted in a lot of stomach pain. This meant I was fearful of it in Percy's birth and ended up doing it wrong and then giving up on it. This time I finally got the hang of it. It's pretty fun.

I got transferred to the high risk bit ready for the babies imminent exit. My waters were bulging but for some reason wouldn't break. I asked again for the epidural, and the midwife were like "oh but you're doing so well, you don't need it" The last thing the midwife from the low risk bit said before going back to the Midwife Led Unit was "good luck and I hope you don't get the epidural" which I felt was a bit too opinionated. You sometimes hear people saying "it's better to give birth naturally" but when you've already had a traumatic birth experience I think it's pretty natural to want to avoid that horrendous pain ever happening to you again. No one goes for a c-section and says they want to do it naturally do they?

It was a bit difficult to then decide whether to really demand more drugs or not because I was just coping on gas and air but I knew it would get worse when a head started getting squeezed out and it's too late to ask then. In the end I didn't get anything, I don't feel like that was my decision though it's just what happened.

So I got to fully dilated and still the waters hadn't broken and I wasn't pushing. Whereas last time I started pushing when I was 8cm, they told me not to but I couldn't help it my body was just doing it. They felt I was holding back and gave me a little pep talk, the midwife was really nice and she was aware of my negative past experience and tried to make it different so she let me do a kneeling kind of position which I preferred to lying and she explained that she would have to press the button to get another midwife at the last bit which was normal. That was good of her because last time the button kept getting pressed and more and more people ran in because it was a bit of an emergency.

So anyway...we're nearly there thanks for reading this far. There was a back log of things I needed to get out first the waters finally came splashing out wetting my midwife and my sock. Then I needed to poo! ww it's so gross but apparently the poo had to get out before the baby. So I pushed that out and had a midwife wipe my bum. Thanks NHS I owe you one. And now it was time for the main event: The head. I was in so much pain I was moving around nearly falling off the bed screaming almost being sick, I got a telling off got back, into position and pushed him out!

The relief when you finally hear the cry and you've done it is immense! I now only had one thing left on the to do list of things to to push out, the placenta, no biggy that flopped out a minute later. It was 4.15 am, little Eric was here, and I could immediately claim my free tea and toast. Hurrah.

6lbs 4

Dan one hour later...he did a super great job, it was pretty hard work for him too.

What to expect when you're expecting.

Expect a person to come out of your genitals, and make a mess everywhere.

Tomorrow I will be 38 weeks. This time last time I was pregnant I was throwing a pancake party because it was the night before I was going to be induced and I was blissfully unaware of how painful squeezing a person out of your bits is. (If you're first time pregnant and reading this maybe ignore everything I'm saying. the other person in this photo, Steph, thinks birth is a lovely miracle and gave birth on 2 paracetamol.)

I tried to write my birth plan today, the short version is "just give me all the drugs and get the baby out." I've been reading up a bit about birth so I can look out for signs of early labour, as I'm now not being induced this time like I was before. Flicking through this book I found several mockable sentences which I will mock now. This is a paragraph telling you all the things you might want to do during early labour. I really just want to know the facts not a list of jobs a generic person might want to do. but yeah I could be folding baby clothes. If baby clothes really needed folding, they're tiny, I don't even fold adult clothes properly. 

"Cook some extra food" my mum had 17 minutes from first contraction to baby being out, with her 3rd child Sarah. My dad had to deliver her because there was no time to get to the hospital. I don't feel like this situation would have been easier if she was half way though making a lasagna. "email your friends" its not 1999.

Don't start telling me what to eat now, if there's any time when you can eat what you want it's when a person is about to come out of you.

Quick I'm in labour, I must find out what celebrities are going to share a birthday with my child... there will be absolutely no time to ever do that again and it is essential that I know now. Just in case it's Hiltler and then I'll try and keep my legs crossed until tomorrow.

This is some advice for the Man now. I don't know if you know, but ice pops will melt all over your neatly folded baby clothes. I remember after giving birth last time I was given a sanitary towel made of ice that was meant to make up for the fact that a man had chopped away at my bits with scissors. (this is called an episiotomy) Initially you're like "ok weird", but yes it's just like putting a bag of frozen peas on a bumped head. Then the ice melts and you have wet underwear and trousers that need changing... and you think this product would not get through to the final stages of Dragons Den.

So glad Dan has been devouring this book so that he knows the essentials like "put socks on cold feet".

Apparently stage one of labour is the time to make jokes and definitely not stage 3. What if you're married to a comedian? Do the rules still apply? Who knows?

Ewww.

Living on the Edge

Hey, it's been a while. Every time stuff is happening in life I have no time for blog writing and every time nothing interesting is happening I have nothing to write about. It's a wonder anyone writes anything.

Not that anything massively major has been going on, we've just been doing A LOT of diy, like almost every evening. We've been in the house a month now and only between 2 and 9 weeks till the baby is here. I'm going to guess most likely we have 4 weeks left. It takes a bit of explaining: So the baby is due on 9th May (7 weeks time). The most you can realistically go over is 2 weeks (9 weeks time), but the baby is a bit small so they are thinking about inducing me, which according to them could happen "around 37 weeks or before". I have another scan on 4th April so they will probably make a decision then.

You're probably thinking "why are they getting it out early? If it's small, thats like getting a bread out of the oven because it's not done properly." Correct, but the baby might be small because the "oven"(placenta) is not working well, in which case it might rise better in the "microwave", which I think in this metaphor represents being attached to my boob where he can get nutrition in a different way. Theres also a small chance the baby has a more serious problem such as no yeast (genetic abnormalities) in which case taking it out of the oven won't help. This was a terrible way of explaining the baby is small and so I might be induced.

So back to the house... We now live on the border between Belle Vale (a bit rough in places) and Gateacre (quite posh) but officially on our address it's Belle Vale, that's why a 4 bed house with a garden was affordable to us. (£132K if you're wondering, I'm really just including that for the Londoners.)

So our house is in walking distance from houses like this:

and people with Cath Kidston bags, and a specialist cheese shop.

It's also in walking distance of this:

The beautiful Belle vale shopping centre. Just what the french had in mind when they invented the word "belle"

and people who wear false eyelashes as everyday eyewear.

I met one of these false eyelash wearers on a trip to Morrisons. It was my first ever time there and I was signing up for a Morrisons loyalty card at the customer service desk. The woman who worked there was a very pleasant false eyelash wearer: she told me all about how you could earn points. Then she told me she saved up all of hers and spent them on vodka, but that I could spend mine on whatever I liked. While having this conversation an old woman with just one tooth in the middle came over and said "haven't you even got a "M" card?!" She was disgusted with me. I said "I've just moved to the area, this is the first time I've ever shopped here and I'm signing up for one now." She still looked disgusted.

So we've invented a game, it's not very nice, we look at people and guess if they're from Belle Vale or Gatacre based entirely on what they're wearing. We'll never know for sure. We've met our neighbours both sides and they're really lovely, proper scouse but super nice. One side told us where all the local stuff was and things that you can do with kids in the area and said come round if you need anything at all. The other side brought round a plant and a huge box of Thornton's chocolates.

At the end of our road is a tree thats been made into a memorial. It always has fresh flowers and lit candles, theres a chair there and sometimes you see a guy spending time there, usually smoking weed. I said to Dan "If I die please don't attach tacky decorations to a tree and smoke a spliff next to me."

Here's some photos of the house progress:

I finally have a studio room after 3 years. 

We painted it, laid laminate, and got those ikea boxes everyone has.

The bedroom is still a work in progress, we're still sleeping on the floor but the woodchip is gone!

We wanted to get rid of the woodchip because a) woodchip is horrible and b) I once watched a documentary about prostitutes who were also drug users and they moved into a council house which had wood chip and they got it off strait away, so if they can have the self respect to remove woodchip from their home then so can I.

There's no place like home

After 3 years of searching for a family sized house we finally moved in a week and a half ago! Hooray! Its so nice to have our own place. Its so nice to not have a pram in our lounge, and have a garden, and be able to open the boxes that we haven't seen in the 9 months that we were homeless, and to be able to decorate things how we like, and not be still in the process of buying a house.

We moved our stuff in over a long weekend. We're lucky that, because we were living with a family, we could move out over a few days and didn't have that annoying thing you have when you're buying and selling a house, where you have to do the whole move on one day.

So, Friday afternoon me and Percy picked up the keys. I didn't go and see the house straight away because Percy was a bit confused by seeing an empty house. He's worried we're just going to live with nothing: he kept asking if we were taking his bed. And then, when I went to look round charity shops for a sofa for the new house, he said "we need to buy jumpers for the new house".

Lola and Percy settling in to the garden

In the evening, when Percy was asleep at the Langston's, me and Dan headed over to the new house which was just an empty blank canvas of anaglypta and dreams, and had a celebratory Orangina, in a little bottle all the way from our France holiday in the summer. I know, we're pretty rock and roll. The last 2 bottles are saved to celebrate baby number 2 making an appearance. Then we set to work making Percy's room look like a bedroom, so he could see it in a relatively finished state.

All of Saturday was spent moving things with the van we hired. I mainly stayed with Percy because as a pregnant woman I'm not a useful lifter. We had help from a few friends and family.

Then, on Sunday morning had a really hectic start. The van had to be returned for 10:30 am and we still had a wardrobe, masses of boxes and a rabbit to move, and no helpers. Dan managed to collect this wardrobe from a friend get it into the van get it in the house, a long with a load of boxes and just get back to the van hire place with seconds to spare. The rest of the day was a lot more relaxed, we had a nice family car journey over, all 5 of us (me and Dan, Percy, lola the rabbit and the bump). Lola got to enjoy some grass again for the first time in a while, and then Percy went to see his new room. He was really happy he said "all my toys are here" and then just started naming all his toys and he ran around the garden a bit. We had lunch with Katie who then babysat Percy while we went on a hunt for a fridge and washing machine.

It turns out fridges and washing machines are expensive, so we decided to try and hold out for a second hand one. We had a few days of eating vegetarian, and leaving our milk outside, before finding a fridge freezer and washer dryer on gumtree and therefore making modern life sustainable. Hurrah!

On the Monday I went food shopping, while Dan and Mike made several attempts at getting a wardrobe upstairs before completely taking it apart and putting it back together again. Percy watched a lot of Peppa Pig.

Then this weekend my parents came up and I managed to survive a trip to Ikea with my mum. I went through the 7 stages of an ikea shop, they're universal right?

1) woo isn't this exciting look at all the pretty stuff, oooh we could get this!
2) we need to get dull stuff like shelves too.
3) mum- "ooh look at these knobs, do you need a knob, you said you wanted a knob? shall we got back to the knobs" - stop saying knobs mum.
4) I'm so tired when will this maze end
5) Yay meatballs, yum yum.
6) ok lets just collect the furniture and go "but you haven't looked at frames and curtain rails" I DON'T CARE, I NEED TO LEAVE
7) I'll just buy some frozen meatballs on the way out here *puts in trolley* oh wait I forgot to pay for them. I'm so tired, lets just go (I put them back, I didn't shoplift)

The whole house needs decorating but we're going to start with the studio, which just needs a paint and some laminate flooring so it's more art friendly. When mum first saw it she said "it just needs a paint". It was the only room I'd painted. I've bought the laminate flooring and watched a youtube video on how to lay it. They use something called spacers which look like dominos. I don't have spacers so I'm guessing dominos will do.

Then we're going to do the bedroom. We've left that pretty much empty apart from a mattress as a motivational tactic to get in done, but I had a huge revelation: "BEDS ARE POINTLESS!" They're just something that our consumeristic society has made up. Sleeping on a mattress on the floor is just as comfy. And then, when you aren't sleeping and you want the space to make a box fort, you can just flip the mattress up.

Percy managed to cue himself of his hoover fear overnight

3rd on our list is the lounge, which is going to be tropical themed!

And if theres anymore time before baby number 2 pops out we'll do the dining room.

30 weeks

Thanks to everyone who has helped out with the move!

My friend the Muslim Immigrant.

For the first time I'm going to try a sort of serious blog post. So, there's been a lot of stuff in the news and social media about Trump and his new immigration laws that some are calling "the Muslim ban", which has made me feel quite angry. Then yesterday in a primary school I had to report some racist Islamaphobic comments I heard.

I'm not really qualified to write a proper political article with facts and figures and quotes and stuff (I probably could if I had to but I really would find that boring). So I thought I'd tell you a true story about my friend the Muslim immigrant (that's not what I call her of course, her name is Samar).  There are so many stories about "them" in the newspapers, how "they're" taking our jobs or living off our benefits, probably both at the same time. These stories are probably untrue, but as that is difficult to prove I will just tell my story about one family that we have come to know and love since we met them just over a year ago.

Meeting

On the first day of October 2015 I'd just taken Percy, who was nearly one, to something at the children's centre. Then, as it was a nice unusually warm day, I decided to take Percy to the park on the way back. In the park I saw a Muslim lady (which is not at all unusual in that park) with her two children aged 1 and 4. For some reason I was feeling extra friendly that day or maybe just a bit bored. So I started a bit of a conversation. It's quite easy when you're a mum to talk to other strangers, you usually start with "aww how old are they?" or something. I wish it was that easy for non-parents to chat to random strangers, but for some reason that is unacceptable. 

I overheard a bit of Arabic and I do have a little bit of love for Arabs over other nationalities, from my gap year in Palestine and our more recent trip through Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. So I am probably more likely to talk to a stranger who looks Arab than a different nationality that I would know less about, is that racist? I hope not. Quite quickly in the conversation Samar said it was her first day in Liverpool. They had moved here from Egypt. She and her husband were both doctors, and her husband (Ahmed) was at the hospital trying to sort out his work while she was alone with the children. When she said that I really wanted to be as helpful as possible. It's hard enough to be new to a city without having to get used to a whole new culture while juggling work and small children. I tried to say useful information like where the Children's Centre was and what they did, where the Arabic centre was, stuff about when you're entitled to free childcare, etc. 

Samar had a lot to sort out in those first few weeks like somewhere to live, a school for her eldest, eventually she wanted to find work for herself too, but she would first have to pass english exams and become registered as a able to work here. I gave her my number and told her to call me if she needed to ask anything. I left the park not really expecting to hear from her again but I hoped I would. I later found out that she went home and told her friends back in Egypt that she talked to a "real British person".

Becoming friends

One of the first things Samar needed to get around and do anything was a pram. She phoned me to ask where she could buy one, I remember spelling out "Mothercare" so she could google it. She ended up buying a second hand one that broke the next day, and I thought I could probably help her out here. I'm in a Facebook group of mums in my church so I asked if anyone had one spare and then I arranged to take it to Samar. She was very grateful and gave me a lot of cake and hot chocolate. Over the next few weeks she phoned me with a few questions about housing and where she could buy certain things. At the same point in time Percy became very ill with pneumonia and we were in and out of hospital for most of the month. Although I barely knew Samar she offered to come and visit us and she told me she was praying for us. When we came out of hospital she offered to come round and help me cook. I told her "It's ok, when British people are tired they just get take away."

The banquet

A month or so later, when Percy was better, we were invited round to their newly rented flat for a traditional Egyptian feast. When a Brit invites you round for a meal they might spend half a hour to an hour cooking, if they're feeling generous they might also provide a pudding. Egyptian hospitality is incredible. Samar spent all morning cooking every kind of Egyptian delight. The way Arabs cook rice is like a whole new better way of life, it takes about 45 minutes and involves many stages of soaking and frying in oil and salt. I guess its not as healthy as our plain boiled rice but it tastes soooo good. I could eat it on it's own as a meal. I've just written down the recipe actually so I'm going to learn. As if all this wasn't enough, Samar also made desserts and a lasagna from scratch just in case we didn't like Egyptian food. There was so much food left over that she gave us lots to take home too. 

Awkwardness 

I'll be honest, there were a few awkward cultural differences, which I want to mention in case you feel like befriending a Muslim and want to know what to expect. None of these things were a big deal, just unexpected. So lunch is at 3pm not the normal British 12:30 or 1. This is sometimes their only meal of the day! We weren't sure if we were meant to use a certain hand for eating, so we just ignored that, hopefully we didn't cause offence. We arrived with a drink, obviously we picked a non alcoholic one, but the drink didn't get opened and in fact they didn't drink anything with the meal. In the end I asked for some water because the food was quite salty, but Dan didn't get offered any. After lunch we had tea. A standard Arab tea is no milk lots of sugar, I have since taught Samar to make tea for me the more standard British way, milk and no sugar. I've also introduced them to charity shops, wellies, blu-tac and advent calendars, non of which they have in Egypt. 

I asked to go to the loo and they didn't have toilet paper in there because that's not how they do toilet time. Luckily they do have loo roll in their house so now whenever I go round I just ask for it. Its the kind of thing thats a bit awkward the first time because you don't expect it, but after you know what to expect its fine. They pray at set times 5 times a day. Normally if we're round Ahmed will do it while we're still in the room, facing Mecca and bowing down, Samar will go into another room to do it. 

Money

The newspapers always have stories about immigrants taking "our" money, and stealing "our" services. But this is a family who do well on very little. (Ahmed doesn't get a proper doctors wage because he is still training.) If they were British they would be entitled to the free childcare that is means tested until the age of 3, but they don't get that benefit because they are Egyptian. Yes they use the NHS and schools, just like I do, but over time, especially when Samar gets her licence to practise medicine here, I'm sure they will pay a lot of tax. At moment I don't earn enough to pay tax and I am taking up NHS money with being pregnant, ic it wasn't for Dan's wage I would need some kind of handouts to survive. Samar and family are so hard working and I've never heard them complain about anything.

Brilliantness

Despite the obvious differences we have a lot in common. We are almost the same age and have been married the same amount of time. We are all interested in travelling. We have a lot of beliefs in common, I think us being christians means we have more in common than if we were atheists. For example we didn't live together before we were married. Also the Bible and the Quran have many stories in common, like muslims believe in Jesus and Moses and Abraham.

I love being friends with someone who's had a different life experience to most of my friends. It makes for good discussions, and I kind of think if I can't be friends with another mum living in my local area, who is the same age as me and super nice, then there's no hope for any cohesion between people of different faiths or nationalities. They are the some of the most generous hospitable people we know, and they only people who have ever bought a duck back from a foreign country in our honour. (a dead one for eating) 

At my 30th Birthday

Our boys at the farm

Percy says "back off Trump"

-->

The Baby Cake

Happy 2017, can't believe I've been writing a blog for 8 years now, I only started it as a way to kill time while working on the reception desk at the Bluecoat gallery. A lot has changed since then, in Jan 2009 I was living in L15 with a family that had 2 girls and a boy now I'm still living in L15 with a family that have 2 girls and a boy. But a different family in quite different circumstances after a few life changes in between like getting married, buying a house, cycling to Kuwait, having a baby, becoming homeless(ish), and becoming pregnant again. My last blog was a bit of a downer on not having a house. read it here

This blog will hopefully be more uplifting and positive about having our second baby. Just before Christmas on 21st December we had our 20 week scan. This is the one where they look for a willy... if you ask them to. With Percy we had a surprise. I've always found that a strange phrase though as everyone has a surprise, they just choose when to have the surprise. So with Percy we chose to have that surprise at birth, which was Dan's idea really. but this time I wanted to have an earlier surprise, which I enjoyed because you get to just have the gender information on it's own without all the other stuff that you have to take in at birth. e.g it's 8lbs, the placenta's coming now, it's healthy, my genitals are ruined, it has a little bit of hair, it's a boy.

So it's a boy! Another boy. I wasn't sure how people would respond because I did tell people I was hoping for a girl. But luckily everyone was still happy and excited about it.  My friend just texted me today with "congratulations on a cheaper 2nd child". I did feel like I was allowed to be a bit disappointed, but other people aren't allowed to they have to be happy, and actually I wasn't really very disappointed. For the first 5 minutes I was a bit sad about all the nice girl clothes I won't get to buy, and how my skill for french plaits will be wasted. I'm not a very girly girl so I wasn't like "oh no I can't make a princess bedroom" but I am slightly disappointed that I won't get to do typically "boy stuff" with a girl like Scalextrics. Anyway I really couldn't be disappointed with a healthy lovely baby. Especially when Percy is a boy and I love him so much.

We went shopping after and I choose some very cute boy baby grows with planets on them. (All our baby grows for Percy were neutral because we didn't know he would be a boy.) We went to the toy shop too to get a last minute Christmas present for cousin Reuben, and I decided toy wise boys have a lot more fun. It does really annoy me that every toy seems to be either for a girl or a boy. Even stupid things like this etch-a sketch type thing that we were thinking of getting for Reuben but didn't coz it only came in pink. And once when we were looking for Duplo for Percy we quite liked the house but that only came in pink. (In the end we got a Castle with a working cannon which is pretty cool.) Percy got a baby doll for christmas from my parents so he can practice big brothering. My mum searched everywhere to find a non-pink one.

We decided to make a cake to reveal the gender to our families, the cake is white or whatever on the outside and either blue or pink on the inside. I know after my rant above about gender stereotyping this is pretty hypocritical. What is gender anyway? Maybe it is more politically correct to say "our feotus has a penis" than "it's a boy" maybe that's what baby cards of the future will say. So we made the first cake at the Langston's (where we live) and took it down to Dan's parents house where we were spending Christmas. It was a lot of fun doing it people seemed genuinely excited and sort of nervous.

Cake number 1

Before

After

Yes the cake was pretty green despite having two tubes of blue food colouring in it. It's really hard to make a blue cake when cake mix is naturally yellow.

On the 27th we went to my parents where we had planned to make a new cake. My sister Sarah was there too, I thought my other sister Jo and her husband would be joining us very soon but actually they didn't arrive till very late on the 29th. So we went from chatting about the baby being a boy to then having to keep it secret until Jo arrived which my brain just couldn't manage! In a conversation about how we felt a bit sorry for Dad because he couldn't pass on the Marshall surname (because of having 3 girls) I accidentally blurted out "yeah especially coz I'm having two boys" and then I laughed a lot because after so much build up I'd ruined it.

Percy doesn't really understand about gender but he is very good on colours and the next day he was telling Aunty Sarah about the blue cake he made with mummy so he would have ruined it anyway. So we made another blue/green cake for Jo, Elisha and the extended family and I had my first go at doing facebook live for the cake cutting. It's the proper future in quite a scary way. It was kind of fun though and nice to see peoples comments so instantly.

I went slightly more gross with this second cake. it had a lovely melted marshmallow egg.