Bump Watch - Week 37

"Is it twins?" the checkout lady in the

supermarket asked me. The cheek of it!

This week marks an important milestone - the baby is now considered full-term and could arrive at any time. My reflexologist certainly thinks it will be earlier than later: "Prepare yourself" he said on Wednesday. "All the signs are there in the feet". As I had planned a girls' night in at our place on Saturday I asked him if I would make it as far as the weekend. "Oh yes" he said. "It's not that imminent".

This came as a relief, since I was convinced that if I planned an elaborate party I would end up cancelling it at the last minute for a mad dash to the hospital. As it happened, Friday's regular hospital check-up passed off uneventfully, and as Saturday came, I prepared salads to go with the takeaway pizzas I would order later and congratulated myself on a job well done.

At 6:45, with the girls due to arrive at 7pm, I just had time to sort out the music and switch on the table lamps, when ZZZZZ!!!!!! I gave myself an electric shock on the plug adaptor for the cursed 2-prong-plugged lamp. Baby's feet gave a massive kick to my ribs in a "Hey! What the hell's going on?" sort of way, and then - nothing. Oh god! Oh god! I thought, dashing for the computer to Google "can electric shock harm baby". The first hit which came up included the line "the fetuses died in 73% of cases, and there was only one normal pregnancy outcome".

So, convinced I had fried the baby with only three weeks to go, I went on what seemed like the longest taxi ride ever to the hospital (which is just five minutes away). Unlike my recent visit (the gastroenteritis episode), this time there was no attempt to take payment up-front and I was whisked straight through to triage where I had a series of sticky pads and wires applied all over my body, apparently to check my heart. Never mind me, I'm thinking, what about the baby?

Eventually the on-call gynae showed to do an ultrasound and thankfully Pob was very much alive and kicking. I bet The Prof, my obstetrician, was wetting himself when he got a call to tell him that his patient, who was absolutely fine yesterday, had electrocuted herself and did she need to bring forward her next appointment as a result? Yes, Prof said. And inwardly I laughed too, because on Friday, when he sent us away with a confident "see you in ten days", I said "I bet we see you sooner". However this wasn't exactly the scenario I had in mind...

Happy ending: the girls' party went ahead

rather later than expected!