Starbucks makes an appearance!

The baby came. She really did. There is no way she really came out of me, but there is a small human we have been allowed to take home, and she is dead cute, and no-one has realised their mistake and come running after us.

So without further ado, here she is.

Complete with facial scratches from the first night in the world of finger nails.

She's learnt a karate defence pose already, needing to fight off all the parental attention and touching.
None of these photos really reflect what she actually looks like, and how cute she really is.

She also has really soft hair, and smells great. A bit like the plastic food you had as a child in your mini kitchen, which had fake food smell on it. (I can clearly picture the cherry pie slice).

More info when i have more time, made several revelations during the duration of my hospital stay (Sat night to Thus lunch time), including that if you do a silent fart whilst hooked up to a baby heartbeat monitor, the monitor makes the fart noise instead! Quite embarrassing when you are not in labour and trying to be normal.

Missing the craic

I've been away from work for 3 weeks, and i admit it, i miss the teenagers. I really do. I also miss regularly being involved in conversations which stump me, and render me silent for a while, generally rending me quite for a week, until i come back at the next session and begin with, 'I've been thinking about what you said last week and.....'

Here are some of my most recent conversation dead-ends:

Kid A (16, a big MDMA drug user): 'I've decided not to drink on New Years because it affects the drugs i take and i don't like it'
Me: 'Brilliant. Not mixing substances is a great step forward, so its just the MDMA on new years!'
Kid A: 'erm, No. We've ordered MDMA, Ketamine and Acid.'
Me: .............

Kid C (13): 'I bought a knife to school today to stab Jade'
Me: 'If you say radical things like that i have to take them seriously, and i don't think you really are going to stab Jade, are you?'
Kid C: 'No. [thinks for a minute]. I'm going to stab my mum'
Me: ...............

Me: Today we are going to talk about contraception as I'm worried your going to get pregnant.'
Girl C (13): ' I'm not interested. I've got a 19 year old boyfriend and we are trying for a baby'.
Me:' well, the baby will wake you up all the time at night, dont you like sleeping?'
Girl C: 'It wont wake me up as i'll be awake gazing at it sleeping'
Me:...........

Mother: 'Tell me, at what age can i give up [parenting her kids]? 16? 18?'
Me: 'Well, some people would say you can never give up on your kids, you will always be their parent. They are your children for life'
Mother: [in all earnestness] 'Nobody told me this!'

Kid K (12): 'I like school, i get good grades and want to go to Harvard'
Me: 'Wow, thats going to be a tough thing to do. But aim high. What do you want to study at university?'
Kid K: ' singing or cooking'

and a great example from my colleague Spinsters session:
Kid A: ' Mum is always calling me names, and putting me down like calling me a prostitute etc'
Spinster: 'Mum is this true?'
Mum: 'well she did it first'.
Spinster: ............

The Waiting

I am now officially waiting. I can pretend i am sorting the house out, painting a mural, meeting friends for coffee/lunch etc, but really these are all pretexts for waiting. When will this baby come.....? No way to hurry her up and no way of knowing when it will be. Here's a photo of my unbelievably big belly. When i walk down the street it looks comedic like i have a pillow stuffed down there.

Its a surreal time. Seems very recently that i took a pregnancy test 'for a laugh' (i didn't feel pregnant and the test was out of date) and it turned out to be positive. This is what i looked like then......

Luckily it wasn't twins.