25
The wife squatter turned twenty five weeks old yesterday. By all accounts, it now weighs just short of 2lbs, or just under a kilo for those of you who are, well, Dutch.All the wee bugger’s organs are present and correct. I now have a fully qualified donor match! It’s kind of like having your own vegetable patch. I do jest of course, something I seemingly must explicitly express for those among us who’ve had transplants of their own of a humourous variety.Anyway, all the baby’s bits and pieces are in place, its skin doesn’t look like greaseproof paper anymore, and it

Absolutely flabulous
It’s a boy. If you ‘carry low’, that is. It’s a girl if you carry high. That’s what they say isn’t it?What is it if you carry low and high depending on the day of the week?This kid just won’t sit still. From an upright position last week, it seems to have started to nosedive in an attempt to take up a more horizontal position. All of which is resulting in a distortion of ET’s belly.With the placenta behind the baby, all movements are being felt more pronounced, and even seen. On a couple of occasions ET’s gut looked like the cranium of a bald man who’d fal

Smartarses
Everyone loves a cutting cliché and a juicy generalisation. The irritating thing about them is the fact that they often prove themselves to be true.From the moment you start trying to conceive up, right up until your kid is attempting to lure you into a retirement home with a trail of wurther's originals you get bombarded with them.While ‘just relax, it will happen’ was the runaway champion in the days of TTC, the days and months that follow becoming pregnant bring their own beauty.‘Just you wait until…’Who knew that at any

Snot and a wave
The saga rumbles on.Slowly and unsurely the baby’s room is taking some shape. That makes it sounds far more intricate than it really is, the reality being that it just needs some bloody painting.So Saturday morning that’s what I did, or attempted to do at least. By the time lunchtime had come around I had managed to scald myself on the radiator and roll paint onto the blinds.Neither of which I particularly advise or encourage, but I’m going to put those mishaps in the battle scar category.One more coat and the kid will have its own room decorated in a colour that can only be described as along the lines of something you’d find in a use

One sick prick
The letter has been on the kitchen table for weeks.It tells us that in 3 weeks or so, vaccinations will begin at our general practice for the H1N1 virus.The 'Swine flu', or delightfully accusatory 'Mexican flu' as they call it here, has been fodder for breaking news headlines in the UK and Ireland for months.Not so much here in Holland.The level of awareness is high, and the practical everyday precautions are promoted and supported. People are encouraged to stay home if they feel ill, which to be honest isn’t exactly a foreign concept to the Dutch anyway.Even with all this taken into account, the Dutch a