"What about the Olympics eh?" Blog 5 5/10/09

So, 3 appointments in a week!  OK, so one was with the hairdresser, but even so….

First up, the midwife for my 28 week appointment.  No surprises – blood pressure fine, baby fine.  All good.

Then, my anti-D injection.  Having a rhesus negative blood type (it's A neg, since you’re wondering), I have to have an injection at 28 weeks.  I phoned the hospital a couple of weeks ago, to check that an appointment had been made.  They have a habit of making appointments for me, and not letting me know.  I was right, they’d booked me in, except that the appointment was for 24th December, several days after my due date…  As I’m not a particularly neurotic person, I find this kind of comedy shambles quite amusing – but I live in a multicultural borough, and if English wasn’t my first language, I’m not sure I’d be quite so relaxed about it all.  They also neglected to tell me that I needed to turn up an hour beforehand to get a blood test done – thankfully, my lovely midwife mentioned that, and gave me the necessary form.

As such, when something happens in my antenatal care (like when a midwife tried to accuse me of being late for an appointment when I blatantly wasn’t), I find myself sighing and saying “what if English wasn’t my first language, eh?” Likewise, whenever there’s some kind of public transport disaster in my home area of east London, I say “What about the Olympics, eh?”
My late father-in-law’s favourite was in relation to difficult-to-open wrappers, jars etc.: “What if you were blind, eh?”

But I digress…

That’s it for appointments for a while.  I’m back at the midwife when I’m 34 weeks, which is AGES away, November.  My antenatal, sorry, Parentcraft (!) classes start then too.  Then I’ll really be on countdown.

Oh, and my hairdresser’s appointment was fine, even though she thought I was coming a week later, and was subsequently doing someone else’s hair when I arrived.  Dear me – what if English wasn’t my first language, eh?!