Twisting by the pool

The birthing pool sounds and looks like a good option (and see blog entry on the discredited Acquatic Theory of Evolution), except PP is very anti swimming around in her own poo. The buoyancy helps, the feel of the water on skin distracts from the pain, and it can be very cooling, too. It's pretty good for the woman as well.

Joking aside, a five-month new dad friend whose daughter was born in a birthing pool said that the strangest part was seeing the baby's head poking out, not the least bit bothered.

Apparently, one of the major duties of the partner (or doula or midwife) is to fish the floaters out of the water, should there be any. Bleeeurgh.

Pic of the boys from Dire Straits when they had hair

HxWxL at 24 weeks

According to The Rough Guide to Pregnancy & Birth, Toblet is now 210mm (A4 width) and 630g (1lb 6oz to you and me).

At what point, I wonder, do they give up on such precise figures? We're not reading ahead to find out!

Metric conversions from the excellent http://www.statman.info/ - every conceivable (appropriately enough) conversion you can imagine.

Size matters

According to the "Rough Guide to Pregnancy and Birth" by Kaz Cooke, Toblet is now 20cm (at 23 weeks today) and around 0.5kg (2lb).

Am I obsessing about this? There is very little else in the books (of which we have even more now) about the baby. It seems that the exciting bit as the baby forms is pretty much over, and now it is simply a race to be big enough and fat enough to survive birth.

Kaz, I guess, was chosen as author because an Emma, Karen or Gillian just wouldn't be right for a Rough Guide.

Kaz.

Yeah.