Day 220 - Oh Sit Down!

We've come up to Grantham to visit K___'s mother for her birthday. It's actually on Wednesday, but seeing as she already had a big party to celebrate it in May (it's her sixtieth this year, so she and her cousin hired Harlaxton Manor and invited the entire world) a few days early is hardly significant!

We took a trip to the local Halfords and got the base for the car seat fitted. It was remarkably quick and easy, though when the chap arrived with the most enormous box you've ever seen, my eyes were fair boggling from my head. Needless to say, there was a completely ridiculous amount of packaging, particularly considering the item's made out of high durability plastic.

It was incredibly simply to fit; okay, the guy doing it has probably done hundreds of them, but even I would probably be able to install it from scratch in a couple of minutes. The great thing about one of these - it's an Easy Base for a Maxi Cosi Cabrio - is that it's not only a lot more secure than just using seat belts to secure the seat, but also that you can just pick the baby's seat out of the pushchair frame and clip it straight into this, so it means that there's far less chance of waking a sleeping baby and it's considerably less stress on the parents.

(Now all we need to do is replace the aerial that some knuckledragger tore off the car last night whilst standing on our bonnet. Little gits. Fortunately, the bonnet doesn't seem to be damaged, but there were muddy footprints all over it.)

After a lovely Thai meal last night, we all ended up back at K___'s parent's house for a few drinks. K___'s family spent quite a lot of time trying to feel Wobblechops moving, but she wasn't playing ball. Naturally there was a bit of baby chat and we were relaying some of the things we'd learned in the ante natal classes. K___'s elder sister C____ told us that when she had her first child, she was desparate to get off the bed and get onto her hands and knees and push. The hospital staff wouldn't let her however much she begged them and she's certain that it made the labour far longer than it should have been and she got so tired of pushing that they ended up having to use forceps. She also had continuous monitoring of the baby which she found uncomfortable, restricting and unnecessary. Another tick in the Home Birth column there, not that there was any doubts about which one is preferred by us. Her second baby was born quickly (albeit a little unexpectedly) on my mother in law's sofa on her hands and knees but maybe we wont go down that particular route!

Mind you, we seem to be the only ones who were into a home birth at the ante-natal class. Everyone else wanted to go into hospital, so I guess we're just unusual where that's concerned. Well, not to worry. It doesn't bother us.