The Inevitable Happens

V quick post as it's 1:33 am and I'm a bit knackered.

My waters broke sometime today but as it wasn't even a proper trickle I was very good at rationalising it away until about 11:30 pm yesterday. I ran up the Delivery Suite they said come in so we did.

I was checked over, an internal examination was done to confirm the membrane had ruptured and to see if I was at all dilated.

If I am dilated it's not very much at all so I am home again. If labour doesn't get established by Thursday morning I have to go in to be induced, so it is possibly all go. I will definitely have a baby by the weekend. Which is nice.

Today Is My Bloggiversery

Four years ago today I started blogging. In my first blog I finished up by saying.

...the chance I might meet or at least talk to suitable chaps who read the Guardian, scrub up nice and like real ale.

Who'd have thunk that I would have ended up marrying the person who inspired me to start blogging and I would be imminently expecting our first child?

As for the real ale? well two out of three ain't bad.

Reality TV Bullshit

Simon Mayo had an apologist (I didn't catch his name) for Britain's Got Talent on his show just now (I started writing this at about 2pm). The apologist was there to defend the programme against cries of the exploitation of children and of Susan Boyle. Now I have watched exactly zero minutes of Britain's Got Talent since the programme started running so I can not comment on whether children were mentally harmed in the making of the series or really say whether that dance troupe should have won or not. No what I did, which I think is like many people in my position did, is accidentally* read articles about what is going on in the broadsheets** or on an online new service.

I hope Susan Boyle bounces back very quickly from the stress that she apparently suffered towards the end of Britain's Got Talent and I hope that she is able to translate her success, for all that she didn't win she did have a great success, into a way of making money that she is comfortable with and can manage.

We all know as some level that the "reality" in these shows is highly manipulated and controlled. Loosing Big Brother contestants routinely complain that the programmes shown were edited either to show them in an unfairly bad light or to make the winner look good. In Susan Boyle's case the only people who did not know that she had a good voice before she started singing were the audience in the studio. Those looks of surprise and amazement that judges had on their faces were well practised and fake as a 3 pound coin. The producers will defend themselves by saying that they've got to create something that is interesting with a narrative thread throughout the series in order to get the viewers interested, and that's fair enough. No one objects apart from the person who feels they've been stitched up but there is a difference between creating a narrative thread and exposing someone to a huge amount of intrusive interest all in the name of publicising your programme.

Susan Boyle was presented to the public as a freak. She had the "Voice of an Angel, Face of a Minger" with a sweet back story of a quiet shy retiring life, a spinster who looked after her old mum and sang in the church choir. Added bonus she has a disability, not one that would be unsightly and put the viewing public off their dinner, but a little bit of learning difficulties caused by oxygen deprivation at birth so ready made sob story. I want to be clear here, I am not accusing Susan Boyle of exploiting her life history or do I think she's a minger come to that, but the producers must have started mentally counting viewing figures when they first heard about her.

Now they could have presented Ms Boyle to the public in many ways but they appeared to choose the method that maximised the public impact and crucially the media's interest too. Once going it was a juggernaut, I'd no interest in the programme but it was impossible to escape, even a cultural pseud like myself didn't stand a chance, the Guardian had features about how the Americans went bonkers for her and in the media/IT sections about how ITV were missing out on millions of revenue because of a dispute with You Tube. Radio 4 did its usual disingenuous thing of "reporting on the media coverage" as a fig leaf for reporting on Susan Boyle and the competition. The bloggisphere and twitterverse appeared to hang on every word. Even I cracked watching the You Tube video.

So when she didn't win and the unfortunate events of yesterday happened it was was not surprising that the parties who created the publicity monster in the first place were busy today distancing themselves from the carnage. I think the statement that made me angry came from the producer's apologist (remember him from the first para?) he said that there was no way that they could have expected the media feeding frenzy that descended on Ms Boyle.

I call this complete and utter bullshit.

We've had roughly ten years of the modern reality TV show with Big Brother being the big daddy of them all. All these programmes have relied on media hype for their publicity and the feeding frenzies that fell upon certain contestants, Jade Goody being the most famous case. It's not as if it's a new phenomenon. They should have had some idea as to what could happen so to claim it was unexpected is, in my book a sign that you're not fit to do your job.

*"accidentally" ranging from - your eye is drawn to the headline like it is to a zit in the middle of a beautiful face to "Oh whoops did I click on the article about Britain's Got Talent? I meant to click on the 10 thousand word essay about the renaissance of Bulgarian opera."

** Broadsheets - papers that pretend to have aspirations serious news reporting. Now mostly found in tabloid or Berliner sizes.

D Day + 1

I was in a really bad mood yesterday, I felt uncomfortable, tired and inconvenienced all day. I think yesterday's blog post showed that and I want to thank Brighter Schemata, Z and Clair for their nice words, they made me feel a lot better. One of the reasons I was in a foul mood was that after an early morning bath I decided to slather myself with a body lotion that I hadn't used in a while. Because in that while, it appears that my skin has become sensitive to it and within a minute my legs, arms and belly were burning. I ended up having to take a very long lukewarm shower in order to get the body lotion off and remove the heat from my skin. It was pretty unpleasant. I had a wee bit of a heat rash (I always get some on the back of my hands when the temperature goes above 17C) before but now my arms are almost completely covered with tiny blisters. It's not a good look.

Today was better, much better, I got what was a comparatively good night's sleep last night and though my arms and legs are still spotty they are not really itchy. The weather has been beautiful, we had a lovely time dropping in on my in laws as it is their 40th wedding anniversary today. Then we did a bit of DIY shopping and food shopping and took it very easy before having a gentle sit out in the garden in the late afternoon, under the shade of the garden parasol. Finally we had another bbq, steaks with chilli rub, lime and coriander marinated chicken skewers, salad and corn on the cob. The steaks were supposed to be small but they were huge, the size of side plates. It was all very good but our eyes were probably a bit bigger than our stomachs however nothing is going to waste as I've got chicken skewers for lunch tomorrow :).

Baby wise, nothing much happened today, a few braxton hicks, he's been pretty active during the day but that's about it. We'll see if anything happens tomorrow.

D Day

Today is the day that we've been planning around for the last 8 months, so of course with only a quoted chance of 5% of anything happening today, nothing has happened.

I've been having twinges all day but as far as I can tell the twinges are just that, nothing greater but I'm saying that with hindsight as well, I'm typing this rather than Simon twittering from the delivery suite. I've been rereading the advice and tips on labour. I think that the most annoying piece of advice that almost all the books and magazines give is that "you'll know when you are in labour."

How?

Does a small but perfectly formed marching band suddenly appear playing "Congratulations" in the style of an American High School Pep Band? When does a Braxton Hicks contraction stop being intense and starts being a proper true labour contraction? Saying that you'll know not giving advice as far as I am concerned. It's like birth plans - what position do you want to use? which drugs do you want? How do you want your birth partner to massage you? How do I know I've never done this before and have absolutely no concept of how I am going to react to the pain. I completed my birth plan today it's basically a list of what I would prefer in a vague order of preference but I'm thinking that birth plans are basically a plot to make new mothers feel bad because they didn't get the birth they wanted. The delivery suite had a long list of reasons of why the birthing pool wouldn't be available, or why you won't be able to get that desperately needed epidural. And that's before medical issues are taken into account.

Oh I know I am having a bit of a rant, it's just that I feel a bit cross with it all, I just don't like the not knowing when it's all going to happen or the lack of control. My sister in law had to have a Cesarean because of underlying medical issues, she knew for at least two months when the baby was going to be born. I like that sort of knowing in advance even if I don't particularly envy her the c-section.

Sleeping On It

I had a great blog post composed in my head this morning, but you are not going to see it because I composed it in my head while I was sitting in the bath at 5 this morning. The bath had it's welcome soperific effect and I did eventually get back to sleep and I've completely forgotten what it was I was gonna blog about. It was probably something to do with disturbed nights and sleeping.

Still Pregnant

I did tell the baby at the weekend that today would be a good day to be born as the weather wasn't going to be very good, and it wasn't, so it wouldn't be as if I had anything else to do and as the weather isn't going to be spectacular tomorrow I wouldn't have minded spending it in hospital. But has he listened to me? has he thump. I think we are going to have to have words when he arrives.

Due date is actually this Saturday but I'm hoping he'll turn up sooner rather than later. I doubt I will be live blogging the birth especially not if I get the birthing pool but there is a chance that Simon will be twittering the highlights.