Archive for May 2007
May
On the weekend, Mark bought a 50 inch television, an LCD projection tv. He’s been wanting this particular Sony for a while, and found it for what he felt was a good deal. It’s ridiculously large. Well, except it was last week. Now it just seems like it’s always been there and it’s a normal size. Not sure how that happened.
At the same time, we bought a matching poofy armchair and ottoman. An ottoman! To put feet up on! Wonderful! Things that make me happy…
One of the positive things about being back in Canada was meant to be the existence of 4 seasons. In England, it’s sort of perpetually spring, with the odd day of winter or summer thrown in randomly at any time of the year. Except, there was no spring here in Ontario this year. Winter ran in April, and then May has featured so many super hot days I can’t even count them. It’s been in the 30s so much – today feels like 37. Thank god for air conditioning. But what is August going to be like? In the 50s?
May
I was going to label this video a busy evening with Oliver. Except then I realised it was really only like 10 minutes and then it made me feel more exhausted!
May
Okay I think my html problem is that I have too much information in my table. But I’m saying sod it, I can’t fix the formatting anymore, it’s good enough.
This is just a start – I think the story is going to continue. And so far I can’t really tell what system is ‘better’ – I think I’ll have to wait until the end.
My lovely prenatal care comparison table!
| Prenatal Services in UK (London-Bucks.) |
Prenatal Services in Canada (Ontario-GTA) |
| Told GP I was pregnant. Smiled widely, patted me ‘congratulations’ and made immediate referral into prenatal and hospital care. |
Told family doctor I was pregnant. Would not speak of anything about it until pregnancy hormone levels were tested and pregnancy clinically confirmed. |
| Never really had any ‘touchy’ care (well, except at the very end, when you can’t avoid being assaulted during labour when they check dilation). |
First family doctor appointment involved a pap smear (WHAT?! I was so not expecting that!). Both family doctor and obstetrician have examined (e.g. felt) breasts. Not sure why. |
| Ultrasound appointments at hospital – scolded for vomiting up water that I was meant to have consumed to increase quality of the scan. Very clinical and serious appointments. Had to pay for any copies of scans. Could not tell if I was looking at a tumour or a fetus. |
Ultrasound (service located in my doctor’s building) lady very understanding that I didn’t necessarily drink all the water – in fact asked me to empty bladder as a way to get it moving into a different position. Printed up numerous scans she thought were ‘cute’, kept going ‘awww’ and gave us a bunch of copies for free. Picture is of very high quality. |
| Was immediately inundated with books, leaflets, loads of clear information about what would be happening to me, at what time, what was expected of me, and who would be involved in the care (I did shared care, GP and hospital). |
Have been highly in the dark until today (17 week Obs appointment) as to what was going to be happening, when I should be having appointments, etc. Am doing shared care again. And I could buy a book if I wanted (see below). |
| Fully funded public health care with no costs associated (except if I had stayed in a private/semi-private hospital room). |
And I thought Ontario had public health… Found out today that I have to pay my Obs $100 for admin costs associated with prenatal care not covered by Ontario’s public health plan, and if I wanted to attend any prenatal classes, there are big fees! I am sort of disgusted. This time, however, Mark’s insurance should cover a semi-private room (I need to look into it a bit more). |
| Care very much centered around midwives, health visitors, etc. |
Care centered around doctors. I did enquire about midwife care in our region, which I could have accessed – however, there is an article in the Toronto Star just today about the desperate shortage of midwives. Funnily enough, they didn’t get back to me, probably way too busy. |
| Any consent or decisions about delivery made during delivery. |
I have to sign consent for epidural use (including spinals) in advance, along with an anaesthesia questionnaire, and send it to the hospital around 30 weeks. |
| Midwife and/or health visitor come to see you at home post-delivery. And you can meet them in your pajamas. |
I am required to take the newborn to see my family doctor within 2-3 days of discharge from hospital. |
May
So after all that fuss, figuring out the tune (Frere Jacques, by the way) to the Rolly Polly song, and trying to get him to practice, we rush to his daycare last night for the class performance.
I get there JUST in time for 5:15 start except that there’s a technical problem that delays it, and then half the parents have to go to another class for their other children’s performances, and then everyone gets cranky ’cause they’re hungry and they’ve put a bunch of food out. So we make sure the kiddies have food, they show some slide show of the kids that a parent put together, and then they sing the song. Except they didn’t call the kids up to sing it so Oliver ate his pizza and clapped. How anticlimactic. I was all prepared to film it but it really wasn’t necessary.
I have an interesting blog post, all ready to go, comparing my experiences in prenatal care in 2 countries. Except I can’t get the damn html formatting to work correctly as I was trying to make a table and it’s showing up all funny and halfway down the page. So I will need to figure out some other plan. But I’ll hopefully post it soon.
May
Oliver’s daycare is having a little concert/performance thing on Friday, and last week they sent home a sheet with a song written on it for us to practice with him as his class will be performing it.
Only problem is I’ve never even heard of it before so we have no idea what the tune is.
Anyone recognize this?
Rollie pollie, rollie pollie
Up up up, up up up
Rollie rollie pollie, rollie rollie pollie
Down down down, down down down
Rollie pollie, rollie pollie
Out out out, out out out
Rollie rollie pollie, rollie rollie pollie
In in in, in in in
Rollie pollie, rollie pollie
Fast fast fast, fast fast fast
Rollie rollie pollie, rollie rollie pollie
Slow slow slow, slow slow slow
Not that, of course, I am expecting him to sing it! Unless he’s been hiding some secret vocabulary from us. I doubt it.
May
Randomness
• Mark attended a meeting in Brussels today about a project he’s working on. Except he attended it in our basement in his bathrobe, on teleconference. The craziest part is that it was from 2:30am to 10:00am. The BEST part was that he decided to yell into the phone at around 2:35am and woke me up. And I didn’t really fall back asleep but for some minor dozing. I am tired and cranky. Oh wait, is that different from usual?
• I just looked at pictures of the new Big Brother house and I got really nostalgic for the UK. I am going to miss a summer of Davina and Dermot and silly antics. Yes, I am a sad sad person. I will either end up spending a lot of time on the Channel 4 website, or realize that it’s just not that interesting when I don’t get to watch the nightly show and forget about it. You know, I just can’t really get into North American reality shows. For some reason, I have no desire to check out American Idol or The Bachelor or anything else. However, every decent show on television has recently, or is about to, have its season finale which means a long summer drought. And they are filling up schedules with pretty much only reality shows, so I might get sucked into one or two after all…
• I’ll be blogging about that other thing going on over here.
• We had a decent May 2-4 weekend of excessive shopping (excellent Homesense and Winners purchases; not so interesting Newmarket Farmer’s Market), visiting (my parents on Sunday for my dad’s birthday; Kitchener on Monday to see Grace and Jay and Cael and new baby Orla with Kristen), and sunshine.
• We are trying to prepare the house for our first long term visitors – Mark’s mum and stepdad on June 8th for 3 whole weeks. I am looking forward to the excuse to visit Niagara Falls and Ottawa (to stay with my grandparents).
May
So I guess I am starting to come out of the closet. Number 2 is on the way, sort of sooner that I had anticipated. So it comes with feelings all over the place – have I just screwed up my career prospects (was hoping to be made permanent in the near future), what effect is this going to have on Oliver, how will I cope, etc., etc., etc.
Suppose I better deal with all that before it gets here and needs therapy immediately?
At least it gives me something to blog about. (Oh goody, a zillion more posts about nausea – feels like it was just yesterday I was writing about that all the time – because it practically was!)
(Poor Oliver, your blog is now hijacked)
May
For the past few weeks, the cafeteria here at work has been having ethnic-themed Tuesday lunches. Today, Great Britain was featured. I was thinking, as I picked up my coffee this morning, we were going to see bangers and mash (not that I would eat sausages from there), fish and chips, roast beef and yorkshires… I just stopped in and they had something called ‘beef hot pot’ and roast root vegetable stew. And a chicken santa fe wrap, asian seafood stir fry, and some roast turkey. I guess it’s appropriate – what is British cuisine these days anyway? However, based on every other ethnic food theme day, I was looking forward to the full stereotyping! I went for the fresh fruit with cheese and crackers bowl myself.
I’m on a very effective diet right now. I’ve lost so much weight so quickly the doctor’s office thought they read the scale wrong. It involves a hell of a lot of vomiting, and not on purpose. It also includes aversions to many, many foods. It lasts about 9 months. I’ve only endured 16 weeks of it so far. I’ve had it before. This time with bonus kidney infection. Can you guess? Should I make it more obvious?
May
It’s Mother’s Day here and I was awoken with a slobbery hug, a day-care made card and macaroni necklace, and a store-bought card and an orchid. I always wanted an orchid; I’ll probably kill it, but the right thought was there.
It’s a good day anyway as for the first time in what seems forever, no one in the house is about to die from (a) a stomach bug (b) an ear infection (c) a spiking temperature induced by a throat infection or (d) a kidney infection (that last one was mine). It’s been pretty rough around here lately. Instead, everyone is all smiles and in relative health. Except for Oliver’s runny nose which is probably the sign of what’s to come next…
Despite all this, lots of things have been going on. We’re looking forward to meeting 2 new little girls, Orla born to Jay and Grace and big brother Cael in Kitchener (hopefully seeing them next weekend), and Lauren Louise, born to Mark’s cousin Karen and Alan and big sister Katie back in St Alban’s. Won’t see them until Christmas though. Unfortunately Lauren is in hospital right now, only a week old, and being tested for meningitis as she had a high fever and is refusing feeds.
Oliver is getting better at using his little vocabulary. He’s pretty good about calling Mark ‘daddy’ or ‘dada’. And he’s often manages to say ‘cat’ or ‘dog’ to the appropriate furry family member, except sometimes it sounds more like ‘gog’ or ‘tac’.
His latest obsessions are toys that you can pull along (I figure he’s almost ready to take the dog for a walk), searching for treasure underneath the couch/bed/whatever he can look under, walking backwards, and having the odd tantrum (throwing himself down on the ground) when he doesn’t get what he wants. I find the tantrums rather hilarious. Probably wouldn’t in the middle of shopping but he usually has a good time doing that.
Some recent photos:
May
OOH those jerks…
The province has quietly banned bureaucrats, political staffers and most MPPs from accessing the popular Facebook website from government computers.
To the surprise of thousands of Ontario government employees as well as Liberal aides, MPPs, and cabinet ministers, the 21 million-member social networking tool is now off limits.
Now what the hell am I going to spend all day at my desk doing?!?!
