Tree trunk ankles

The next time someone tells me that my cervix is like butter I’m going to take it with a pinch of salt. Surprise, surprise, Baby 3 has not appeared yet. This has given me the opportunity however to experience a few delights of pregnancy for the first time which hitherto never having passed the 37 week mark I had missed out on. Chiefly among these are the tree-trunk ankles. I look at my feet – only possible while seated of course or if I dare, and I wouldn’t recommend this at this stage for anyone other than supermodel mommies-to-be, to look in the mirror – and I don’t recognize them. They remind me of the time I fell off a horse more than 20 years ago and tore ligaments making my foot swell to the size of a melon. Anyway, said ankles and sudden headaches, sent me off to the hospital yesterday to have my blood-pressure checked. Yes, how could someone have such unsightly limbs as a matter of course- there had to be a life-threatening reason for them, hadn’t there? Of course my BP was fine but the visit wasn’t wasted as I got to edge my nose into the previously hallowed confines of the delivery suite, to meet several midwives who were all very friendly and happy to chat in English and to eye up the ice chip machine and wonder if people really use it when the time comes (and where goes the ice?Mmm?). I was glad not to hear any screaming coming from behind closed doors and slightly taken aback at the sound of a new baby crying.
So now I suspect I have my card marked as that slightly over-anxious foreign girl who can’t speak Norwegian – upto now I have only spoken Norwegian to midwives but when a perceived crisis hit, let’s just say the words failed me as I weakly requested that the staff speak English – who has only given birth in exotic places like Singapore and who thinks that staying pregnanct past 37 weeks really is, well, very inconvenient. To their credit, the delivery guys, as I like to call them, were very friendly, understanding and one of them had spent a year living in Dublin from which she seems to have fully recovered. So the latest news is that I’m having contractions, am 3 cm dilated, with a very soft cervix, and that the baby will probably arrive this weekend. Add a pinch of salt to that and I’m calculating that at a rate of 1 cm dilation a week, Baby 3 will be here by New Year!