8+2

This is me ..... :-D

Yup, big smile. I had my early scan yesterday and on the screen was a large butterbean, just starting to grow arms and legs, with a lovely thumping heartbeat.

My husband applied boy logic to the whole thing. Proclaiming both that 'everything's going to be fine' and 'the clinic always runs at least half an hour late'. He was right on the first and wrong on the second, and arrived from a meeting that had run over just a few minutes too late, having missed the whole thing.

To be fair, based on previous experience, the scanning department running to time was fairly unlikely. There's something about a room of full-bladdered women, ordered not to relieve themselves until after the scan, that fills me with dread. I am a stickler for instructions and will follow them to the letter, going above an beyond if I can. Thus an hour before the scan time, when advised to drink a pint of water, I drink a litre. All good, until clinic runs forty minutes behind, which is something that will make you wish you'd done the prescribed 200-a-day post-natal pelvic floor exercises (OK, maybe I'm not that much of a stickler for instructions). I have become the master of the discreet 'foot to foot hop' which seems to relieve some of the pressure, oh, and of staying away from the water cooler. It's an oldie but it's true, trickling water will make you want to pee!

Of course I am being facetious. I understand that not all scans are simple, and that the NHS is over-stretched and under-resourced, and that of course the sonographers don't keep women waiting, especially in 'full to bursting' discomfort when they don't need to.

Yesterday though, I was called from the waiting room on time, wriggling toddler under one arm, childcare notably absent. 'Will he sit still whilst we scan you?' she asked? Hmmm, to lie or not. I went for it. Worried that even a fifteen minute delay might cause my bladder to jump up and out of my belly button in protest once the probe was pressed on my abdomen. Actually though, T was wonderful. Entranced by the dark room and the grey blue lights on the monitor, he didn't make a peep, even when his wet old Mum shed a small tear at the sight of his brother or sister on the screen.

Obviously we're not at the magical 12 week tell-the-world mark yet, I have four weeks to wait before my next scan, and in the mean time I need to book in with the community midwives. I am allowing myself to start to dream though about the birth, names and life with two babies!