Fully Qualified Big Sister

Cassie graduated today from the Big Sister Course at the Birth Centre! Her first step in formal education is complete, with a certificate to prove it! So, Cassie will be ready...it's a shame about the rest of us.

Highlights of the course included:

• Drawing a picture of "Mummy with the baby in the tummy". Cassie has produced a lovely piece of abstract artwork which I can't share due to us not having a scanner. She is starting to get the hang of sharing textas and other toys with other kids too, which is nice!
• Close up look at a real placenta, from a baby born at 9am today. Cassie's reaction was "Mmm...eat" [loudly]. This was a bit worrying. I guess it looks like liver but we don't eat a lot of that in our household. By the way, I didn't eat Cassie's placenta and I'm not planning to eat the placenta from this baby either. Still, it would be more nourishing than the 10 pieces of toast I ate last time seeing as I was 10 minutes too slow giving birth to get the proper breakfast. (How slack of me). This time, I am taking a container of my Mum's delicious spaghetti bolognaise. Complete with wheat and tomatoes (sorry Geoff). Mmm, a lot more apertising than placenta.
• Seeing a 4 day old baby being bathed. For Cassie, this was the best bit. Unfortunately, it was all happening at a very ergonomic height for the adults, which meant that I had to lift Cassie up for 15 minutes so she could watch. Very exhausting. This baby was tiny but he weighed 5.2 kg when born. I really really hope ours isn't that big!!
• Seeing a birthing video. As soon as she could see the baby's head coming out Cassie said "Needs bath". I tried to convice her that they could probably wait until the baby was fully born before they worried about that. Anyway, Cassie didn't seem at all distressed (or amazed) by the graphic video, but 2-year-olds can take a lot in their stride. Still, I'm not planning to have her at our birth. I found the video a bit hard to watch as it's so intense. And I will be experiencing something like that in about 3 weeks.
  

On the downside, I drove around TCH for 20 minutes without actually finding a park so we were quite late to the course. Cassie and I ended up running across Garran oval together. Probably this was very valuable experience...if I need to travel to the birth centre in labour during the daytime I think we will take a taxi. Although Canberra Cabs is pretty bad too...

In other news, I have yet another cold (I've had several mild colds in the last couple of months). Everytime I get a sore throat I am completely paranoid about swine flu, but it's definitely just a cold this time...Hopefully it will be mild again so that I'll be completely recovered before going into labour.