One born every minute

I'm feeling rather emotional after watching the first couple of episodes of a British documentary, One Born Every Minute, which follows the everyday goings on of a labour ward in a British hospital. These episodes showed a natural birth and two c-sections, and it was completely fascinating, and made me cry, of course. The very idea of the beginning of a new life, and therefore the start of a new family, makes me feel like welling up nowadays. I blame the hormones.

What I did think was interesting, however, was the behaviour of the Dads during birth. One kept playing practical jokes (including trying to lock his wife in the toilet during labour!) Another one just sat in the corner silently, and refused to go in for the c-section and let his partner's mother go in instead, and yet another just looked at his girlfriend with a rather blank expression as she faced her fears over the birth of their baby, which had a known physical disability. I can only hope that these men were acting this way to mask their true feelings - anyhow, it was uncomfortable to watch them. I know I'd be distraught if my husband didn't seem as focussed and involved in the birth as me - but then, everyone's different, I suppose.

We made an annoying discovery last week. It seems the way British passports are being processed in the Gulf is going to change at exactly the moment we need to get Bump's first passport. Instead of being printed here, ALL our documents (including both our passports) will have to be sent to Europe for a process which could take up to four weeks. Which of course is brilliant when a) You're a pilot and need your passport at all times and b) You are under time pressure from the government of the country you live in to get your child's residency sorted asap. Brilliant, eh?

My husband is therefore going to have to apply for a second passport (which we're told is at the discretion of the Embassy!) and we're also going to have to engage in a mad scrum when Bump is just days old to get the birth certificate (which takes a week here), a passport pic (that will be a cracker!) and then to the courier to send our docs off for the passport. Oh, and we're having to order new copies of our full birth certificates from the UK, because we need those, too. To say I'm annoyed about this would be an understatement. Just what you need when you've just had a baby, eh!

Anyhow, rant over. What watching the documentary certainly did make me think about is that I need to pack my hospital bag! I've got six weeks to go until Bump's due date, which incidentally is likely to be the day of the general election in the UK.
As one friend said to me last week, that gives new meaning to getting through the pains of Labour...