Tuesday - an old friend, Phil, came around to meet Nathan. They hit it off well, but that was to be expected as Phil is a charmer! We patted him down before he left to make sure that Nathan hadn't decided to run off with him!
Thursday, I had to go to another site with work, over on the Wirral, for a meeting. I had to pick someone up on the edge of Manchester on the way, so was planning an early start. Things started to go a little wonky when I met Jill's Dad on the landing, and he told me that Gillian (his wife, not Jill his daughter) had developed a bad cold during the night, so they were planning on going home that day, rather than wait to the weekend. They wanted to minimise the bugs that Nathan was exposed to, and I can't fault that at all. Anyway, the meeting should have finished by 3pm, so they would wait until around 6pm when I would be back before they left.
I left the Wirral to return home at 2.15pm and finally got in our front door at approximately 10.30 pm. It was the trip from hell, and the weather warnings were – for once – very justified. I won't bore you with the details, but each of the following was shut just before we reached it; the M56, the M6 Thelwall viaduct, the M60 Barton Bridge. On top of that, Manchester Gridlocked and took perhaps three hours to cross rather than go around. It wasn't a fun day, but I guess at least I got home, unlike 11 or some unlucky souls. I was absolutely knackered.
Friday had the greatest ups and downs. Nathan started to sleep a lot longer (three and four hours) than ever before, and was showing very little interest in his food. On top of this, he was very nasal and sounded like he was struggling to breathe. Needless to say, this was quite worrying, so we phoned the midwife out of hour number after we couldn't find any descriptions of what he was doing in the baby manuals, and the next door neighbours with more experience than us were out. They told us to go to the Out-of-Hours doctor service at Harrogate Hospital, so Nathan had his first trip out, to the very place he had come from six days before!! Anyway, the doctor checked him out and he was okay. It's probably just a change in his sleeping pattern combined with the fact that he is taking his milk a lot faster. We were officially labeled as neurotic, and then told that the doctor felt that this was a good thing for new parents, and that we should do what we did if anything else changes again. Phew!
There was one disturbing thing. While we waited in the reception, we couldn't help but sit there and listen to twenty minute argument between the reception staff on what to do about an asthmatic who was choking. The Doctor had said to send a car out immediately, but the staff coordinating and the staff in the cars were being somewhat chaotic in trying to agree who would go. They couldn't even decide whether to call an ambulance. If it was a serious asthma attack, the patient could have been in a very bad way by the time they resolved it. I hope they weren't.
Another positive point is that we seem to have got the car seat fastening technique all resolved now! We go it in pretty fast last night, and the initially complex looking threading of the seat-belt becomes second nature very quickly.
Currently feeling: Neurotic (and that's a good thing!)
Currently listening to: Radio 4 in the background
Currently reading: Pulp Egypt (an RPG book)
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