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Josa’s pregnancy diary weeks 32-34

Josa Young has two children aged eleven and eight. She’s now 41 and expecting another baby. Follow her pregnancy at week 32

A new experience

Queen Charlotte’s Hospital moved this week. The staff I spoke to seemed sad, and I will never again go to the cosy red brick building, where I know my way around. All is unknown in this state-of-the-art modernity, conveniently placed next to Wormwood Scrubs prison. We are informed that, there is no parking up there. I look forward to waiting at the bus stop at the end of the road, while timing my contractions.

Risi, my excellent one-to-one midwife, has promised to show me round, before I need to go in. She is very pleased about the new facilities. There are rooms where you go to give birth and stay for six hours, afterwards, before going home. This eliminates the need to go up to the ward and be disturbed, for the rest of the night, by other babies.

Last time

My child-bearing experience started in 1989 with Dulwich hospital – an exceedingly old-fashioned establishment, now closed. While waiting for my first scan, I observed a huge cockroach scuttle out of the room, closely followed by a nurse, who trod on it, wrapped it in a tissue, smiled ruefully at me and returned to the room.

The labour rooms contained nothing much, other than a high bed and a drip stand, which I almost bent double during contractions. Thoby gradually slid down the wall and ended up dozing on the floor. The ward contained at least 30 beds – an old-fashioned fever ward, where one nurse could keep an eye on all the patients. I stayed two days.

When I had Archie in 1992, all had changed. The room where I gave birth in St Mary’s, Paddington, had been redecorated to look like someone’s notion of a bedroom. There were four beds in the ward. I’d just been given pethidine and was hallucinating little Maurice Sendak-style men with trailing overcoats. Archie was born around 2.30am and I left the next morning, just before noon, making a detour with the baby to visit my father-in-law in the same hospital, where he was awaiting heart surgery.

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