Thursday, March 10, 2005

New beats, Nu Nus and Nannies

Another day, another mindblowing moment. This time it was at Hayley's 16-week appointment with the midwife when she unexpectedly placed an amplified stethoscope on Hayley's tummy and we heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time.

There can be few things more symbolic of life itself than a heart-beat. The very sound of it was evocative, perhaps even more so than the ultrasound scan. The moment we heard that sound the baby was as real and present in the room as it would have been had it walked through the door (which admittedly was unlikely, although I have just heard Elvis on the radio talking to Steve Wright... I digress.)

The rest of the appointment went well. The student midwife struggled to find a vein in Hayley's arm. Hayley mercilessly teased her and joked around. She was so funny! Really on form. Fortunately I was standing behind the midwives so they didn't see me laughing.

After the appointment we went to Nu Nus nursery near my work. We had a 1 hour tour of the nursery. It was quite impressive. We were alarmed by one thing though. They showed us an example of the daily report that is filled out for each child. The one she showed us was for that day saying how child had had a lovely day. The trouble was it was only 10am and the child had only been there an hour. When Hayley pointed this out the girl blushed and flustered slightly before waffling about re-writing it later if anything changed.

It made me realise that the number one thing you are looking for in a nursery is trust. You are leaving your child with them for hours at a time, several days a week. If you can't trust them you aren't going to do that. So although we've heard good things about Nu Nus we'll be looking around some more.

Oh and it's £693 a month. Strewth! I'm still trying to get my head around that. It has prompted Hayley to consider starting up a child-minding business. It's something she has had an interest in doing for some time. It would allow her to look after our child and still earn some money. But for that we'd need a bigger house. With a potential nursery bill the size of a mortgage my next job is to work out whether we can afford to move at all.