Congratulations on the arrival of Isaac ellen - the birth sounds like a really positive experience despite being slightly pre-term!
Hoping all the other imminent arrivals are also going well!
Good news about your bonus scan ismarah.
Feeling very positive at 35+2. I just had a meeting with one of the supervisors of midwives at the hospital to confirm that I could use the birth centre despite my advanced age. She reviewed my notes and birth plan with me, went through the protocols they would follow in various scenarios such as induction, breech birth etc, introduced me to some of the midwives, got me to cancel my 36 week GP appointment and have it in the birth centre instead to increase chances of meeting even more midwives, and got a midwife to do a full antenatal check (my last one was with the community midwife on Monday).
They were both really encouraging about using hypnotherapy and breathing techniques which was great, as I will find cynicism on the day pretty difficult to cope with!
I had been a little nervous about increasing watery discharge so the midwife used the new AmniSure test (a swab test which doesn't need a full speculum examination, hooray) to make sure I wasn't leaking amniotic fluid (which I wasn't). Everyone should have access to this if it's really 99% effective. Much better than bleeding for 24 hours as I did after a speculum exam a few weeks ago.
Everyone was really friendly, sweet and seemed committed to what I can only call excellent customer service and making sure that I was comfortable and happy. I came away glad that I'd picked that hospital (living just south of London there are a lot of local choices and people tend to look at me askance when I tell them where we're having the baby, as their general reputation is not brilliant). And also feeling very lucky to have all of this great care for free (ok, I know I've paid for it via NI/tax but still).
OK, yet another rant (albeit a positive one) over!