Bloggogriff

I: Slow Start “One thing I learned from the first time around,” I told Eric as we headed out of Carnoustie towards Dundee, “this time I’m not going to try to be a hero. I’m going to ask for the epidural when I get to the Substantial Discomfort phase instead of waiting until I get to the Agony phase.” It was around seven p.m., dark and rainy, on March 13. After waiting around at home all afternoon, we had the go-ahead from the hospital to come in for my induction. I wasn’t overdue – in fact, I was at 39 weeks – but a diagnosis of gestational diabetes four weeks earlier had altered the birth plans. So once again we had escaped the speeding-through-town-with-woman-in-labor movie trope. We dropped Owen off with our friends Jason and Melpi in Tayport, got dinner near the university, and arrived at Ninewells around nine. The induction process would begin slowly. The midwife in the antenatal ward inserted a pessary behind my cervix that would release prostaglandins for 24 hours. This ...

Please welcome Evelyn Aurora, born at 6:34 pm on March 14, 19 1/2", 8 lbs 3 oz. She made her entrance to the world in an astonishing 39 minutes. Now one week old, she is doing beautifully!

If I don't get this done now, I never will. So, here goes the rest of the trip in a much more abridged form: The Extremely Abbreviated Adventures of the Griffis Family in China (Days 6-10) Day 6: We visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Both are extraordinarily vast and impressive and hard to describe or get good pictures of because of their vast impressiveness. The former is magnificently austere, the latter magnificently ornate. We also get to see “new” Beijing in the form of a vast urban mall for lunch (San Francisco readers, imagine the Westfield, with all Chinese food and only a slightly more skewed ratio of Chinese to Anglo diners.) That night Guangsho takes us out for Peking duck, yum yum. Day 7: Eric spends the morning talking to people at Peking University. Owen and I spend the morning wandering the university grounds with our guide for the day, whose English is, alas, extremely limited, to the point that conversation is pretty much nonexistent. We meet a Ca...