Transfer deadline day

Today is the football transfer deadline day. What’s that you say, football? Really?

Yes! It’s a day I’ll now always remember as a year ago today it was also Eliza’s due date, which was coincidentally fitting for a baby with a sports-obsessed father, grandfather and uncles.

Throughout my pregnancy her EDD had been a pretty abstract concept as I knew that most first babies are as late as I usually am. So it was less of a full stop, and more of a TBC. However, at about eight months my consultant scheduled in an induction for the actual date. My lovely husband joked that he’d be watching Sky Sports News in the delivery room.

So the 31st of January saw Alex and I and all our bags sat in the hospital labour ward waiting room, impatiently waiting for the next chapter of our lives to start. A woman with a tiny newborn was wheeled through on a bed, and I remember it suddenly hit me, along with a wave of mild panic – I’m going to actually have to get the baby out now.

And then a midwife appeared and told us they were too busy, and could we come back tomorrow when they might have a bed? Talk about an anti-climax. So Alex and I and all our bags went back home, went for lunch with my mum, and actually did end up watching the football. And Eliza arrived shortly after.

Photos are the pre-birthday girl dressed up as a character from a children’s book for National Storytelling Week at nursery. She’s a bear from that children’s literary classic, ‘That’s not my bear’. I’m feeling really emotional already about her birthday! Does everyone feel like this? Worried I really might spend her whole party in – happy – tears…