A different kind of endurance

My wife Kirstin has been back at work for about 2.5 months now and has recently been successful in gaining a promotion - she's now Operations Manager for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. This has meant that she has had to up her hours from 3 days per week which she felt comfortable with since having Eilidh, to 4 days 1 week then 3 days the next. As part of this, and to get me more time to spend with our daughter I will be taking 1 day off every 4 weeks to be the pcg as we call it tongue-in-cheek (primary care giver). I did my first pcg stint on Friday, and wheesht it's pretty intense, but great.


Eilidh in 'give me my yoghurt' mode in July before teeth appeared

Now I don't want to paint a picture of me as an oafish, non contributing husband. On the contrary we have always adopted a 50/50 split to all forms of work domestic but Kirstin has definitely pulled more than her fair share of baby raising. I did midnight nappies and bottles and all that sort of thing but other than the paltry 2 weeks paternity leave I've not done much full time pcg'ing other than at weekends due to my being a full time work.

On Friday, it all went pear shaped from 8am, when Eilidh started moaning due being tired from getting up too early (a habit she has on occasion). I tried to put her to bed but the screaming began and wasn't stoppable even with a nice warm bottle of milk. I called K for advice and she suggested taking E out for a walk in her buggy. This worked a treat, got us both out of the house, soporifically sent her to sleep and reset her mood for the rest of the day, which we spent in the sun at a Milton Keynes lakeside, playing on swings and 'ooking' at ducks (E can say ook). I even managed a shopping trip (in which E sat laughing in the trolley chewing a cucumber half her height) and still managed to make dinner for us all as per usual. The whole experience is quite tiring physically (constant bending over to help her walk) and emotionally but great overall.

Outwith the baby front I nearly landed myself in deep doo with a comment on Debs blog about whether or not she should run and race whilst pregnant. Clearly a sensitive issue from her blog and the comments made by some of the other commenters. Anyway, I managed to extricate myself after realising I had waffled incorrectly about how Kirstin and I had approached the issue of pregnant exercising. Apparently the advice given by our Doctor was that keeping up existing forms of exercising is fine, it is the taking on of new forms of exercise which might be more risky - probably something to do with uncertainty as to how the body would adapt. Not sure how long Debs will manage to run as expansion continues - good luck to her though!

Last thing. I went a for a run on Saturday morning with a fellow called John Litten who had read my blog and has entered the Highland Fling. He lives in Luton so not so far away. I took him round the local hilly woodland and we waffled about ultras and running as the morning mist rose to reveal a glorious day. If you are reading this John - it was nice to meet you. Good luck in the Venice marathon!