Jasmine Stalker-Firth

We have all been to the hospital to talk about transplants. As we waited in the windowless reception area with all the ill people we soon felt pretty depressed.  We met the living donor transplant co-ordinator and had lots of questions for her.

I had the initial screening tests. You have to have good blood pressure and a body mass index no greater than 30. I was fine on these, and on the urine test.

I can now go on to the transplant assessment day, which does take all day. I will get blood tests for various viruses, creatinine clearance tests, a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) test using a radioactive tracer, an electrocardiogram (ECG), chest X-ray, renal ultrasound and computed tomography (CT) scan. This will ensure that I am healthy enough to donate a kidney, check that I actually have two kidneys, and confirm how many arteries my kidneys have, to decide which kidney would be removed. A significant proportion of potential living kidney donors are rejected after these tests. If you are rejected then whatever health problem you have has to be monitored by your GP.

The good news is that Jasmine is a universal recipient, and so can accept kidneys from any blood group, and would have a reduced waiting time for a cadaver kidney. It also means that Ruth could be a potential donor in the future when Jasmine’s first graft (kidney transplant) fails. All the statistics are at uktransplant.

All kidney harvesting is done with the hand-assisted laparoscopic nephrectomy technique. This gives reduced recovery times and smaller scars, and is supposed to allow the kidney to be harvested just as well as the open technique. I would be in hospital for a week, and have to take it very easy for some time afterwards. I would be on morphine for 24 hours, then the strong paracetamol for a week, and weaker paracetamol after. I will have to keep the wound clean, and go for a check up after four weeks, to keep an eye out for hernias. I would have a check-up every year for the rest of my life.

Potentially, my kidney would then be taken across London to Jasmine in Great Ormond Street Hospital and she would be in hospital for a week or more. We would then have to take her in every day for six weeks for blood tests. We would also have to monitor her fluid balance, replacing any fluids she loses to ensure that the kidney is fully hydrated. We keep being told that this will be very stressful, and I’m sure it will be, but we already do a lot every day, and we wouldn’t have to do any dialysis, and Jasmine’s vomiting should improve straight after the transplant. We want to get Jasmine a kidney as soon as she is big enough to accept one so she can get growing and have more energy.

After many hours in the hospital we were totally stressed out. We went down to a pub on the Thames for some lunch and I had a pint to steady my nerves…

Jasmine likes to share things with us. She will lick whatever she is playing with then give it to you to put in your mouth. Sometimes she pushes it straight into your mouth. And sometimes if you are having a snooze she will bash you with whatever she is playing, so that you can wake up and share it. Ahh!

Her other new skill is that she can clap and she does so all the time and she is brilliant. She started doing it the other day. Her Great Auntie Carol bought her a nursery rhyme book which sings so Jasmine likes to clap along to the singing and then gets very upset if you take the book off her to feed her. So it comes everywhere with us. She likes you to sing along with the book whilst she claps but she turns the pages so quickly that sometimes you are singing Twinkle Twinkle Old Mac-Rockabye Hickory Dickory Dock. Singing all the nursery rhymes together is a talent I didn’t know I had but Jasmine is very impressed.

This week has been quite hectic again. We went to clinics on Monday and Jasmine is growing but slower than before, but apparently that is quite common and nothing to worry about as she is getting all the right levels of protein and the rest of it. She is getting her vitamin D levels monitored too now, which is very good as she is taking part in some new research. They have learnt down at GOSH that vitamin D levels which are too high or too low can affect the artery blood vessels and make them brittle, which can eventually lead to heart problems. Her blood pressure was running a bit higher than is completely comfortable so the consultant reduced her fluids and the dietician gave us a new recipe to make her milk a bit more concentrated.

After GOSH, we went to see an acupressurist to see if she could help us reduce Jasmine’s vomiting. The idea behind the bit of acupressure we are now performing on Jasmine is that we massage her digestive system so that it works quicker and her milk moves quicker through her so she has less time to vomit. This is how the drug domperidone works – it stimulates the digestion to push food through the gut – but unfortunately it had unpleasant side-effects on Jasmine so we had to stop giving her it. So, we are giving acupressure a go. It has been two days so far and there has been a bit less vomiting (saying that though I have just heard Jasmine vomit in the other room where Neil is keeping an eye on her). We have to be patient and try for a good while, as when we began the acupressure on Monday her dialysis program and her diet got changed at the same time, so we need to wait a few days for everything to settle down and then we will see properly what is going on with the acupressure and if any changes need to be made.

Everytime she vomits though I get really disappointed, which is silly, since she can vomit up to 20 times a day and that is not going to disappear overnight. Neil said acupressure is not sorcery and we have to work at it. He is very wise!

The other amazing thing is Jasmine has managed to drink all of her milk for the last 10 weeks without her NG tube. This is just incredible. Although, the other day she did struggle as another tooth was coming through and Neil got a bit down thinking that we might have to put the tube down. But, I was (unusually for me) feeling positive and said that if it did come to that then at least her nose has had a rest for 10 weeks and we would get a bit of a break on an evening – as we always wake her up to give her a nighttime feed, otherwise we struggle to meet her full quota, which she doesn’t like at all and kicks up a big fuss.

Over the weekend Neil and I met some doulas so that if I go into labour during the night when Jasmine is on dialysis, I have someone to take me to hospital and stay with me through the birth, knowing that Neil is with Jasmine and we don’t have to worry about her and our doula is with me so Neil doesn’t have to worry about me. We have found a lovely lady so I am feeling all excited now. It was a bit tough talking to doulas at first as their first question is understandably: “Why do you need a doula?” So that was hard, as it meant talking about Jasmine’s birth and all that we went through.

Feeling settled in my mind has meant that I have finally gotten off the settee and onto the floor to do my yoga. And I am feeling better already. I found that I couldn’t do the pregnancy yoga that I did before as it brought back all of last year, but now I am raring to go and get birth fit. Hurrah! Neil is very encouraging and Jasmine sits on the settee throwing toys off it and sometimes onto me – helping in her own way.

Today we are off to the GP for Jasmine’s latest round of innoculations. She has two today and then she needs two more in the future and then she is ready, vaccination-wise, for transplant. After that she won’t be able to get any more innoculations as she will be immuno-suppressed, so we have to get them all in now.

On Thursday we are off to another hospital with Neil to begin talking about transplants and living donors and to investigate Neil’s potential as Jasmine’s living donor, which is really scary but could be really good as living donor organs have much better results.

I keep hearing lots of people at the moment moaning about their lack of achievements in life (job, career, money, whatever). And I am a bit fed of up to be honest (pregnancy hormones are responsible for a lot). So today, my advice to anyone who feels like they haven’t done much useful with their life is: give a kidney away. One way to do it is called non-directed altruistic donation where you don’t know the person who receives your kidney, but you save a life. What greater achievement is there?

I know a lovely lady who gave her son her spare kidney and this is what she has to say on the subject: http://www.savebabygavin.com/2008/04/23/donate-life-and-save-a-life/. She is an inspiration to us all.

Jasmine is one today. I have cried a lot, tears of joy. Neil has been his usual lovely self, and has rubbed my back a lot. And Jasmine has been non-plussed by the whole event, even though she received loads of lovely cards and presents (thank you, everyone).

We only managed to get her to look at the first card, as shown in the picture here, that played music, and then she was permanently distracted by the envelopes and the lovely shiny wrapping paper. So in a few days time perhaps she will notice that she has lots more interesting things with which to play.

Jasmine loved the candle on her cake and kept trying to touch it, but didn’t want to taste the cake itself, so Neil and I had a little slice each (now there is only a little bit left).

There was a bit of a mix-up with our dialysis delivery on Saturday when it finally arrived, so Neil had to rush off to GOSH this afternoon to pick up more supplies, and when he came home he arrived with a gift from our lovely nurses for Jasmine’s birthday. Here she is modelling one of the hair ribbons, sitting next to her new teddies (she also got a cute hat and mitts but we will save those for another picture).

And finally, we keep this picture in a frame in our living room. It was taken after Jasmine arrived at Great Ormond St, once the team at Homerton had spent several hours making her stable enough to travel. Some lovely person in NICU took two pictures for which I was so grateful. I got to study my daughter whilst I was still at the Homerton and poor Neil was dashing back and forth between hospitals, after having had no sleep the night before.

So today, we remember and thank all the doctors, surgeons and nurses at Homerton on the first day and GOSH ever since, who took such great care (and continue to do so) of Jasmine and I. We remain eternally grateful and give thanks that such wonderful people exist. And we thank everyone who has thought of us, prayed for us, and shared with us over the past year. Thank you for all your love and support.

After all the drama of the week, we have had a lovely Sunday – just lounging about and taking it easy. We are hoping for an early night tonight surrounded by our dialysis boxes and to catch up on our sleep. We will be doing the dressing and the usual dialysis stuff later.

I love Sundays it is the only day of the week when you don’t get post, phone calls, and deliveries. It gives us time to collect our thoughts ready for a new week. Magic!

As a parent of a chronically sick child, the message I get everyday is that my time is cheap and I have nothing better to do than either wait around for people who are supposed to make my life easier or I have all day to chase them up when they don’t do their job.

This has happened several times with the community nurses who expected us to sit in ALL DAY and wait for them. It always happens with Fresenius the rubbish food pump people who can’t even deliver giving sets, all the time with our local Primary Care Trust (PCT), and this week it even happened with the Baxter Dialysis people who couldn’t manage in the snow.

Baxter send me a text the day before our delivery is supposed to come to give us a time slot. On Thursday I didn’t get one. I rang them up first thing Friday morning and was told that our delivery would arrive in the afternoon. After much wrangling I managed to get the information that our slot was 11am-2pm, but it would be later especially since we were 6th in the delivery round. Ok fine. We got another phone call at 12noon to say that it wouldn’t be coming, it might come on Saturday if we were lucky – no times at all and that I was unreasonable to expect one, especially as we weren’t an emergency case (I don’t know who is if we aren’t). When I tried to explain that it was very stressful not to know, the woman who was sitting in her call centre told me that she understood EXACTLY how I felt. So, this silly woman with her silly sing song-voice who interrupts you everytime you try to say something knows exactly how I, a pregnant hormonal mother of a chronically sick child, feels. Well she is obviously wasted in the call centre and she should be putting her empathetic talents to better use.

Later we got another phone call to say that the delivery would come on Monday but we would get a phone call from the call centre over the weekend. Ok! So I got out of bed this morning and rang them up to get an ansaphone message telling us that they are closed until Monday so tough luck.

So I was trying not to stress about it, especially as we are due at the hospital 9am Monday morning for a day of hospitals – scans for me and then GOSH – so who knows where this delivery would end up. At noon I was chatting to my mum on the phone (poor woman has to listen to all my woes). When I put the phone down I had a voicemail, and it was the Baxter delivery man, who had been outside 10 minutes earlier (our doorbell intercom is stupidly connected to the phone). When we got downstairs the concierge had already sent him away along with our month’s supply of dialysis bags/dressings/swabs/everything because when the concierge rang our phone/doorbell intercom to ascertain our whereabouts he got an engaged tone, demonstrating that we were in the flat.

After some frantic phoning round (us, not the concierge and not to Baxter who are SHUT even though they know their deliveries are all over the place because of the snow) the Baxter man rang us back and finally came back with the delivery. So, all’s well that end’s well.

Really though, my irritation with how people treat us started at the beginning of the week (if we don’t mention the relatives) when the PCT sent Jasmine a letter to invite her to an open day about food pumps and NG tubes because they don’t know whether to renew Fresenius’s contract with the NHS – even though they sent us a badly designed questionnaire before Christmas on the same subject. Now, I don’t know that many people who wear NG tubes but that is probably because if they need to wear an NG tube then they are too ill to feed themselves and if they are too ill to feed themselves they will be too ill to go out and meet people and go to stupid open days organised by the morons who run the PCT. But then that is just my opinion. And as Jasmine’s carer obviously I have ALL DAY when I am not waiting in for community nurses and deliveries by the concierge’s desk in case he sends everyone away, to go to their stupid open days to tell the PCT how to do their jobs. I would only get to one of their open days however, if I turned private detective and tracked down the incomplete addresses of the random health centres (which seem to be miles from where we live) they included in their inaccurately addressed, grammatically incorrect letter to Jasmine, who can’t, by the way, yet READ.

The next day, Neil went to the GP to pick up our prescription which we had put in 48 hours earlier. They had lost it for the second time this month. (We keep needing to go to the doctors because the dieticians are so hopeless they can’t calculate that a 200gs tub of maxijul only lasts us two days so we need more than four a month – I am beginning to suspect you don’t need much in the way of social skills nor ability to be a dietician. They have software to tell them what to do but unfortunately they won’t give us a copy of it, and it doesn’t include instruction on social pleasantries.) Could we come back the following day? I rang them 9am the following morning to be told that I needed to ring back Friday. I said no and that I was on my way there. When I got there they had created a new prescription which missed off two of things that we absolutely needed and they had already dropped it to the chemist who then needed to order the stuff in. Stuff arriving at the chemist is variable depending on the delivery people. So we plan two weeks in advance and even then sometimes we have to run down to Great Ormond St to get emergency supplies. So when the receptionist at the doctors suggested I should plan in advance, say a week, before I put my perscription in, I again was amazed at how many talented but totally wasted people there are out there who should be running the country instead of squandering their gifts as they do.

Anyway, our lovely chemist got on the case with our GP and the helpful planning lady and they have doubled all our doses and got us some BIG tubs of maxijul (as you can see from the pic) and now we shouldn’t have to go back for a month or so. Hallelujah! So if our lovely chemist could just come and live with us and sort out the rest of the healthcare suppliers and services and the dieticians whom we need to interact with and train our concierge not to send our deliveries away, then we would be off our heads with joy! She is great and we love her, especially next week when she will phone us to tell us that the calcium acetate has arrived (and the rest of the vitapro).

We ventured out this morning to go the chemist to get some more vitapro for Jasmine. It was amazing. The snow has covered everywhere and there were lots of people out building snowmen, having snowball fights and jumping up and down in the snowdrifts.

After the chemist we took Jasmine to the park, although it was a bit tricky pushing the buggy through six inches of snow. Jasmine took the whole thing in her stride, of course, and wasn’t half as excited as us and even fell asleep in the buggy on the way home.

Now we are in the warmth and Jasmine is still asleep. I am not surprised. Yesterday was a long and tiring day as she was teething and unusually irritable and didn’t sleep at all during the day. She vomited a lot and at bedtime we gave her some calpol to give her toothache relief so that she could finally go to sleep.

Since getting back from my parents, we have had a quiet few days. It has been lovely. Neil has started going to the gym again as he was feeling unfit and taking me for walks around the place as he has noticed my distinct lack of exercise and the fact that none of the clothes I wore during the time I was pregnant with Jasmine now fit and I still have 16 weeks to go. Still my mum bought me a lovely red top which I love and wear all the time and Jasmine likes to chew it too.

Today it was freezing but Neil put Jasmine in the sling and made us all walk around the Arsenal stadium. It was pretty good as Jasmine was toasty warm inside his big coat and we all got some exercise and got to listen to the crowds inside cheering on their teams. Then afterwards we went to pick up more milk at our corner shop and they had run out of the nice cake (iced madeira) we keep eating so we have eaten grapes this evening instead.

Not much else going on. I have been feeling quite tired as you can tell by the picture below as we have had a few late nights with Jasmine vomiting and pooing everywhere. Her sixth tooth is finally through today and it looks like her seventh might be on its way. Today, she vomited A LOT even by her standards and so has absorbed most of her last bag fill (the dialysis fluid which stays inside of her peritoneum during the day and carries on dialysing whilst she is off the machine) which made the machine beep like mad tonight when I connected her.

Jasmine is now making a determined effort to tug her catheter out everytime she gets the opportunity i.e., when we change her nappy. So we need our wits about us when nappy changing. This catheter tugging loosens her exit site dressing and causes the tube from her stomach to move about and causes blisters on her stomach. One healed up nicely with a bit of sudocrem and we found another one today under her dressing when we were changing it, so we can’t rub cream on it. I have taped her catheter down so it is harder to tug on and won’t loosen the dressing and her catheter shouldn’t be able to rub on her tummy. Fingers crossed that this this works and that it won’t set the alarms off on the machine, as the slightest change in the way her catheter lies can cause it to kink when she kicks her legs about and set those alarms off on the hour every hour ALL NIGHT. She is really funny in bed and manages to get her feet out of her sleeping bag so that she can wave them about or leave them sticking in the air whilst she sleeps.

The other morning she slept right through until 9am (recovering from yet another bug) and when I woke up I kept staring at the clock as I couldn’t believe we had all had that much sleep. This morning though it was back to 7am projectile vomiting and the rest of it.

Her kidney urine output has gone back up. When she first came out of hospital it was about 200mls per 24 hours and then it went right down to about 40msl/24 hours. Just lately it seems to have increased and Neil and I couldn’t agree by how much so we had a bet on and did a fluid balance (very sexy, you weigh her nappies for 24 hours to see how much urine is generated) and I was right it is now back up to 100mls per 24 hours so Neil owes me a small box of the pink foil-wrapped heart-shaped chocolates from the corner shop.

Jasmine is very clever and generous and when she chews on her toys she puts them in our mouths for us to chew on them too and then takes them back again. She recognises the music to In the Night Garden, as I sang it to her today when I was changing her nappy (catheter distraction technique) and she kept looking at the TV to see if it was on. Her other impressive talent is that she can lift the flaps herself when we read her Dear Zoo and she laughs at the animal noises we make. I guess this is in part because giraffes and camels don’t make much noise and according to Grandad Stalker mine sounded like cows and hyenas. Very cheeky! Jasmine joins in with the chimp noises to show me that they are the funniest ones to make.

We have just come back from visiting the Grandparents Stalker and it was just what we needed. We had a lovely holiday. Everything was perfect, even getting everything in the car and packing seemed quite straightforward this time with our list. And even though we had to do the dialysis and dressing changes and everything whilst there, it was really relaxing. This is most likely because my mum kept doing the washing all the time and cooking us nice dinners, poor thing.

Jasmine had a great time being the centre of attention and all the kisses and cuddles from Grandma and Granddad. Since arriving back here she keeps looking around for all the extra faces coming in and out, as she was waving at my mum and dad everytime they came in the room or when we took her out of a room. I know how she feels as we are sad to be back and enjoyed their company very much. We always forget to take photos so I had to take a couple of quick ones just before leaving and I am sure my mum will tell me off for this one – but I like it, it makes me laugh, as I was sitting on the settee next to everyone when I took this one.

On Saturday, Grandma Stalker took Jasmine out for a walk in the buggy and it was really nice but strange, as it was the first time Jasmine has been anywhere ever without one of us. Neil kept saying things to my mum like: “Now don’t take her trousers off when you get outside.” And my mum looked at him as if he was mad and just nodded, humouring him.

Jasmine’s Uncle Igglepiggle (Iain) came round and Jasmine was captivated by him and enjoyed rubbing his face and sitting on his lap and the white chocolate buttons he brought for her. It was also really nice as I was telling Iain about the latest exchange I have with strangers in the street:

Random weirdo: Oh what a lovely girl. How old is she?
Me: 11 months.
Random weirdo: My God, she is tiny. My baby is 12 months old and can walk and do backflips and is taller than me.

… or some such nonsense. Iain said that he hadn’t noticed if Jasmine was small as she seemed the same size as her cousins which cheered me up no end. And since we are all small (I am five feet tall) that makes sense and what has it got to do with random (tall and not fun-sized) weirdos in the street anyway.

Last week we went to see the transplant surgeons and it was great. I didn’t think talking to them could help, but it really did. The surgeon we spoke to was really, really nice and brilliant. He was very matter of a fact about what they do during surgery and how that would benefit Jasmine, and how Neil would recover if he was a suitable donor. We came away feeling reassured, although when I type that now I get a bit teary, as always. But for the first time since she was born I am beginning to feel in my heart that transplant could be a good thing which is progress. Even though we have been told this many times. We had a funny conversation with our consultant, who is brilliant too, and she said that dialysis shortens your life and then she paused and reflected a little and then said that transplant does too. And when we laughed, she said that transplant was definitely better than dialysis, which it is as it will allow Jasmine to grow and not vomit 20+ times a day.

Last night Jasmine hit the 7kgs mark, which we know was excess fluid so we put on a stronger dialysate bag, but she is not far away and this is progress too, as it feels like she has been 6kgs forever.

Jasmine and I have made friends with another lady and her baby in the building and we go for cups of tea and biscuits, and it is really nice and I enjoy their company. I think Jasmine does too as yesterday we were round their flat and Jasmine was lying on the floor next to the baby (10 weeks old) and leant across to hold her hand and then was burbling at her. We talk about normal baby things like feeding and getting babies to go to sleep and occasionally I might say something that I do with Jasmine but then say that it might be different from normal babyness because she is on dialysis (and is fluid restricted and all the other stuff that goes with it) and everything feels fine. Once over I might have cried. Now I am just thrilled to be sitting about drinking tea and chatting and cuddling Jasmine and enjoying the company of my neighbours, so that is great progress. I lost track of time a bit yesterday afternoon and when we got to the flat Neil was already home feeling weird by himself, as he is never in the flat alone.

Jasmine seems to have extra curly hair today so I couldn’t resist an extra photograph of her here. Her eyes have changed colour too and now seem hazel and not the bright blue they were when she was born. Her teeth at the bottom are a bit crooked and Neil said to Jasmine when they came through, “Oh no Jasmine, you have teeth like your mother.” How rude. My orthodontist and I are very proud of my English teeth.

Jasmine is also very proud of hers and now she has them top and bottom she grinds them together and sounds like a geiger counter.

So we have just got back from the hospital tonight with Jasmine. Today, I was on duty and took Jasmine off dialysis and checked her drain bag as always. All was good and we got on with the day.

Tonight, Neil took the machine down and saw that I hadn’t properly broken the seal on the dialysate bag which we put on the heater. The seal is in the middle of the bag which has two chambers – one contains calcium and the other has sodium bicarbonate and mixing them together allows the dialysate to maintain the correct Ph level for the body. So, last night we were pumping Jasmine full of sodium bicarbonate all because I didn’t fully snap this seal.

We rang the ward and they told us to come in immediately as Jasmine’s electrolytes could be all over the place and Jasmine herself at risk of alkalosis, which left untreated can cause low potassium levels, putting immense strain on the heart and ultimately heart failure.

I am horrified and cannot forgive myself. This happened because, yet again, Neil and I were arguing about the stupid couple who won’t leave us alone. I cannot believe I put Jasmine at risk because I was angry at this selfish couple who won’t take responsibility for their actions and blatantly don’t care who they hurt. And that is the last time I am mentioning it as I sound like a stuck record and might just spontaneously combust if I think about it anymore.

So, we rushed down there and one of our lovely nurses took charge of us and was very comforting and the lovely phlebotomist took Jasmine’s bloods. Jasmine was calm through them and got a squeaky book because she had been so good. All the nurses are just fantastic and look after us so well, but it just so happened tonight that when the night shift turned up, they were some of the ones who looked after Jasmine during our three months stay so we knew them all well, and I was relieved at the thought of leaving my baby with them overnight (even though she would have been perfectly fine with the ones we don’t know so well – but who is rational at a time like this?).

A couple of hours later, the blood results came back ok and we were allowed to go home. The doctor mentioned that Jasmine has chronically high levels of sodium biocarbonate already and they weren’t much higher after my performance last night. Her heart sounded ok and she was in herself fine. In fact, she has had her first fantastic feeding day for months. She only threw up about four times instead of her usual 20+. She has been wimpering today and yesterday as she is cutting two more teeth at the front, bringing the grand total to six.

So, after saying goodbye to all our lovely nurses, tonight we are back at home and I am on my knees giving thanks.

This week is a big week. We are meeting with the transplant surgeons to talk about the future, which is really scary, but ultimately, it is something we should look on positively as it will give us a different sort of life. I am just having trouble adjusting to this thought and that is why we need to spend our time in counselling wisely and not banging on about things/people that I shouldn’t care about.

I am exhausted typing this. Last night I was up half the night with Jasmine vomiting and pooing because of this bug that she has, so Neil has taken over looking after her, and I am off to bed. Our new baby is kicking away as I type this, which is lovely as we try not to worry about her, but it is hard and sadly, we don’t seem to get the time to do the chatting and the massaging to my big bump that we did when I was pregnant with Jasmine. Although Jasmine had a go yesterday at rubbing my tummy and putting her fingers into my navel, which was very nice. And sometimes, in quiet moments I wonder how we are going to cope with a baby on dialysis and a newborn in our tiny, tiny flat, just the two of us. Although, I am thrilled to be having this baby and feel so lucky to be Jasmine’s mother. Especially, as this time three years ago I was recovering from a miscarriage and was told that I was infertile and unlikely to conceive without assistance (and they didn’t mean just Neil’s). Right now we might be having some tricky times but being married to Neil and being Jasmine’s mother and having a new baby are the most enriching experiences and I am so grateful.

Thank you everyone for the lovely supportive messages and emails. And thank you for reading the blog. Knowing you are out there taking an interest and feeling connected lifts us up and helps us immensely, especially on those days when even after chocolate biscuits, yoga and meditation, I have a little bit of trouble and feel a tad sorry for myself (especially yesterday when the Boro lost 3-0 to West Brom [WEST BROM!] and are now in the relegation zone).

Jasmine is totally addicted to In The Night Garden and sits wide-eyed watching it. I don’t see why, there isn’t much of a plot and Igglepiggle is annoying as he loses his blanket all the time (he runs like Jasmine’s Uncle Iain – well just the once when we had both had one shandy too many in Zurich and were trying to catch a cab). Why doesn’t he tie his blanket round his waist? But Jasmine loves it and I love watching her, watching them, and waving bye-bye when they all go to bed.

Jasmine is smart and gorgeous and we love her. We are thrilled that we are all home together tonight. Here is the latest cutest picture of our girl, which was taken especially for her Grandma Stalker’s birthday.

I have been just as upset as Ruth about a certain couple. After asking them not to contact us because of how much they have upset us,  today I received an email asking me whether I could ring them and wondering when we are meeting up next.

The amount of stress and conflict Ruth and I have been through just because they were offended by an email is astounding. I don’t have the time or energy to make allowances for others at the moment. I don’t want to meet up. I want to be left alone.  Please put Jasmine first, by leaving us alone so that we can care for her without any additional stress.

Jasmine has lost weight due to a cold and an upset stomach this week and that is what is foremost in my mind.