Hold the front page !

Helen is home, she has no pulmonary embolism or any of the other nasty things the medics feared and although her haemoglobin is still quite low, provided she gnaws on a few rusty girders and drinks plenty of Guinness she should be fine.

Molly is on top form. She is eating and sleeping well, but doing precious few interesting tricks yet. She provides the odd wet nappy of course, some of them very odd !

Helen's milk flow is still being seriously impeded by her anaemia and although it is improving, we are not going to be in the market to purchase any additional EU milk quota any time soon. She is expressing milk for Molly who is not coping well with taking it direct from Helen's breasts at the moment - too much like hard work it would seem. She obviously takes after her father - shyness for hard work I meant, not unwillingness to suck on Helen's breasts ! We hope to be able to reintroduce her to the breast when Helen is a bit more in the swing of things.

A warning to those of you who might have been planning on using this blog as a revision source for your nursing exams after yesterday's posts: apparently the procedure that Helen underwent today is called neither VK as we thought or V/P as our nursing teacher friend thought. It is apparently called VQ or possibly V/Q. Sadly I am unable to enlighten you all further as to what that stands for either. When I asked at the hospital today, it appears that they had marginally less idea than I did. Anyway, they injected the dye, wheeled Helen in front of the machine that goes 'ping' let it go 'ping' a few times and then a gaggle of ostensibly medically trained people (well they had all the right looking gear on) gathered around the printout and after some whispered discussion, the one they called Punksatawny Phil pronounced that he could see no shadow and therefore there would not be 6 more weeks of winter after all. That reminds me, I have not watched "Groundhog Day" for ages. I could watch that film over and over again. Someone told me the other day that they are planning a "Groundhog Day 2". I know it's an old gag, but this is Give An Old Joke A Home Week.

Time to go and cook a supremely iron-rich supper: Roast beef, really strong beefy gravy, green beans and broccoli, followed by a fruit salad with kiwi fruit and papaya because they are particularly rich in vitamin C, which apparently makes the iron in the rest of the food more accesible. I may try to work in some watercress, spinach and spring onions too. Into the meal, that is, not into the fruit salad. Perhaps some form or starter with watercress, spinach and rocket salad - ideas on a postcard please...