Ooops, he did it again

R has a pesky habit of having military service in the days right before my due date. Small Boy's due date was February 9; R was in the military January 24th to February 4. For the average Swiss, "in the military" means at a site someplace in Switzerland (you're expected to remain there overnight during the week but are generally allowed to go home over the weekends) so this is not, in the grand scheme of things, a giant tragedy. It's not as if he was off in Iraq while I was giving birth to a child he wouldn't see for months. I'm well aware of that. It's annoying at worst. Nevertheless, it is annoying to be home alone in your 39th week. We were still in Small Village back then, and although we have a car and a good train connection to the city, it can feel fairly isolated when you're speeding towards your due date. I had a friend stay over several nights while R was away, and he came home over the weekend. And he wasn't scheduled for military service in the week of my actual due date, so we were pretty well covered.

Need I say Small Boy arrived early? At least he had the great good sense to jump start my labor on the middle Sunday of R's service, meaning R was at home with me when my water broke in the middle of the night. Small Boy was born Sunday night, and R was graciously granted leave on Monday, but Tuesday he had to go back into service. He was stationed about 2 hours away and was allowed to leave overnight for the remainder of the week, so he drove two hours home in the evenings, saw us in the hospital late at night and then early the next morning before the two hour drive back. It wasn't ideal, but it worked out okay since I stayed in the hospital all that week anyway. If we'd been in the States, where they send you home after a day or two, it would have been awful to go home to an empty house with a newborn. As it was, I stayed my standard five days and we all went home together on the following Saturday.

The one thing that went awry was that we didn't have enough baby clothes at home. At some point we stopped shopping because Small Boy was starting to get a bit huge in utero and the size 50's (for 50 cm long) were starting to look a wee bit small. We figured we'd wait until the baby was born, see how big it was, and R could finish shopping while I was still in the hospital. Since as it turned out R was in the military while I was in the hospital that didn't happen and he had to buy some panic onesies on Saturday afternoon. They were overpriced, but remain among the cuter onesies Small Boy ever had.

Well. This baby is due December 10 and R has military service December 3 through December 7. And during weeks 36 and 37 he'll be attending courses in Zurich where he will, in all likelihood, stay overnight during the week. Okay, Zurich is only an hour or so away, but still. That's an awful lot of away time in the final four weeks. Needless to say this time the plan is to have all of our rubber duckies in a row before that Zurich course begins.

And the cab company's phone number on speed dial.