About 7 weeks ago Thomas and I found out the sex of Baby Baked Bean as part of the chromosome analysis following our amnio. I asked my close friends if they wanted to know too and Karen jumped in (as she always does when I'm pregnant) with a big NO. Karen always wants to wait for the surprise and with both Léon and Anna that was possible (with the others I didn't know myself). This time was going to be trickier given how much more everyday blogging and facebook have become but I refrained from mentioning the baby on either and left Karen in the dark. Not telling Karen in person of course was going to be the easy bit, given she currently lives in Lancaster... piece of cake! Then Karen arranged to meet me for coffee on Saturday morning when she was up in Glasgow for a flying visit. Obviously bribing the two biggies to stay quiet would be easy - there's always something they want, and Anna wouldn't be hard either given that when she is asked if the baby is a girl or boy, she always replies in Danish. So Pudge was going to be the hard one. I tried to explain nicely on Friday night that he'd to keep it secret, he seemed to get it. I took Marcel and Charlotte aside and threatened them with torture and death if they released the cat from its bag. So, fingers crossed, there'd be no problem. Karen arrived with a lovely cake. I hadn't seen her since I got pregnant. I let her in, put on the coffee machine and she said: ' Wow, you're big, when IS the baby due? I don't think I know how pregnant you are', instantly I replied 'This is week 28, I'm due around the first week of January'. She then came back with 'my god you've already got Anna and Lots' birthdays that fortnight, that's not great timing' and I of course jumped in with 'Yeah all my girls will have birthdays within 2 weeks of each other...' She'd been in the house less than 3 minutes and the foot was in my mouth... D'OH!
