Premonitions

A friend of mine has blogged about her fear of flying and it made me think of people who don't fly because they have had a premonition that the plane would crash. Would I believe it?

I have only ever had one premonition. I was eight months pregnant with our third child and as I was carefully coming down the stairs I suddenly knew that it was a girl called Sophie. Absolutely definitely no doubt whatsoever. Sophie was not a name we had discussed because it is the name of a very good friend of our first child and seemed to have been 'taken'.

My mother always said that she knew the sex of the child as she went into the delivery room.

Now with all these things there is a 50 50 chance of being right. Mum had 4 so that ups the odds of her 'knowing' I guess.

From my life experience I didn't trust my premonition. Yes, it felt completely and utterly convincing, real Road to Damascus stuff and privately to myself I began to talk to her as Sophie but to other people I would only tell them in a 'probably isn't but' sort of way.

At that time, if you had had no problems with other deliveries you were allowed to opt for the Domino system which meant that you had no hospital appointments at all, just saw your doctor and your own midwife and took them in to the hospital with you. With the other babies, hospital appointments were things that took at least 3 hours of waiting in a crowded waiting room while you were herded like sheep from urine sample (peeing in an egg box) to blood test (done by the newest, least experienced nurse) to prod by a doctor, to make another appointment. So the idea of not doing that was great. (Him Outdoors was an emergency caesarian delivery so we always opted for hospital deliveries.)  Anyway this all meant that we had had no scans at all so had no idea of the sex of the baby.

Of course, as is the way of these things, my doctor was on holiday and my midwife not on duty so the ones that turned up were not ones I knew very well. But after a really positive delivery in which I felt totally in control and of which I have nothing but good memories, there was a girl called Sophie.

So, would I believe another premonition? Yes, if it felt as that one did, I would. I still think with my logical head that it was just the toss of a coin whether it was a girl or boy and however many babies you have it is still just 50 50. But, in my heart,  I KNEW it was a girl called Sophie :-)