Obey the laws of the Jag Clinic

Had loads of fun this week embarrassing strangers who asked me when the baby was due. They’d look at my ever-increasing bump and inquire as to the estimated date of arrival. I’d look at them all dumbfounded and ask them what the hells bells they were talking about.
My strange fascination with making people squirm started off innocently enough when I took the baby for his swine flu jab. We were forced to join a queue of screaming kids and grumpy parents on the street outside the outpatients department of our local hospital. A few irrationally inpatient fathers and a sprinkling of gale force conditions were also thrown into the mix to
compliment the relaxed ambience.
When we were done queuing outside – a monotonous hour-long ordeal – we queued a little more to get pens to fill in forms about our children. Then we got into another fabulously long queue to have the jab administered.
All in all myself and the little man spend approximately three and a half hours of sacred Saturday morning time standing in a line. His time was broken up into carefully thought-out segments. For the hour he spent outside in the elements he mostly kept a firm grip on his precious curly hair in case the gales would blow it away. He wiled away these 60 minutes by expressing his displeasure through the medium of screaming.
Once we got inside the child was able to release his hands from his head, safe in the knowledge that his locks weren’t going anywhere. He spent the hour we queued for a pen laughing maniacally, running away down darkened corridors and screaming loudly, approximately 3cms from my eardrum, when I picked him up.
We queued through his nap time, through his lunch time and into the afternoon.
We lost our places in the queue several times. It was a dog-eat-dog type of queue made up of really grumpy, hungry, tired parents. Once you stepped out of line, you no longer existed in their eyes. It was harsh, but those are the rules of the jungle, and the jab clinic.
When we eventually got to see the nurse I was a tired, irritable, queue weary, broken shell of my former self. I could barely string a sentence together, remember my name or speak actual English. It was a bridge too far to have to make idle chit chat. So when she asked me when the baby was due I just stared bleary-eyed in her general direction. I suppose she took my silence to mean that I was not six and a half months into a pregnancy, just big boned, and the poor girl stuttered and stammered apologies and excuses. It was the first time I laughed that day.
I wasn’t laughing later though when the baby had a bad reaction to the jab, turned into a fever-stricken stunt double for the Exorcist and was sick at half hourly intervals during the night. I wasn’t laughing for the next three days when he performed quite spectacular feats of projectile vomiting for our general entertainment and ranted and raved his way through an extremely high temperature.
I regained my sense of humour though when I played the ‘what do you mean, pregnancy bump?’ card at the tills in Sainsbury’s and a sales person who stopped me in the street.
So I’ll add enjoying making people squirm to the long list of pregnancy symptoms I’ve had to endure this time. It’s now filed away alongside extreme grumpiness, a hatred of the sight, smell, taste or mere mention of Spaghetti Bolognaise and, of course, utter imbecility.