2. Digital Records

Nine months later and another dark stormy day. Rain-damage at the hospital meant the ante-natal clinic was temporarily moved to a portakabin some miles away. My husband dropped me off, and massive but calm, I waddled in. My baby was due in a week and finally we would meet - after a perfect pregnancy - who said being an older mother was complicated?

The receptionist searched for my name. Then she smiled, ticked a box and told me this was my third baby so doubtless I knew what to do. I asked her to look again, told her it was my first and it wasn’t due for another week. She searched.

“No! Nothing about a first pregnancy. You’d better fill in this form, the mid-wife will fit you in.”

My heart-rate soared.

The mid-wife took my blood pressure and tut-tutted. “Sky high!” she muttered.

“That’s not to do with the baby! It’s because you’ve lost my notes!”

“Always the way with older mothers; straight into hospital - right now..”

“But my baby isn’t due yet!”

“We don’t know who you are, you’re thirty-nine and your blood-pressure is up.”

Then, perhaps relenting for having been so sharp, she explained that the nurse who’d carried the folder of files to the portakabin from the hospital had also carried a bottle of milk for their tea-break and had slipped in the rain, spilling the milk onto one of the files… so, sodden and illegible, she’d spread the papers to dry on a chair. Nobody had thought to tell the receptionist.

Twenty four hours later I finally held my beautiful baby. Who cares about spilt milk?