Antenatal Classes.

These classes are something that were relatively unknown to your grandparents and in essence they are designed to up skill new parents in what to expect, and more importantly, what to do and how to prepare for a new baby. In England these classes are given for free by the good old National Health Service, or for a fee, you can attend the classes of the National Child Trust (NCT). Your parents, being very eager by nature, decided to attend both!

The antenatal classes are broadly divided into three sections: the Labour Workshop, Breastfeeding Classes and Parenting Classes. The class of the NHS is given by a qualified midwife in the St Thomas hospital, where you will be born if everything goes according to plan.  It is very informative and especially the Labour Workshop gives you a very good idea of what can be expected from the birthing process itself. After three hours of hearing about contractions, epidurals, gas and air and third degree tears, it is safe to say that we are aware of the fact that it is not going to be easy!

The classes given by the NCT broadly follows the same script, however it is given by a volunteer parent who obviously went through this whole process herself. The difference is that it is based in your area and attended by people local to you who will all go through the same experience. Your dad loves to say that the NCT is essentially a  dating agency for expecting parents!

Our NCT group consist of seven couples, all living in the Clapham area: Tara and Simon, Rachel and Mark, Sinead and Liz, Isabelle and Steve, Lone and Jon and Rachel and James. Even though we only spent a little time together, it really seems that we all "clicked" quite well and we really hope that we will spend a lot of time together in the future once all the babies have arrived. However, it remains to be seen who will stay in contact, and who won't.

Baby Shower.

A Baby Shower is an American tradition where all the friends of the new mom get together for a little party before the baby is born. It is here that little presents are "showered" onto the new mom, and of course where wise advice is given on exactly what to do with the new arrival!

After a vague conversation between Heino and Alessandra, Heino decides to ask your mom's good friend Ruth if she will help him to arrange a sort of surprise Baby Shower. In secret all her friend's e-mail addresses are taken down and forwarded onto Ruth, who does all the arrangements with the invitations, cakes, other food and even some games!

Alessandra and Ruth

So on the afternoon of 5 December 2010 the guests including Ruth, Charlie with her two daughters, Julie, Sharon, Monique, Francesca, Agnese, Ania, Jennifer and others turn up at our house. By this stage it was not much of a surprise anymore as one of Alessandra's friends e-mailed her the day before to say that she could not make the shower!

The house is all festively decorated with pink balloons, a pink table with pretty much everything else in pink as well! You get your first little presents which include sleep suits, little jumpers, blankets and little socks. It is hard for us to imagine that a little human being can be so small!

One of the games is to guess the circumference of your mom's bump, and then to cut a piece of string to this length. This sounds easier than it really is, and in the end Francesca won by a whisker! Ruth also bought a very nice notebook in which all the guests wrote a little message for you, which can only be opened on your 18th birthday. A very nice idea, but let's have a look first if this book will survive the next 18 years!

It is a very nice afternoon, and it is very clear that there is already a lot of affection for you!

Agnese, Francesca and Alessandra.

Holiday in Cyprus.

To say that your parents like travelling is a mild understatement! Apart from at least on city break per year, they also try to visit at least one new country properly every year. This year, due to work schedules, we can only go on holiday in October.

This is logistically a bit of a problem as it has to be in Europe in case you make an early appearance, However, they desperately need some sunshine as well, which is quite hard to come by in Europe in October! In the end the island of Cyprus is a very good solution as it is only a three hour flight away, has European health care standards and most importantly, lots of sunshine even this late in the year!

Despite the average 28 degrees sunshine, it also has a very good mix of beautiful landscapes, interesting archaeological sites and stunning beaches! To top it all, you are behaving very well in your mum's tummy and she carries you strongly up and down ancient ruins, to the famous Baths of Aphrodite's, into the Tombs of the Kings, along the various Troodos Mountain Churches and finally (to your dad's delight!) to the amazing beaches of Agiya Napa!

For your parents, who have both grown up in sunny countries, it is very important that you finally get to have some proper sunshine. The nice tan on the bump will have to last you all the way through the cold, grey English winter which will greet you when you finally come into the world!

Second scan in Italy, 23 September 2010.

As mentioned before, your mom has a group of very dear friends in Italy. This means that she goes home quite often for birthdays, weddings and increasingly baptisms!
Her next trip to Rome is for the wedding of her friends Barbara and Emanuele, but is also a good opportunity for her to get you scanned again to make sure everything is fine. For good measure a standard blood test will be done as well, just to make double sure!

Seeing you on screen is always moving, and this goes with big relief as you are very thoroughly checked with all positve results. Right at the end it is also again confirmed, you are a little girl!

With this reassurance, it is time for her to relax and enjoy the beautiful wedding that is just outside of Rome in Grosseto. Due to work commitments, Heino could not come to Italy on this occasion, so Alessandra goes with (well you in the bump!) her friends Paolo, Anna and their little boy Flavio.

It is the first time that her friends can see a little bit of a swelling on her. They all seem a bit unimpressed by the size of the bump, claiming that it looks like a "typical girl bump"! Alessandra's mom pertinently expressed her desire for a more prominent bump, however Alessandra, knowing that she is the one who has to lump it around, knows that it is prudent to be careful what you wish for!

Kicking around in Riga!

Your mom started to physically feel your presence inside her around July already, although it is difficult to say exactly when as it feels like something splashing around in water and therefore making it difficult to say if it is really you or not! She could clearly start to feel your little kicks from outside in August, but for somebody else to feel it, takes a lot of time and patience.

Feeling a baby's kick for the first time is a really emotionally moving experience, so we remember exactly the first time Heino could feel it. It was during a city break to Riga, the capital of Latvia over the August Bank Holiday. We try to visit a different city every year and previous ones include Marrakesh, Oslo and Budapest.

Riga will however, always be a special place for us as it is here that we, for the first time, made your acquaintance in a more physical way!

Second scan, 23 August 2010.

This scan is a very important one as they will now check that all your organs are developing properly and therefore your mom is understandably a bit anxious! After the usual wait we are showed to the little room and everything is prepared for us to see you again.

The midwife doing the scan starts to check out all your organs, which are all declared in place and growing properly. To our big relief we could clearly see the four little chambers of your heart, and that they are functioning well. A quick check from the midwife to make sure that we want to know your sex (to which the answer is yes!) and we are told that you are a... GIRL!

It is all over a bit too quickly for our liking! Some of our questions were answered a bit vaguely by the midwife as well, and overall the verdict is that we are not too pleased with the scan. So it is decided that we will try to arrange for another scan to be done when your mom goes to Italy again. Also, we want to make sure that you are really a girl, as it has happened before that the midwives got the sex of the baby wrong, or that the boy bits just develop a little bit later!

Our next trip to Italy is in two weeks time for Alessandra's grand mom's 90th birthday, but this is too quick to try and arrange a scan with Alessandra's uncle Augusto, who is a doctor as well. For the time being we can only trust and hope that everything is indeed fine and growing as it should be!

Your great grand mother Delia's 90th birthday party, 4 September 2010.

Your name.

Choosing a name for a baby is a very difficult task at the best of times. However, when you have to choose a name that can be pronounced easily in Italian, English and Afrikaans, as well as being spelled correctly, it becomes a nightmare!

So, it was a bit of good luck then that your mom, as a young girl herself, used to love the Italian book "Jolanda, daughter of the Black Corsair" by Emilio Salgari. Even then she liked the name a lot and that made it a relatively easy choice for us. Even better luck is that your dad liked it as well, primarily because it is a nice sounding name in most languages, and more importantly because it is not a very common name, especially with the Italian spelling of I-O instead of J or Y! During the year of your birth, the most commonly used girl names were Olivia, Ruby and Chloe, but somehow we just couldn't picture you as any of these!

We really hope that you will like your name as well, especially as it felt so right for us!