Leed's Castle

So we had a bunch of guests over July and spent a lot of time in London, shuffling around some of the tourist sites in the miserable heat. After a while, we decided to get out of town and take a day trip to nearby Leed's castle. It was an easy getaway - we had a leisurely morning, then hopped on the tube to Victoria station where we grabbed lunch to eat on a quick 1 hour train south east to Bearsted, where we hopped in a shuttle to take us the 10-min drive to the castle. 

relaxing on a train

The Castle

So first up, we swung by the visitors' center for a quick video that explained the history of the castle going way back to the wives of Henry VIII. Then we went into the main castle building and explored. There were some very cool older rooms with awesome floors and ceilings, and then a few rooms that had been renovated in the 20's - not as cool, but still nice to see. 

elaborate ceiling beams

butterfly joints in all the floor boards

someone already crashing

The Grounds
After the castle, we went to explore the grounds - which included some lovely gardens, an awesome hedge maze, and  a grotto. The rest of the group continued on to the falconry, but I started back with the kiddo towards the front gate.

hedge maze

grotto

hiding in a tree

squishing the hedges

So - the grounds actually stayed open a few hours later, but we had to rush to catch the last shuttle back to the train station. We had pretty much seen everything, but it would've been nice to have another half hour or so and not feel rushed. Everyone was happy to sit for a while on the train, and then we were back home in time for an easy dinner. All in all, it was a little rushed but a really nice day trip. I'm glad we finally got there and didn't try to also stop by Canterbury, which is very nearby but would've been way too rushed. We'll save that for another weekend.

A Big Boy Room

So with the new baby on its way, we started thinking about where it would go. In order to have new kid near our room on the 2nd floor, we needed to shuffle bedrooms with the first kiddo and move him up to the third floor. We decided to put him in the room that is currently being used as an office, and repurposing the 4th bedroom into an office/guest room. Because we want him to move into his new room before the baby arrives, in order to not feel pushed out, and because we have a lot of guests  coming this summer and need extra beds - we decided to get started now.

Emptying out the Office
The office was one of the least furnished rooms in the house - so it didn't take much effort to empty it out. We moved the small desk, chair, and bookcase into the 4th bedroom, which had plenty of room to absorb the extra furniture.

the office

fireplace and closet

the other wall

Planning and Shopping
Then, after measuring the walls (and the door - which is the real limitation), we made some furniture decisions. For his bed, we opted for a twin-sized bed with a trundle bed underneath - something my brother had when we were kids that seemed useful. UK beds are slightly different sizes than US beds, so I'm hoping that sheets won't be an issue in the future. For bedtime stories, we picked a small 2-seater couch that will barely squeeze through the door but hopefully fit two people. We also picked a new bookcase that will hopefully be just tall enough to fit his taller books. My hope with all the furniture is that these are nicer things that will move back home with us and last for a few years.

For softer stuff, the room sort of fell into a calm, blue and green color scheme. I tried to get his input on bedding, but he didn't have a lot of patience with me. We wanted something he would like but not outgrow too quickly, so we ended up with some cars and trucks, as well as just stripes. The rug was a neutral pick, just something big and soft, with lots of lines for driving cars on.

1. A single bed with a trundle
2. A solid bookcase
3. A 2-seater couch 
4. A neutral rug
5. A very soft and furry pillow for the couch
6. Car sheets
7. Stripe sheets
8. A subtle car quilt

Putting it All Together
Thankfully, the rug arrived first, and was easy to put down in an empty room. Then the bed came in lots of boxes - that I slowly carried upstairs and put together with some help. The bedding also arrived quickly - which allowed us to get the bed completely made up - just in time for our first guest to try out. After that, I did some shuffling of end tables to move an existing table upstairs, but swapped out the boring handles with some great double-decker bus handles.

bed getting built

new bedding and side table

closeup of the handles

view of the window

So he is all excited, and likes to check on the new room every few days. Unfortunately, to fit all the furniture in there, the bed has to go on the wall with the window - so that the existing curtains (which are ugly anyway) don't really work. So, next up - I'm going to make some new ones. 

British Literature -> The New Art Shelf

So - my first trimester was rather miserable. I was nauseous all day and exhausted - plus the weather was cold and rainy - so I spent a lot of time on the couch reading.

my British literature shelf 

The British Literature Project
I posted a few months ago that I wanted to start a new project to read the British literature classics. I started with The Remains of the Day, but then decided I should go back and start chronologically. So far, I've made my way through a couple hundred years, with a lot of help from Netflix.

• Chaucer: Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories told by pilgrims on their way from London to the Canterbury cathedral. This was a painful exercise in reading middle English. I only got through a few before giving up and just reading the modern English summaries at the beginning of each tale, followed by some youtube videos. 
• Shakespeare: I find it difficult to read plays, so decided just to go the movie route on him. We rented Macbeth and Midsummer Night's Dream, and then finished with Shakespeare in Love. I know this is a total copout-- moving on. 
• Jane Austen: I started with Emma, until I realized it was remade into the 90's movie Clueless, which then was completely distracting so I quit. I rented the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma and then Sense and Sensibility, which was a lovely cast of Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet. I decided I'm not a huge Austen fan and moved on.
• Brontes: Having previously read Wuthering Heights, I opted to just rent the movie. I unfortunately picked the 1970 version with Timothy Dalton - which was not so great. Finally, my project really turned around when I picked up Jane Eyre, the story of an orphan girl who gets passed from one horrible place to another and slowly makes her way through life. I loved it and read every word to the end. 
• Dickens: Next up was David Copperfield, another orphan story about a boy who bounces from one horrible situation to the next until he finally makes it. Very similar to Jane Eyre, but he turns out much better - clearly it is better to be an orphan boy than an orphan girl. I really liked this one, but gave up after about 500 pages and decided to watch the movie, which has a cameo by Laurence Olivier.

Modern Lit

At this point, I was getting tired of hauling around these huge texts, and decided to take a quick break with some current books on my kindle.

• Manhattan Beach: a WW2 story about a girl who is abandoned by her father and works in a navy yard outside New York. Not my favorite, but an interesting story about her searching for her father and diving with 1940's gear. 
• Less: the story of an older gay writer on a trip around the world, trying to get over a breakup. Had some funny moments, but really not clear to me why this one won a Pulitzer. 
• Sing, Unburied, Sing: a story about a boy in the Mississippi Delta who takes care of his younger sister because his parents are completely unfit (mom is a druggie, dad in jail), while dealing with serious racial discrimination and violence. This story was fascinating and really brutal at times - with a really interesting change back and forth in perspective between the boy and his mom. 
• Boat People: the story of a father and son who are refugees from Sri Lanka, fleeing to Canada. The story bounces back and forth between the terrible life they've fled to the miserable process of seeking asylum. I loved this one and read the whole thing in a day.         

Parenting Books
So at this point, I realized that everything I was reading seemed to have the same theme of children struggling to survive, due to unfit or absent parents. This made me want to be a better parent for my kiddo (and a half). Our biggest issue right now is tantrums, and I had read that timeouts are now considered passe - but had no idea what the alternative was supposed to be.  So I decided to read up on parenting and discipline guidance for preschoolers.

• Positive Discipline: This one talks a lot about not punishing your child, but helping them work through their tough emotions. 
• Calm Parents, Happy Kids: This one is very similar to the first and has three basic concepts: set a better example yourself by managing your own emotions, strengthen your connection with your kid so they want to behave better, and then coach them through managing their emotions. It got a little too attachment parenting for me - but had some good concepts. 

Activity Books
So both of the parenting books talked a lot about having quality time with your kid to strengthen the relationship. I realized that while I spend quite a lot of time with my kiddo, there isn't a lot of good quality time.  So I'm trying to make an effort to play with him every morning before daycare for about 10-15 minutes, usually one of his board games or another toy. But I didn't have great ideas for the weekends, so I picked up a few more books:.

• The Tickle Fingers Toddler Cookbook: Recipes that are meant to be made by a preschooler with just a little help from parents. I figure cooking together is not only an activity we can do together, but helps give him a useful life skill and maybe makes him more likely to eat dinner. We've already tried the nachos, and it seemed like a success all around. 
• The Big Book of 100 Little Activities: A variety of activity ideas, from making bird feeders to splatter art.  I'm hoping we'll have some fun together while getting a little fine-motor skill practice. 

the new art shelf on top

This, of course, led to another round of online shopping to pick up key ingredients and more art supplies. And now that those things are all organized in their new homes - I've come full circle back to my British Literature, picking back up with some more Dickens. I was hoping for some more uplifting stories - but the prospects are Bleak. 

Comparing Healthcare Systems: US v UK

So - I'm officially pregnant again, which means that I am in the unique position of getting a lot of firsthand experience with two very different healthcare systems. When we left the US, we didn't just leave our doctors, we left an entire healthcare system that (despite its faults), we had learned to understand - and replaced it with a completely different system to figure out. I'm just about halfway done with this pregnancy, so here are my thoughts so far.

The Two Different Systems
So, as we know - in the American healthcare system, doctors make care decisions, insurance companies pay for part of the cost of the care, and the patient also covers part of the cost through deductibles, copays, and other bills. Patients can choose between the doctors that are within their insurance plans, or the costs are even higher. To protect themselves from law suits and keep the practice profitable, doctors are incentivized toward excessive treatment and tests to cover themselves, as long as the insurance companies will cover the costs. By comparison, the UK system is a single-payer system that is run by the government entirely. You go to the general practitioner that is in your neighborhood and couldn't choose a doctor that's closer to work, for example, but don't have to worry if they are covered by your plan or not. To keep down costs, they minimize the time each patient spends with doctors, delegating as much as possible to midwives or nurses, and minimizing tests and visits wherever they can.

Prenatal Visits

• Number and location of visits: So in the US, I think I had over a dozen appointments. They started out every month, then went to every two weeks, and then every week by the end. All were in the same place, my ObGyn practice. Here, we have many fewer appointments, and they are split between 2 locations: my GP practice and my midwife group. I will have a total of 7 appointments, 5 with the midwives and 2 with the GP. Additionally, because I'm 35, I had one consult with an ObGyn, which was a total of 5 minutes long. 
• Lots of Different Doctors and Nurses: In the US, I went to a practice with about a dozen ObGyns. I knew from the beginning that delivery would be by whoever happened to be on call that day - so we played Doctor Bingo to make sure we had met everyone in the practice before my due date (not that it would've mattered). I would occasionally test them by asking a question that I had asked at the previous appointment to see if I got the same answer, and always did. Here - I have the GP practice (which is several doctors and nurses), the midwife group (which is a team of several midwives), plus the ObGyn, but none of those people will be at the hospital for delivery - that's apparently a completely different team of people. My biggest complaint is that they don't coordinate together at all and give conflicting advice. For example - the midwife told me to go get a vaccine at 16 weeks from the GP, but the GP follows different guidance and wouldn't give me the shot until 20 weeks, so I had to waste time sitting in the waiting room for an hour and then reschedule the appointment. 
• Tests: At each of the appointments in the US, they conducted a bunch of tests. They took a urine sample to test for protein and sugar, they weighed me, took my blood pressure, and then they palpitated my uterus (meaning awkwardly poked me in the belly). At every appointment they either listened to the heartbeat or used the ultrasound machine to check on the fetus. Here, it's just the urine sample and blood pressure - no one has weighed me yet, poked me in the belly, or listened to the baby's heartbeat. Additionally - in the US, I was giving blood samples left and right for various tests - but we only did two here. My least favorite appointment was the glucose test, which they don't do here in the UK unless there's some reason to order it. Similarly, I had at least 4 sonograms in the US, but will only get 2 here. There isn't even a machine in either the midwife or GP's office, so I have to make a special trip to the hospital for that. So in the US, I spent at least a half hour at each appointment getting all the tests and talking through all the symptoms, whereas here an appointment is 10 minutes max. 
• Medical Files: In the US, even though I had a different doctor at every appointment, the care felt continuous and consistent because they would take a minute to read my medical file before each appointment. Here - they don't have a file on me. Instead, I have to carry a booklet to each appointment, where they write their notes for the next person to read. I feel like each appointment starts from scratch - I have told our birth story like 6 times already. I was extremely irritated when the first question the ObGyn asked was, "How old are you?", followed by "Is this your first baby?", two questions that seemed basic enough that he should've known the answer already. 
• Scheduling Appointments: Maybe this is a small thing, but it still bothers me. In the US, after one appointment was over, you would walk to the desk and schedule the next, at a time that worked for you. Here, they just schedule my appointments for me based on what works for them, and I get either a letter or a text message telling me when my appointment is scheduled. Technically, there is a phone number to call if you want to reschedule, but no one seems to answer the phone, so the appointment basically cannot be moved. This has resulted in an appointment on a weekend with first kiddo in tow, an appointment for a test 3 weeks after it was supposed to be given, and then several appointments when I'm out of town or just otherwise busy. Clearly, the assumption is that my schedule doesn't matter. 
• Pregnancy Rules: In the US, the sort of default assumption was that you probably shouldn't do something during pregnancy - whether that was eating soft cheeses or drinking herbal tea- if there was any reason to think something might be a bad idea or if it just hadn't been tested yet, doctors would advise you not to do it. All those rules, plus the constant testing and appointments led to a rather anxious pregnancy. I remember going to a reception and realizing I couldn't eat anything that was being served. Here - it would be an huge understatement to say that they have a more relaxed approach. There aren't any rules about what I'm supposed to be eating or not, and they just recommend avoiding alcohol during the first trimester. I am avoiding alcohol myself, but have decided not to follow the soft cheese and smoked meat rules.  At my first appointment, I asked the midwife what number I should call when I have a question, and she said that she guessed I could email them. 

Kid Visits

• Standard Well Child Visit: In the US, there was a schedule for standard healthy kid checkups, that was every few weeks, then every few months, and then once a year. At each visit, a nurse would measure his weight and height and calculate the percentile. Then, the doctor would come in to review the results and discuss any other questions that had come up. This was a great time to ask random things that we had been worried about but that weren't enough to schedule a special trip for - like: "Do you recommend a sunscreen?" or "Should we worry that he won't eat anything green?". She would often give us an answer and refer us to a book or website for more info, and all in all in at both helpful and reassuring. Then, the nurse would come back in to give him the schedule vaccines. Here, you can get the measurements taken by the midwife, but they can't answer any questions - you have to make a special appointment with the GP for that. Only the nurse at the GP office can give shots, so that's a separate appointment too. Here the measurements stop at 2 years, so after that - you need would only go to the GP if there was a cause for concern - eliminating our chance to just check in and make sure we're on the right track. 
• The ASQ Test: In the US, before each appointment, they would send us a link to an extensive test, which changed for each visit based on the recommended milestones for that age, i.e., "Can your child pick up a cheerio with just his index finger and thumb?" or, "Does your child speak in sentences with three or more words?". The doctor would review the test results before each appointment and discuss anything unusual - but it was also just a chance for us to learn his strengths and weaknesses. Here, they seem to have the same test (paper only), but will only give it if there's a reason for concern. The midwife asked if I was concerned that he might be behind in anything, but what do I know? 
• Vaccines: In the US, there's a schedule for vaccines that follows the schedule for well child visits, so you just get the shots while you're already at the doctor anyway. Here, the schedule for shots doesn't match the schedule for measurements - so you need to track two different schedules for the two different offices. Also, the schedule is different than the US schedule, including both some different vaccines that we don't give in the US and some different timing. For example, they don't vaccinate for chicken pox here but do vaccinate for meningitis, and have a booster a 3 years, 4 months that we don't give in the US. I tried to ask the midwife about it - but of course she referred me back to the GP - who had already referred me to them in the first place - so it feels like it falls to me to figure out if he's going to get behind on anything.  
• Percentiles: As any parent of a young child knows - everything hangs on a kid's weight and height percentiles. We have so much data on growing kids that we can easily calculate how a kid's height, weight, and head circumference compare to other kids of the same age - which is their percentile. You want to know both the percentile itself, and the trend from previous measurements. Our kiddo dropped to the low percentiles at his 2 year appointment, so it's something we're extra concerned about - so I found an app that allows you to easily calculate and track your percentiles over time. Here - the midwife used an old school paper graph to chart his measurements - determined that he was somewhere between 25% and 50%, and then said - "He looks fine to me". So - I flipped out, and started my own excel file tracking his percentiles using my app and regular measurements of my own. Again - I feel like the onus falls to me. 

Dentist

Similar to the prenatal and health kid appointments, the dentist also delegates any lower level work to a nurse (the hygienist), which is scheduled separately, though thankfully in the same location. So, I went for a checkup which was a 5 minute appointment with the dentist just looking for cavities. He then recommended a cleaning, which I will have to schedule separately and go back for during another appointment. In the US, of course, it's all done in one appointment. 

Costs

It wouldn't be fair to compare these two different systems without talking about cost. In the US, we had very good insurance when I was pregnant, and then dropped down to minimal insurance afterwards. Thanks to Obamacare, all the prenatal visits and well child visits were free, but we would occasionally get a bill in the mail for various tests or appointments that weren't covered - and of course, a several thousand dollar bill for the delivery. Bills were always mysterious and unintelligible - it was never clear why something was covered or not, and certainly not clear during the appointment. Here - there's none of that. I haven't paid a pound out of pocket for any of this care - and won't. Our taxes are much higher of course, which is what covers this all. It's nice to know we won't be spending any miserable nights trying to compare plans and decide if a $20 copay is more or less than 15% of covered costs under a different plan. 

Conclusions 

As a good Democrat, I really want to like the UK system, but I don't.  I'm getting the distinct impression that they don't care about my time or what's convenient for me, and things could easily fall through the cracks. I'm trying to remind myself that the system I'm comfortable with was probably overdoing it - and that it wouldn't hurt to relax a bit on things. After all, they have plenty of healthy kids and routine deliveries here too. I'm also trying to remind myself that we moved here to have some different experiences and adventures - even though this is an area where safe and boring would've been fine. All in all, I'm sure everything will be fine - we are lucky to be very healthy - so I'm just going to try to go with the flow and google the hell out of everything.