In case someone did not get the news, we are expecting again. In fact, we have been expecting for the past nine months and today is Emese's due date. Quite an exciting day, one might expect. But not nearly as exciting as the first, or even the second time around. Why is that, and is it fair? I shall leave the attempted answers to these for my next post, while here I will only provide the history of Emese's third pregnancy, which is officially supposed to finish today.

Emese realized that she was pregnant already by the end of last summer, after we spent three weeks together at our sea-side house in Goritsa. The important fact about this vacation was that for the first time I had arranged with my parents to stay in a different house, so we could actually be on our own with the children. This proved to be a good choice - my parents were still near, and we could enjoy each other's company, but we had much more privacy and relaxation with Emese - which apparently ended up in her getting pregnant.

The family folklore tells that the baby was conceived on a beautiful starlight night, with a stunning view of the moonlit sea horizon from our terrace, under mysterious and gentle ancient-sounding Anatolian tunes transmitted to us from across the Black Sea. Very much by the end of the evening the music stopped and was replaced by a voice reading, to our surprise in English, verses from the Holy Qur'an. It seems like we had enjoyed a religious music programme.

This episode, although scientifically unconfirmed, gave rise to speculations that the baby's name should in some ways reflect upon Islamic tradition. This idea seemed well matched by media reports that we came across, which claimed that different versions added together make the name of the Profit Mohhamad the most frequently used in the UK. Unfortunately Emese does not seem well convinced by all these arguments.

As usual Emese would not be willing to announce the pregnancy before its first three months had passed. By then it was already Christmas time, when we went to Hungary and Bulgaria by car. In this period Emese performed the already traditional ritual of pregnant down-hill skiing on the slopes of Mount Vitosha over Sofia. As a result most of our friends and colleagues ended up learning about the pregnancy already in 2011, when it was starting to get visible on Emese's figure anyway.

As always Emese has worked almost until the last minute, leaving herself less than two weeks of actual rest before the term day. These two weeks have just ended today, and we are being reminded about this by several of my friends - mostly women - who started sending us anxious emails. But no, no news yet.

As said in the beginning, we are unbelievably relaxed about the forthcoming delivery. Emese keeps busying herself in the kitchen and with the kids - even at the moment she is out to the playground with them. I have found the past days productive in terms of my work. Indeed, since yesterday the thought that the baby may be here any time is upon us. But even now Emese keeps saying that she does not feel like giving birth before mid-next week, and that it will be apparent when the baby is coming whenever she starts "really hating me." Apparently this has not happened yet, and everything going fine, I am planning to take her out for a surprise lunch tête-à-tête when our existing kids will be taken care of.