It's Getting Better (or Misery Loves Company)

I have never liked New Year. It probably makes me the ultimate cynic but I really cannot buy into the idea that this particular turn of the calendar can herald anything more than any other. Oh I know no one else really thinks so either, but I can't even pretend. Not even for one night. Which is just as well as I'm stuck indoors with a baby in any case. I really like Christmas and particularly the run up to Christmas Day. After that everything loses its sparkle and perhaps that adds to my antipathy. The best New Year has to offer is extra days off work which doesn't even apply to me this year. Even in the short term I have only the dark days of January and February ahead of me. And this year for me means returning to work - so what's to look forward to?

Okay I had to be that miserable because that is how I always feel on 31 December. Except last year when I was all pregnant and deluded. Wow what a simpler time. I should celebrate 'Happy Old Year' and enjoy how contented I was 12 months ago. Tomorrow I'll feel better. And although I cannot bear resolutions, I do have some hopes for myself. The inevitable weight loss plans, not least because I have bags of size 10 work clothes to fit into by April. Also I'm going to work on feeling positive about going back to work. It is going to happen so I might as well change the only thing that I CAN change, which is my attitude towards it. Difficult though as I'm stuck in a loop of negative thought about it. I want to go part time so I can see enough of SB but we need a bigger house to accomodate growing SB but cannot afford one if I go part time which I want to do to see enough of SB. Arghhhh. And while I'm on the subject, how do people afford more than one child and still send them both to nursery? Poor only child SB.
So, um this is depressing so on to better things such as SB. What a happy chap. I think it's probably more entertaining to read about me coping with a difficult SB, yet getting by and making light of it where I can. In fact now he's just lovely and I don't want to say too much because it will sound like bragging. And there is nothing worse that a bragging mother, especially to those who also have young babies. I'm lucky enough that throughout the really difficult first 5 months, no one bragged to me about their baby. But even knowing that other people were able to take their young babies on holiday or that other babies could go in their buggies without screaming or that other babies did not girn and fuss and wake up every hour at night, made me feel low and useless. When SB's change first came about, I shouted from the rooftops about it. Now it is becoming normal to have a happy baby so I will hold my tongue. Those who know him, know how wonderful he is and all the things he is up to. It is so great to be a proud mother of a happy child.

And so how depressing to have to leave him with others while I go to work. Oh I tried to be positive, but it's 31 December so it's simply not possible.

Are you there Samuel? It's me, Mummy.

SB is 6 months old today. This week he has learned to sit up by himself and is pretty proud of himself. He is also trying his best to get the crawling started. He's up on his hands and knees but he is now trying to go from that position to having his feet flat on the floor. As if he wants to stand. Trust SB to try to walk before he can crawl. I blame myself for playing Sinatra's High Hopes to him daily from 2 months old.

After my sleep training boasts, things are really needing addressed again. SB is spending altogether too much time in our bed. I can't count the number of times I wake up and look to my side to see two sleeping boys. And I think, again, why am I so often awake when they are asleep? The reason that we haven't solved the sleep thing is that I really do not want to listen to crying at night and so I just feed him. Which has led to problems. Not least my desire to inflict violence on anyone whose baby 'has always slept through the night'.
I secretly pray that they will suddenly experience sleep problems about a week after I have solved ours. Some books say there is no way a 6 month old needs to wake in the night for food and that it is just habit. Other books say that some 6 month old babies will need to feed in the night. I also suspect many parents are lying their asses off. Or, to be kinder, are wildly exaggerating. In my book sleeping through the night is 7pm-7am. Anything less than that is not sleeping through the night. One woman I spoke to told me her daughter slept through the night but it transpired that she meant from 11pm to 5am. I'm not judging - as D says, we all do what we need to in order to get by, but please don't call it sleeping through the night. Regardless of anyone else, SB does have a problem and he possibly eats more at night than during the day. Daytime is too exciting to be spent eating as far as he is concerned. But it has to stop. I'm the boss. Yes I am.

I should say that SB did sleep through the night two nights in a row in August. But he has never managed to do it again. We have no idea why he did it in the first place and no idea why he stopped.

Tonight, I decided to make sure that I put him in his cot AWAKE. We'd started to do that in August and then I slowly lapsed back to feeding him to sleep. So now I'm incorporating a bedtime story into his routine. From now on, he'll get a story after milk and before sleep. When I brought him through to his room after his feed tonight he was asleep. I sat down on the rocking chair and got the book out. He was still asleep. I started to read the story - 'That's Not My Penguin'. Still he slept. Is there anybody there?? Usually I'm creeping through, dreading the slightest sound or jolt that might wake him before 'the transfer' to the cot, and now I'm reading aloud to a sleeping baby, sitting on my knee. We did fuzzy tummy penguin, velvety wing penguin, shiny beak penguin, silky head penguin and rubbery feet penguin - nothing. Only a light snore. I got the last page of the book and my final-sentence tone of voice 'that's my penguin' woke him. I held my breath. How awake was he going to get? I wanted drowsy but books can make SB go limb-thrashing crazy with excitement. His arm started to stir. It moved towards the book. But it was just going to gently stroke the fluffy penguin on the last page. I picked him up, said goodnight to his animals, put him in his cot and.....crying. But only for 30 seconds. Hooray.

Next, the difficult bit. Letting him cry at night. He's not getting a feed until 2am tonight so he'll just have to cry before that. And then I plan to stretch the night feeds until there aren't any any more. But the trouble is, I've had to face up to the fact that I actually quite like feeding him in the night. Just once mind. Not three times like last night. But, still, the thought of stopping altogether actually makes me feel a bit sad. Like saying goodbye to night time SB forever.

Clearly I'm quite mad.

Oh b******s - it's 21.48 and he's just woken up because we laughed too loud at the telly. Long night ahead.

It's a roll-over

Ya ya roly, ya ya poly, ya ya roly poly. SB is on the move. He can roll onto his tummy but only to the right. He hasn't mastered the left yet. After 2 or 3 weeks of this he's becoming a bit more comfortable on his tummy and can stay there for a few minutes before having an eppy. I'm pretty sure it won't be long before he crawls so we'll need to pen him in. His legs go nineteen to the dozen when he's on his belly.

But then all his limbs move all the time. He burns calories faster than I can get them into him. And that's not an exaggeration. Since last I wrote, he's barely gained half a pound. I've had the same sized baby for 2 months. I'm ready to throttle the health visitors because on a whim they oscillate between two extremes. First they are at my door wanting to weigh him every week, whipping me up into an anxious frenzy and then they retreat into the shadows leaving me wondering what to do and whether I'm starving the SB. They'll be coming to take him away next.
After the last weigh-in I decided to start to wean him one month 'early'. Obviously I wasn't making enough milk for him and he still won't take a bottle so what else was there to do? So we are about 10 days in and he's loving it. They say babies will tell you when they've had enough by clamping their mouths shut or turning their heads away. Not SB. I think he is trying to make up for lost food over the last 2 months. He's already a happier baby (at last) and now I feel bad that I must have been starving him all this time. But the old NHS breastapo do forbid early weaning and I'm such a square - I always just comply. I'm going to try to use my instincts more. And with that in mind I'm trying to be more relaxed about what I should and shouldn't be doing. So if I want to breast feed SB in the middle of the night when he's probably not hungry but is in need of comfort, I will do it without guilt. And I have long since abandoned the routine. But I am scared about having him weighed next in case he still hasn't gained, even on solids. And when he does gain, how strange it will be. For the last two fifths of his life he's been exactly the same size.

So he's a totty tiny baby but he is making strides in other areas aside from the rolling. He's got much better co-ordination already and he is into everything. He loves to be outside being a nosey parker, watching people go by. He especially likes being in the sling. I don't hear a peep out of him when he's in it and we are out and about. And being tiny, he's easy to carry! I promise I'm not stunting my child's growth for convenience. The rolling is a bit of an issue in terms of sleeping. When he wakes up and cries, it's straight onto the belly and of course he's stuck there with no hope of him settling himself back to sleep. Hopefully he will learn how to roll back soon.

I never ceased to be amazed at the free stuff you get from the NHS as a new mum. Recently it has been free books, a free toothbrush and toothpaste and a free tommy tippee cup. I think it's both sad and ridiculous really. Presumably there are so many people out there that would not think to buy these things themselves that they are bought by the state for everyone. And how wasteful that everyone gets these things when so many of us can afford to buy them ourselves. Far better surely that those less well off are given more help using the money saved from not buying a bunch of middle class women toothbrushes, books and cups. The books come at about 4 months to 'introduce the child to literacy'. SB likes to eat them.

Sleeeeeeep

Okay so this is quite a difficult job, motherhood. I have had no time for updating blogs. We had a couple of weeks around the 2 month mark where things were quite manageable and I even managed to read a book (bizarrely I chose Kate McCann's book about Madeleine). But before and since it's just too time consuming. The poor wee soul has a completely rubbish digestive system. There is, once again, a great deal of vomit in my life.

Little squirrel baby is exclusively breast fed and until last week, I was feeding him umpteen times a night. In fact he was sleeping in bed with me for most of the night and I became an all night snack bar. This was lovely when he was a newborn as he needed to feed often. But more recently it's got a bit silly. We knew we had to do something about his sleeping. Since he was about 4 weeks old, I fed him in bed at 7pm until he was asleep. Then I would carefully put him in his crib. For a long time he would stay there until 11pm and sometimes as late at 2.30am. One night we even went out for dinner and he stayed asleep for the whole time we were away - a bit boring for the grandparents babysitting. That was about 5 weeks ago. Since then, it has proved more and more difficult to get him to fall asleep and into the crib without waking. And even if he finally went to sleep, he'd be awake a very short time later. It was time to make a change. Sleep training beckoned. I spent a small fortune on books, videos and pdfs produced by experts. I got more and more worked up the more that I read. Do I try the cry it out method? Is that cruel? Is he too young for it? Or, in fact, had I left it too long? I learned that baby needed to be put down in the cot awake and NOT asleep. I didn't believe SB would EVER fall asleep by himself. He never had before. He'd always been fed to sleep, or swung in his swing or he's gone to sleep in the car or the pushchair. Eeeek. D took a week off work and we braced ourselves for some very sleepless nights. We agreed that we would let him cry but would go in every 5 minutes. All the books on this method made it sound like your baby would be calmed by your presence and that you would leave the room with the baby quiet and not go in unless he cried again. We knew our SB would not be calmed and would scream through our comforting. And right enough, so it was. We picked him up a lot that first night and he cried for 100 minutes. But night two we didn't pick him up and he cried for 35 minutes. Night 3 it was 4 minutes! And on each occasion he woke just once in the night for a feed and went back into his big cot in his own room. And on each occasion, he slept later each morning. Night 4 was a bit of a blip though. He had some inoculations that day and wasn't in great form. He cried for 80 minutes before falling asleep. But he still had a good night afterwards. Night 5 and 6 (tonight), there was no crying at all. We are sleep training GENIUSES. But my shoulders are up to my ears with tension at the prospect that he could wake at any minute.

Our next challenge is to get the wee man to eat out of a bottle. He just refuses at the moment and it means that I can't leave him with anyone for longer than 3.5 hours. He used to know how to do it but I went for too many weeks without giving him one and now he's forgotten what to do. And he goes absolutely mad if he's given a bottle. I'm not sure how he'll learn when I want to continue breast feeding. Presumably if I was moving to bottle feeding completely, eventually sheer hunger would force him to learn. However, I will offer him one bottle a day and see if he remembers what to do.

D came along to his inoculation this week. That's because I cried the first time he got them and I wanted to see if D would cry too. But he obviously went to great efforts to prepare himself in advance and he remained composed.
Which is quite impressive considering how moist eyed he gets when he's with his 'little dude'. He's so good with him.

The eyes have it

The boy is asleep! And has been for nearly 3 hours! Unheard of during the day, well in the last 3 weeks anyway.

Today I went into town without Samuel to get my eyes checked. They have changed since I was pregnant and again since giving birth. This child bearing business is so all encompassing. No one tells you all the things that it affects. I'm thinking of preparing a sex education course and, believe me, it would be the most effective contraceptive ever. I could go on at great length about the true horrors of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood as well as the minor irritation of needing a new contact lens prescription. But really, who'd have thought it would affect my bloomin' eyes. It just never ends.
Anyway, I've had quite a busy week. I had my first time apart from Samuel on Tuesday morning. I had an appointment with a dermatologist (can't blame that on Sam) and then I went into town and bought a new coat and a bag. But I still rushed home by 11am as I felt guilty about leaving him. That afternoon we went on a 'buggy walk' which is just a community initiative to provide something for new mums to do. There were 5 people there and it was nice although the walk was only 20mins. I wonder if anyone will turn up next week. All the other babies were much older than Samuel - at least a few months. It made me wonder if I was giving myself too hard a time about how well I'm coping. There I am joining community groups when he's only 5 weeks old and at the same time feeling that I'm not coping. On Wednesday we took a bus into town to meet women from my NCT course. While I took him in the sling and not in the buggy, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. Again, at 5 weeks that's not bad, surely?

The weather is really getting me down. It has rained and rained this week. On the way back from the buggy walk I got caught in a mega thunder storm with hailstones. But I was on such good form, I didn't even mind at all (it helped that I was close to home). I even smiled through it.
The next day I had Sam in the sling so I was able to use an umbrella and wasn't too fussed. However, the following 2 days I got soaked and, worse, so did my washing which I'd spent ages hanging up in the garden. Grrrr. My good-natured, earth mother acceptance of the crap weather has therefore worn off.
In other news, our car is kaput. D tried to start it this morning and it just made a funny noise. Something to do with a spark plug but the AA refused to try to fix it in case they made it worse and became liable for it. So it's been taken to the place we bought it. So obviously, that's a bit annoying but it's worse cos we'd planned to go to my parents tomorrow with D taking his bike so he could go out for a ride in the Pentlands. We will likely still go but in a taxi. I just hope the car is fixable and not too expensive. Just what we need.

There's loads of other stuff to report that I've not mentioned. But most of it is dull and vomit or poo related. The only real piece of interesting news is that Samuel has a baby cousin Erin as of yesterday. We can't wait to meet her!

And seeing as I now need to lose weight I should continue to admit to what the scales are saying. Today I am 9 stone 11 pounds.

And he's STILL asleep.....

The new man in charge

He's here! Samuel arrived at 2.17am on Friday 6 May with the maximum of fuss. Good job I wasn't stranded on an island or we'd both be dead quite frankly. Poor wee soul had been break dancing on his head in the womb and had gone back to back and got the cord round his neck twice. As soon as I was in triage and assessment (after an hour on my hands and knees in agony in the waiting room), I was on a trolley in acute pain and didn't move off a bed until the following Saturday morning. I refused drugs except for gas and air and hypnobirthing went right out the window. The midwife was getting frustrated with me for not taking the diamorphine but I kept thinking 'I'll just get through this next contraction and then I might have drugs'. I so didn't want a drugged baby. But in the end things got very dangerous and I was rushed for a c section under general anesthetic. Unfortunately they couldn't intubate me so couldn't continue with the section under GA. Luckily, Samuel's heart rate improved and they did a section with an epidural after all. And it was a text book section and Sam was perfect when he came out - 9 on the AGPAR score. 8 pounds exactly. He had a ridge on his head from where he was trying to push himself out the wrong way. But that went after a day or so.
And now a whole new chapter begins. Wonder if I'll ever have the chance to blog any of it.

LATE

Officially late now. But I knew I was going to have a May baby. It's only really today that I've felt like I was ready for the baby to come. So I will start doing all the hypnobirthing visualisations for bringing on labour. The house still isn't perfect but it's good enough and I want to use the time now doing everything to prevent being induced. I know some women at my stage are gagging to be induced but I'm really against it. I'll be offered a membrane sweep at the midwife on Wednesday but, unless something unexpected happens, I'll be saying, 'no thanks'.

Today I did a very silly thing. I spent £25 on 5 metres of self adhesive velcro. Yup. That's what B&Q were charging. Because we were spending so much, I didn't really question the price til we got home. We are using it to attach a travel black-out curtain to our window frames. The baby will sleep in both our room and its own room on a daily basis so I want to be able to put both rooms into total black-out darkness. But 5m was only enough to do one window and then it dawned on me that the whole job would cost £50 just in velcro. Onto the internet and, of course, it should only have cost me about £8. B&Q - SHAME ON YOU!

And just this second I've got a text from an NCT mum to say her baby arrived today - on her due date. Everyone I know is going to beat me to it. Women who've already had their babies - bah!


I've been trying to do a Lost re-watch of Season 2 recently but I have to confess that Dexter has been getting in the way. I started S1 months ago and couldn't quite get into it. It's so morally dubious. But with all the spare time and ironing I had since starting maternity leave, I've quickly got to the end of S2. Frank Lundy temporarily filled the Frank Lapidus shaped hole in my life. Now I have a Frank Lundy shaped hole in my life. This baby needs to come so I can have a real life again.
Weight - 11 stone, 10 pounds. Phew - at least not gaining rapidly. Pregnancy app fruit/veg obsession = pumpkin. Roll on midnight.

The end is nigh

One week to go until my due date. The midwife says the baby is not quite ready yet and doesn't think it will arrive before Wednesday at least. As D says, it's looking over the edge of the highest diving board but it's not ready to jump yet. I've now had a week of maternity leave. So far it is just like taking time off work when you have nothing in particular planned but you have great hopes of achieving lots of things. Then the week ends and you've not done a whole lot. Except I don't now have to go back to the office! Mwoah ha ha ha ha. Hooray!

At the midwife on Wednesday, my blood pressure was a bit higher than normal. There was a student nurse in and the midwife had me explaining hypnobirthing to her. I think I got a bit excited and it raised my blood pressure. Anyway, she took some bloods to check for other signs of pre-eclampsia and said she'd come round to mine the next day to take my blood pressure again. I'm getting fed up of having blood taken even though I know it's necessary. It never used to bother me but I'm sure it's more sore every time.

She also told me not to do anything for the rest of the day. I was supposed to be meeting NCT girls in town so I cancelled that. Luckily the next day, my bloods came back perfect so she didn't bother taking the blood pressure again. I have to say I wasn't remotely worried about it. I just knew I was fine. But it was nice following orders not to do anything.

We now have wheels! D bought a car a couple of weeks ago so we are finally mobile. It's still really strange that we can drive around together after 14 years together without our own transport.
It's already come in really useful and we've picked up some storage boxes and bags in Ikea, bought plants and compost at the garden centre, been for dinner at the Stable Bar, visited my grandparents, dropped my brother home after he visited. It's great. It's like my life changed overnight. Suddenly I don't have to go to work and I get driven round places.

Because it's Easter this weekend and the Royal Wedding and the May holiday next weekend, I'm going to have D around a good deal. He's just got three days of work between now and 3 May. And, as I'm planning on having the baby on 3 May (!), he'll have two weeks off after that. So far, he's been really helpful getting things tidied around the house. Well, things are far from tidy, but we are slowly getting there and I am slowly getting less stressed about the mess. He's also pretty useful for getting rid of all the spiders in the house. For some reason they are everywhere at the moment. I cannot stand the things. Mostly they are pretty small but the other day I went to put a pot away in a kitchen drawer and there was this HUGE hairy one just sitting there. In the drawer! Euwwww. I've also found a flattened one on the side of my birthing ball - double euwwww.
I have a mantra to prepare for labour. It covers what I want to happen. I thought I'd throw in a date just to see if I can make it happen on a particular day. I thought 3 May was perfect. It's a few days later than my due date of 29 April but not so very late that I get fed up or that I need to be induced. I do have to admit to becoming slightly fed up in the last couple of days. It is difficult to get around and the place is just such a tip. It doesn't do much for my relaxation. Nor does the flow of birth related news that's been coming in during the past few weeks. Most of the women I know (I'm talking 8 out of 9 or 10 pregnancies) have ended in a C section. One of those which hasn't was a 23 hour labour because the baby was back to back and was finally delivered with forceps. But it just makes me more determined to have a quick, natural, drug free birth. Mantra Mantra Mantra.

Today I am 11stone, 10 pounds. Good grief! 2 stone, 3 pound gain. And the baby is still the size of a watermelon. I presume it will remain this size due to a lack of the existence of a bigger fruit or veg. Well, I suppose there is always prize winning marrows - I should be grateful I suppose.

I'm carrying a watermelon

Oh it's been so long since I last posted. It's just that things are so so much more tiring these days. While I'm glad to report that the 'twanged' ligament I had at the end of February didn't come to anything, it hasn't been possible for me to walk any distance at all since. It's just that it's so blinkin' heavy and the baby sits on my bladder and bounces around and it's just too uncomfy to walk. I like to think if we hadn't had a month of snow followed by 6 weeks of yucky weather, I'd have continued walking for longer and maybe even now would have the stamina to keep going. Ah well.

So it's a shame I've not been updating because I'll probably miss lots of details out from the last 4 or 5 weeks. I'm very pleased to say that all the ante-natal classes have finished. The final NHS class was quite good - it was held by a Health Visitor and actually told us a little bit about what to do once the baby is finally here. We saw how to wash the baby and were told that baby products were not necessary! This was bad news for the girl next to me whose Aunt was creating a hamper for her by buying a well known brand of baby products to it each week. Even talc is evil. And baby wipes. And nappy cream. Seemingly all you need is water and perhaps Vaseline and aqueous cream.

And then the NCT classes FINALLY finished. They were fine and it was nice to meet the other people but it was getting soooo boring going out there every flippin' Sunday. Two of the women from the class have now had their babies - both boys and both C sections because the babies were breech and not for turning. In fact, 2 other women I know have had boys since my last post and one of them was also a C section - not sure about the 4th but he was a hypno babe. Not heard how that one went yet. One of these babies is my friend M's who was 4 weeks ahead of me - that brought home how close we are to the birth.
On the home birth front, we'd pretty much decided against it. We'd heard nothing more from the midwife after she was round to tell us about it. I'd assumed that we'd been forgotten about and fully intended to confirm it was a hospital birth at my appointment this morning. Then on Friday I had a missed call from the NHS saying that they had tried to deliver my gas and air and birth box for my home birth. Ooops. Mind you, a bit of communication wouldn't have gone amiss. We had a meeting with the midwife to 'find out about' home birth then we hear nothing. The next thing, we are confirmed for one and they are trying to deliver birth boxes and gas canisters. And then getting stroppy when I'm not in. Hello! I have a job!
So on Saturday, I got a call from the on-call midwife saying that they were having 'a lot of difficulty' delivering it. Which means they tried once without even telling me to expect it first. But she was lovely when I explained we hadn't actually decided on the birth yet and she offered to come round to chat about it. After we talked, we agreed not to cancel the home birth and that I'd make a decision after my next appointment. So, anyway, at the appointment this morning, the midwife couldn't tell what way round the baby was although it's back is on the left hand side of my belly with all it's limbs at the right hand side, which would explain all the kicking action going on there. I'm to go for a presentation scan on Friday to find out where baby is exactly. I'm really excited to be getting another scan but I suppose it will probably be over before I blink. If it's still breech, then I have to go and discuss my options. I think it's moved though because it's heart beat could be heard in a totally different place from last time.

Also at this morning's appointment, I did cancel the home birth. I'm feeling quite happy about the idea of being in hospital because I do not intend to be there for long at all. And just cos they are more readily available there, it doesn't mean I have to use their drugs.
And maybe we will get a water birth without having to faff with a pool ourselves and clear up the mess afterward.

Only 7 more days of work left and only 4 more in the office. I'm trying to work 10am-4pm and am certainly leaving earlier than usual. We live in a terraced house and usually use our back door. To get to it we walk up a path between a break in the row of houses behind ours. Two houses from the row behind and four from our row access our back gardens from there and it's not a public footpath. There is a little broken bench there - no idea whose it is. Today, there were 4 youngish teenagers sitting there smoking! I was so surprised, I didn't say anything. They were pretty sheepish and one even said 'sorry' even though I acted like they weren't there. Then they ran away. I wonder if they are always there at that time and I'm going to spoil their smoking den by coming home early every evening. One of our neighbours told us that he found an old couple sat there once 'just having a rest'.
I had my leaving lunch at work on 31 March as no one had faith that I'd still be at work in April. Pah! It was very nice - we went for tapas. I got a very generous gift of John Lewis vouchers and a lovely soft toy bunny rabbit. Without an 8 stamped on it's ass. But you can't have everything.
Now if you'll bear with me while I weigh myself for the first time in weeks.......oh my ....11 stone, 5 pounds. Nearly a 2 stone increase overall. And the baby is the size of a.......watermelon!

Oranges and Melons

I've been meaning to post a new entry for ages but I've found that I've had very little to say so I've been put off. Things have been so tame that the best I could come up with a couple of weeks ago was that my satsuma had a baby satsuma growing inside it. Riveting.

However, things have moved on a little when you take the last 4 weeks together. There have been 3 National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes and three NHS antenatal classes. D has been to them all with me except the most recent NHS class which was a breast feeding workshop. I let him off the hook because the previous week he had a 'mare with his remote access and had to go into work at 2.30pm. He was so angry. I hadn't seen him angry for 12 years. He doesn't do angry. He had actually headed off to work intending to miss the class as he had so much to get through. I turned up at the class by myself and 5 minutes later, in walked D. Awww. But actually, he's not going to miss much by skipping the last two because it's all covered at NCT on a Sunday.

The NCT classes are a right pain to get to. I think we were assuming we'd have a car by now but the snow put paid to that with David having had two tests cancelled. Happily, he passed on 14 February but it might be a while before we have a car. So it's two buses for us on a Sunday. We are out from 2.30pm to 7pm for a 2.5hr class at a village hall type place in scheme-ville. We are already half way through. Tomorrow is their breast feeding workshop. I wonder if there will be a knitted boob like there was at the NHS class this week.

On Monday of last week, I tried to walk to work. It was a lovely, frosty morning but with a hint of Spring in the air. After 15 minutes, I twanged what I presume was a ligament under my bump. I did this by walking up a gentle slope. Thinking I could 'walk it off', I carried on. Five minutes later I was in some agony and hobbling towards a bus stop. I'd quite happily have been stretchered off. I could barely take another step.
I was raging. I think it means no more walking to work for me. Urgh. I called the midwife because it was soo painful, but it did ease off and completely disappear by the end of the day. However, I've had a few pangs since. Boo.

I'm 32 weeks pregnant now and apparently the baby's movement is at its peak. It is certainly active. The last few days it has barely stopped moving. The only time it seems to stop is when my brother or Mum are trying to feel it kick. It's a tricky wee thing. I'll miss it when the moving stops.

On Wednesday evening, we had a visit from the police. Eek. We had had a card through the door on Friday asking us to call the West End police station from Tuesday onwards. I thought 'from Tuesday onwards - can't be urgent!' and promptly forgot. So they turned up at the door. We had just been practicing hypnosis and had only just finished. I was zen-like. Normally a visit from the police would have my heart beating nineteen to the dozen despite my innocence. The hypno must really be working. Anyway, someone had stolen a 'device' (they wouldn't be more specific) which had GPS and its last known position was our street. So they wanted to know our names, ages, work places, our movements on a particular date and whether we'd had any visitors that day. Luckily, because we are so busy these days, I could actually remember where we had been. Cast iron alibi. Kind of.

So that's the latest. Also - I am so so so so so tired, and am 10 stone, 10.5 pounds. 'Mare! And the baby is the size of a honeydew melon. Now, THAT I believe.

Baby Boiler

The day after my last post was D's birthday. We were woken up at 5.45 to a very loud and terrifying noise coming from our heating system. The baby was leaping about all over the place because I gave it such a fright waking up so suddenly with my heart pounding. I was still on holiday from work and so was able to get the boiler man round in the afternoon. Turns out our pipes were blocked. They think. It was either that or the pump. Except he couldn't find the pump. In a two up, two down, tiny terraced house, he couldn't find the pump. So he said we didn't have one. In any case, the system was pretty screwed and there was no simple way to fix it in the long term.

So we chose to just replace the 26 year old boiler and be done with it. With a baby on the way, it's probably for the best although it will totally blow our hard earned savings.

I spent all the following weekend drawing up a baby-boiler budget spreadsheet. With hindsight, I could have named it better. All frivolous spending has been banned. Supermarket shops are to be strictly monitored and no more coffee at work for me or posh sandwiches for D. Sigh! And of course, no spending money to have Lost prints professionally framed.

Anyway, the boiler is in now and everything seems to be fine and the pump was safely located and replaced. It's good to be warm. And we get a £400 rebate from the Scottish Government to help pay for it. Thank you Scottish Government.

My next project is to think about getting a tumble dryer. Even though we haven't much space. We'd need to get rid of our kitchen table. But with a baby coming and taking up our current clothes drying room, it may be the only option when my life becomes laundry-tastic. It's not going to look good for re-sale of the house to have what is a quite spacious kitchen filled with white goods that aren't neatly under the counter top (freezer is taking up floor space since D let me have a dishwasher). But I guess selling is a long way off.

In other news, we finished HypnoBirthing last Sunday. Or I should say, we had our last class. We met with the other 2 couples for lunch beforehand just as we did last week and had a good time. At the class, we saw a video of a British water birth at home. It convinced us to ask the midwife about a home birth. She is going to come round in early March to chat about it properly.

At my midwife appointment, I had blood taken again and got my anti-D injection - in my backside!

That all went fine except she had to draw blood twice because she wrote my name wrong on one of the vials. It was the first time she'd EVER done that. Lucky old me. At my appointment there was also a midwifery student. She got all the good jobs - like testing my pee. She also got a shot at palpating my tummy. I felt for her as she wasn't too sure what she was doing and the midwife left her with me alone for ages. But she found the heartbeat of the baby with the doppler while the midwife was out the room. Then the cheeky baby moved so the midwife didn't believe that she'd heard it when she came back in and asked where the student had been holding the doppler. The baby is breech at the mo but there's plenty of time for it to move.

Since my last post, I bought a nursing chair for the baby's room. It's a modern rocking chair which glides rather than rocking. We now have far far too much stuff in the house and that's only going to get worse.

This week the baby is the size of a butternut squash (!) and I am 10 stone, 6.75 pounds. That's only 0.25 pounds heavier than two weeks ago although I'm definitely way huger. So the six jumpers I had to wear the last fortnight were probably masking my true weight.

Birthdays and Brainwashing

We've been on holiday from work since 19 January. Poor D has to go back tomorrow on his birthday. He's not happy. He's got too used to spending every waking minute with his enormous wife. We were supposed to be getting the house in order while we've been off, and while we've done a bit of this, it's been a pretty lazy time. We've been lying in and lounging around. The bathroom is still not finished and the place is still a tip. But D has cleared out the attic. And then refilled it with different crap. And the poor soul has had to retire one of his mountain bikes as it's going to be too expensive to maintain it. He is still in mourning.

I had a lovely Lostie birthday in that I received the BEST gift from @andalone (THANK YOU!!!!!) which happened to arrive that day. It was a Dharma baby-gro and a t-shirt for me (which I'm scared I'll never fit into). And then later in the afternoon, I received my prize for coming 2nd in the Kharma Initiative raffle which was two posters (one being the Not Penny's Boat print from the second Lost poster event) and a 'Hurley and the Numbers' gelaskin cover for my Ipod Touch which was the giveaway item at the Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear reveals. I now have 3 of those items. One from the Glasgow reveal and the other from the Chicago reveal. V. happy.
Also on my birthday, Dad and D went to Mamas and Papas to pick up our travel system, cheap(ish) buggy and cot bed. Today D put the cot bed up - it's lovely. I'm glad we didn't go for a real cheapy. The baby's room is small and we have real storage issues in this boxy little house. But people manage with less.
The one bit of useful tidying I have done is to sort out my Lost posters. Some have gone in the attic to be framed another day when there's more cash. The others I have set aside to take to the framers on Friday, the last of my days off from work. I'll get four done and the rest will just have to wait sadly. At least until some kind person takes us to Ikea where I might be able to pick up a frame for them.

Hypnobirthing has continued and we are still enjoying it. In class 2 we learned the principles of glove anesthesia where you numb your hand and then apply your hand to any part of your body you want to numb. I managed the hand but wasn't able to transfer it. If you perfect this, you can use it at the dentist instead of an injection.

We also learned that I can practise birth breathing while going to the loo for a number 2! If you can breathe out a bowel movement without pushing, you can do the same with a baby. Just lovely.
In class 3, D learned gentle touch massage which he can do for a while when I'm in labour (although he'll get sore arms if he does it too long). In the hypnosis session at the end of the class, I feel that I went under very quickly. We were in the deep recesses of our minds looking through a book of our lives so we could erase and rip up any pages which contained fear that might get in the way of our best possible birth experience. Most of my fears are not borne of any past experiences or stories I've heard - I've just made them up for myself. So I found it difficult to find relevant pages in my book. But I pulled out a few. I need to think of ways to visualise my fears so I can do this more effectively the next time I 'go through the book'. Do I sound sufficiently sucked in yet?

The technique to get you to go deep inside yourself seems to be to get you to count down, and use language like 'down' and 'deeper' until you are in a hypnotic state. When I was being counted down, I felt myself on an escalator, and then eventually on a rope pulley system (like in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves after Robin shows Marion the riches in the tree house and then they get down by rope, rather than by ladder). When I got to the bottom (or when the counting from 10-1 had finished), there was a huge lilac, gleaming diamond floating in the air in front of me. This wasn't something I was being prompted to see. It was the most vivid thing I've seen under hypnosis. The hypnotherapist made no mention of it and was telling me to go find a room down a corridor (the one with the book) . I tucked the jewel under my arm as it seemed too important to leave behind. I have no idea what it means. Perhaps it is the source of life, death and rebirth?
Eventually we were asked to visualise our new family once baby has arrived. I saw me and D and a baby. When the hypnosis was over, we were asked if we saw the sex of our baby. I hadn't thought about it while I was under, but I immediately replied 'yes' without hesitation. But I'd borrowed the image of the baby I imagined from a dream I'd had and that dream, I'm sure, was influenced by a picture of a newborn boy I'd seen at work the previous week.

On Friday, I spent a lot of time practising the hypnosis. D has also been given hypnosis scripts to read to me so that I can associate the sound of his voice with being relaxed.

So, as you can tell, it's pretty much occupying my thoughts at the moment.

And that's the way it needs to be if it's to work. I'm also getting more keen on the idea of a home birth. However, it is remarkable how sinister some people think hypnosis is and how foolhardy they think a home birth is. They think it is hippy dippy nonsense. These people are the ignorant ones but sometimes it's difficult to hold your ground. Especially when these people have given birth themselves and think that makes them experts on birth in general. It makes them experts in the birth of their own children and not a lot else. Granted, I'm not even an expert in that yet but I'm more expert in self hypnosis than they are. So there, see!

This week, according to the iPhone app of pregnancy wisdom, the baby is the size of a... cucumber. Que??

Today I am 10 stone and 6.5 pounds. YIKES!