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!

Hypnosis! (And not in preparation for my impending kidnapping by Ethan)

This week our baby is the size of 2 juice boxes. That's according to one of my American pregnancy iphone apps. This was a deviation from its usual fruit and veg reference points. I quite often have to Google these. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, baby was the size of a spaghetti squash. Say what now? Equally puzzling are the assertions that baby is the size of an avocado or 'an ear of corn'. But what sized avocado and ear of corn? And we all know those transatlantic cousins do things bigger and better than we do. So a 'giant' ear of corn? Or just a sad Scottish ear of corn? Do you get Scottish ears of corn? Anyway, I was delighted about the juice boxes because as of Season 5, episode 11 of Lost in 2009, I know what a juice box is. No need to Google (ooh - unless US juice boxes are bigger too?). We call them 'wee cartons of juice'. So, although it triggered a fairly dramatic series of events, I'm glad Aaron changed his mind from milk to juice.
The crochet is going well but I'm waiting for a new consignment of wool in my preferred colours so the blanket is on hold for now. But I am 'well into it' and am determined to produce at least two blankets by April. For now, I have swapped to making a silly hat but I haven't got the tension quite right and have made it a bit too big and have consequently run out of wool in that colour. I've been crocheting away while we watch Still Game, episode after episode as we've just got the box set. I'd only seen a couple of episodes on telly but thought it was worth the purchase. We love it.

Today we were at our first HypnoBirthing class. Just beforehand, neither of us wanted to go. I dislike new situations and D just prefers the path of least resistance. This means he agrees to my mad cap plans months in advance for peace, then when they approach implementation, he wishes he could just stay in the house. The added 'threat' of being hypnotised was not helping his frame of mind. Although he was mostly joking when he mentioned being made to run around like a chicken.
But it was actually a really nice afternoon. We watched a video of women just 'breathing' their babies out. No pain, no pushing, no screaming. Very very hard to believe. But you have to believe it for it to work. You have to train your sub conscious to believe it. I therefore have to listen to birthing affirmations everyday and also self-hypnotise every day. At today's class, she put us under at the end. It worked quite well for me first time and I stopped being aware of my body - it was a bit like floating. Most of what was said made sense and one of the appealing things about it was the supposed effect on the baby once it is born. If you are relaxed and sending the baby endorphins because you are happy, then that will be the baby's natural state. If you are stressed, worried, etc, you'll be sending it all those stress hormones and then that will be its natural state. So when it's born, it will cry more to produce those stress hormones it is so used to. So HypnoBirthing proponents claim that HypnoBabes are happier and eat and sleep better too because they like to have those happy endorphins in their bodies. It makes sense to me.

What I believe a little less is the chances of really having a calm, pain free birth. I think that hospitals whip you up into a state of anxiety and then you are on their conveyor belt production line. Someone on the class said that her sister in law's midwife wouldn't believe her (over the phone) that her labour was as far advanced as it was because she sounded too calm. She'd been doing hypnobirthing techniques and was completely relaxed and under control. However, one of the NHS indicators for judging the advancement of labour is how stressed you sound. That's just super, isn't it?

This week I have broken the 10st barrier. Eek! I remember how hard I worked to get below that marker. I am 10 stone, 1.75 pounds. This is a gain of 8.25 pounds (I think - it's late and I'm tired). The NHS don't seem concerned about weight but the interweb says I should have gained more than this by now. Ach, well.