1st antenatal class

Wooh! We went to the first of our 7 antenatal classes yesterday evening. It was great! I was so relieved. It’s run by the NCT and I have to admit I was (stupidly) a little bit scared that everyone would be stuck up. Anyhoo, they weren’t! Everyone was really nice and the session was really helpful. The first thing we did was introduce ourselves – we’re the only couple having a home birth, everyone else is booked in at the City (now Royal) hospital and one lady is at Chesterfield. Our teacher, Rebecca, made split us into the men & the women to write a list of things we wanted to know more about under the following headings: pregnancy, labour, early days, ghastlies & ground rules. We filled in the ghastlies first with things like tearing, pelvic muscle recovery etc. The men actually raised some interesting points which I think surprised the women!

After that we had to put some pictures of a baby being born in order. This was incredibly helpful; I’ve read quite a lot about labour & pregnancy, but as yet didn’t really have a clue as to what actually happens while the baby comes out. So now I do!

I could tell people were a bit shocked that I was hacing a home water birth, but Rebecca explained that the risks of homebirth (if you take out the unplanned and free births) are significantly fewer than giving birth in hospital. She also confirmed that it’s the best way to get one on one care and that I get lots of other stuff I wouldn’t if I was in hospital. By the end at least 2 more couples were considering home birth & more were thinking about water birth – hurrah!  I think they were secretly a bit jealous lol!

Simon really liked it too – I think it’s helped meeting other men in the same situation as him. We’re both really excited about our next class on Saturday – bring it on!

I bought a steriliser & some bottles on Wednesday – half price in Boots and triple points on baby!

Stuff update

Not been doing very much of late what with it being so flipping hot & sticky. So here is a picture of the chest in the nursery:

We finally decided to go with the original curtains. You can kind of see them in the picture.

Here is a picture of the Stokke!!

Isn’t it amazing?! I keep playing with it. Can’t wait for the Turner Prize (as Auntie Maj calls it) to make it’s entrance so I can put him/her in it!

I have another midwife appointment on Thursday so I’ll write more after that. Work is becoming incredibly tedious & I’d like nothing more than to have started my maternity leave. I shall persevere for as long as I can so that I get more time with The Wiggler post birth. I get “foot in diphragm/ribs” quite a lot and “bladder punch” too which is an unusual experience to say the least. I shall be glad when I have my body back to myself again! Then I can sit without the feeling that something is stuck in my ribs, which it sort of is I suppose.

I sent Simon a Father’s Day card from The Wiggler – he found it highly amusing. I’m glad he did because it took long enough to learn how to do speech bubbles on Photoshop without asking him for help!

Cheese-o-rama

It’s my ELBOW at the top. Anyhoo…I’m off to be hot & sweaty away from the computer now.

Rant

I really have to rant about this.

All the literature I’ve read tells me to enrol in a yoga class or aqua-natal class or something designed for pregnant women. Also that going to pregnancy groups helps you feel better by talking about stuff and generally being around other women who are going through the same/similar things.

WHEN AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THIS???

I work full time (8am-4pm Monday to Friday). All the yoga/aqua-natal classes and mother & baby groups are held WHEN I’M AT WORK! “Pop along at 10.30am on Wednesdays” – that’s no bloody good is it? Where are the evening ones, or is the assumption that we’ll be so tired by then that we won’t want to go. Work aren’t going to give me time off so I can go are they?? They already give me time off for antenatal appointments.

The really frustrating this is I know that this stuff really will help. There are things that Simon just doesn’t understand – how can he? He doesn’t have a womb, or leaky nipples, or freakish inside tickling, or swollen ankles, or irrational mood swings. I can’t even go out and drown my sorrows .

I have 2 weeks maternity leave before my due date and there’s a possibility that Wiggler might make his/her grand entrance early so that’s even better! Can’t even cram some in then. Although, I’ll be so huge I probably won’t want to get off the sofa.

It takes the biscuit and makes me MAD!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!

Midwife appointment at 28 weeks

Saw the same midwife today! Wooh! She measured my bump and said that it was 2cm bigger than it usually is at the point. My reaction was “oh no big baby”, but Simon’s was “ooh, early baby”. So we’ll see. Have another appointment on 25th July – should have blood test results then and measure bump again. She also signed my Health In Pregnancy grant form today which I shall post tomorrow. The Government is giving us money! £190 to be exact. Or, as a work colleague pointed out, the Government is giving back some of our money lol. That’ll come in very handy as money seems to disappear in our house.

Developments in pregnancy:

My lung space is now greatly reduced; makes sitting/breathing comfortably quite difficult. Our sofa is also rubbish for being pregnant on, apart from the lying down bit . For sitting it’s awful and gives me back ache . Have seen a maternity pillow on the Argos website which will be purchased when it comes back into stock so hopefully that’ll help some. Have been using large quantities of cushions for the time being.

Sleeping is getting more uncomfortable too. Lying on my side isn’t great because my hips hurt after a while. I’ve found that tucking the duvet in under the bump so it sort of cushions it & pulls me back a little bit at the same time helps. It’s all very complicated! Perhaps the maternity pillow will be helpful for that too?

Wiggler is very wiggly, for most of the day now! It really tickles! When it kicks/pushes me in the side it’s really very tickly and quite weird. It makes it more bizarre because it’s an inside tickle, so there isn’t anything I can do about it! It also likes to kick me in the diaphragm, which is kinda weird.

Still no specific cravings, just getting more hungry. That is normal though as Wiggler is now mainly getting bigger.

Nursery & car seat

We picked up the car seat from Mum’s today (at the same time as the chest of drawers and mirror). It’s ace! We went for the Maxi-Cosi Cabriofix in deep red. This is the one that goes with the Stokke (which is also in Red) as part of the travel system so luckily our choice was limited! There are soooooooooooo many car seats & base unit things. Decisions aren’t my forte at the moment.

We’ve painted the nursery! Finally. Painting skirting boards is my least favourite job, officially. It’s so fiddly, especially around radiator pipes & when there’s carpet – bleh. Anyhoo, we’ve done it now & we really love it. The worst part of the prep work was getting the effing border off. Who sticks a border onto woodchip?? In this day and age? Seriously. We managed to get most of it off and the glue that was too stubborn, we left and painted over. I suppose the woodchip was a bit of a saving grace (I can’t believe I said that) as the glue remnants look like part of it when painted over! Wooh! Score.

These are the colours we’ve gone for:

Door = hideous

I know the door is hideous. We have plans to change all the doors in our house, but there are 13 so that’s an ongoing project on the back burner for now. I took the photo above this way because if I took it facing the window it distorts the colours. I took one facing the window anyway so you can see more of the room:

Dubious phone pano

So now you get the gist of the room; the carpet is a chocolate brown. It’s not the biggest, but babies are small! We have some pictures (donated by Mum from her house – Mickey Mouse limited edition paintings – thank you!) to put up and a mirror that goes with the chest of drawers. The cot is coming some time in July I think. We have the mattress already.

We’re still um-ing and ah-ing about curtains and the light. We have a blackout blind so the fabric isn’t too much of an issue. We were going to have an Alfie set as there is a changing mat too and it would be nice to have some matching stuff, but having painted the room I don’t think it would go. Then we saw this but decided it’d be too much white. We quite liked these, but think it would be green overkill. There are loads of really funky nursery sets at Walmart, so bright & colourful. What is this English obsession with pastel, pale colours for babies? It’s INFURIATING! I decided to have a look on the Ikea website on the off chance, they usually have some good kid’s textiles. This is what we found for curtains, and we’re still struggling with the light. This is by far the most challenging room decoration project ever. Even looking at the Ikea curtains again I’m not sure they’d look right; maybe if the walls were white instead of the colour they are. Hmm. Perhaps Alfie wouldn’t look so bad after all??! My god this is getting out of control…enough.

Birth pool

We booked the birth pool today! It’s all becoming alarmingly real. It arrives on 1st August & goes back on 8th September. 5 week hire for £340, not bad. We went with Aquabirth – Fiona, the woman who runs it is lovely and very understanding. She said that if Wiggler is late, it’s more important that we have her/him rather than worrying about returning the pool so to tell her & she’ll jiggle her pools from her end. How nice is that?!

Still, getting quite scared now.

*Think happy thoughts, don’t get freaked out because it’ll make it worse*

Baby clothes :-)

We bought our first baby clothes today! Well, technically the first piece we bought was in New York – an  bodysuit – it’s so dinky. Hope it’ll fit, if only for a few days.

Anyhoo…we were at B&Q getting paint etc for the nursery & saw that Sainsbury’s had 25% off all clothing. So we went in to see what they had. I’m glad we did because we got about 20 things for £20! Bargain! They range from newborn to 3-6 months. We bought some lovely Winne-the-pooh bodysuits, plain white ones and patterned with a bear/stripes etc; some sleep suits with stripes/numbers on and a plain one and also bought a Winne-the-pooh sleeping bag.

There are some really lovely unisex things on the Mothercare website. We’ve set up a gift list to keep track of things we like . A lot of places really are quite rubbish for unisex; it’s all pink for girls & blue for boys. Adams Kids is the worst! H&M have some awesome little t-shirts for babies. Will be going back there when we need to get some more stuff.

Travelling while pregnant

We’re back from the States now. We had a fabulous time, except in NYC where it rained pretty much the whole week I’m glad we went; I feel refreshed having not been at home/work for 3 weeks, but if the situation presents itself again I wouldn’t repeat the experience. We did a phenomenal amount of walking which, had I not been pregnant as was the trajectory when said holiday was booked, would’ve been fine. However, the amount of walking we we did meant that I was so very tired for the last week while we were in Washington DC. Normally I’d have been fine, but I was ready to come home by 11th May, which is a shame because DC is a really nice city – so spacious & clean. It’s easily walkable, which is just as well as the metro stops are quite far apart compared with Boston and NYC.

I found it frustrating that I was ready to be back “home” in the hotel by early evening. Usually I’d have liked to stay out and seen the night-life, but I was ready for bed by about 8pm! I think Simon found it frustrating too because he didn’t have anyone to go out with like he does at home.

I also did a really stupid thing – I booked our train tickets for April instead of May. Luckily the nice man at Boston South Station realised it was a genuine mistake and refunded the whole amount. We actually ended up getting a bus which was a fraction of the price of the train ($17 each for a single trip from Boston to NYC & the same for NYC to DC). I was so cross with myself and can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t pregnant with pregnancy dementia.

So, if you’re going to go on holiday while you’re pregnant, do it before you get to 25 weeks, get someone else to check your reservations before you make them and go sit on a beach lol!

Stokke!!!

So…we’re in Boston right now…wandering around somewhat aimlessly and we stumble upon a maternity store. Inside said maternity store is none other than a Stokke Xplory! WOOOOOOOH! We knew we’d like one for Pie mini, but didn’t know where to see one “in the flesh” to have a go and a play. We certainly didn’t expect to find one in Boston of all places. Anyhoo, we are now decided on the Xplory. It’s such a smooth ride and so much higher than regular push chairs. It’s also LOADS slimmer than other ones which is great. So we are now decided that this is the travel system/thing for us and most grateful that Mum has very generously said she’ll buy it for us.

I didn’t realise how pushing something that big would affect me. When you’re walking down the street it’s just you, your bag and your personal space in front of you. When I was test driving the Xplory it felt so weird. My personal space was totally massive and it was a bit daunting. I suppose I thought it would be a little like pushing a trolley, but no. Nothing like it. When you’re in the supermarket, everyone has a trolley. Not everyone has a huge multicoloured thing with a baby in it. Hmm. We’ll see how this progresses. It reminded me of an article I read online a few weeks ago about the first time you go out with your new baby alone. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be weird. Can’t really comment on that yet though.

Midwife appointment at 23 weeks

So I saw another different midwife today. She seems nice and has said that I can stay with her now rather than seeing someone different each time. She was actually pretty shocked that I’d seen different people each time.

I asked her about the possibility of a home birth. She was really excited about it! She said that none of her ladies are having home births at the moment and that she likes them. This really surprised me because everyone I’ve spoken to and most things I’ve read on the internet say that midwives aren’t a fan of home births. A pleasant surprise then – she even said that it was the best way to get one to one care during the birth! Phew, I’m now relieved. All we need to do now is figure out how to afford a birthing pool. It may have to be born in the bath lol…just kidding. I said that to Simon and he nearly died. Hahaha…

We’re off to America for 18 days tomorrow. I’m nervous about all the travelling. The trip was planned before we knew about le bump so will see how it goes. I’m sure it’ll be fine.