Bump update Week 34

[for previous bump updates click here]

34 weeks and a couple of days

So here’s an update of symptoms/happenings etc… (with some holiday snaps flung in just because I can!)

Itchiness & Skin: Still no stretch marks as yet, but more itchiness like I got back in the first trimester on my hands and feet mainly, which is very odd, but the cream I was prescribed back then has helped! Where I had my belly button pierced twice, and a small scar from when I had my appendix out have been a bit sore where the skin is stretching ever tighter over the bump, but not painful really, just enough to notice (I took both belly rings out when I knew I was pregnant, Sam hated them anyway and I didn't want them to pop out or anything gross!) I’ve been lathering on various creams and things on an almost daily basis, not forgetting my back/thighs/bum too!

Headaches: I’ve had a couple, after not having any for a good few months, but nothing a good sleep and a couple of paracetomol didn't fix, apart from one that needed co-codamol and a darkened room to get rid of, but I'd driven for about 4 hours and then endured 2 small boys screaming when we went to see Sam's cousins.

Sleeping/Energy Levels – Still not brilliant, but I have started taking Feroglobin liquid x3 a day which is meant to help your iron levels, and have been eating lots of green veggies when I can. I think carting around a huge belly would take its toll on my energy levels whether I’m anaemic or not, plus the fact that I have been hurtling around Cornwall visiting castles on hills/islands/caves etc hasn't helped much! I still appreciate a good nap when I can get one of course! As for sleeping I am having broken nights sleep (piddling) and also still getting pretty bad nightmares a lot of the the time but am napping when I can!

[gratuitous holiday snap of St Michaels Mount, which was all cobbled slopes, not ideal but pretty!]

Position: Baby is head down and facing towards my back, or so MW says, all good with me, hope it stays there till it has to come out!

Peeing – My Midwife says my constant urge to pee is because sprogs head is pressing on my bladder, and I agree with her completely. Literally I can pee immediately after leaving the toilet having done a pee… Its really irritating and my 3 trips a night to the toilet are killing me. There was ONE glorious night a couple of weeks ago where I didn't go during the night, but it was a one off apparently (and no, I didn't pee in the bed!) Often when the sprog stretches (i.e. it’s little rump sticks upwards and it’s head presses downwards at the same time) I am thankful I started doing kegel exercises a few weeks back as there have been a few near misses!

Acid reflux/heartburn – Much worse in the last 4 weeks, I’m attempting to eat smaller portions and not as close to bed time, and sleeping with more pillows so I am raised a but higher in bed seems to help a little.

Back/Hip Pain – Not horrific, although a little old lady came up to me in Asda the other day to specifically tell me ‘you never forget the feel of back pain in pregnancy you know’ THANKS LADY. In all honesty it isn’t that bad, I think I have fairly good posture anyway from all the dancing I did, which hopefully has helped. I get achy when I wake up, but after I've been up for a little bit it fades. Hot baths help at the end of a long day to. I did overdo the walking in holiday and got achier than normal but that’s my own fault really! I’m not wearing any kind of bump support or anything either…

Cramps / Braxton Hicks – Still getting bloody painful leg cramps, and have had a few Braxton Hicks fake contraction things, which are not pleasant and quite alarming at first (although husband once called them ‘branston hocks’, which was amusing) but they’re not painful, just surprising.

Movement – Still squirming at pretty much every waking moment, sticking its bum up under my ribs when I am driving and generally making most positions uncomfortable in the evenings when I am trying to sit still and it is having a whale of a time wriggling. The last week has been particularly difficult as bump has grown, as it is so hard to get comfortable sitting/lounging/in bed, and I can only see this getting worse until the bump becomes a baby!

Size – My last midwife appointment (at 33 weeks) was the first time the bump measured more than the number of weeks I am, and even then by only a cm, so it’s still not ‘big’, which is a good thing in my mind! I have an appointment with a obstetrician this week and I am hoping he/she offers me a growth scan then, so we’ll have a better idea of its size, and the size of the head more importantly! Needless to say bending down is nigh on impossible and rolling out of bed sometimes requires a push from Sam! I am also lots and lots slower, and run out of breath quicker than a 90 year old with a 60 a day smoking habit.

And as for my size, in the last couple of weeks I have felt distinctly frumpy and flabby. My midwife said she definitely didn't think I had anything to worry about weight-gain wise, and I haven't weighed myself for a few weeks so not sure if I’ve put that much more on, but I think my thighs and upper arms are bigger than they were, but to be frank I like food, and have spent the last week devouring cream teas and various other unhealthy things whilst on holiday so ce la vie! Oh, and my boobs STILL haven't gone up by more than a cupsize and have put on exactly 2 stone since I got impregnanted!

Cravings – none. SO annoying, I wanted to crave something awesome and hard for Sam to get hold of when I got demanding, but no such luck!

Swelling – none, apart from ankles slightly at the end of very long days!

Mood – Still anxious about many things, and with a lower tolerance level then ever before (it was pretty low to begin with!) but no tears!

Maternity Leave – remember I talked in this post about not knowing who I was going to be handing my huge and complex hotel over to whilst I am on mat leave? well I know now and am happy with who it is, so have finally made the decision as to when I will stop work, which in my 39th week. However if I do have to stop before I know that I won’t be leaving anyone in the crap so to speak! I am also lucky in the sense that I can work to my own schedule and cut days shorter if needs be. Work is also only a 10 minute waddle from home and 5 minutes in a cab to the hospital should anything drastic happen…

Things I need to do: Pack a hospital bag! dun dun dunnnnnnnn!

I’ve also been to 2 out of 3 ante-natal classes that are run by the local NHS, the first one was about the stages of labour, and breathing etc, which I didn't find that helpful as I've been reading all sorts of books etc but Sam did, he he claims he’ll know what to expect now, so that’s a bonus! We also did an exercise where the mums and dads had to split into two groups and write down what we thought the qualities of a good birthing partner would be, and actually the 2 lists weren't that different! Basically we had “do everything I ask you to and don't get upset when I shout at you” and theirs was “do everything she says!” There was a creepy looking baby in a fabric womb though, along with a knitted boob (which acted as a bladder!)

Class 2 was about ‘when things don’t go to plan’ and I went to this on my own as Sam couldn't get out of work. It covered pain relief including epidurals/forceps/other types of deliveries and C-sections, and I must say was pretty helpful as the Midwife went through everything in detail and answered all our questions thoroughly. The next class is about breast feeding and the first few days at home, and we have to bring a dolly/teddy to practise with, which will be difficult as I own neither!

Another sweet and reassuring phenomenon is that we’ve spent the week with some close friends and their 10 month old on holiday, and Sam has taken a huge interest in how things work, including feeding times/methods (he fed her himself a few times with great glee!) and ‘nipple’ size (he meant teats on bottles but we’ll let him off!)

That’s about it for now, I've just got back home from our week away, so am desperate for a long hot bath and my own bed but it’s okay… only 3 weeks left until mat leave!

 

[underground caves and steps at Tintagel Castle!]

How time flies...

I've recently confirmed that I'm going back to work in a few weeks and I'm bricking it. But it's also made me realise how quickly time has gone (even though some of the early days felt like water torture, the slow drip-drip of not knowing what the hell I was doing!) I mean, D is nearly six months old!

Gangnam Style

I've been sorting out some of his clothes, in order to give stuff away or sell it on eBay (quick plug, all my stuff is here) and I've been marvelling at just how tiny his newborn clothes were, even though he wasn't in them for very long at all. I'm keeping some bits- his coming home outfit and stuff I made, but the rest has to go. 

We've also had to graduate to a new car seat, as D was doing a very good impression of Richard III hunched up in his old one. His new one, obviously, has robots on it. Of course it does.

The hardest thing to see go was the crib. D is now in a cot, which has the odd effect of making my gigantic baby look small. However, he loves it, as he can roll onto his front and grin at me when he wants to get up. I'm honestly convinced that it won't be long until he's crawling properly- at the moment, he pulls himself round like a seal!

It's weird when I look back on D's first five and a half months. They've gone so quickly and the first three months are nothing but a blur. I don't remember much, apart from being ill and tear-y all the time, as well as constantly questioning myself. I wouldn't personally go through that again if you paid me. It's only in the last six weeks I've felt completely normal (I was diagnosed with depression a couple of months ago. It's getting better, but I don't like to go into it too much.) Needless to say, I'm enjoying D more now. He's nosy, noisy and a terrible flirt. He's completely amazing.

Child-friendly kitchen!

On my main blog, I talk a lot about my house, but I've never actually shown you the room D and I spend the most time in- my kitchen! We rent the house from a baker, so it's massive and has the biggest oven I've ever seen outside Masterchef.

Yes, those are my feet you can see!

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen- my sewing machine is in there, I bake, make lots of cups of tea and now D is eating proper food, I'm often making things for him. One of the challenges we've had since he's become more aware of his surroundings is how to make the kitchen more child-friendly and interesting.

One way I've done this is by decorating the cupboards with the postcards I've received as part of the Postcrossing project. By doing this, I've made a brightly coloured, fun and ever-changing mini-art gallery that seems to be perfect for capturing a five-month old's attention. I like to spend time chatting to D and pointing out pictures. Although he can't yet understand what I'm saying, I like to think I'm helping him learn something interesting.

When D is in the kitchen with me, he tends to be in his high chair. He loves his food and he also loves being able to see what's going on, so it gives him the best of both worlds! It's also good for him to sit with me and his dad at dinnertime, watching us eat and learning about mealtimes. It also means he's constantly eyeing up our food...

 

What I'm really looking forward to, though, is when D is big enough to get involved in more activities- I'm dying to buy him an apron so we can get into the really fun (and messy!) stuff like painting and baking, which will drive Benn mad, but it'll be lovely to have a partner in crime for that sort of thing. After all, no-one tuts when a toddler has cookie dough in their hair.

Now, though, the challenge is to make the kitchen a fun yet safe place. I've no doubt that D will be crawling soon and, as he's my son, he's very nosy. This could be interesting/dangerous (delete as appropriate) to say the least. So far, my strategy involves moving a playmat and his favourite robot toy into a spot as far away from harm as possible and buying up the world's supply of child locks. What could possibly go wrong?

Any advice on childproofing welcome!

*This is a sponsored post*

Strange things people have said to me in pregnancy

A collection of things people have said to me that have made my eyebrows either raise quizically, or almost meet in anger... feel free to add your own annoyance from people in the comments!

• "Which School will you send it to?" HELLO PEOPLE it is currently no bigger than a sweet potato or other medium sized vegetable. In 5 years time I do not even know where I will be living, let alone where I might send it to learn. I answered 'I'm going to home school it of course' which shut them up long enough for me to make my escape
• "I bet people rub your belly ALL the time right?" At week 17ish with a bump that could just be over indulgence (and some of it probably was if I am honest, it was Christmas after all...) NO actually, you were the first person to do that and if I wasn't quite close to you I would have thumped you in the nose. (since then one more person has asked and was shot down rather quickly, but way more people have just reached out and touched it!)
• "Are you sure it isn't twins" yes I am, there was quite clearly only one sprog on that first scan, and actually you inferring that I am fat. I have lost count of the amount of people who have asked this, the last time was the gas man at work, so I retorted with "no, are you?" (he had a HUGE beer belly)
• "When are you going to have the next one" this was met with a harsh glare that my grandmother would have been proud of. 
• "Did you MEAN to get pregnant before you got married"/"was it planned"/"how long did it take you to conceive"/"bet you were pissed off you were pregnant and couldn't drink at your own wedding/honeymoon, haha"  all from people who really are not close enough to me to have the right to ask these questions...(is anyone close enough to ask this kind of thing!?) and NO I wasn't pissed off I couldn't drink, if you were actually a close friend you know I barely drink anyway.
• "I wonder how long you will be in labour for... my mum/sister/second cousin thrice removed was in labour for 2/4/19" days etc The first of these questions/useless statements was asked of me at 13 weeks pregnant, when I had barely even thought about it actually coming out of me. 
• "Your body will never be the same again" (with a certain smirk I'm sure) 
• "Your husband is HUGE, the baby is going to be a whopper/do some damage on the way out" thanks for that lovely input. I am already having nightmares about giving birth to something the size of a Christmas Turkey to feed a family of 10, I don't need your input. Plus I was a normal sized baby so there is hope yet!
• "so, like, errrr are you drinking more milk so you can feed the baby?" This is from a guy who is MY AGE, ie 29. I just gawped at him, I thought he was joking but he wasn't, he's just THAT thick.
• "I mean, I'm just not sure if I'll ever have kids, they're just so permanent, you're stuck with them forever, they'll ALWAYS rely on you, for everything" Yep, thanks for that observation, friend.

Life in Limbo

[.]

I like to have things planned to a T. A huge big fat CAPITAL T. When things are not planned and/or I have no control over them I get anxious, and often angry. My life seems to be in Limbo right now, for a various number of reasons, the main being the obvious one of the imminent arrival of baby KPB (don't worry, I'm not going to give it a triple barrelled surname, I wouldn't be so cruel!) and then the smaller but still important issues of where are we going to live, same place, different, next town over? Will I go back to work? more importantly when will I stop work to start maternity leave? How will we cope with Sam not having a bog standard working pattern? Will I get lonely once our house mate moves out/we move out, with Sam working late at night? How will we afford to pay for things without my Salary?

I figured the best way to tackle these things is to get my thoughts down on paper (blog-paper?) and then see how other people coped/plan to cope, and I have been speaking to my GP about how best to tackle anxiety (more on this at a later date, potentially but there is a bit more to it) and I know one of the best ways is to discuss my thoughts with people, but as I don't have a particularly deep relationship with the mothership (I think this is because I don't like to worry her) and my husband is like an excited puppy and always has a positive spin on everything (which normally is ideal, as he is the positive to my negative, but sometimes I do NEED someone to be blatant with me and point out things that might crop up in a negative/constructive aspect, and not just say "it'll be fine, wait and see") SO here goes...

Where will we live? Long story short there is a slight possibility that a friend will let us his 2 bed flat at the cost of his mortgage (plus bills, but still about 400 less than the going market rate) BUT only if the current tenants want to leave at the end of their 12 month tenancy, which is through a letting agent. (keeping them would give him more income, but if they left he'd rather have someone he knows in the flat) This flat is in Worthing (half an hour drive away) but right next to the train station for easy travel/Sam to get to and from work and also has a car parking space with it,so I could get my car back on the road. It has 2 beds/2 baths and is about 3 years old, plus we have 2 close friends who happen to live in the same road. It is also closer than where we are now to my mums house, and other friends. So we have to wait a few more weeks to see if that will work out. If it does it is too good to turn down. If it doesn't then we would more than likely stay where we are, (a 2 bed maisonette in central Brighton) but would need to cover the whole rent, as opposed to the half we pay now (our lovely housemate will be moving out) and of course we would be paying around an extra £100 a month in bills too, which was her share. All this with me earning SMP and not my salary. We contemplated moving somewhere cheaper, but actually our rent is cheap compared to other similar places, so to move somewhere noticeably cheaper we'd have to move right to the outskirts of Brighton, making it more difficult for Sam to get to and from work (currently a ten minute walk for both he and I).

conclusion: there isn't one yet!

Will I go back to work? When will I stop work? without bemoaning my company/area manager too much I will say that considering I told him I was expecting at 9 weeks pregnant (to get them off my back about a potential move to maidstone!) and at the time of writing I have 8 weeks left till me EDD and no decision has been made I'm pretty pissed off! I know who I want to cover for me, (I manage a large hotel for anyone that didn't know) as I have spent a lot of time with him over the last few years and know that he would do everything efficiently and properly and already works in the hotel so he knows all the intricacies and ins and outs, whereas if the decision is made that it will be someone external the handover period will take potentially 2 or 3 weeks, bearing in mind I have the last week of April off and ideally don't want to work till the baby actually falls out leaves not very long at all. Another gripe is that we were told he would make a decision on the 1st April, but then realised the day before good Friday that he was on holiday all that week and "do you mind covering for me Lauren" so not only an increased work load during the Easter holidays (already the busiest time of the year so far) but who forgets they are going on holiday?!!!! OH and a third gripe, my last regional manager told me I should get a say in the cover as it is 'your hotel' but he's since moved regions and my area manager seems more intent on being seen to make the right decision than actually making it! does he not realise this is stressing me out big style?! (I have told him how I feel, by the way, I'm pretty vociferous but he clearly has no back bone and doesn't want to rock the boat with the 'higher uppers' because he's new to the position!) GRRRR

As for if I will go back, I genuinely don't know. I would love not to, and have a bit of a career break, but actually my main worry is not money but boredom. I've worked solidly full time for the same company and I'm not sure how I'd cope going from high stress levels and being busy and active 5 days a week (or more!) to basically sitting on my bum watching my child grow up. I've contemplated doing a foundation degree type thing through the open university (which is pretty cheap if you are a low income family, which we would be if just Sam was working) and re training to do something that I could do to my own schedule, but I'm just not sure what. Then if we have another child later down the line, I would effectively be putting my career on hold even longer, if we waited for the (hypothetical) 2nd child to reach school age... Also I earn more money than Sam, so it would make more financial sense for me to go back and for him to leave, but I think maybe I'm ready for something different!

conclusion: who knows?

Shift patterns and family routine. Fairly often Sam works 5 nights a week. And by nights I mean 3pm - 3/4am. He often has different and separate days off in a week and, and doesn't generally know what these will be till only a few days before (thanks Sam's bosses, you make planning really easy) At first I was dreading the long evenings alone (as lovely flatmate will have moved out by then, or we will have!) from 3 till god knows when, but then when I thought about it a bit more, once baby KPB is sleeping more to a routine and is going to bed around 7pm, SO CAN I!!) I wont need to feel obliged to do married people things like cook him dinner and watch a film together, I can just have a nice relaxing bath (positive thinking!) read a bit of my book and then be asleep by 9pm with no distractions or guilt at not spending time with my husband, ready for the inevitable middle of the night feeds. Sam has even said that if it works out that the baby will need a feed within an hour of him getting home, he can do it!

Then providing he wakes up at a reasonable time (normally 10/11am after a late night shift) hopefully the baby will have had a morning nap and we can have nice family time/lunch together whilst the sprog is awake (and yay for eating a bigger meal at lunch time, more time to burn off the calories!) then I can walk into town with Sam to get out of the house on his way to work.

conclusion: this one could benefit everyone!

So, a potential positive one out of three. Brilliant, no wonder I'm stressed.

How did you cope with things that you couldn't control, either when pregnant or in other phases of life?

Lurgy.

So, it's been a quiet week or so from me for a couple of reasons. My parents came to visit us last weekend and so blogging wasn't massively on the agenda- they haven't seen D since December and so we were quite busy! It was lovely to see him respond so positively to them. Thank goodness for Skype! He's become used to their voices, so he was able to recognise them quite quickly!

Also, we've had a horrible stomach bug take over the house; D had been sick on Sunday morning, accompanied by nappies that required a degree of heroism to combat. Cue me calling the emergency doctor and my parents driving to us at 11pm on Easter Monday with Dioralyte. It has not been fun. It's only today that he's seemed better- he was still suffering yesterday morning. Of course, when I spoke to a GP, I was treated a bit like I was overreacting, but I needed to check that all was well. It's not normal for a baby to have sickness and diarrhoea for five days! However, because D was quite chirpy and didn't have a temperature, apparently all was fine. I, on the other hand, was so ill I was carrying a bucket around with me and alarming the cat with my pale pallor.

So what did I learn during this 'escapade'? Well, being sick when your baby is sick/not as sick as you is quite annoying and very hard work. Also, Postman Pat is a godsend.