Yellow

So, anyone who follows me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram will know that our yellow bump turned pink yesterday when we welcomed our second daughter into the world. 

And while our story in photographs will appear once I'm out of hospital and settled at home, this week's theme was the perfect opportunity to reflect on a whole pregnancy of yellow, in comparison to my first pregnancy, who was declared "probably pink" at 21 weeks gestation and confirmed at 34 weeks before she arrived a little over due.

Team Yellow. Have I loved it? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heart beat. Were there benefits to knowing the gender before they arrived though? Completely.

When we found out E was a girl, baby preparations became a military option. Her freshly painted mint green nursery was accessorised with pinks and purples and everything we bought was girlie. We found choosing name options easier as we didn't have to worry about the blue ones. I felt able to bond with my bump imagining my pink bundle out in her pram in her spotty foot muff, and dreamed of girlie nights painting our nails and putting on face masks.

With L being a planned section, we've known that it... She would arrive on March 3rd since 18 weeks gestation. We also had a better idea of what our baby would look like this time so we still wanted there to be an element of surprise. And surprise it was when the consultant held my baby above me yesterday and asked me to tell her what it was, as in the last days of pregnancy I had convinced myself I was having a boy and low and behold the spitting image of E, be it a smaller version, hung above me, ready to be the little sister.

But Team Yellow has caused some denial and some laziness at Thursday's Child HQ. If you've read any of my pregnancy posts you'll know that the last 39 weeks have drifted past in a haze and I've been very last minute in my preparations. Poor L has a very limited neutral wardrobe ready to be worn, no bed set up at home yet, and arguments over boys names which were completely unnecessary. She only just got her car seat out of the loft a few days ago.

I would say I kept my cool about Team Yellow until 36 weeks. And then frustration kicked in. But frustration for a few weeks was worth all of it for the huge surprise. And she looks lovely in greys and yellows, and she even rocks blue stars. And I won the girls name row.

So I raise a glass to Team Yellow... To the impatient woman and to my beautiful new daughter.

Oh go on then...

I was feeling a bit too much of a newbie to blogging to be thinking about the MADs this year, and then to my surprise, some lovely person nominated me in the Best Pregnancy Blog category. Naturally I'm thrilled, and it's given me a little bit of courage...

So, if you haven't already, why not pop over here and nominate me again? A full list of categories can be found here, if you think I do something better on here than pregnancy... 

Go on. Make a heavily pregnant woman very happy indeed! 

Word of The Week

Irrational desire to scrub the ensuite shower from top to bottom with a toothbrush and an insatiable desire to bleach the toilets.

The bathroom cleaner smells INCREDIBLE.

Yep...

Word of The Week

I'm not one to blow my own trumpet all that often, however this week's word is...

By 36 weeks pregnant with E I has gained 2 1/2 stone, c. 35lbs.

This week I saw the midwife and nearly fell off the scales when she told me I'd gained... 12lb. TWELVE POUNDS. In total. Since getting pregnant. And I thought I was eating like a horse!

So yes, smug I am. 

Cake, anyone? 

My Petit Canard: Breastfeeding Stories

Revisiting an old post today over at My Petit Canard as part of her Breastfeeding Stories blog series.

Silent Sunday

Fresh air

When my daughter woke up at 7:30 this morning and peeled my eyes open I assumed at first I must be dreaming. A) a lie in? B) is that SUNSHINE?! 

Today was marked in my diary as the day I'd attempt taking a few photos of my bump that weren't just me in the mirror with my camera and might be vaguely good enough to hand alongside the handy work of my lovely friend Sarah McKee, who took my shots when I was expecting E. It was also the day at the end of a very wet week so E needed out but  despite the sunshine, it was bitterly cold and blustery... So, there's no better place in my mind to tick off all the boxes: Kirby Hall, our local English Heritage property, which I have raved about on le blog before. 

Despite the wind we were able to search for the (absent) peacocks, engage in hide and seek, read books about the Tudors, see some birds of prey, chase our shadows in the sunshine and look at moss growing on the urns out in the garden.

I took advantage of my favourite window in Northamptonshire and managed a select few pictures to be proud of, with a better selection of photos being photo-bombed by my toddler. 

We'd almost forgotten what blue skies looked like. Almost.

Is my baby moving enough?

Baby movement was the thing I remember desperately waiting for to start in my first pregnancy, and I second guessed every twinge and gurgle – which was, in retrospect, probably trapped wind – until I felt my daughter roll at eighteen weeks. From that point on I counted her kicks and wriggles religiously for several weeks, I even had a wristband to help me keep track until a pattern emerged. Eventually I came to be able to anticipate when I’d next feel her move and ultimately worry if I needed to… Although, until the very end of my pregnancy she was fickle and always woke up for a slice of the cake action! Perhaps I am more laid back in this pregnancy, but I don’t feel any need to worry about my baby not moving as once again I’ve learned to recognise the patterns and what is normal for us. The exception to this was a few weeks ago when I took a fall down the stairs, and of course no chocolate or cold fizzy drinks could get baby to move… Until I got to the hospital to be checked out, when the hiccups and the party started!

There are distinct similarities and differences between the way my daughter moved and the way this baby makes their presence known: E’s movements were usually quite slow, but big and bold, like stretches that pushed me away from my desk if I sat too close and rolls like she was practicing her synchronised swimming. This one is all legs that I feel right in my waist and a permanent fidget who just can’t seem to settle or get quite comfortable. What is similar however is that they both were/are about a lot during the day, their most active period was/is the 8-9pm slot and thankfully they both settled/settle down as I’m getting ready for bed for a peaceful night. Certainly in my late pregnancy with E, it was not her movements that kept me awake all through the night!

I think both my babies have been on the active side. Both exceed(ed) the ten movements a day that the midwife always told me to look for… A friend of mine, whose daughter is two weeks older than mine and whose next is due just days after mine shocked me the other week when she told me that she only feels movement a few times a week. Our placentas are both high and anterior, which can reduce the amount of movement you feel but I find it so odd to think that what we feel could be so different. But that’s normal for her.

So what would my advice for expectant mothers be? In the early days of feeling movement, I think trying to find a pattern is virtually impossible, but you’ll soon start to establish what’s normal for you. I felt my daughter for definite at 18 weeks and this one several weeks earlier, but I’ve had friends report sensations in subsequent pregnancies as early as 12 weeks, and some not feel a thing until long after 20… To feel more or less movement or different sensations to the next woman is completely normal. It wont take you long to notice what’s typical for your baby. But you shouldn’t ignore it if something doesn’t feel right, or you feel no movement or significantly less than usual. Your midwife definitely wont think you silly for asking to be checked over and it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry. BUT, before you call, I’d always recommend trying a few things:

• Eat or drink something sugary. E was stubborn at every scan I had and every time I had to eat a Mars bar from the hospital vending machine to wake her up and get her moving. Hopefully your baby will be as fickle as her.
• Have an ice cold drink. You’d wake up and get moving if someone poured a cold bucket of water over your head, and this can have a similar effect on your unborn.
• Prod gently or give your belly a rub. This is probably more likely to work in later pregnancy when there’s not much left between you and your baby as you’re stretched to capacity but I can certainly get a reaction out of this one most of the time.

Personally I’m not a fan of the home doppler. I think that they can cause paranoia for mums who aren’t trained in using them and aren’t always sure that they’re listening for, and the lack of research into prolonged, repetitive use of them worries me a bit too. But that’s just me, a lot of my friends find them just the safely blanket they need for their pregnancy.

If after an hour of relaxing and scoffing a doughnut and a can of coke, you’ve still not felt movement, its time to give your midwife a call. Similarly, if your baby is normally a quiet one and it’s got an unusual wriggle on, it’s probably worth a mention to set your mind at rest.

My final thought on this is that you really know your body and your baby best. Most of the time it’ll probably be nothing and it’ll all be fine, but just occasionally there could be a real problem. If you don’t feel happy then push for a check up and if you feel like they’re listening stamp your feel a bit harder. Because actually, mums really do know best! 

*This post first appeared on Wriggly Rascals on December 12th, 2013.*

An open letter to my local supermarket

Dear Local Supermarket,

I am 34 weeks pregnant and the mother of one under two. I am exhausted, my hips hurt and feel as though I am wider than a bus. Getting my toddler (replace with slippery fish out of water) in and out of the car at the best of times is hard, but it's even more difficult when this belly is in the way. It requires me to open my doors as wide as possible, else I (we) just don't fit.

I am grateful that you provide 'parent and child' spaces for parents like me, they make getting my slippery fish in and out far easier, without risking damage to my car, or anyone else's. However, I am begging you to relocate your spaces away from the very front of your store. Please let me explain.

Today I made two visits to your store and while strapping in/un strapping the slippery fish, I saw three cars pull up in these spaces who had no baby or toddler with them. In fact when I looked in their cars, there was no evidence to suggest that they even had a young child.

I confronted one man, who claimed that having had two hip replacements, he was entitled to park there. His wife looked at me like I was dirt while making sarcastic, patronising noises at me.

Another man had gone by the time I was able to say anything. I left a note on his windscreen.

The ironic thing being that there were empty spaces in the disabled bays... And can you imagine the uproar if I had parked in a disabled space? After all, pregnancy and motherhood are not disabilities. We just don't fancy denting our neighbours' cars while we go about our weekly shop with our kids. I have no care for the space closest to the door. I will happily walk across the car park in the rain. I just want a wide space and I don't want to lose out to those who aren't entitled to use them.

While your spaces remain so close to the door they'll continue to be abused by the childless, the lazy, the people who don't seem to understand their purpose. Move them away and our struggling double hip-replaced colleagues won't fancy the walk. You won't enforce the rules, you don't have parking attendants. So please do something to help us parents out.

I'd love to know your thoughts on my idea and would be thrilled to discuss this with you further. You can email me at thursdayschild.fridaysthoughts @ gmail.com.

Yours,

Thursday's Child

Word of the Week

This one needs little explaining. I have the appetite of a small holding of farm animals and cannot stop eating. Particularly Mars Bars (other confectionary items are available).

Having done well so far to not pile on the pounds like I did when I was expecting E, I am half trying to watch what I eat... Unsuccessfully this week! 

That's why I've picked...

Family Photo Friday #4 - 24/01/14

This week has disappeared in a pile of work, mostly. At the weekend we celebrated our friends' daughter's baptism, and I photographed the event... Which meant I spent the whole day on the wrong side of the camera.

However, a little bedtime silliness and the camera did catch my two children - in and out of utero - for this week's Family Photo Friday. 

Her fascination with the bump is growing as much as the bump grows itself.

Her prediction last week was a dinosaur. This week a girl. We shall see! 

Thank you to those who linked up with me last week. Each week finds a new face, and it's so lovely to have you all on board! 

My favourite image this week came from Life as a Mum - I think it filled me with excitement for E having a sibling and the special relationship they will have... And who can resist a puddle?!

Right then Week 4! Let's recap the rules! 

• Share a family photo from your week just gone. It needn't be a Family Photo Friday specific post, I don't mind you recycling! You can join in weekly, monthly or just whenever you can. It can be a formal portrait or a snap from your phone, something you posed for or something you caught when no one was looking. It could be from a day out, a gathering, an activity at home, it doesn't matter so long as it gives a snap shot of what your family looked like during the week that's just been.
• Give us a brief explanation of your photo. 
• I'd love it if you could grab the badge to add at the bottom of your post and Tweet about it using #familyphotofriday - my Twitter handle is @oneformybaby12.
• Pop over to visit at least two other bloggers and see what they've been doing - maybe you can watch their family grow and change too!
• Leave a comment if you can.

I promise to visit as many of you as I can and I'll pick my favourite photo to share next Friday.

Happy photo-taking and memory-making!

<div align="center">
<a href="http://thursdayschild-fridaysthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/p/family-photo-friday.html" title="Family Photo Friday @ Thursday's Child, Friday's Thoughts"><img src="http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r718/oneformybaby12/cfd43ed3-81dd-4bc8-891e-83da05b4339a_zpse02e79b8.jpg" alt="Family Photo Friday @ Thursday's Child, Friday's Thoughts" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

New

Reality is kicking in.

We're on the final countdown to our big 'new'. Our second baby. A brand new life.

Starting all over again. 

E will be a new big sister. We'll be new parents again. A new family of four.

I'm looking at all of E's stuff that is out and ready for it's second round. As good as new, some of it virtually untouched. But all new to this baby.

We can't wait to meet you, little new.

Tales of the Baby Brain

What a disastrous day.

We're up, we're ready to go, I've checked Kirby Hall's opening times and we are off. It's the failsafe well, it might rain destination for the toddler who likes it best outside.

Firstly I can't remember where to turn. We get lost. On arrival, I haven't checked carefully enough, and failed to notice the winter opening times. 

We'll go to Dean Park, I thought. Closed.

We'll go to Lyveden, I thought. Closed.

By which point, we've driven half the way around Northamptonshire. We'll go to Fermyn Woods... Great in principle, it's open, after all. Except it's £2.60 to park and I only have my bank card. So I have to pay £2.40 in addition on unnecessary beverages to put a car parking ticket on my car. 

I fall over trying to get into the wooden castle climbing frame.

E refused to do much other than go on the swings and then demands an unnecessary beverage. I manage to attract the weird men out walking their dogs who want to regale me with how they've forgotten the dog's lead. Then it tips it down with rain.

We went home and my daughter ate a lunch consisting of ham, which she removed from the bread, and a banana. Followed by a yogurt. Lunch fail? Unsure. Dog eats crayons that are thrown on the floor.

Looking at the photos, you'd never know about any of the bad stuff. Toddler outside equals happy toddler. Dog with full belly equals happy dog.

Exhausted mummy.

Water

I keep having weird dreams. I know that's normal in pregnancy. But the majority of my dreams involve my waters breaking in hugely inconvenient situations. The most commonly reoccurring dream is that my waters go in my office, at work, during a free period, much to the horror of my male (currently childless) colleague who I share the office with, who panics and flaps while I stand there in a puddle wondering what to do next.

You see, the whole notion of 'my waters going' is a complete mystery to me. Because at some point between 2am and 7am the day I had my daughter, my waters just seemed to disappear. They were there when they scanned for her position, and then when they were checking my progress they were gone. But no one knows where, and I have no recollection of it.

So actually, I don't know what it feels like for my waters to go, and unless this one decides to make an early appearance, I wont find out this time either, being a planned sunroof situation.

A lot of my friends had dreams like this in pregnancy; dreams where they were always having a particular gender, or where the gender they dreamed about was not the gender they were being told they were having; dreams that they were going to go into labour early; dreams that they were going to end up labouring in frankly bizzare and unexpected situations.

And some of their dreams came true.

Which makes me wonder, should I stop joking about my waters flooding my office? I'm not sure my colleague would ever recover.

I'd love to hear of any funny 'waters' situations. The whole thing fascinates me, and I suspect will remain a mystery to me. Unless I am in fact Paul the Psychic Octopus...

Joining in with #thethemegame - what an apt theme for the week! 

Seasonally plump

Visiting a friend's newborn today, I felt a pang of broodiness and a little ache in my ovaries. And then it dawned on me: My pregnancy countdown is into single figures. I'll have one of those in less than ten weeks. 

My darling little girl looked positively grown up as she sat on the sofa eating Christmas cake, shhh-ing the adults that spoke as the baby slept peacefully in the moses basket on the other side of the room. Just yesterday D and I had to remind ourselves that she's not yet two years old. Her new fringe has taken away a bit of that messy haired toddler innocence. Having her home for the holidays, her language has come on tremendously. There are so many new words everyday and she is so wise to everything. It makes me well up a little just thinking about it. 

My unborn is currently breech. Christmas Eve eve was a horrible night as it turned itself around. The heartburn was horrific and the pain in my bump intense and tender. E was breech for a long time and now I remember how uncomfortable it was. I have hit the third trimester wall of tiredness and I am thankful that I am blessed with such a hands-on husband who has done the baths and chasing and running around with E that I'm finding more and more difficult. 

Christmas was divine: Round 1, a buffet lunch at home with friends and family before driving to my dad's in Norfolk for Round 2 where we were waited on and spoiled silly and enjoyed being suitably lazy while E lapped up time with the family we don't see so much, then onto Round 3 on Boxing Day for lunch with 'Grauntie' (my mum's sister) and more lovely gifts before returning home and then scratching our heads about where on earth everything would go and how we were going to cope next Christmas with gifts for our two children. Minor palpitations.

If I'm not fortunate enough having a husband who just loves being a dad and does an amazing job of it, he also went over the top with gifts for me, the crowning glory a new lens for my camera and a tripod...  You can expect a deluge of photographs over coming weeks, starting now, with a brief Christmas round-up.

Testing

My daughter took her first unaided steps just after Christmas last year. Two or three steps between furniture and such continued until February, when she just let go and never looked back. She gets around on foot. Most of the time. Maybe I've been spoiling her and carrying her out of convenience and speed. Who knows.

This week we reached breaking point. Yesterday she point blank refused to walk to the park (circa two minutes at toddler speed) and I refused to carry her.

E planks on a wet pavement and screams for five minutes, unbothered by the fact that I am still on my way to the park. Proper face down, covered-in-mud-kind-of-planking. People walked by chuckling at the stand off between two incredibly stubborn Aries women. Eventually I gave in, put her in the car and went home. So much for making the most of my Fridays off and dry weather. 

I needed a plan. I resisted Dr Google for this one, however, and tough mum is out of the box. A kiddo somewhere between the 98th and 99th, by the age of 20 months weighs in excess of two stone. I cannot carry two stone and be 28 weeks pregnant. She has legs and can walk. End. So as of 7am this morning the "no carry" rule was enforced Chez Thursday's Child. Mostly successful. I am feeding her more fruit shaped snacks to keep her hunger induced grumpiness at bay and some bribery and coercion is needed. 

But we managed an early morning trip to the park, 99.9% on foot. I am sad that the colours of autumn are gone, but I do love an early winter morning. E enjoyed the ducks, the puddles and the swings. 

Let's hope that 99.9% is a figure we can stick to. Day one has set high expectations...