24 weeks 4 days

I'm booooooooored!

There's nothing going on on the Internet and there's nothing on the telly. I've eaten loads of pickled onions and drank milk and i've tidied out my wardrobe ready fro my sister to collect it and there's nothing else to doooooooo. Actually, there's probably loads to do, but nothing that i feel like doing.

I could read my book, but i don't fancy it. I could start the quilts i'm making for my friends twins, but it's too late in the day for that. I could do some scrapbooking, but i can't be naffed to make a mess with it. I've already played with the guinea pigs for a while.

Suppose i should get my clothes ready for my penultimate day at work tomorrow. EEEP! I'm so excited about finishing work!!! In the morning i'm going for my glucose tolerance test, so i have to fast from 10pm tonight. Then i'm at work in the afternoon and i have to sort out the files on my computer so that people can find stuff they need once i'm not there anymore. Then Tuesday is my last day, but i'm starting work at 8.30am, leaving at 10am for my fetal specialist appointment and then going back after that for the last couple of hours.

I've been doing research about bedrest and low laying placentas. I need to feel confident that when i see the fetal specialist on Tuesday he is covering all bases and checks me for vasa praevia again as well as checking out my placental position and the growth rate of the baby. I suppose i could write down my list of questions that i have in my head, then that will organise them and i will make sure that i don't miss anything off. Yeah, that's what i'll do. Something constructive!

24 weeks 3 days

I just threw up! We had fajitas followed by ice cream for tea and when i'd almost finished my ice cream i suddenly came over really sick and ran upstairs and barfed! I usually don't barf when pregnant, so this is really unusual!

Straight away i felt better and i went to use my doppler to check on the heartbeat and there it was, so all is okay. Phew!

What is particularly funny (or not), is that i will be 24 weeks 6 days pregnant on Tuesday, which is 3 days away. Last time i was pregnant, with our daughter, she was stillborn at 24 weeks 6 days pregnant and a couple of days prior to loosing her i had gastroenteritis. I feel completely fine now, so i'm hoping it's not gastroenteritis again. That would be awful.

December feels like a million years away, but at the same time it's sooooo close! The shops have their Christmas stuff out already and i've started my Christmas shopping. I want to have it all done as soon as possible so that it's one less thing to worry about come December!

This next couple of months are going to be busy! I'm finishing work on Tuesday for maternity leave, but we have someone coming to fit a new bathroom and change our boiler to a combi. I've got new bedroom furniture coming for our room and we need to decorate the nursery. My husband is putting the finishing touches to the wall he's been building out front and i've got loads of correspondence to catch up on! Busy busy busy! :o) I hope i don't have to put myself on bedrest cause i'll be buggered!

24 weeks 1 day

I have just sat through some crackin' music tonight to support my friend who has just started her new job as a teacher this term and was playing the piano in the school concert. It was at the high school i used to go to, which was crazy. Everything's changed though!

The baby was all quiet in between acts and then when the music came on s/he started dancing! It was ace!! It couldn't have been a coincidence either cause it was literally every song that i'd get loads of pokes and then all would go quiet til the next one. Ha!

The pokes are quite big now too and sometimes make me jump.

Well, it's 10pm and i'm absolutely knackered! I'm off to bed in a bit. Only one more get up til the weekend and then it's only two more get ups next week until MATERNITY LEAVE!!!!

WOOP! WOOP!

23 weeks 6 days

I hit the point of viability tomorrow! Or, should i say the baby hits the point of viability tomorrow, which is a milestone! At least that means that if i go into labour early and they can't stop it they will try to save him or her. So that's a huge thing!

I'm so tired right now, i almost went to bed, but i made myself stay up a bit longer and type this as a point of principal. It's only 20 past 10 and i'm not even at work tomorrow, so i should be staying up! There's nothing much going on online though and telly isn't appealing to me.

My friend felt the baby kick for the first time today, which was nice. So that makes a total of four people to feel it, including me.

I'm having a haircut tomorrow and i think i'm going to have it cut quite a bit shorter. I've never been one to be overly concerned about getting my hair done, nor overly dismayed with a bad haircut. Hair grows. If i don't like it i'll tie it up for a few weeks and grow it out. I just fancy something a lot lower maintenance. Long hair is great, but it's harder to wash, dry and straighten and i can't be naffed.

I start my kick counting tomorrow. I have to pick a two hour section of the day and count until the baby kicks ten times and mark down the time it took to get there. If i don't reach ten in two hours i need to drink something cold, walk around and try again. If i don't reach ten in the second two hours i go to hospital to get checked out. Studies have shown that babies who were stillborn moved less prior to passing away. I don't suppose there's always anything they can do, but it makes me feel like i'm doing something. You know. So i'm picking 7.30ish in the evening to start because that's when the baby is the most active. Well, then and just as i'm trying to get to sleep! Ha ha!

23 weeks 4 days

All is quiet on the pregnancy front. Baby is active and mum is okay. Dad is fine too.

It's deliciously hot outside, which is nice. I'm hoping that the nursery curtains will have finished in the washing machine soon so i can put them on the line before i go out. I'm having Sunday dinner with friends today. Mmmmm...

I'm definitely entering the hungry phase of pregnancy now, which is fab! Still only 10 stone 13 though... which means i've put on a total of 6lbs! I started at 10.7, lost a few lbs and then went back up again. If i put 3 stone on again like i did with my first i'll be 13 stone 7 by the time i'm finished!! AHHH!! Oh well, it's worth it to make sure the bub is healthy. I'm certainly not going to worry about my weight on top of everything else! If i'm fat at the end of it, i'm fat. I wasn't exactly skinny beforehand anyway! Ha ha! Plus, if all goes well i'll be breastfeeding this time, so that will help to shed those pounds.

Oooh i just did this weight gain in pregnancy doodah and it estimates i'll gain 2 stone 2lbs in total. 1 stone 4.9 lbs of it is on me - boobs, uterus, blood, water and fat. The rest (11.1lbs) is on baby - fetus, placenta, amniotic fluid. Cool! Some stuff i've read says that by the 23rd week of pregnancy my total weight gain should be about 15lbs. I'm not worried that mine is only 6lbs, especially because i had a few reserves to use up first.

23 weeks 3 days

I think i might be entering a nesting phase. I know that i have wanted to get my teeth stuck into the house for a while now, but with me working full time still, i haven't had the energy. Today i have been on a mission and i've done a ton of sorting out, cleaning and tidying. It's been very therapeutic!! Still a long way to go though!

It's amazing how many catalogues a person can collect. I haven't cleared them out for a while because they are just in the back of the coffee table. I mean, we never use them now anyway. That's what the Internet is for!! I pulled out the coffee table today though to have a look and i've thrown out eight, yes eight catalogues. Where do they come from? Why do we need them? I have just kept the latest IKEA and the latest Argos. Everything else is in the recycler.

The guinea pigs are grazing outside now, but they aren't playing like i thought they would. They just seem to be eating the grass and hopping back inside their house. Not so much frolicking.

Now i've sat down for a break the baby is kicking like mad! I must have woken him/her up with all the activity this morning. Bless! It was a routine midwife appointment yesterday and everything was fine. Blood pressure was low at 100/60, but that's normal for me. My urine was clear and the baby's heartbeat came up fine on the doppler. I'm also measuring fine for my dates. I did get myself worked up before the appointment though, but i'm putting it down to it being the same appointment that we found out we'd lost our daughter. In the car on the way home from work i was fretting because i couldnt remember the last time the baby had kicked me. It didnt kick all the way home in the car and i had to call in at our house before the appointment to listen to the heartbeat on the doppler. Thankfully it was there right away. It's just far too easy to convince yourself that the baby has died. After all, if it's happened like that once before, why wouldn't it do it again?

We have an appointment to see a fetal specialist a week on Tuesday and i'm going to ask about delivery and management etc. Hopefully they will be able to give me a better idea of what my placenta is doing and perhaps it might have moved upwards even.

23 weeks 1 day

I've been getting threatening letters about an aged debt i apparently haven't paid. :o( I'm trying to sort it out and keep on ringing and writing every time i get a letter, but it's not resolved yet and today the debt agency said that i would have a default against my credit file. It's not even my fault!! I had a Barclaycard a few years ago and i paid off the balance and cut the card up. I paid the balance in May 06 and we moved house in June 06. I had a Royal Mail redirect set up for a year following our move, but received nothing from Barclaycard until i got a threatening letter from their debt agency. I've just been on the phone to a guy who was trying to get me to pay the balance, which i'm not going to do until i see what it's for. They say i owe £79.13, but there's no way i would have left a balance that large! I think that for some reason i've had a small amount on my account when i thought i'd paid it off and this is just interest i've been accruing. I don't get why i heard nothing until debt collection though. The debt guy said that they'd had to trace me, but i had a redirect set up and nothing came through. Mind you, it wouldn't surprise me if Royal Mail had messed up there. They're not exactly the most reliable of folk!

So anyway, i've got that on my mind now and it's doing my head in. I don't have room in my mind to be worrying about trivial things like this, nor do i have the money to just pay them to get them off my back so i don't have to think about it! Gah!

The baby is kicking me now though, which is a blessing. Although s/he kicks loads, i still. always think something's happened when i don't feel a kick for a while, so it's nice that the baby is reassuring me at a time when i'm distracted by worry about something else.

I wonder if i'll end up with massive worry-furrows on my brow...

23 weeks

23 weeks today. This means that there are only two weeks to go until i have passed the point at which we lost our daughter at 24 weeks 6 days. It also means that the baby in my belly right now will look a lot like how she looked when she was born and she was a proper little person, just really small! Amazing!!

Things seem to be going well. The baby is moving great and seems to be busy a lot, which is really really reassuring! Last night i was laying in bed and it started to do big kicks just as i was dropping off to sleep and it woke me up, but i just smiled. Those movements are the best part of pregnancy and they're a reminder that s/he is still doing okay in there. You can feel them from the outside now too, but like most children this kid doesn't want to perform. As soon as someone puts their hand on to feel, it stops kicking. LOL!

Today i am at home on annual leave too. Thank goodness!! I'm so tired of being at work already, but you might have guessed that from previous posts. Ha! Only two weeks left until maternity leave though and then i sincerely hope that i won't go back to work for a whole year because we will have our family!

This credit crunch is worrying me a bit too. We are lucky enough to have a lower mortgage than most because we bought early, but it's going to affect everything else. It's got really cold outside this past few weeks, but we haven't put the heating on yet. In fact i relented last night and set it to come on for only an hour a day in the morning for when we get up before work. Plus i had some washing to dry and in this weather it won't dry outside and if you leave it on the radiators cold it will take months to dry and it always feels damp. I also changed the water heating to come on for an hour only in the afternoon before we get home from work. Then we can use it in the evening for my husbands shower etc. and i should have enough left over by the next morning for my shower before work. I hope we'll be okay with this cause we're still trying to pay off our last gas bill from last winter. We can't afford to go into this winter just adding more to it without paying it off. I'm not ashamed to admit that i'm worried how we will cope when i'm not working. Maternity pay is only the government statutory minimum, which will give me about £370 per month after tax. My husbands wages only cover our bills and food. Petrol, hardware, home improvements, eating out etc etc. all come out of my wages. I know we will do some serious cutting down, but it's still a worry, especially since the price of things keeps rising. Petrol prices are shocking! Mind you, i won't have to pay to travel 45 miles per week to work in stupid traffic, so there's some back.

Now i'm not at work for the day i have a plan of action. I need to do some cleaning, the guinea pigs need cleaning out and i need to take a trip into town to get some Spa Tone, fabric, milk, and have a waddle round Tesco. I can't wait til i'm a proper full time housewife!! :o)