The Alice

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I feel there is nothing else to say today.

- We moved house! And what a treat our new place is; the fact that I can be in the bedroom and not even hear the TV In the living room is still such a novelty, and I am so pleased to see my houseproud side back in full force (I thought I’d left it in the house in Nottingham when we moved to London 2 years ago). We’re still in a flat, but there is a garden, our own front door and neighbors with a toddler.

- I chilled out, relaxed, and learned how to sleep properly. Something about our new bedroom means I sleep like a baby, perhaps because our heating is no longer included in our rent payments so this house isn’t as balmy as our old one. No more nights of insomnia, no more 4am frets, I’m asleep for 11 and awake at 7. I feel like a new woman.

- From my 12 week test results I’ve been diagnosed as being high-risk for developing pre-eclampsia. It’s a testament to the new laid-back version of me that this hasn’t been worrying in the slightest. In fact, I think it’s wonderful that the hospital are taking such good care of me – I’ll be in every 4 weeks for additional pulse, blood pressure and heart monitoring as well as extra scans. I got to see baby H again yesterday and it was wonderful.

- I discovered emailsfromcrazypeople.com

- I grew a baby bump, evidenced by a lovely lady offering me her seat on the tube.

I am ending this week feeling positive, excited and very happy. Still no internet at home (and it’s not going to be forthcoming until the beginning of Feb, argh), but on the bright side this is giving me plenty of time to cook for and attend to my poor, neglected husband. I really want to get cracking on my freelance portfolio but this will just have to wait whilst I chill out a bit longer. Ahhhhhhhhh……..

Happy first wedding anniversary today to the best husband in the whole world!

It really doesn’t feel like 12 months ago that we said ‘I do’. And at the same time, it feels like we’ve been married forever.

What a year – I can’t wait for the next 70.

PS: a hectic weekend was spent moving all our wordly belongings 5.1 miles north to Muswell Hill. The new house is wonderful, all the SPACE is a revelation (garden! nursery! separate kitchen!). Sky was installed over the weekend but we won’t be online until the 22nd, so until them I’m limited to whatever I can squeeze in at work. Internet, I miss you!

Brilliant news – I think my first trimester exhaustion is on its way out. I can’t even begin to describe how debilitating I have found this, the strain on my brain felt enormous and I had so many “I can’t do this anymore” wobbles. It was a massive shock; I was prepared for morning sickness but nobody warned me about the bone-crunching fatigue. After six weeks of hell I am SO GLAD it’s over.

Bad news – the exhaustion has been replaced by insomnia. All week I have been awake til at least 4am, though it was 5am on Sunday and Tuesday. I’m putting it down to the stress of moving house tomorrow as Will is in charge, therefore I do not get to be a control freak. It’s disconcerting – nagging is my forte and I’m lost without it. We’re going down to the estate agents this evening to sign paperwork and pick up the keys, tomorrow I will leave our lovely De Beauvoir flat for the final time and return to our new Muswell Hill abode. Need to make the most of the 15 minute commute one last time.

Aside from the moving worry, I seem to have a whole host of baby-themed concerns buzzing round in my head in the early hours. Last night, these included:
a) how do I get a new baby in a pram down lots of steps on to a train platform?
b) how do I get a new baby in a pram up and down the escalator on the tube?
c) can I wear high heels when I’m carrying the baby or will it mean I drop it (I’m not great at balancing)?
d) how do I watch out for dog poo when I’m pushing a pram? How do I clean dog poo off pram wheels?
e) how do you get baby sick out of silk?
f) how can I justify buying the £60 sweater dress I like in American Apparel?

As you can see, it’s really serious stuff. Send help.

- Photo Memes – looooove…. ahhhh… SOB.

- John Lewis’s baby department – there is just so much stuff in there, it totally overwhelmed me and I had to be taken to Topshop to calm down.

- Glee – I have no excuse for this one and for that I am truly apologetic.

- My bank statement – “how are we going to afford a baby??!!”  and other irrational thoughts are keeping me up until the early hours.

- My tiredness – when will it stop?

- My scan photographs –  because baby is beautiful.

- Will, just not understanding me – irrational? Hormones? Moi?

Photo credit – Roadside Guitars

The date January 4th had been in our minds for the last 6 weeks; once Christmas and New Year were done with it was a short countdown to this day and our 12 week safety-point scan. Not as significant as it might have been following our 10 week scan at the EPU (I just HAD to tell the whole world once we had a photo), but it was still magnificent.

The staff at UCLH have really impressed me so far – everyone has been so caring, sympathetic and professional. With the exception of the the phlebotomist who I thought was scary and mean at first, but after she sang Duffy at me throughout my last blood test I realise she’s just pleasantly nuts. Plus, if I can’t feel her taking my blood, she must be good. So every trip to the hospital right now feels to me like a holiday to EuroDisney, including the waiting (though I make this worse myself by insisting on being half an hour early to every appointment).

It’s mandatory to have two doctors present at your ‘milestone’ ultrasounds at UCH (is this what happens in other hospitals?) both confirming the health of baby, and my pair of doctors yesterday were great. According to them our baby is beautiful and perfect, music to our ears. They really took their time showing us different parts of baby, and we saw 10 fingers, 10 toes, a brain, eyes with lenses, lips, nose, ears, spine, legs, arms, the heart (157 bpm), a bladder and stomach… in short, everything is where it should be.

Our due date has been slightly adjusted to 21st July, making it pretty much guaranteed that baby will make an appearance on my 25th birthday (25th July), because I’m not good at sharing and Karma hates me like that.

Surprisingly they were able to take a guess at the sex of baby… it’s a GIRL! At least they are 60-70% sure, not enough for me to be calling baby ’she’ or buying pink stuff, but good to know. Of course I would be happy either way but I was sure I could feel girl vibes from my uterus. And everyone knows mum’n'daughter matching outfits are cute

Roll on 21st July… I can’t wait to meet our baby.

- Potato waffles with vinegar and a lot of salt
- M&S Bacon-wrapped cheese Christmas canapes (though M&S not open so had to improvise with ingredients from the corner shop)
- Pancakes
- Pies (when watching The Waitress – had to improvise with toast as no pie ingredients in house and 11pm)
- Cheesy twists (total morning sickness-at-3am lifesaver)
- Plain pasta with olive oil and butter (dinner for a fortnight when I was too sick to eat anything else apart from toast and cheesy twists)

I don’t remember a great deal of last New Years Eve. I know it began with my gorgeous friend Abi coming over to the Studio flat Will and I called home in Shoreditch, and we spent the first part of the evening putting out make-up on and drinking the local newsagent’s best sparkling wine. I remember being amazed and jealous that Abi’s thighs didn’t touch at the top and vowing then to go on a diet in 2009 (I went on to lose 35lb, however my damn thighs still touch at the top). We ate pizza, listened to music and got a cab at 10 to my husband’s club for a night of electro and dancing.

Once there I recall parts of 2ManyDJs at midnight, but mostly my memory fails… I think we spent the night flitting between the dressing room and backstage areas and not listening to much more music, before crawling home at around 7am. I believe a lot of  champagne was involved.

This year was totally different. I spent the whole day preparing by sleeping, as I knew it would be a late night (and these days anything after 9pm counts as a late night). I’ve been feeling really pale the last few weeks so I gave myself a fake tan along with a hair treatment and facemask. I blowdried my hair and picked out an outfit that I hoped would make it obvious I was pregnant rather than fat.

We left the house at 6pm for dinner at Nobu with my husband’s german work colleagues and had an amazing dinner of yellowfin tuna, rock shrimp tempura, black cod miso and wagyu beef (this was following some intense googling of ‘is sushi safe for pregnant women’. Short answer, due to UK food safety regs: YES, thank goodness). I even allowed myself to have a small glass of wine and a non-alcoholic Mojito. I was really looking forward to seeing some famous faces at the restaurant, but the most famous people there were the DJs we were eating with. I would rather have seen a Sugababe or Girl Aloud, techno DJs mean nothing to me and I have been known to offend them with my ignorance of their trade.

We shot off to the club for opening, and I had a nice long sit down before the midnight count down. Midnight came and went with just enough champagne to wet my lips, a smooch with Will and I was in a cab by 12.10 and home by 12.30 where I actually crawled into bed with a hot water bottle and some cocoa.

I’m still slightly terrified that next New Year’s Eve I will almost certainly be at home with baby… though I don’t think I’ll miss the busy clubs and 7am bedtimes this is what I have been doing for the last 7 years. Saying that, I think I’ll be happy as long as there is champagne at some point in the evening.

In 2010, I resolve to:
- Be a better wife
I need to realise when I’m being a whiny bitch because of my hormones and keep a lid on it, otherwise Will’s sanity will be severely compromised.

- Make our new home a wonderful place to be
I can’t wait to move to our bigger family home next week and to have a garden and nursery. We’ll be spending a lot more time there and I want to make it as homely as possible.

- Keep in touch with my friends more than I have done
Should be easy as I won’t be hungover at all in the next six months.

- See as much live music as possible before baby comes
…because I won’t be seeing much afterwards!

- Really work at doing freelance stuff
I won’t be working for a long while after baby arrives, should I pick up freelance work we won’t have to worry so much about budgeting (yuck).

- Blog
If I don’t blog about things, I forget them. I really want to remember this pregnancy.

- Be a good mum
Self-explanatory I think.

- Don’t splurge so much money on convenience food, clothes and booze
I think this means no more Pret. I’ll need a while to get over this one.

- Read better books, not just crappy chick lit
I love bad books, but I worry they are turning my brain to mush. So far this year I have already powered through Bridget Jones’s Diary, but am now on ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini. FYI: the Twilight series doesn’t count as crappy chick lit.

One thing I have struggled hard with over the last week is the fear of losing my identity. I have always wanted to be a mum, and a young one at that, so the concept is not unexpected nor new to me. But how do I become ‘mum’ and still remain ‘Alice’?

I do a lot of fun things that I often take for granted. I work for an amazing magazine, a job that has introduced me to many things I otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of. I haven’t paid to see live music (including festivals) for the last 7 years because of Will’s job. I enjoy eating out regularly at michelin-starred restaurants and drink in private members clubs. I get to spend my weekends in bed if I want, or at London markets eating cheese and drinking cider with my friends. I know I won’t be able to do all these things when the baby comes, so does that mean I will be less ‘me’?

The ‘mummy blogger’ scene is a strange one; in my job I have worked with fashion, music and even food bloggers, but not the mums. I have read many of them over the last couple of days as I find their material compelling, and how wonderful it must be to have somewhere to record and feedback on the ins and outs of parenting.

But, dare I say it, some of them seem a little dry. For years I have enjoyed blogs such as Dooce, Everyday Stranger, DasBecca, Mademoiselle Robot, Girls Gone Child and LLG because they not only talk about their main subject matter but diversify into others – interiors, fashions, mental health, photography, food, wine… I find myself hooked on these people’s lives, feeling their agonies and triumphs as much as I do my friends’. These blogs aside, I can’t help but feel some ‘Mummy Bloggers’ have left their previous lives and successes behind to simply become mothers. I look forward to being the best mum I can possibly be, but I know to do that I need to keep aspects of my current life, too.

Saying that, I came across one blog today that I had to sit and read through in its entirety. Metropolitan Mum is brilliant – a London mum recording life with her husband and six month old baby. She makes it so easy to relate, perhaps it helps that we live in the same neighborhood and she too conceived quickly after being told she was challenged fertility-wise. Whatever the reason, I will enjoy being along for the ride, safe in the knowledge that Met Mum not only loves talking about being a mum, she also goes to Brora sample sales and enjoys spending Saturdays in Liberty’s. Sounds like my kind of woman.