The Alice

- Firstly, I am so relieved to be at the 24 week viability stage! Especially after watching a particularly emotional episode of One Born Every Minute last week (there was a 23 week old baby in the neonatal unit). I feel like a weight has been lifted.

- My sleep has gone crazy again. I’ve had a couple of very late nights worrying (I’m afraid I have to blame this book – it had me concerned that we weren’t being frugal enough) and this morning I woke for the day at 5am having had a particularly vivid dream about zombies. Weird.

- My sinuses, oh my god. On a bad day I can’t wake up when I breathe and by the end of the day the pain has spread from my nose to my forehead and feels like an elastic band tightening round my brain. I am so sick of blowing my nose and earache!

- We took a trip to the hospital early last week (first time visiting the Labour ward!) because I felt like I’d pulled a muscle in my stomach overnight, and the following day I hadn’t felt any movements from Baby H at all. Of course as soon as we sat down in the waiting room baby started kicking, but we stayed to get checked out – anyway. There was a heartstopping couple of minutes whilst the midwife found baby’s heartbeat, but it was nice and strong after that. Baby has been kicking, punching, rolling and twisting ever since.

- I have a big bump! Finally! None of the miserable commuter bastards on my train noticed yesterday morning when I was feeling particularly exhausted and desperate for a seat, but I blame their tendency to avoid eye contact for that.

- My lower back still hurts pretty much all the time. The less said about the better (though I enjoy my nightly back rubs from Will).

- I have gone up 12lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight, which feels like a lot but I know is really quite average. I’m trying not to treat my mouth like a personal dustbin (I have eaten what I want, when I want ever since I got over the initial sickness) and am on a bit of a health kick. This means cereal for breakfast, mid-morning granola and yoghurt, salads for lunch and a healthy dinner. I’m still allowed my McDonald treats after my blood tests though… and pudding. And easter eggs.

- I’ve had a lot more bad moods (sorry Will, I love you for being nice to me even when I’m mean). I blame the lack of sleep and sinus pain.

- I have less than 10 working weeks left in the office. Not that I’m counting or anything…

Ever since my bump has popped I’ve noticed real attitude changes in the way people react to me. Aside from the usual comments from work colleagues (I get at least one remark about how big I’ve gotten every day), it’s fascinating to see the way strangers in the street react to me.

Men, specifically ones around 30 – 40, seem terrified of the bump; they back away from it, with a horrified look on their face. One guy I encountered on the way into Pret a couple of days ago practically leaped out of my way, his eyes fixed on my belly. I think this is down to pregnancy being the great unknown for a single man – a stellar example of this is one of my work colleagues who is terrified of ‘womb juice’ as his calls it.

Builders react well to the bump. I get my morning catcalls and winks, though thinking about this it might be the two expanding lumps above the bump that get them going more than the baby belly?

Mums like the bump – they give me smiles and “good mornings” – I like this a lot more than my builder’s greetings.

My mum LOVES the bump and rubs it like a genie’s lamp when we get together. I don’t mind her touching it and have been lucky enough not to get total strangers put their hands on my tummy, but I’ve heard some horror stories about this. I tend to let people I know (and like) touch it because pregnant bellies are pretty fascinating and they always ask first, but touch it without asking and I might have to bite your hand off.

Finally, I think Will is the one who is most in love with the bump. He gets to touch it as much as he wants and he doesn’t even have to ask first. That’s a good thing because I’m going to get him to take over cocoa butter rubbing duties (really helps with the mad itching).

It makes my back hurt, but I love it too:

I am so sick.

Sick of waking up every morning at 6am because I can’t breathe through my nose and my sinuses are screaming.

Sick of constantly worrying that the baby isn’t OK, that something bad will happen and it will all go wrong.

Sick of worrying that nobody will want to hire me freelance and I will have to go back to working in an office full time.

Sick of trying so so hard to organize our finances yet 7 year old bills coming back to ruin my week and make me feel like a naughty immature bad-with-money teenager.

Sick of caring that my thighs are getting bigger and I can see the beginnings of cellulite. It shouldn’t, and doesn’t, matter.

Sick of being tired.

And very very sick that I’m not able to make everything seem better with a couple of glasses of wine.

I got given my first blog award! Brilliant! I was really excited when I read this, but then I promptly went off, did something else and totally forgot who gave the award to me. And it’s taken me this long to remember – thanks YoungMummy!

To accept the award I need to give you seven facts about myself, and then pass the award on to seven more bloggers. Here goes:

1. I don’t like chocolate
Or rather, I mostly don’t like chocolate. Sometimes – about once a fortnight – I will fancy a brownie or a piece of chocolate cake, but then the craving will go and I won’t eat chocolate for another two weeks. Moreover, more than a little bit of chocolate makes me feel sick. Crisps on the other hand….

2. I think I might be addicted to the internet
Which is OK, because my job involves me being on the internet (I’m a Digital Marketing Manager). The web fascinates and excites me every day, I love it.

3. I can’t get enough of blogs
I could read them all day and all night if I could – I set aside special times at work (whilst I’m eating my breakfast and lunch) otherwise I would get nothing done. I love all blogs – mummy blogs (obviously), food blogs, fashion blogs and funny blogs like FML or Not Always Right.

4. I have really bad taste in music
Girls Aloud, Kylie, 90’s R&B… I even like The Saturdays.

5. Similarly, I have awful taste in TV
I LOVE faux-reality TV shows like The Hills and Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I have to Sky+ them and watch them when I’m home alone like a dirty secret.

6.Will and I met in a nightclub
He was the manager in charge of booking all the DJs, I was working behind the bar. He used to let me do the nicest jobs, like supervise the VIP bar (I never had to work in the cloakroom or clear up vomit!). We went home together after an all-night party once and 7 years later, here we are…

7. I used to be in the Pony Club
I’ve been meaning to take up horse riding again for ages – I loved it when I was younger. Another thing for my ‘to do when baby comes out’ list.

And I would like to pass this award on to:
Notes from Lapland
MetMum
Potential Mummy B
Notes to Self, Plus Two
Me, The Man and the Baby
Mediocre Mum, and
WADs

who have all made me feel really welcome since I started my blog.. thanks ladies!

A belated post on Mother’s Day: though not technically a mother yet the day did not go unnoticed or uncelebrated.

It began with breakfast in bed and a couple of cards:

One from Will (with a soppy message that I won’t re-print as I don’t want to threaten his hard-man persona) and one from Baby H.

We then had a great day of lounging round in our pyjamas watching crap TV, Skyping the in-laws and de-cluttering our lives on to eBay. I believe we watched 8 episodes of Come Dine With Me (my favourite) before Will decided he couldn’t take any more and we had to switch to some Sky+ goodies.

It was a very good day.

————————–

I’d also like to say Happy Birthday to my very own Mum – next year will be her first as a Grandma! She also had a good day today (I think) at the Rugby in Cardiff with Dad. Luckily the flowers I ordered for delivery today (doh) still found their way to their house despite them not being there. Here she is with Dad (looking like a massively camp snooker player or magician) at Christmas time:

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM, I love you very much. You’re the best Mum in the world, and will be the best Grandma, too xxxx

One of the biggest joys in my life is celebrity gossip. It’s not big, it’s not clever, but I love it. In fact I think the highlight of my career so far was when I contacted Perez Hilton and he re-published one of my writer’s Kanye West stories from Fashion Week last year .

(Please don’t think less of me for my celebrity obsession)

So I was really excited to find out who my due July celebrity pregnancy buddies would be… I was really hoping for Cheryl Cole but obviously that was a no-go. Dannii Minogue was a poor runner up, but she is better than Big Brother’s Chanelle Hayes:

- Dannii Minogue

I like Dannii on the X factor, and of course she has the cache of being Kylie’s sister. But I really don’t think she did herself many favours in that furry dress.

- Chanelle Hayes

You might remember her as the really annoying one from Big Brother. I wouldn’t want to meet her at my NCT classes.

- Danielle Lloyd

The racist one from celebrity Big Brother. Enough said.

Not a great lineup really, is it??!

With only 17 weeks to go now I feel it’s time to legitimately begin decorating the nursery. Taking inspiration from Young Mummy’s gorgeous book-themed nursery, I want Baby H to have a stimulating, girly and interesting room; she will sleep in our room for the first six months of her life so it will be initially treated as a nursery/playroom.

So far we have a white cot and chest of drawers. I think I’ve convinced Will that he should be building a built-in wardrobe in the bedroom alcove though with his track record in DIY I think he’ll need a hand from Grandpa-to-be. An antique desk inherited from family will be a changing unit with some small adjustments and the neutral carpet will be jazzed up with a rug.

(Note: I’ve shamed myself into posting the ‘before’ photo, taken just after we moved in! The room has improved massively even since then – though it’s currently serving as a storage area for the high heels I can’t wear anymore. Those awful opressive curtains that came with the house have been replaced with neutral white which makes the room immediately seem bigger and brighter).

On my shopping list so far:
Ridiculously girly fairy lights
Laura Ashley bunting
A ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ pink poster
Some pretty storage boxes
A cherry blossom decal

I was browsing birthday cards this morning and I found some gorgeous ones that were the result of a collaboration between Rob Ryan and Roger la Borde. Rob Ryan is a brilliant artist whose shop is based on the lovely Columbia Road (which is where we used to live, back in the day when a warehouse studio apartment with massive windows and one storage heater seemed like a good idea). His art is based around laser cut silhouettes and lovely words – the one I found this morning might have brought a tear to my eye:

‘You were in my head but now you are in my heart, please stay there forever’

He has around 7 greetings cards with Roger la Borde and luckily enough three of these are pink-themed. I’m going to frame these three (the one above will take pride of place in the middle) and hang them above the cot. Hopefully my hormones will have calmed down to the degree that I don’t weep every time I see it.

Where did you get your ideas for your children’s nurseries? I’d love more inspiration!

- I’ve noticed in the past week or so I am having moments of realisation that a little person will be arriving into our cosy family of 2 in July. Yes – it’s all becoming real. I’m still trying to concentrate on the practicalities of becoming a parent (if I didn’t do this then I’d get too excited, and when I’m excited I can’t sleep = I’m going to have enough sleep depravation with the baby). But still, right now I’m feeling a little bit ‘oh my god we’re having a baby’! It’s not quite 100% real yet, I reckon I’m 70% of the way there.

- Our 20 week scan was fine – although it was at 22 weeks. I fear we may have seemed like the most heartless parents ever as we didn’t get very excited; we’ve now had 7 scans thanks to my risk of pre-eclampsia and have been lucky enough to know the sex since week 14 and watch babies development very closely. However, our last pre-eclampsia scan was 4 days before our 20 week scan so we were given an identical tour of my uterus. I now know it like the back of my hand.

- Baby is still a girl. Excellent! She’s been breech since about 15 weeks and still is now, but I’m hopeful that she’ll turn before delivery.

- My cervix looks great (in fact, it’s 32mm long I believe – now that was something new to look at yesterday). This puts my risk of early delivery at a teeny tiny 1%!

- The headaches have arrived. Once a day, mostly behind my right eye. It’s not my blood pressure (which is still fairly low), it’s not dehydration (I’m chugging as much water as my shrunken bladder can carry), I reckon it’s either linked to my sinuses or hormones. The doctors aren’t worried, so neither am I.

- I’ve switched to using a sensible across-the-body handbag and have been wearing sensible shoes ever since my fall last week – I never thought I’d be self-imposing a ban on high heels. In all seriousness it was a really scary experience and one I wouldn’t like to go through again.

- My mood is constantly good. I wake up in the morning feeling happy and go to bed feeling happy. Its brilliant!

- I’ve noticed that I have to get everything done that I want to in a day before around 9pm, as that’s the time I crash and burn. Once I’ve collapsed on the sofa post-9 there’s no getting me back up again.

- I’m HUNGRY. All the time!

(Go and check out this week’s carnival at Baby Baby – I’m there for the first time this week!)

Today I felt like baking, so whilst Will was stuck to the TV (rugby… alll day) I made some mess in the kitchen. This was the result:

Nigella’s Chocolate Fudge Cake – delicious. Not recommended for diabetics, dieters or chocolate haters. Definitely recommended for pregnant women!

There has been more of the drama llama in the H household this week.

As I am a clumsy elephant-footed type of person, I was very careful throughout the cold winter and slowly and carefully tiptoed in the ice and snow – no accidents. Goodness knows how I managed to fall over my own feet on Tuesday night and spectacularly hit the decks in front of a group of city boys by Old Street station. Ouch.

I went home for a remedial bath and some comfort eating, after an early night I thought I’d be fine. But the next morning I was having a few stomach twinges and I was convinced baby’s movements had slowed down. I went to my local GP where the not-so-kind receptionist made me cry, and with no appointments I hopped to the Maternity unit at the hospital.

One gruelling 2 and a half hour wait later (they lost my notes. Twice.) I saw a midwife and everything was deemed OK. I was sent home for bed rest (not before treating myself to a naughty McDonalds, shhhh I’d had a hard day) and felt very sorry for myself for the rest of the afternoon.

It was such a relief to hear that baby is OK – I really went through the mill emotions-wise at the time and felt so drained afterwards. This mothering stuff is hard!

Will came home with a lovely M&S meal of fishcakes, green beans and potatoes – yum. He totally surprised me with pudding and presented me with this:

For the last week I have been craving a banana split like my Dad used to make me when I was younger, but could not for the life of me find the ‘correct’ chocolate sauce (has to be dark chocolate!). Lovely lovely Will found the ingredients for me and surprised me with that masterpiece. It was delicious, I spilled it over my lap and didn’t care.