The one with someone else's big announcement

Sorry sorry sorry!! Such a big gap! Mind you, I guess with it being the Christmas period I do have some excuse.

David's brother and his lovely fiancé (who have been together 11 years and engaged for about 7!) announced on Christmas day that they are finally tying the knot this Valentines Day. That was hard. Obviously not the news, that's fantastic and I'm really happy for them but Christmas day was our 'news giving' day... I know, I know I shouldn't make it all about me but to be honest, in here at least I should be allowed to! Our midwife appointment should have been yesterday and I got a letter through advising pregnant women to get the flue jab. Ok I know it's not their fault but c'mon I cancelled that appointment weeks ago! Grrr!

Anyway. I've had a brilliant Christmas, playing boardgames with my family (Mousetrap rocks!), eating my weight in food I didn't pay for (and yet appearing to have lost weight haha!) and spending my vouchers on lots of lovely sales clothes. Tonight we are going for a *ahem* civilised dinner with Emma, Miles and Mike to Loch Fyne which is a yummy seafood restaurant AND no work till Tuesday! Darn it I will be cheerful, I have plenty of reason to be.

Oh and we had another unprotected 'oops' incident yesterday which brings us to a total of 2 (we've been good most of the time!). I think I should be due on anytime from now though, it's been about 4 weeks so hurry up body and sort yourself out!!

The one with my saddest Christmas

I miss Spot today :-( I feel like he should be here, he was meant to be with me on Christmas and ruining my fun by stopping me drinking and generally making me feel rubbish... but no I feel fine physically. Emotionally... not so much today. We had our midwife appointment booked for this Thursday, and a scan in about three weeks time (We did know the exact date as the hospital didn't cancel the letter in time but David threw it away before I could see it, thank goodness.)

I'm not in the mood for being cheerful and celebrating anything. It almost feels wrong to be doing so to be honest. What's to celebrate really??

On a perhaps more cheerful note... our Christmas morning 'fun' was unprotected. We're planning to use condoms until my first period comes but we both hate them so today we thought "What the hell!" and didn't bother. After all, just this one incident is highly unlikely to result in conception and if it does... well it was obviously meant to be. Plus we'll have no difficulty with dates if I do fall pregnant because we've used protection all the other times!

Anyway Merry Christmas everyone, send me happy thoughts and I'll try to cheer up!

The one where it's FINALLY Christmas Eve!!

Yes! I honestly thought we were never going to get here!! But we have!!! No more work until the 4th January woo woo!!

Off out for drinks tonight... until next time, have a lovely Christmas everybody!!

The one where the After Eights are unleashed :-(

I had a dream last night (or was it the night before?) that my dad died in a plane crash. It was so awful, in the dream I just didn’t know how to cope with it. I wonder if that’s how it’ll be in real life? For someone who has so far been lucky enough never to even lose a grandparent, this is something that really scares me. I suppose this dream came about because of all this snow travel stuff that’s going on at the moment, lots of the airports are closed so there’s been a lot about planes in the news and of course my brother managed to fly back (safely thank goodness, although delayed) from Amsterdam on Sunday night.

On a lighter note, somehow it is still only Wednesday! Everyone keeps thinking its Thursday for some reason, myself included, and I just keep getting really disappointed when it’s only Wednesday after all! I know I shouldn’t wish my life away but I’m really sick of this week. I don’t know if I just really need a break or if I’m actually losing interest in my job at this point, I guess I’ll see how I feel after the holiday. The thing is I won’t find money as good as this in any other industry and if I stay in this industry, I may as well stay at this job for now as they’re all pretty much the same anyway! Plus of course, as we’re planning to start trying again soon it doesn’t really make sense to be leaving a secure job. Arg.

On an EVEN lighter note (although I won’t be at this rate) someone has let me loose on a box of After Eights. For someone who doesn’t like dark chocolate, I have to say I’m working my way through them fairly quickly!!! Goshdarnit, why do my department insist on bringing in chocolate and leaving it by my desk all the time? It’s a conspiracy I tell you!! David has his Christmas do tonight as well so I’m expecting him to come back fairly inebriated (which I can’t really moan at him for as I certainly did haha!). Of course upon finding out his do was tonight, I immediately invited all the girls over so I just hope the snow won’t keep them from me!

I will finish the entry on a weird note – I just noticed on Facebook that an old college friend of mine just had a little boy. She called him….. Logan James. I don’t know if I ever got around to mentioning this but that was (well is!) pretty much our definite chosen name for a boy. Of course we may change our minds by then but yeah. Freaky!! Luckily I am no longer in touch with this friend, and haven’t been since we left really so it won’t be remotely weird if our children end up with the same names. I love that name :-)

The one with the new arrival!

Just to say..... I am so excited that Samuel is finally here!! Well done Alice!!!

The one with the money worries

Three more days. Oh. My. GOSH the slowness that is this week. On the plus side, the temperature has managed to drag itself up from below freezing to… wait for it… 2 degrees!!! So of course every teenage girl in the country is hovering around her bikini and mini skirt just waiting for it to hit 5 degrees so she can wear them because of course that is how we roll in England. Cut us some slack though - we don’t get real summers here so we have to make do where we can!

An embarrassing thing happened to me this week – somebody (I suspect it was the same ‘Bad music fairy’ that tricked me into buying the Cheryl Cole single) bought the Justin Bieber album using my iTunes account and then it somehow got synced to my iPhone and I’m somehow being forced to listen to it! Bad times. Randomly I also have finger tips that smell like garlic after my (actually very successful) attempt at cooking dinner last night… does anyone know how to get rid of that smell? I’ve had a shower and washed my hands countless times and yet still it clings on! I thought you could use lemon juice but then David pointed out that’s actually used for getting the smell of fish and seafood off your hands (I won’t even go into the innuendos that were going through my head at that point - if you can’t guess, you’re not old enough!)

I was getting a bit stressed about our finances last night, we’ve got all these credit cards to pay off but it’s really easy to just keep re-spending on them in ‘emergencies’ (which basically means we got skint a week before payday and live on the credit cards for the rest of the week!). So we chopped them all up!


No more ‘keeping one for emergencies’, they’re all gone. I feel lighter already! Finally we should start seeing some progress with them. I worked out that once the debt is clear (hopefully mid 2012) we can easily afford to save roughly a whopping £1000 a month! It’s pretty sickening actually to think that between us we are currently paying out that much on debt per month. This is partly from wedding expenses and partly just old debt from both of us when we were younger and credit was given freely to anyone lol! Ah how I wish I’d lived within my means then, I’d be rolling in it now!! Oh well, learning this lesson at 23 is a lot better than most.

Sooo… 4 more sleeps until Christmas :-) very excited! My dad has bought goose for us to have on Boxing day which I have never tried before (and is apparently very expensive) so I can’t wait for that. Just gotta get through Christmas Day at the in-laws…..

Spot would have been 9 weeks today :-( I know I promised I’d stop doing that but it’s still nice to remember that he was here, even just for a short time.

The one where it's nearly Christmas!

And so begins the slowest week in the entire working year – the week leading up to the Christmas break. We are very lucky that our office is closed between Christmas and New Year so we don’t have to go in for the few days in between like a lot of people do. So after Friday I have no work until Tuesday 4th January! Woo! They tend to let us leave at around lunchtime on Christmas Eve as well so really there’s only 4 days to go!!

Sorry for lack of updates, I started to write one on the train and then the stupid app decided to close itself halfway through and then I found it was because an update was available. Grrr. I check the App store every day for updates and yet they decide to bring one out exactly while I am writing a nice long ‘train induced boredom’ entry. Typical.

So firstly I’m gonna get the gross TMI bit out of the way. As some women may (or may not!) know, there are certain signs that help you know when your body is ovulating, one of which being a change in the er.. ‘stuff’ down there. I don’t claim to be particularly in tune with my body, after all how could I be – I’ve had one normal cycle in about 7 years what with being on the pill, the pregnancy and then losing it – but today I noticed that I seemed rather um… fertile. Today of course is exactly two weeks after my miscarriage; trust me to even do a miscarriage right down to the exact day. I bet my period shows up in exactly two weeks time as well. Apparently I am perfect at the entire reproductive cycle except for the important part of staying pregnant…. Oh well there’s always next time, I’m trying to be done with feeling sorry for myself now.

I had a lovely weekend with my family, my cousin continues to amaze me with his unbelievable cuteness – he started walking a few weeks ago, exactly on his 1st birthday (we like to do things very exactly in my family apparently haha!) which only makes him more adorable. Especially when he’s dressed such a cute trendy little outfit, I’m not kidding you, he was wearing a skinny tie!!! So so cute!


And although it might seem that I paid no attention to anyone except the baby, it was really lovely to see everyone else too. We did the whole ‘Christmas gift exchange’ thing so that’s a job well done – no chance for Royal Fail to lose my presents for everyone!!

Anyway, roll on Christmas and New Year (and please my period for goodness sake! I know it’s not been long but using protection of that sort is just sooooooooo off-putting to us both that we haven’t really bothered much. Obviously we have a couple of times since the bleeding stopped and we’ve found other things do as well ;-) but I really do miss it!) and everybody have a fabulous time whatever you’re doing! And please send nice ‘please go into labour soon’ thoughts to Alice – the poor girl is now 41 weeks and wants her Samuel to arrive plenty before Christmas please!!

The one after the Christmas lunch

Oh. My. Gosh. I had the hangover from hell this morning! It probably wasn’t that bad really, in the grand scale of hangovers but for someone that rarely even gets them, it was pretty awful. So…. the work Christmas lunch. It was really good fun actually, everyone seemed to enjoy it and there were no major disasters such as people having to sit next to people they don’t like or people getting the wrong food so I’d call it a success!! The hardcore drinkers stayed later into the evening and we started doing shots (I think this is where I should have stopped haha!) of tequila and one of Samuel-buca as well (ergg nasty stuff!).

I did get a bit upset later in the evening (luckily quite discreetly) and disappeared off to the bathroom, however my lovely boss saw me go (she knows the story obviously) and followed me in which I was very grateful for. I thought perhaps the alcohol was a bit to blame as I’ve been ok for the last few days but then again, I drank quite a bit on Saturday and Sunday and was fine both those times… I think it was a bit to do with David not being there this time. Strangely though, as I was about to leave I got a text from him saying "When are you coming home? I need a cuddle, I feel sad xxxxx" and of course there’s no way he could’ve known about me, we must be connected by a psychic link or something!

This week is literally crawling along at a snails pace, in fact it’s more like the pace of a snail that has a limp and is dragging a huge iron weight behind it! Of course today is even worse as I’m not feeling my best and I didn’t get in until later than usual so the prospect of staying late is hanging over my head and filling me with dread. I’m really not enjoying work at the moment, I feel so bored and frustrated all the time – I guess perhaps some time off that isn’t due to some horrible injustice like losing my baby will do me some good. Can’t it just hurry up and be the Christmas break already??? Seven more working days….

Oh Motivation, Motivation where art thou?????

The one with the secret cousin's birthday party

It’s my work Christmas lunch today! And of course the gorgeous Matt won the X-Factor and I am now the proud owner of “When we collide” which is, in my opinion (I know I’m horribly biased!) the only decent winners single to ever be spawned by that programme. So yay finally some good things are happening (yes I know I’m grasping at straws here haha).

I’m doing better again today. I suppose every passing day makes it easier. Spot would’ve been 8 weeks today but I’m not going to keep doing the counting thing I promise! I’m just lucky to have my lovely hubby and now we have the whole Christmas/New Years period to practice making another one :-) arg which reminds me, we still haven’t bought any protection. It almost seems silly to be using it but I really don’t want to take the chance of falling before my periods even return and it somehow causing any complications, and not knowing dates etc. Best to start with a clean slate I think.

I am doing a flying visit to Nottingham for a family birthday party this Saturday, for the 14th birthday of my secret cousin that I never knew about until about three years ago (long story involving my uncle getting two women pregnant at the same time!)…. I am quite looking forward to it actually, plus it’s a good opportunity to do a Santa drop-off and give everyone their presents. Plus best of all, I get to see my gorgeous chubby bubba Adam!! He is just so yummy. I hope he gives me lots of cuddles! I can’t believe he is 1 year old already.

On another quick note – anyone who happens to stumble in here by accident (sorry about the dust and tumbleweed!!), please send all your good thoughts and wishes to Alice as Samuel (Baby boy #5!) is due today!!! Good luck Alice :-)

Ps - how much does my Christmas cocktail rock??

The one where I'm back to work

Oh dear. Poor neglected little blog, I haven’t forgotten you. It’s difficult to summon up something nice to write about. All I can think of is my poor little Spot. I’m sorry; I know I’m being melodramatic. Just humour me for now, this is a huge deal to me.

MIL, in one of her usual bouts of ‘sensitivity’, decided to tell me last Tuesday (yes folks, about 24 hours after I miscarried) that a girl we know at work is pregnant. Quite how, in ANY way, this was supposed to be beneficial information to me at this time I really don’t know. Actually as a general rule, I’ve not had any major ‘bump envy’ since losing mine but this girl is a bit of a special circumstance – she is nearly the same age as me, only got married about a month before me….. and she gets to keep her baby, whereas I didn’t. I don’t wish her (or anyone!) anything bad, I really don’t, but it’s going to be so hard for me watching her knowing that I should be there too. So from that perspective, I think perhaps MIL thought she was preparing me but personally I think I would have been far better equipped to deal with this a few months down the line when the girl actually starts to show, rather than 24 hours after losing my own baby. Just my opinion but whatever. Now I just wish that I didn’t know anything about it because every time I see her I want to cry. I could be blissfully unaware right now… hell, I could’ve even been pregnant again myself before I ever found out about hers.

The lunch for 11 at our flat yesterday went well – my husband is a culinary genius! Everyone was very impressed with him, none more so than me! (Side note – I just realized I typed the word ‘husband’ without having to stop and think about it – I think I’m finally getting the hang of this Mr & Mrs Ralph thing! It’s only taken 4 months!) In fact we realized this morning that yesterday was our 4 month wedding anniversary so it was quite nice that we spent it with close friends. Our 6 month one (don’t worry, after the first year I’ll stop counting every month!) is two days before Valentines Day so I am hoping to book some kind of trip, or at least a night at a nice hotel for that weekend. I love him so much, I don’t know what I’d have done without him this last week.

Speaking of how much I love him…. How glad will we both be when this bleeding has stopped (it pretty much has actually) and we’ve been to get some.. er.. protection because OMG it’s been a while. I mean ok it’s only been 8 days but to us, it feels like a lifetime. Obviously we will not be attempting procreation for a few more weeks but practice makes perfect!

The one with WHITE Terry's chocolate orange.... OMFG

The hospital was fine, I just had a repeat blood test and hopefully the results will show my hcg levels are back at zero or as good as. I will ring them today as I never heard yesterday although I was told I would.

Anyway in a last ditch effort to keep myself cheered up, I will move on to more trivial things. I have just discovered that Terry's chocolate orange do a white chocolate version which is possibly the yummiest thing ever. I'm not usually a comfort eater (I'm more the 'depression induced starvation' type, as people probably remember from previous episodes) but I have to admit the white chocolate is going down quite nicely. Plus for once I'm feeling marginally good about my figure (at this point, I'll take anything that makes me happy) as of course all the pregnancy bloating has gone right down with the bleeding and I'm back to my skinny, ribby, childless self again.... OK so I'm not doing so good at keeping cheerful, moving on again.

We have friends coming over for a Christmas lunch on Sunday. The group of us usually books a table in a restaurant somewhere but this year we thought (David and I) that it would be cheaper and a lot more fun to just cram everyone into the flat and cook a massive Christmas dinner and then just get tipsy together! Of course we asked a contribution of £5 a head from everyone for the shopping and it's a BYOB situation, but it still makes it far cheaper for everyone than a restaurant plus it'll be a lot more relaxed and we can just hang out all evening as well. Of course it's been slightly tainted by the fact that we were going to tell everyone about our pregnancy (it might seem early to have been doing that but this group comprises our very closest friends only) and now... well to be honest, we're just thinking we won't say anything about it, after all there's not much point really and it'll probably just depress everyone. There I go again, bringing the mood down. I guess it's only natural really, my mind never stays off it for very long.

I'm almost looking forward to going back to work on Monday, I guess partially because being on my own really isn't helping me anymore and also because it shows life getting back to normal which makes our second attempt seem closer. Oh by the way, on that subject the midwife didn't have much to say other than that they advise not having unprotected sex until after my first natural period which of course I already knew. So unless we feel differently after the first period (or more likely just sick of using condoms!) we are planning to leave it one more cycle after that which would bring us to February I think.

I will be glad when this year is over. It started out amazing what with getting engaged (well technically I suppose that was last year), getting married, deciding to start a family, being lucky enough to conceive so quickly... I suppose we were overdue a bit of bad luck. All I hope now is that it was just a random blip and that there will be no problems next time, I know there's no reason for us to think there will be (apparently we have no higher chance of it happening again than anybody else) and of course next time I will now be able to ask for an early scan, so I suppose that's a mildly silver lining - I can't wait to actually see one of my little ones and know that everything is ok. But I'll never forget my little Spot... July 26th next year will be a strange day for me.

The one with some sort of update

I thought I might feel like doing some major rambling update about just how rubbish I feel, I guess maybe one day I will still want to but for now - the short version.

After Sunday night and the spotting, it continued through until Monday and got a bit redder, bright red but with no pain or cramps whatsoever. I didn't go into work (obviously) and called the Early Pregnancy Unit at my hospital. They couldn't fit me in for a scan any sooner than Wednesday and I can only assume they didn't think I was an emergency case as I was experiencing no pain and the bleeding was still fairly light. Anyway by this point I had kinda figured 'What will be will be' so it was just the waiting around that bothered me really. Anyway, David went to uni as normal that afternoon and at about 5pm I noticed some light cramps starting which I tried to convince myself I was just imagining because I was so worried and scared but as they gradually got worse (and worse!!) I started to know that wasn't the case. Anyway David got home and we went straight to A&E where we got seen at record speed (the fact that I was crying my eyes out and kept getting massive cramps in the waiting room probably helped that!). So first I did a urine sample (with quite a bit of blood in - the bleeding got a bit worse right around the time the cramping started). Then I was taken through to give a blood sample which we had to wait in the hospital about an hour for the results of in a nice side room with a bed and I started to calm down a bit. Then a lovely doctor came in do an internal examination and she used a speculum as well which was not a great time for my first experience of that! I was so tense and shaking that (TMI alert) the only way I could even relax enough for her to put it in there was to imagine somehow that it was er.. David and not a speculum (you get the idea!).

Anyway that caused a bit more bleeding but by this point I was just so distraught and I just knew Spot had to be gone (or going.) Then she told me the urine test had come back NEGATIVE. I couldn't quite believe it, when I'd had such a good positive only 3 days before hand! We agreed that the hormones must have just plummeted very quickly. They rang me in the morning and said that the hormone levels in my blood were very low (but not gone) and that I needed to have a repeat blood test on Thursday (so today!) to check my hormone levels are going down properly and we'll get to speak to the early pregnancy midwife about everything.

It now seems the bleeding and the cramps are almost over... a lot of people (well the people we've told, including a couple who've been through miscarriages themselves) seem to think it's all calmed down awfully quickly and that I shouldn't completely lose hope yet. But I'm absolutely refusing to think like that, as far as I'm concerned a negative urine test (albeit at the end of a day full of trips to the loo, so most of the hormones would have been gone anyway) and the low blood hormone level pretty much say it all to me. I've been off work this week so I've had plenty of time to think.... I'm doing better now. On Sunday night and Monday morning I just didn't want to do anything, say anything or go anywhere at all - everything I could think of.. telling parents, having a shower to clean up, letting work know what had happened and why I wouldn't be in... I just couldn't bear to even think of any of them. I just wanted to cry and cry every time I had another cramp because I couldn't bear the feeling of my body killing my baby. I'm only grateful that, if it had to happen at all, it was now and not later. Anyway David was (and is) utterly amazing - he looked after me perfectly, of course we had a big cuddle and a cry when we got back from the hospital but he really was so perfect - he made me drinks, he dealt with all the family phone calls, he called into work for both of us and just held me when I was being completely useless, even though he was going through it all too. When he went back to work on yesterday, he left me on the sofa with the phone, the remote, my mobile and a cup of tea and kept ringing me throughout the day to make sure I was alright. Plus all the other things that I can't even remember or describe properly now but just made me think all over again why I am so lucky to have married him. And we have each other and our chances of this happening again are no higher than anybody else's next time.

On that subject, with regards to 'trying' again - we've not spoken to the midwife yet for advice but our own thoughts are this - wait for my natural period to come back after this (hopefully 4-6 weeks) and then wait out a full cycle (using condoms of course! I don't think celibacy is really an option for us!) This is mainly for my own purposes as well as dating purposes - I still don't really know my cycles that well after being on the pill, I only had one natural period before getting pregnant! Anyway then we'll stop using protection after that (so around February time). Of course I am fertile again pretty much from now, as soon as the hormone levels go down to zero, but I think at least one normal period, preferably two are a good idea. So... watch this space again (you'll be doing a lot of that!)

I'll be updating about this afternoons appointment at some point as well anyway. xx

The one where Spot is gone

Ok so the worst case scenario has happened. I'll update later. X

The one with more spotting :-(

Ok so still spotting a bit, it's red... I'm so nervous, last night we called the doctor who told me that without cramps or pain and not much blood it's probably nothing to worry about but I need to ring the early pregnancy unit at the hospital and leave a message for them to schedule me an early scan, hopefully today! Ooohhhh please keep your fingers crossed for me!!

Edited later to add

No scans available until Wednesday :-( arg I don't know how I'm going to bear the wait!! The good news is the bleeding appears to have all but stopped. I'm so scared.

The one where I'm spotting???

Ok very nervous now... Just had a small amount of pink bleeding... Admittedly it was after some rather ermm.. deep penetration, which is apparently fairly normal and usually nothing to worry about, not to mention there's been absolutely no more since but I'm still calling the doctor tomorrow. I'm quite hoping they'll offer me an early scan so I can know my little one is in there once and for all!! Please be ok Spot :-(

The one where I am all but symptomless...

... And slightly worried about it, if I'm honest! Ok so I do have sore nipples and achey boobs, I am more tired than usual, I have had the odd queasy moment and a few headaches... So I guess when I say I'm symptomless, I am in fact lying! But I somehow expected pregnancy to be more obvious lol! I hope everything is ok with my little Spot...

The one with the doctors appointment!

It's my doctors appointment this morning - I used my last Clearblue Digi and I'm still pregnant weeee :-)

Just gotta battle our way through the snow to get there now! Update afterwards!

**Updated later**

The appointment was very quick as expected, I have a midwife appointment in about three weeks so I'm more excited about that!! Woo! So I'll be saving my final test for the morning of the 30th December just to be sure lol!

The one with the snow!!

The view from our balcony -


Bear in mind, our balcony is a good 6 foot off the ground as there's a trench underneath it (full of snow now lol!)

Urg suppose I should battle the 10 minute walk into work :-(

The one with the first possible smell aversion??

Quick note before bed - Spot appears to dislike the smell of curry, it made me a bit gaggy! Yay a tiny symptom! Oh and still napping after work and got sore nipples and slight headaches... That's about it really!!