The one with the pumpkin babygro!!!

*sigh* Another big gap. I suppose I’m at least managing weekly(ish) which is something.

So, updates. David’s grandpa’s funeral was on Monday, it all went off without a hitch (apart from the atmosphere between branches of the family… long story… which could be cut with a knife!) and all in all, was really quite a nice day. David coped really well and I’m very proud of him! He carried the coffin into the chapel as well, along with his brother and two cousins which I thought was really nice.

Pregnancy wise I’m rather proud of myself, I’m still doing well and starting to wonder what all the fuss is about (you just WATCH me eat my words in a few weeks time haha!). Mostly my nights aren’t too bad (I’ve gotten toilet breaks down to a fine art – I shuffle to the en suite barely opening my eyes, no lights go on and when I’m done I pretty much just fall back into bed without even properly waking up) except for the weird bicycle seat pain which is often worse at night and causes havoc sometimes when I try and turn over (which is not a dignified sight these days, believe me). I am getting more tired which I guess is to be expected with the extra 4lb of baby not to mention all the other stuff that I’m carting around with me these days so boy, am I thankful not to be carrying any other excess weight so far… I feel heavy enough as it is!




I have finally caved and snaffled myself a few bargainous baby boy clothes from eBay (love that place!) despite us saying we weren’t going to buy any clothes, knowing full well that we’d end up being given loads. However I saw a couple of lovely bundles going so cheap that I couldn’t resist, plus an amazing pumpkin babygro for £1 which just had to be bought… we are having an almost Halloween baby after all…. and it all arrived today and it’s just so cute!!!! So Pip is now well set in the clothes department, even without other people’s contributions (of which there will be many I’m sure). Here is a picture of the pumpkin outfit – I just know he’s going to look too yummy for words wearing it but I simply can’t imagine my. own. baby will be wearing this in just over two months time. So I will be sure to post a picture of that too :-)

One final thing – the driving test is tomorroooooooowwwwww!!!!! “Argghhhhhhhhghhhgh!!!” doesn’t quite cover it if I’m honest. I’m am so nervous, I’m sure I’m going to fail. I don’t really have a logical reason for thinking that, I don’t think my instructor would be letting me take the test unless I at least had a decent chance of passing but still. I just still don’t feel like I can actually drive! It’s like if I don’t have my instructor in the car, I’ll just forget how to do any of it or something. I don’t know. Anyway I have a lesson tonight and an hour with my instructor before the test (so three more hours practice altogether) so please, please let me pass. Not only can we not really afford for me to have more lessons and then get re-tested, I’m also reaching my limits physically on how long I’ll be able to drive for and I so badly want to pass before the baby gets here. Quite where we would find the time or money for me to continue afterwards is beyond me so, yeah it needs to be before. Not that I’m putting myself under any pressure or anything :-)

I will update tomorrow afternoon if I remember and let all of my avid readers (or the tumbleweed!) know how I got on.

Until next time…

The one with sad news (but on the bright side... 30 weeks and 1 day!)

Oh my Lordy Lordy. We are officially in count DOWN mode people. Single number weeks. 9 weeks and 6 days to go before this little man stops looking after himself in there and requires me to actually do things for him. Dear God what have I done? LOL. Just kidding(ish).

I’ll get the sad bit out of the way first, and quickly – David’s grandpa finally passed away on Friday evening (12-08-11) at 10:03pm. I must emphasise that when I say ‘finally’ I don’t mean “Fiiiinnnaaallllyyy!!!” as in “About bloody time too!” but only ‘finally’ as in, when he was taken into the hospice on Wednesday morning they didn’t think he’d even make the journey. Then when he got there, they didn’t think he’d last the rest of the day. As it turned out, he stubbornly hung on in there for about another 46 hours after that, driving us all the despair with about a hundred “Is this it?” moments. Talk about a grand exit :-)

David and his family are coping very well (some more so than others, it seems to me) considering. Obviously they are all devastated but trying to look at the positive side – in his last few weeks he wasn’t himself at all and his last few days at the hospice were spent in a coma so it is good to think that he is not suffering now wherever he is. I’m not really sure about handling all this kind of stuff, having (very luckily!) never been through it with a member of my own so far but I’m told I did very well. I don’t know if the fact that I didn’t cry makes me some kind of horrible heartless person, I hope nobody thought so but I think I’m not really a crying sort of person in general – it’s not like I bottle it up or anything, crying just wouldn’t be my chosen response to a situation like that but it certainly doesn’t mean I wasn’t sad like everyone else. The thing is, I’m such a practical person so that is how I do things (as does David to a certain extent) so we were the ones tidying up everyone’s bits and bobs (when roughly 15 people have all but lived in a room for 3 straight days, there are a lot of bits and bobs to tidy – believe me!) and sorting out drinks for everyone. Although I surprised myself (yes really!) with a rare streak of sentimentality when, amidst all the chaos of people leaving the room to cry, going to make phone calls, check on the children in the playroom and talk to nurses/each other, I realized that if I left there would be no-one in the room with him. For some reason this just seemed wrong to me so I waited in there with him until David and his mum suddenly realized they didn’t know where I was and came back looking for me. I have to say, I think his mum was quite touched when she realized why I was still in there. I don’t know what made me do it, I’m not convinced in life after death or anything like that but the fact that he’d only passed away about 15 minutes ago and the room had completely emptied (all for perfectly good reasons I hasten to add!) just seemed a bit like abandoning him so I stayed.

That wasn’t as quick as I’d hoped but oh well! Pregnancy... What to say about pregnancy these days, other than the first panicked paragraph in this entry. My bum/leg/’bicycle seat’ pain is still hanging around, perhaps slightly worse these days but seems to ease off once I start moving around. Night times are now getting pretty tough… I think I must wake about once an hour, either to turn over (this requires a full ‘wake and heave ho’ now and can be quite painful if done wrong!) or to go to the effing toilet! Other than that, I think I’m doing rather well (if I do say so myself) – not much I can complain about, none of the horrible symptoms I mentioned a few weeks ago have appeared yet and my weight gain is still pretty much confined to the bump (although WHAT a bump it is becoming!) and thankfully I’m still happily wearing those expensive black maternity jeans (remember those ones I bought at about 22 weeks that I was terrified to grow out of!?). So they only need to last another 7 weeks of work…. C’mon bum/thighs stay small (well the same size, perhaps small is pushing it haha!), I know you can do it!

The one where I'm 29 weeks and 2 days

It’s almost here…. 30 weeks! I am starting to feel quite uncomfortable, particularly when Pip manages to get himself into all manner of awkward positions (his current favourite seems to be sitting with something large, I’m thinking either head or bum, sticking out of my side!! He never stays like it for long but in the last few days he’s been there quite a lot!) If he’s managing to get himself transverse, I hope he doesn’t decide he likes it too much and stay there! Another irritation (particularly at night when trying to turn over) is this new pain I have – I like to call it ’Twelve hours riding on a small, hard bicycle seat’ pain. I hope that describes it adequately for you lol! It seems to ease off once I get moving around in the mornings, although not completely – I also feel like Pip might be lower down now than he was before, I have this sort of pressurey feeling ‘down there’ but this keeps being contradicted by Pip’s other position (described above) which is quite high up! So basically I have no idea what my son is up to in there, except that he’s a wriggly little monster :-)

There’s something I probably should have put in quite a few entries previously, to keep the timeline in perspective – but it’s too late now so I’ll have to fill in most of the story in this one. David’s grandpa is very ill. Very ill as in, it’s not looking likely he’ll be here for Pip’s arrival now. After being discharged from hospital (he was being bounced back and forth between Kingston and St Georges) being told there was nothing more to be done really except keep taking the various medications and try and be comfortable, today his doctor told us he’s going to take him off all medication as it’s not helping him anymore. Apparently it’s just prolonging the inevitable (which we already knew really) and it’s probably causing him more distress to be dragging things out than to just let it happen naturally. I’m not sure how long he’ll last without the medication but I can’t imagine it’ll be long.

David is so sad that his grandpa won’t be here to see his son… it literally breaks my heart to see his face when he thinks about any of it, it just sort of crumples and I know there’s nothing I can do to make it go away. All we can hope now is that it’s as quick and peaceful as possible I suppose. I know he’s ready for this, he’s said as much himself many times, so I just hope the family don’t find it too hard to let him go.

The one with the bunny eviction

Ok. I’m going to endeavour to be a bit more interesting here. Most of my favourite blogs are so super funny and interesting, even when describing the mundane - occasionally I like to think that I am too sometimes but this blog has (rather inevitably I fear) become a bit of a pregnancy-fest. So. I’m going to try something a bit wacky here folks….a NON pregnancy/baby related entry!!! With the exception of this paragraph in which I’m going to tell you that I love my little boy sooooo much and can’t believe I get to meet him in just 11.5 short weeks (give or take). More importantly, I get to finish work for NINE WHOLE MONTHS in 10 weeks! Woohoo!

Right. Well there’s big news on the bunny related front… unfortunately it’s not good :-( So I know technically we were always flying a bit close to the wind by even having the rabbits on the balcony as the building rules do state that having anything other than a table and chairs on your balcony – no drying washing, no smoking, no storage of gym equipment, bikes, pushchairs etc… is not allowed. So it could be argued that we should have realized that this might happen at some point. However, seeing as other people persistently broke those rules (one other flat even had a rabbit at one point!) and the actual owner of our flat (although technically only responsible for the inside of the flat which apparently does not include the balcony) had no problems whatsoever with us having them there, we figured that we’d probably gotten away with it.

That is, until the building took on a different management/maintenance company who decided they were going to enforce these ridiculous rules and suddenly all the outdoor laundry rooms, gyms, playrooms and just about every other use for a balcony you can think of started mysteriously disappearing in favour of soulless carbon copy balconies with a table and chair set and perhaps *shock* even a plant or two if the occupant was feeling daring. Then our landlady received a narky letter (the first ever letter on the subject can I just say) stating that if the rabbits weren’t moved, they would be pursuing legal action against her. So the poor little bunnies have been callously turfed off their balcony and taken to live at their grandparents (well, David’s parents house). No more cute little faces watching TV through the patio doors, no more furry little friends running up to the patio doors when they heard us come in the front door…. It’s really very sad :-(

Not to mention that it’s a massive pain in the a$$ as it now means we will be making the 20 minute trip up to David’s parents an absolute minimum of once a week to clean them, probably more as obviously it’s not really fair to always rely on the in-laws to feed them and give them exercise time (something that was nicely taken care of when we were able to just leave them on the secure balcony all day!). All in all, we really could’ve done without the hassle. Never mind.

Other than that whole drama, the best and most exciting thing to happen to me in recent times is that I got to eat a delicious fresh bakery cupcake (you know the sort – the one with a big swirl of icing that’s about as thick as the cake itself!) for breakfast on Saturday and Sunday…. Not exactly a super nutritious breakfast for me and my.. erm…. little resident, but yummy all the same. Only problem being, I am now addicted (I blame the sugar) and have a continuous urge to go out and buy more and just replace all my other food with them. (Can you say ‘gestational diabetes’??? ) Perhaps not such a great idea then.

Until next time… [insert witty closing line here]