False Braxton Hicks and Finally Buying Baby Clothes

I'm starting to wonder who's pregnant here as the boyf falls asleep on the sofa far more often than I do. It's as if his body has said to him that he needs to get his sleep now, whilst he still can...

I've been having lots of weird twinges, which of course had me paranoid that I was experiencing Braxton Hicks (vague labour type thing, but not real labour) but I think the bambino just looks likes to jump up and down in my va-jay-jay and has extended her abilities to being able to kick or punch me in my left side...

Yesterday, I finally did it. I brought some baby clothes and I can't believe how small they are! I'm trying to order more stuff on Gap.com at the moment through a US delivery service Borderlinx, which enables UK residents to order from American sites that don't deliver overseas. The exchange rate is so good, it's be too good to miss. In the meantime though, I got some neutral stuff as our paranoia about the margin of error when it comes to girls means that we've decided to get neutral stuff for now....

The boyf has just woken up on the couch and I called him 'sleepy head'. He let male pride rear its head and announced that he was never going to sleep again. That's quite a promise! Unfortunately he's just dozed off again as I heard a distinct snore...

If one more person asks me if I'm afraid about the labour, I will frigging scream. The joys of being pregnant mean that despite the fact that you're cacking yourself about pushing something the size of a basketball out of something that normally fits penises in it, is overriden by the acceptance that it has to happen and obviously you want to see your baby.

Jaysus a Baby Shower

People have been going on at me for ages about having a baby shower and I have succumbed and agreed. Thing is, I think I am only twigging what it is in the context of myself and I suddenly feel very nervous. I can't imagine playing Baby Charades, or Baby Scrabble or other such word puzzles involving baby words. I love babies and I'm excited about the bambino, but I don't do cheesy. I suddenly thought of Miranda in Sex and the City demanding that there weren't storks all over the place and getting really sh*tty with Charlotte who was stork crazy. I'm not anywhere near as bad as that, but I wonder what I've let myself in for.

I have several friends with kids and lots that don't. What if the one's that don't think that I've been snatched by baby aliens? It's like when I went to my friends hen party a few years back and was expecting a pretty wild night. We had some crazy times back in our 'youth' so it wasn't a leap of imagination to expect a bit of sauciness. It was a very placid affair and whilst I also hate cheesy hen nights, especially L plates, there was nothing even remotely sex associated in sight! I remember wondering where the girl who danced on tables and did the occasional bit of flashing on a girls night out went! I felt like I hardly knew her!

I was going to leave it all to my friend but now that I'm paranoid about a frilly affair, I think I'll do some research on this baby shower stuff...

The Last Stretch

I'm 30 weeks pregnant tomorrow and I have been dreaming about going into labour early for the past few nights. I don't ever get to the point where I even start to have contractions but I wake up feeling panicked about five times a night. If I have palpitations dreaming about the thought of it, God help me if the dream moves on a bit with actual contractions!

Tomorrow, I have decided, will be the day I put together my What to Do in an Emergency list for my crackerjack colleagues. If I leave it in the hands of the God's, I could be having vulture boy, Barry from Eastenders (my boss), and MSlash getting hot water from the tea machine and using the jackets and coats for 'towels'. They would keel over if my waters broke or anything untoward happened. Bless 'em!

Because the boyf sometimes goes abroad for a few days with work, I want to ensure that there is a smooth system for what is to happen if I need to go to hospital as when I had the severe reaction to my Wagamama's salad in January and ended up in hospital, it was like a bad comedy trying to let my family know. Wouldn't you know that the one day that the boyf goes away after almost two months and I end up throwing up repeatedly and collapsing, my mother's mobile is broken, the bro was in Canada, the boyf's mum was in Africa, and lil bro was being a typical 17 year old and screening his calls. The list will have a plan a, b and c, and no doubt it'll get f*cked up....

I am soooo tired at the moment that I think about going to sleep from about an hour after I woke up. This makes for a veeery long day. The bambino is kicking like there is no tomorrow because of the reduced space she has due to the size she is at this stage of the pregnancy. This means that she has taken to manoeuvring what feels like elbows or her feet and ramming them hard against my tummy so that they poke out like funny little bumps. I give her little rubs which then seems to set her off into lots of wriggles. She's a funny little thing!

Someone asked if we are all set for the bambino's arrival. Set? The only thing that the baby has is a pair of Havana sandles which a friend brought for her in Brazil. We've 'chosen' the pushchair, pram and car seat and that's it. Jaysus we have a lot to do.....

The Bambino at 21 weeks

Don't read this if you don't want to know the sex...

This was the scan where we found out the sex...sort of... Unfortunately the bambino is such an active baby that it was difficult to pin down to be sure about the sex. Eventually the midwife said that she was 'pretty certain' that it's a girl...but not to go overboard on pink.

My acupuncturist had done the dousing thing with the pendulum and it said that the baby was a boy and this was when I was about 10 weeks pregnant, so for ages we'd thought it was a boy going nuts in there.

We're very excited about our little girl who is a kicking maniac that doesn't like to rest very often. In the scan pic she is putting her thumb into her mouth. This was after showing off and moving around so much that they couldn't even measure her head initially as she was moving the hands and legs around whilst looking upwards. After a while I had to bounce up and down on the bed so that she eventually moved her head into a measurable position.

Seeing how much she had developed from when we'd seen her at 14 weeks was unbelievable. We saw her little bum, heart, kidneys, feet and all sorts of detail. She also likes to use the umbilical cord as a rattle.... I thought she was blowing bubbles but it turned out that it was the umbilical cord....

Because the sex of the baby is potentially in dispute, everyone we know is speculating about the sex. My ma, who claims to be psychic insists that it's a girl, the boyf is paranoid that it's a boy now (when we thought it was a boy, he became paranoid that it was a girl) and the rest of our friends are divided. Maybe we would have been better off just not asking about the sex but whatever comes out, we can hardly wait!

The Chosen Pushchair - Quinny Buzz

I'm pretty sure we've chosen our pushchair. It's the Quinny Buzz which we'll buy as a travel system with the Dreami Carrycot and a Maxi-Cosi car seat. It comes in a few different colours but we haven't decided what colour we'll go with yet.

I thought it would take us a lot longer to research but because we were looking for a travel system, it narrowed down the search to just a few brands. I'll post about the other travel systems that we looked at (Bugaboo, Mamas and Papas, Micralite) on a separate post.

As we'll be using a mixture of public transport, walking and driving it makes sense for us to buy something that caters to everything and whilst it is slightly bigger than we had hoped at 12.8kg, it has a lot of features that resonate well with us, such as a front and rear facing pushchair (pictured) which can also be angled to different positions. It unfolds automatically at a touch (it can be locked too) and the wheels are gas something-or-other so they're great for when you coming off or going onto trains, although bus drivers may not like it so much! It manouvers really well and it's a very smooth experience. We'll use it from when the bambino is 6 months old.

The pram is really cute and the hood of it has a handle incorporated in it which helps with when you take it off the frame. It comes with adaptors which can be fixed to the frame for when you want to set it up as a pram. When we tried to figure out how to do this without a demonstration, the boyf faffed around for a while with it, not realising that there were adaptors. We were very pleased with ourselves when we saw it attached to the frame but quicklybecame nervous at how wobbly it seemed, and then a woman walked by and it fell off! Fortunately it's not complex to set it up as a pram but it doesn't come off easily either. Apparently people use the carrycot as a moses basket as well, but I don't think we'll do that. It's nice to know that we have the option though!


The Maxi-Cosi car seat will be mostly used in the car but we can use it for taking the bambino on short jaunts in it by using it as a pushchair. Apparently they should only be in it for no more than two hours a day though. Maxi-Cosi is also supposed to be the best car seat brand so we feel we've really lucked out by finding the Quinny Buzz travel system.

It doesn't come cheap though! It's supposed to retail for around £500 (close to $1000) but we will buy ours online or wherever we get the best deal. Annoyingly there was a fantastic deal on where we could have got it for just under £400 on one website, but for the sake of our sanity and space, we aren't planning to get the pushchair till we move/month before baby due. I am monitoring prices because if something really good comes up again, we'll just go for it.

A place for my pregnancy waffle

I set up this blog a few months ago when nobody even knew I was pregnant and I was wandering around with my little secret. Of course I had good intentions to diarise my secret pregnancy but a flurry of work, headaches, and life, and OK, a dodgy memory let it fall to the wayside.

Of course by the time I started thinking about doing a pregnancy and baby blog, I had revealed my secret. Since then, whilst I have shared my thoughts and fears about pregnancy and squeezing the bambino out of my va-jay-jay, there is vast amounts of information I want to share and find out. The boyf and I are not that clued up about everything and as the arrival of the bambino fast approaches (I'm 28 weeks today), we are starting to make the mountain of decisions that we need to about what we want to buy and how we want to start out.

I don't do things by half. I met the boyf a just under a year ago after a few years of juggling serial bad taste in men and an immune system disease. I met him just as life started to slot into place personally for me and my health took a turn for the better with the help of acupuncture. The past year has been fantastic and even finding out that we were pregnant became the most amazing thing after we'd gotten over the shock. I really couldn't be happier.

So what will this blog be about? My pregnancy, most likely the trauma of giving birth (something that has been a life long fear) and everything and anything about pregnancy and babies as I'm having to learn and research a lot. I've had a lot of people wanting to know what I plan to buy, what clothes I've brought and all sorts so this will be a home for it. It's a very exciting and slightly daunting time - Bambino due in 12 weeks, selling a flat, buying a house, learning to drive, preparing for bambino arrival, going on maternity leave in 6 weeks and managing crackhead grandmothers (not actual crack). Pray for me....

Pregnancy Support Pillow

Sleeping, sitting, standing, bending, pretty much everything that requires me to move a muscle is becoming quite a task. I've just ordered a multi-purpose support pillow on Mothercare (bit unimpressed with the steep delivery charge) which should be arriving tomorrow.

Apparently I can wedge this under the bump which is becoming rather weighty...but I can also use this as a feeding pillow. I fed my friends newborn the other day and even though he's a tiny little thing, after a while he started to weigh down so this pillow should prove to be a handy number.

£19.99 plus more postage than I can to remember...from Mothercare