Just MC and ready to try again? Pack your leathers, black nail polish, air guitar and jump in the mosh pit for some serious metalling. All welcome! (Part 18)

X posted with Poppy! I am trying to keep an open mind, I really am, and I think it will be fine but I guess it's so far from what I would actually 'want' (if I wasn't fucking diabetic) that it's taking a while to get my head around. I guess it's better to start now rather than in, hopefully, seven months time.

Er... SIX months time. Or even FIVE months time, I mean!

What a bugger about feeling so sick. Sounds crap. Is it def the metformin then?

A bunfight? Eeeek! Maybe namechange first

Yes, I am in Calderdale. Will google in a bit (currently wasting time on guilty pleasure, the Daily Mail website - such arse, but strangely compelling, especially the 'comments' sections at the end of articles)

baby a friend of mine had what sounded like a lovely c-section experience with her twins. As it was planned she hadn't had to go through hours of labour prior to the surgery so she was rested and calm, and so were the team who did the surgery. The doctors were very good at encouraging skin to skin contact as soon as the babies were born (and had been checked out) and they made sure she saw them when they were still all sticky . Her husband took some photos (not of the gory bits mind you) and all in all it sounded like a very gentle entrance into the world for her little ones. There can be some fantastic birth experiences even with the extreme end of "medicalised birth" so if that is what you end up having just keep that in mind I think the best approach to birth is to explore what you would like to happen, but also to keep a very open mind. At the end of the day the safe arrival of your child is the outcome everyone wants.

blue I can't blame this on babybrain just yet (maybe "fertility-drug brain" ?) but I have just done something akin to your Tesco mishap...just ordered DS Christmas present from Amazon last week - I hasn't arrived so I checked my email for the tracking number..tracked parcel and guess what, delivered to an address I lived in 5 years ago. Obviously for some reason that came up as the default delivery address and I didn't notice.... BAH! Just ordered another and hopefully whoever lives there now will return it to the post office or something. Thankfully wasn't anything too expensive (£25 ish) but still sooooo annoyed with myself.

Well.....and I am sure you all really want to know this.......my side effects got a tad worse last night. I had felt ok all day (bit nauseous but manageable) but I had to get up twice in the night with a terrible upset stomach so I feel so tired and drained today. DH was so lovely about it this morning though - I promised him I wouldn't go out and he said he expected me to be snuggled up in bed with my book when he got home from work

That's all very well of course but I have the small matter of DS to look after....I feel it may be a Cbeebies day for us today....

Happy first of December all! Hope the advent calendars are out in force for those who partake!

baby i know which area you live in but cant work out who your Primary Care Trust are, are you Calderdale? Anyway i would talk to your MW about the NHS Parent Craft classes, you should get them free through your PCT. I found them really good and made a good group of mates i-got pissed with them only just this friday gone

My friend went to NCT and to be fair has made loads of friends through it but she wasnt impressed with the actual classes.

Go onto Pregnancy topic and see if there are any NCT threads, if not create one to ask about them. Disclaimer - could turn into a bunfight

Ooooh, I am now intriguied about the NCT and their fanatic breastfeeding / no c-sec policies! I do realise that breastmilk is best blah blah blah but hate this bullying, from what it seems, to make people do it. My cousins girlfriend said she had the health visitor look at her in horror when she said she was considering mixing both formula and breast, and this was when the baby was 8 weeks, because she was getting exhausted and also wanted my cousin to be able to take over a bit with the feeding occassionally. She later saw a GP (presumably for something else) who said that before she had her baby she was exclusive breastfeeding all the way, but now she has a child of her own she is a lot more open minded and thinks the approach easiest for the parents is by far the best. And it's not like FF babies are shrivelled skinny things while breastfed one's are big bouncers is it?

Glad to hear your c-sec too was okay, Marthas. Thanks to everyone who's telling me things like this, as it's a reasonable (I am guessing) possibility it is good to get some positive angles. Still think I'd be terrified but I suppose almost everyone is, aren't they? Being cut open while awake isn't a daily occurance after all.

Am now going to Google parent craft groups...

right trying to catch up with you chatty lot so will jump up and down!!

pie the sleeping thing is just a phase i think, DS did exactly the same, from the age of 6 weeks he slept 12 hours a night (some of my friends hated me for it ) and then a little while ago he went right back and wouldnt settle till about 8pm then was up at 5am however it didnt last, especially since the dark nights he has settled at 7.30pm and sleeps till around 7am (or later if weekends) he too did the whole 'book' thing and whingeing when i left the room. just a phase - honestly

poppy so sorry i xposted with your consultant info, excellent news and soooo good that you have an action plan. i know nothing about the diabetes medication but if the cap fits many may fingers crossed

waves to MsScarlett we gonna be 2WW buddies then? i shall be holding your hand next week!

waves at baby too! i had an emergency CS and was absolutely fine, i felt ok after 2 weeks, fine after 4 weeks then great after 6. not a problem honestly and-it was good to have DH running round after me

also i didnt do NCT - poppy far from flaming you i am right with you, i have heard lots about NCT being all Nazi about not having a CS and if you choose to formula feed then you are the scum of the earth. well i had a CS and FF'd DS so i would probably be blacklisted from them anyway! one night when i had too much wine i emailed them and told them that they needed a FF support group as they were too biased towards BFing, funnily enough i got a snippy reply from them telling me that 'it is unlikely we will have a meeting group for your needs in our area'

go to the PCT Parent Craft groups instead - i have made some fab friends through my group!

off to bed now but speak soon

Just read last post and realised it isn't very clear - I meart that hopefully I am getting neurotic about drips etc with no good reason to be, not that I hope to be wired up for no good reason!

Farking hell. And I call myself a writer.

Perhaps it is time for bed.

Argghhhhh! And I've had two shandies too! Eeeek!

MissScarlett I seriously doubt it was anything to do with your bathing habits too. Good luck re the home birth, I am quite envious as I now feel, hopefully without good reason, I will be wired up to things that beep and have drips EVERYWHERE.

From NHS choices website:

...If you choose to drink, protect your baby by not drinking more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week, and don't get drunk. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises women who are pregnant to avoid alcohol in the first three months in particular, because of the increased risk of miscarriage...

So, JUST DON'T!! For the first 12 weeks and then the moderate message.

I stopped going in the sauna and hot tub but carried on going in the spa pool, just being careful to keep moving and get out after ten minutes, and bathing as normal (hottish) - I was concerned and did go and read the studies and concerns, looked up the temp of the spa pool etc, I feel I took the right level of precaution. Course I still lost the baby anyway though seriously doubting it was anything to do with my bathing habits.

Didn't apply when I was pregnant with my first MC or with DD as I wasn't a member of a gym and only had a shower room at home then.

Pie - I didn't show with DD until about 30 weeks, pretty late, she was very snug in there, hiding. Next time I'm pregnant though it'll be my fourth technically so who knows. I like bumps though. Actually growing a little food baby myself

I didn't do NCT with DD and have lots of parent friends now so I'm not sure I'd bother with classes. They don't offer the NHS to second time parents round here either so I wasn't planning on those either. I hear they're quite hospital based too and I prefer home birth for me when possible. I did have my latest MC in the hospital but I had my first at home and DD there too, thankfully I've no medical issues to rule it out, fingers crossed.

I am back after my lovely hot, but not scorching, bath.

I agree that coolish / tepid showers or baths (extra urgh to the idea of tepid bath) just make you feel more grubby. Even when I was travelling I used to try and stay in places with hot running water, despite the outside temp, as cool water didn't make me feel very clean at all.

To be honest, and even after the MMC and me feeling more cautious etc this time round, I find a lot of the do's and don'ts a bit ridiculous. The hair dye one is another that I find bonkers, but also another one the tepid shower friend has rigidly adhered to. I can understand the booze guidelines but I think it has actually gone back to 'JUST DON'T' now hasn't it? Bum. I better put that bottle of tequila back in the cupboard then...

Lol. That's the thing though, isn't it? Because there's no guarantee that anyone taking advice will be sensible/have common sense then the government has quite a problem when it comes to wording advice. Hence for so many years the message re drinking alcohol when pregnant was JUST DON'T! instead of the moderate message (well, more specific 1-2 units, once or twice per week) these days.

PreDC, to me a hot bath was one where I actually did used to boil myself! I loved it I would get out all red, sweaty and could hear my heartbeat in my ears. As you rightly say, probably not good for me at all... but could have been fatal for an early pregnancy. I can't bear a tepid bath or shower - makes me feel dirty , so I had to seek out what really was acceptable (ie it can still be hot, but not hot enough to make you red/sweat!) rather than the blanket 'no hot baths' advice.

I do, yes, but also think a little common sense is in order. A nice hot bath is fine surely, whereas semi boiling yourself alive is not good regardless of being pregnant or not.

My friend took this advice to quite an extreme when she was pregnant (actually, she probably still is, her due date was yesterday) and her shower was on tepid. She looked at me like I was about to start smoking crack when I said I wanted to raise the temp of it - 'but you can't, its not good for the baby' she gasped.

....manda yes I did know about the polos/laxative thing - hoping that the number I have had won't cause a big problem, also it will be hard to tell whether it is that or the Met in any case. It works, so hey I'll take the risk and hope for the best

I know what you mean about pregnancy sparking an interest in human biology and all things related to having babies. When I left school I started training as a midwife and since then I have a bit of a passion for all things childbirth related. That's why perhaps I felt soooo guilty after DS birth - I was ever so idealistic (in a good way) so I did feel rotten afterwards. I only completed the first year of training but it was absolutely fascinating. Trained as a lawyer instead - wish I had stuck with it to be honest but at 19 I just wasn't ready. I would love to go back to it though one day. Have you ever thought of going in to something healthcare related post DCs?

I'm on DF's notebook and his 'r' has been sticking for ages... most of them, I catch and correct but not always - I think it's getting wose

Have a good bath. Not too hot though! You know all about the 'not hot enough to give you red skin/make you sweat/raise you core temp when pregnant', right?

Hey, you know too many of those sugar free polos will have a laxative effect, don'tcha? Also a hinderance to SWI, I should think

By the way, I am not a healthcare professional (DF thinks I should have been a doctor and the number of times I've had his family members 'consult' me is quite amusing!). It's just that when something interests me (and from school, human biology really did, and since my first pregnancy, pregnancy in particular) then I have a voracious appetite to learn all I can about it. It tends to stick, too. The internet has made that learning all the much easier.

Manda it gets 'wose' does it?

Poppy my gun is cocked too. Oh, okay, it isn't really.
I will NOT be able to have a natural birth as I am diabetic and will be induced by 38 weeks. The reason for this is that the placenta has to work three times as hard with me and so it can deteriorate earlier than it would for non diabetics, and this, unfortunately, sounds like a good enough reason to go along with it. If it was a blanket cover all types of diabetics and our arses NHS stance I would question it further, but their reasoning does make sense.

I wish it didn't and I wish I could do it naturally etc etc (waterbirth and home birth would def be out unfortunately, I would actually like to have the option of looking into both of those if it was feasible.) While I think that giving birth has become far too medicalised, it's as if you are ill rather than doing something completely natural, I also think that focussing on the natural side to the detriment of everything else is wrong, and I agree wholeheartedly that making people feel guilty for doing things 'differently' to their agenda is also wrong.

I am also too tired to re write that last sentance to make it shorter and make more sense.

Sorry.

Hot bath I think...

Thanks Manda

Nausea is not as bad as yesterday evening and I haven't had an upset stomach at all today so all in all feeling good. I felt sort of like I was motion sick this morning so I have been chomping on sugar free polos all day and that seems to have done the trick

Geez, poppy why would we shoot you for having an experience and then developing an opinion because of it?

How's the stomach/nausea?

blue I'm laughing about your double delivery! Er, with you, obviously, not at you It only gets wose from now!

Pie I had forgotten about the trapped wind post c section....yes that was horrid.

blue I was similar with DS re not putting on much weight. It was the same all of the way through, I was actually lighter after I gave birth than I had been at my booking appointment. The midwives said not to worry and count myself as one of the lucky ones :) Don't worry you will be all bump soon enough It was definitely something to look forward to for me, I loved it!

and definitely congratulations on being able to drink tea again. Fabulous news here have a

Your story about Tesco made me laugh - we had some shopping delivered to a previous address once by mistake, good job the new occupants were out...

baby in my view the nct classes themselves were a bit poo but it was great to meet the others, we still see each other regularly as well. I think the biggest failing of the nct classes is the zealous way they push "natural" birth and breastfeeding - even going as far as barely mentioning c-sections which is so wrong because if you end up needing one in an emergency there isn't a lot of time to fully comprehend what is going on.

Before you all snarl at me, what I mean is this...I was extremely pro natural birth, I attended hypnobirthing classes (which were amazing, can highly recommend) read all kinds of books like the continuum concept, childbirth without fear, Ina May Gaskin etc, booked myself in to a birth centre, geared up for a water birth and hey presto DS was 16 days late, I was induced and ended up with an epidural and then a c-section. All that the nct "natural" birth message did for me was to make me feel extraordinarily guilty that it didn't happen for me despite my best efforts. Same story with breastfeeding, desperately wanted to and struggled through two nasty excrutiating infections and ended up combination feeding for 4 months. But the guilt, oh the guilt....how dare I poison my baby with formula etc

Anyway, sorry for rambling what I mean to say is that the nct is a great way to meet new (very good close) friends but there are other, better classes to go to which will give you a more rounded understanding of the whole birth process which will allow you to relax more and take it as it comes.

Phew, I know others have a different view, this is just my own experience (please don't shoot me!)

Morning all! In answer to various questions I am now 14+1 and have still only put on 1lb since my bfp despite me definitely having a hard round tummy now so am assuming that I have basically lost what muscle I had elsewhere as I don't feel any slimmer in any other parts of my body so the weight must have come off somewhere to balance out the start of a mini bump?!?! I can't do up any of my normal trousers anymore without the aid of hairbands and am living in baggy tops as feel more fat than 'with bump' IYSWIM! Thankfully the nausea seems to have passed now though and I can finally drink tea again which is fab!!

I had my first proper 'baby brain' moment last night which I thought you all might find amusing...on Sunday I logged onto Tesco to finish off our order for this week but couldn't find it so started a new one, which was delivered on Monday. At about 7pm last night the doorbell rang and it was Tesco bringing our order which must be the one I'd started and couldn't find the delivery driver was very good and said he could take it all back and we'd get a refund, which I need to chcek we actually get, but there was no room in our fridge or freezer after Monday's delivery so no way I could accept it...felt VERY silly!!!

Will pop back on for namecheck at lunch but must do some work now...

I have heard similar about meeting other mums, and I have to say this aspect does appeal (a lot more than the actual classes to be honest.)

I don't drive anyway, so that's not an issue. However, I do, er, fart and poo so maybe that will be. My DH will be at home too, thankfully, so whatever happens he'll be on hand.

Having issues now with blood sugar. Apparently your insulin requirements drop at 12 weeks (I am 12 weeks on Friday) and mine have more or less halved. However, this has created a whole new set of ishoo's with both low blood sugars and then subsequent highs after rectifying them. And I was doing so well too! The nurse is helping me though, which is good, so am hoping I can get things back to the level's they were before as soon as poss. Am also thinking that surely this must happen to almost all diabetics, and they can't all have 'negative outcomes' can they? Am also consoling myself with the fact that overall my blood sugar has been excellent, although it's still hard not to worry when it does things I don't expect!

The worst part of the CS was the trapped wind, not being able to drive and going for my first poo (fearing my stitches would burst) sorry TMI I know! If you do have a CS you will be given enough drugs to numb the pain during/after and then are given pretty strong pain killers to take home. Luckily DP was off for 3 weeks with me which was a great help. The best thing about the NCT classes was meeting other new mums, we spent most of our maternity leave meeting up during the day and still meet up monthly now we are all back at work.

Pie glad to hear it wasn't too bad for you either. I had my appendix out at 18 and it was sooooo painful after! Some patients were hobbling about a few hours later, but I was in agony and unable to move easily for the best part of a week. Due to this, I suspect I may be a bit of a wuss. And the idea of a c-sec and have to deal with the pain as well as a tiny baby sounds horrific. Fingers crossed, if the worst happens then I am now made of sterner stuff!

As for NCT classes, I am not sure if I will bother or not yet, but I am leaning towards a 'no' at the moment. I think MN seems a better source of info really, and I would have to go into the proper hospital rather than the midwive led unit and can guess what that's like without a tour.

baby I had both forceps (failed) and a CS with DS. It really wasn't so bad(drugs helped but I had the spinal block in preparation for the CS). NCT classes (in my experience) make CS out to be the devil of childbirth but it's not - if that's what is best for you and baby then that's the best thing to do.

poppy sorry to hear you have been feeling sick, hopefully that means the drugs are working their magic powers! I am very very excited this cycle for you!

misscarlett I didn't really show until 17/18 weeks last time I think my body isn't even trying to hide it 2nd time around!