January 2012 - Thread 3

[ParsleyLion1]

And we're back......

Hi falabalambI'm having the odd cup - when I looked it up it seems that there is a max recommended amount of caffeine per day of 200mgs - I've cut and paste it below

As a rough guide:

* One mug of instant coffee has about 100 mg caffeine.
* One cup of instant coffee has about 75 mg caffeine.
* One mug of filter coffee has about 140 mg caffeine.
* One mug of tea has about 75 mg caffeine.
* One cup of tea has about 50 mg caffeine.
* One 50 g plain chocolate bar has about 50 mg caffeine. Milk chocolate has about half as much caffeine as plain chocolate.
* One can of cola has up to 40 mg caffeine.
* One can of 'energy' drink may contain up to 80 mg caffeine.
* Check the label on medicines for quantities of caffeine.

So, you do not have to stop your favourite drinks, but you may need to limit their amount. For example, you will reach about the 200 mg limit for one day if you:

* Eat two 50 g bars of chocolate, and drink two cups of tea; OR
* Drink two mugs of instant coffee; OR
* Drink a can of energy drink, one can of cola, and eat one 50 g bar of plain chocolate and one 50 g bar of milk chocolate.
* Etc.

If you occasionally take in more than 200 mg in one day, it is likely to be fine as the risks to the baby are small. However, as a general rule, it is best to aim for 200 mg or less on most days throughout your pregnancy.

I'm drinking more tea and coffee now than I ever have in my life - from 1 or 2 cups a week to 1 or 2 cups a day. I think sproglet must be wanting it (yes - DH and I have started calling bubba this now - oh well, the cats have about 15 pet names each, no surprise sproglet does too!)
Redhead - I think you need to just kick up a massive stink about this. Exaggerate some negative symptoms you've been having, tell them you're really worried, ask repeatedly when your scan is, ask to speak to supervisors - they'll ignore you if you can, so you need to make it impossible. Good luck!

Congrats on all the scans and the (mostly) obliging DD/DSs to be!
I've got two and a half weeks til mine which is driving me mad!! Sure will be worth it, just hoping everything is ok.

DH still isn't keen to know if its a boy or girl, and I don't want to spoil the surprise for him... but I Have to know if possible!! I'm sure I'd be able to keep it quiet (everyone else says that would be impossible to keep up - which just makes me more determined to give it a try..). Reckon he'd cave within a day or so anyway. I'd like to get fairly neutral colours anyway; it would just be nice to know who's in there.. Argh

Has anyone starting buying baby things yet / decorating? It feels a bit early but would like to buy the odd little thing. :o

Also, Parsley thanks for the caffeine chart - I keep forgetting how much caffeine I can take, before being pregnant I had really high levels so its been good to cut down.. Although I started off being really careful but its gradually increasing...

Liking the blue/pink debate. I'm not a pink person at all and hated it when I was little, it must be weird feeling like that and ending up with a little pink princess/ fairy loving girly! That happened to friends of mine who have a DS and DD, both really stereotyped boy and girl behaviour which is definitely Not from the parents..

Well I've started collecting baby things, but the only stuff I've bought has been a set of cloth nappies. Superstition is just superstition and buying a few babygros is not going to affect your pregnancy - you may as well enjoy it in fact! The bigger we get the harder it's going to be to get round the shops.

I got an appt at the London passport office next week - unfortunately it's just before my scan, so won't be able to buy any baby things that are a bit more gender specific... oh well, probably safest!

Ooh - I forgot to have breakfast!
And I really don't want to work - can you tell? :)

(eeek, just lost a long and squee-ful post about my anomaly scan - here we go again...)

Just got back from the 20 week scan and it was the best thing ever . Fab to have DH there this time and I think he really loved seeing the pamplemousse on screen.

Everything looks perfect and we're bang in the middle of the growth charts (well, actually, smaller head and legs, big belly; sounds about right , but all just slightly either side of the middle centile line). The sonographer was thoroughly lovely and kept saying things like 'oh, look at that perfect little nose, lovely' which was very sweet of her, whatever she thought privately.

I'm amazed by the quality of the scanners - we saw the parts of the brain (the cerebellum I think) as well as the chambers of the heart and the aorta and pulmonary artery, which is so cool. Baby's bladder filled up between the beginning and the end of the scan - probably, like me, needs to wee all the time! I have the wriggliest baby ever and pamplemousse wouldn't stay still for the scan, so it took ages to check that there was no problem with a cleft lip/palate. Not much kicking going on but an awful lot of wriggling! The placenta is nice and high but is right at the front, which probably explains why I haven't particularly felt a lot of kicking etc. Oh, and yet again, baby had crossed legs!

The only issue was that the sonographer couldn't get very good photos due to the bub's position/wriggling a lot, but she apologised about not getting a good shot! It would be nice to have but I don't expect we'll really look at the photos much once the baby's born, so I'm not too bothered.

That's wonderful ghost am so jealous - can't wait for my scan now!

DH felt a little kick last night and it's so wonderful when you're able to share those things with the baby's daddy, isn't it?

Ugh - just watched this awful woman on 'This Morning' whingeing about how she only gets £30k benefits a year for her TEN children. I am livid - here's us in absolute panic over one little bub and there's her with ten, no paternal involvement and more money than we get (after taxes) even though my DH has a frickin' PhD - makes me wonder why we're both working. He should just move to a separate house, I'll have as manay babies as we want and we'll just get the state to support us

redhead that's really unlucky with the care in your area - poor you. Like others have said, all you can really do is make it more of a problem not to deal with you than to just fix the situation - ring up all the time and generally get in the way. Must be rubbish constantly waiting to find out.

cakes that's exciting! Hope DH has come around properly and that you're able to see something on the scan in the end.

As for buying stuff - we have a crib that we bought from ebay as was a very local seller, but I'm regretting rushing into it a tiny bit. We got what we expected but as it's an older model it doesn't seem to do what the newer design does, which is a bit of shame but not enough to change my mind about it. It's really well made and useful though so I'm sticking with it. We also just bought a sort of rocking chair from Ikea as we were going anyway. And today I'm going to mark the scan by picking up a babygro or a teddy or something - luckily we have a scarily expensive cute baby shop in town so I can go over lunch.

I think we're going to make a big expedition to kiddicare in Peterborough at some point in Sept/Oct to do a big shop, but I'll need to do lots of research and build an enormous spreadsheet before I go. We don't have any friends who are ready to give up baby stuff so we can fairly safely assume that we won't be given much. I can't possibly face shopping in December for all of this and I think Jan might be too late for the essentials, and DH is away for most of Nov.

Cakes, daytime tv is a dangerous thing! Even with the breakfast news I often find myself yelling at the tv for the idiocy of the people being interviewed. I don't tend to take a hard line on benefits but having ten kids when you can't look after them yourself is just not socially responsible. Probably not ideal for the kids either.

There has to be a way to make it worth people's time actually going to work - I don't pretend to know whether lowering benefits or increasing the tax threshold is the answer, but I have some seriously free-loading relatives and it makes me fume - mostly at what they're essentially taking away from people who are genuinely in need. Gah!

Ghost and Cakes I'm with you on the teeth gnashing, it seems so unfair sometimes. Dh & I both in the public sector and so are coping with 2 years of pay freeze whilst Dh works alongside consultants earning vast amounts. And now Dh's train fare is going to soar on top of probable pension increases. We were always told that our pay was lower than comparable professions due to the pension element and suddenly that counts for nothing. I wonder why we bother to keep trying and will spend next year working out how to defect to the dark side grrrr!
Great news about your scan Ghost and everyone else's too! Our gal has a small head and big tum but the sonographer was definite that all were in the 'normal' range so not to worry.

I let dd sometimes have weak tea too Spag and as she only drinks water or milk I don't worry. Was amazed at the chocolate milk from a bottle, I'd be mortified if dd needed fillings in her milk teeth whilst on my watch.
Btw Cakes, I tried the cake release stuff from Lakeland yesterday on a banana and walnut loaf, it was amazing and I'm converted from faffing with liners! Shame I can't use it on the slow cooker, biriyani was tasty but stuck badly and rice was mushy. I'm not sure how much more effort to put into my new recipe book (got the Katie Bishop ones cheap on Amazon) as I can't seem to adjust the sizing to stop stuff overcooking and sticking. Still better a burnt crockpot than a day at the office!

knittiekitty - have you tried the easy cook rice? It's a bit more costly, but it's marvellous stuff and never goes mushy.

I'm feeling all shaky and 'got at' because of what someone posted on a thread I started about finding out what the baby is thread here in case you're interested
She's basically talking to me like I'd posted in AIBU and I got a bit snippy in response.

I don;t know why it's upset me so much, but basically the reason I want to know is that there have been some health problems with the men on my mum's side of the family and if it is a boy then I want time to prepare for that possibility. It's not something I generally talk about because I'd like to look on the bright side and hope that my baby will be fine, but you know - some people just seem to think that any opinion that differs from theirs is wrong.

Oh, I've just seen the other thread. Don't worry too much - there are always people in the world who think that whatever they decide is automatically right and should therefore apply to everyone else too. And it doesn't quite sound like she understands the process of discussion and compromise either. Looks like everyone else has spotted that you're a reasonable human being and is on your side anyway

If you're feeling all shaky then maybe you need a . (watches cakes run off and make a cuppa in some weird Pavlovian response)

The MN app ate a huge post earlier so I'll try again!

Congratulations to all those finding out flavours this week, I have my scan on Friday and we are definitely staying "Team Neutral".

Dd has taken to giving the baby cuddles and kisses, very cute at home, not so much half way round Tesco She sat with her hand on the bump yesterday singing Twinkle Twinkle, cue loads of wriggling :) Lovely moment!

Got my dress for a wedding reception next week this morning. I think I like it and to be fair I'm going to look huge in anything. Think I'll order a silver pashmina for a bit of cover and confidence.

makescakes Some people are just too judgemental for their own good or just trolling to provoke a reaction. Just ignore them - everybody else on the thread responded in the right way so its obviously some problem of theirs and nothing to do with your query.

How's the tea? :)

MakesCakesWhenStressed - We have a ds who has autism so I know that we will have to watch our new ds carefully for the first couple of years as autism is more common in boys. We found out because it takes us so long to come up with names we like. I can always think of girls names but boys take longer. I also know our new ds might have reflux as both our ds's had reflux. My feeling is forewarned is forearmed. I will have certain things ready for our ds.

OMG - giraffe that is sooo lovely! She sounds likes she's going to make a wonderful big sister :-)

And ghost you're evil - I did actually want to go make one. Instead I think I'm going to have a brownie and you can't have one, so ner :-P

Nanny - thanks for understanding. The things I'm worried about won't show up till teen years probably, but I would want to sit and have a quiet think about how I would deal with early years stuff to try and ward it off (sorry, don't want to go into too many details) before the baby actually arrived and things got mental.

Cakes V thanks for tip, the crockpot book says use converted rice but I stuck to the recipe book instead - will try easy cook next time for sure. I also echo the others too so don't worry for a moment. Some people seem to vent on MN no matter what the discussions.
V cute Giraffe, very sweet big sis behaviour. I'm trying to log all these memories of happy big sis ready for the sibling scraps in years to come!

Hello everyone!

My brain hurts after reading the past 7 pages. That'll teach me to go away for a few days. Just back from the Czech Republic, which had its moments (especially when I managed to lose DH's mobile somewhere between the car and the hotel - cue comedy conversation in German (which I barely speak) with the local moustachioued constabularly. All I managed to say was I lost it near the icecream, which possibly caused more confusion than it was worth!)

I'm feeling decidedly unpregnant and tubby - I haven't felt any wriggles for a couple of weeks, which is making me a bit twitchy, but I have my 16 week appt with the MW today, so hoping she'll listen for the heartbeat. I didn't feel anything with DD until 20 weeks, so maybe the previous ones were wind!

makescakes - ignore her. You're perfectly entitled to find out without any reason at all. We're still thinking about whether to find out so we can tell DD what it'll be - although my friend found out, told her DD she'd be having a baby brother, but her DD has decided she'll actually be having an older sister, so I'm not sure it'll make much difference!

giraffe - that's just gorgeous. I hope our DD comes round like that.

Foolishly agreed to make a cake for a sale at DD's nursery tomorrow - I can't bake for toffee. What was I thinking??

Hope you're all ok, and congrats on the scans everyone!

Fryn time to make some of the above-mentioned chocolate crispie cakes or marshmallow squares - more melt and stir than baking, but always go like (excuse the pun) hot cakes at bake sales! I should write the cheat's guide to being a domestic goddess :-D

Cakes have another some people are just out for a fight. There's a lot of it around at the moment.

cakes - excellent thinking. Even I can't screw those up (she says, crossing fingers and praying slightly).

Just had some tip top news - I currently salary sacrifice to get childcare vouchers, and I presumed that the vouchers would come out of my SMP, so I'd be losing £50 a week from the SMP, BUT, turns out work have to pay for the vouchers while I'm on mat leave, and my SMP remains intact. Essentially DD gets a free day at nursery a week - huzzah to that! heads of to make a celebratory .

I have no idea what any of that means, Fryn, but I'm happy you're happy :)

Why thank you - I like to share the inexplicable joy!

hiya all, im ordering my cot tomorrow, a lust white slaigh cot bed. so can not wait now. only pushchair and carseat things to get now and pink or blue clothes and toys and paint then we are done and can relax.

can not wait for the 7th september we are finding out if baba mmc is a blue bundle or a pink bundle!