February 2014. The cake mix is in the mug, the microwave is on, it's slowly rising and we'll be pinging in three more months!

[Shropshiremummy2B]

Sadly my cake mix is rising too much and resulting in a serious muffin top.

Here we go, hope SoupDragon doesn't mind me copying and pasting her post. These really are the best flapjacks you will ever eat. unplastered, you might want to get the diabetes results before making these...

Soupdragon’s flapjacks:
"250g porridge oats (the cheap type, not large ones),
150g Butter,
2 generous table spoons Golden Syrup
half a tin condensed milk,
100g demerera sugar

baking tin, no bigger than about 18cm x 28cm

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees c
2. Line the baking tin with baking parchment.
3. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat and add the sugar and syrup. Keep gently heating and stirring until all is melted and mixed. If it starts to boil take it off the heat!
4. Add the condensed milk and mix. Bring to the boil for about a minute.
5. Remove from the heat and gradually add the oats, folding them in. All the oats should be coated, and the mixture quite dense, but still sticky. Don't add so many oats that the mixture becomes dry.
6. Pour the mixture into the tins and spread about so that it lines the tin to a depth of 2-3cm. Don't squash the mixture in, just spread it evenly.
7. Bake in the oven for about 15mins. You should take them out when they just start to go brown round the edges, don't leave longer than this. If they're still squidgy in the middle that's fine, they set on cooking."

We also pour over melted chocolate when the flapjacks have cooled and add chocolate sprinkles/drops before setting in the fridge for a few hours. Also, there is not much you can do with the other half of the condensed milk but make more flapjacks so we tend to make two batches.

Pee slightly less pungent this morning so I might see how it develops. It's not like the asparagus or coffee smells, it's much nastier! But I need to go home and pick up my notes (there you go, sensible ladies carrying them around with you!) to get my mw's number so I can call her and see what she suggests.

I spent a long time at uni perfecting my flapjack recipe and I'm very pleased to see that the key ingredient - condensed milk - is also in this recipe. It makes for a far superior flapjack to just golden syrup! The unbaked mix is also particularly good when still warm in the pan. We also liked to throw in raisins and seeds and that sort of thing now and then.

Champs sorry you're feeling sick again :( I still throw up every few mornings but that seems to get it out the system. Yes, hopefully a temporary blip. I haven't even had the flu jab yet so goodness knows what I'll eventually decide about whooping cough.

Unplastered grim, hope the two hours goes by quickly.

Thingy you definitely don't need to feel self conscious!!

Champagne Yes please on whooping cough resources! It concerns me too because it's comparatively new and seems to be a combined jab?

That recipe sounds gorgeous! Definitely going to try that, nevertheless tried flapjacks with condensed milk. Could use the other half of the tin for fudge, or banoffee pie, or millionaires shortbread, or... Shame I've got to go to work this afternoon, I want to get baking now!

Or just double the recipe...

Flapjacks freeze well too. Good labour energy food I'd say :)

Ooohhh... banoffee pie. Can I come round, please?

Hello - checking in again and now feeling hungry reading about all this food!

It was DD's 3rd birthday on Monday so i've been busy having a party for her with family on Sat, and had a day out for her birthday. She was as good as gold and enjoyed the attention and presents.

However since yesterday my lovely sweet, happy little girl seems to have turned 13 instead of 3 and is grumpy, miserable, refuses to do anything I say and is driving me mad! I'd heard about terrible twos and thought I'd escaped them, but troublesome threes?! I needed to go out this morning with her but she just refused to get dressed so we didn't go. It really shouldn't be so difficult. Sorry for the reminder about what they turn in to - they can really test your patience!

I've managed to sell our guest room furniture and it's all been collected, so I need to get a new carpet and put up DD's furniture for her new room, to make way for her box room to become the babies room. In the box room we have a pale grey carpet and an orangey/yellowy blind and want to paint the walls from beigey sand colour to a pale blue. I'm not great at interior design, do you think that would go? Or should I keep it more neutral? The furniture in the room is pine and cream.

Flapjack recipe sounds amazing! Would never have thought of the milk but it makes sooo much yummy sense.

Me also on the jab please... so unsure about it. I won't be in london anymore but in my smaller home town so thinking the the infection risk may be less there. Plus it's combined with tetanus and sone other things and after working in various shitholes across the world for the past few years am up to my eyeballs with protection against everything else...

panda hope your DD perks up again soon.

I've also been looking into the whooping cough jab, think I'm going to get it, (In my opinion) I don't think the risks of not having it outweigh the benefits of having it. I've read comments from people who have had it and the baby is fine, and I've not read anything to the contrary. It would be interesting to hear what other people think about it.

tiny I'm going to have the jab. I'm moving to a thoroughly multicultural part of London just after Bean is born, and will be using public transport, so the chances of us being exposed to a wide variety of germs is pretty high, and I want Bean to have the best possible chances of health until he can get his own jabs. But it's also such a personal decision, and hasn't been linked to for example killer whooping cough outbreaks (unlike measles), I wouldn't be aghast at someone choosing not to use it.

Wow that flapjack recipe sounds amazing, definitely going to be making that asap. I'm with the rest of you on the less than ideal eating habits these days. Mine varies so much but I used to be super healthy with homemade salads for lunch, plenty of fruit and fairly low-GI meals, not too many processed carbs/sugar etc. Now if I suddenly need a Boost bar or a flapjack or another almond croissant and hot chocolate from Pret I just have to go with it otherwise I feel nauseous and weak and pathetic. Some nights I really fancy vegetable soup and have made some lovely batches of soups lately so I guess that's healthy, but last night my body was crying out for curry so I had an M&S microwave chicken tikka masala with rice. DH was home late and it took all of my strength not to wolf down his portion too! Could have easily polished off the whole thing which was supposed to serve 2.

I've had my flu jab and have just booked in for the whooping cough jab - I prefer to see that the positives outweigh the negatives but everyone's different on that front.

Definitely going to have the whooping cough jab. I'm another that thinks the risks don't outweigh the positives. X

Ditto on the whooping. I would research the risks, but I am very simple and a degree in medicine far outweighs my degree in History of Art so the doctor wins.

Also concur on the eating crap constantly, sadly I don't have a 'I feel weak if I don't eat it'/ 'I have no energy'/ ' I'm hungry' excuses to back it up, it's pure carnal lust.

I'm going to trust the medical advice on WC too. Babies can die or be hospitalised for weeks from it - it's quite a brutal illness for such a small person. My take is that I've trusted so much medical advice over the last 20 something weeks I'm going to take the same approach with the vaccine - if RCOG are happy with it I'll let them jab me.

champ would you mind so much linking it here too, I'm not on the FB page and I'd be really interested to read the info that you've found. I'm definitely having it as I work in paediatric intensive care so could be exposed to it during the next couple of months but this also means I have had first hand experience of how sick babies are with it

also met my 2 week old neice at the weekend and had lovely snuggles, she weighs 7lb 13oz now and all I could think was 1) how could something that size fit inside me!! and 2) how do you get it out!!!!!!.......and breath....positive thinking required! but she is so so so beautiful, so all worth while

Hi all
re the diet... glad you brought that up MissKat as before pregnancy I was super healthy - hadn't drunk alcohol for months, taking vitamins, ran a half marathon, only drank green tea and vegetarian - I've always loved fruit and ate loads of it. I kind of went a bit over the top getting ready to TTC but it worked (1st time!). Then for the 1st trimester, before anyone knew we were expecting, I kept it up.
The past 12 weeks I have craved refined sugar like never before. I never had much of a sweet tooth but now I put sugar in my tea (and I'm having normal, not decaff, a couple of times a day), eat lots of chocolate, and have started baking a couple of cakes a week!
I've been feeling a lot of guilt, worrying about gaining weight I won't be able to shift, and wondering why I'd do this to baby.
So I'm glad I'm not the only one, and agree that my body probably needs it for something.
Booked in for flu jab and whooping cough today. Midwife appt went really well - they've decided that at the mo we are not high risk for anything (there was a question mark over baby's size, a bit small, and my blood with its antibodies)...
I'll stop now, rambled on too long!

Awww durk - your niece sounds gorgeous. I agree with the "how the hell can something that big come out of a person" tho.

So glad the rest of your are eating loads of crap too - phew! It must be our bodies needing something from it all (I am NOT just super greedy...). The flapjack recipe looks amazing - will have to surprise DH with some when I can actually be bothered. I'm so tired this week most nights I have tea and then just want to go to bed!

Sorry you're feeling crappy again Champagne - I hope it's a temporary blip. Thanks for the whooping cough info too.

Oh my god I spent the whole day today constantly needing a wee! I literally had a wee when I was free, chatted to another Preggo at work and went back to my dept and by the time I got their I needed it again! Thank god I had a support assistant in some lessons as I had to nip out and go as could not last 2 hours without a trip! I don't know if I drank more without realising or if baby has moved a bit and is now pressing on my bladder but good god i hope today is a one off! That is very wishful thinking isn't it.

Diet wise I was good tonight - I had a tin of roses ready to put in my trolley at tesco and I put it back and walked away. I'm choosing to ignore the fact that I have just eaten loads of biscuits instead oops!

Ooooh just a reminder too - lots of places have NCT nearly new sales coming up so have a look online if you're hoping to go to any - apparently you can get some amazing bargains and if you're a member you get to go in early too.

Hi all. I think I'll have the whopping cough jab. I had a cough that probably was whopping cough lay spring, it lasted three months and was awful. No way would I want to put a baby through that.

The saga with work and leave continues... so I'm not allowed to have one Friday off at the end of the month (to catch up with a friend I haven't seen for 18 months), and we may be forced to work overtime one weekend. So I'd be expected to work 12 days in a row.... At the moment it looks like I'll be losing 12.5 days of leave. I'm talking to my boss tomorrow and if that doesn't work I'll involve the union. I'm not getting stressed about it now, I'm just rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.

Gah eeyorish your boss sounds such a nightmare not a violent person but would love punch him in the face.for you.

I get the baby bladder mainly at night. Wake up bursting, try to ignore it, finally give in amd stagger to loo (hip is always agony first getting out of bed), make it to loo, don't really need to go. Three times a night. Sigh.

Oh my god Eeyore your boss sounds like a total arse! Definitely get the union in if he doesn't sort himself out! I also want to punch him in the face for you!