With disbelief and minimal drama, the PESH are ambling into springtime diffedness!

[SinkyMalinks]

Antenatal fred fun for BESH graduates

CRESH

Faith - pinky faithlet arrived 14th April 2013
Pinkr - suitably pinky one arrived 25th August 2013
Jethro - blue one arrived 23rd September 2013
Noks - a surprisingly breechy pink one arrived 12th January 2014

PESH

Frankel - EDD 4th March
Sinky - EDD 18th March
Merks - EDD 21st March
Driz - EDD 7th June
Draf - EDD 19th June
Kat - EDD 20th June
Winks - EDD 26th June
Dor - EDD 18th August
Ginger - 20th August
Euro - 28th August

Pleasantly busy here, isn't it?

I felt just like that Ginge. Quite odd not to need an early scan this time!

Afternoon all, how's everyone doing? The scans do seem to take forever to roll around!

We had our couples birthing class this morning. HWHNN found it really helpful and he said he learnt a lot, so I hope he feels the same about next week's basic baby care class!

Unfortunately insomnia is starting to kick in now, woke up at 4.45 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I ended up getting out of bed to lie on the sofa. I did manage to doze a bit but I'm knackered now so feel an afternoon nap coming on

I'm doing ok. I've not slept well the past 2 nights so I'm tired. KFZK has a cold so you can imagine, it has been a fun day. We've been toy shopping as we have 5 children's birthday's coming up over the next month.

My nausea is easing, which I am trying to see as a good thing and not menkul about...

I met with an independent midwife yesterday. I liked her, so I think we are going to book her. She can be my midwife if I were to go for a homebirth, and if I were to go for hospital, she would act as a doula/advocate. I think I would find it helpful to have a friendly well-known face in the room rather than a bunch of strangers.

Good luck for scannage ginge.

My 12 week scan is on Monday week. But I've already had 4, so plenty of opportunity to see centime already. Even so, it seems like an age between scans!

Can I pick the PESH hive mind please?

Pretty much overnight I seem to have largely debloated and my nausea has gone too. I am trying to see this as a good thing, but there is a niggling worry about the sudden disappearance of symptoms. It this "normal" (whatever that is). I'm 11 and a half weeks.

Very normal. Hcg levels peak around 10 -11 weeks, so your hormone levels will be a bit more settled at the moment and your body is getting the hang of things. The debloating is good - my belly was smaller at 13 weeks than 10 - and not a sign that you need to worry.

Totally normal. In my ante-natal group (which is full of hons and driving me nuts!) lots of people commented on this sort of thing.

The antenatal freds seem to be magnets for 'hon' and 'lol' types, I abandoned mine fairly rapidly too.

They now have an annoying questionnaire. I might have to post it. To be fair the thread I was on for The Little Mister was full of people who aren't fuckwits so that's good!

I left the March thread for a while, though am nice posting again on an ad hoc basis. Freaked out by the fact that there have been 3/4 babies born already

Oh god that questionnaire is irritating. I never bothered posting on it, I just lurked.

Why are prams so horrible? Ones that look nice on the internets look bloody awful in the flesh. Really plasticy and impractical.

Ginge have you looked at the Vista? That's what we've gone for as it gets such great reviews and people I've spoken to said it lasts years. Unfortunately it's not cheap though.

Sorry, link fail. Uppababy Vista

Hey there, excuse my thread invasion.... Been lurking for a while on the besh thread, and then eventually ventured to antenatal threads. Signed up to the original aug 2014 thread, which quickly began to drive me nuts too- And i never signed up for any of the follow up threads. Sympathise with you on that front Dorothy... Initially I thought it would be good to read up on what others were experiencing but I grew very bored, very quickly! each page is just a repeat of the 10 previous pages that have been filled that day.... But anyway, enough of this rant-it's back to lurking for me- just wanted to express my support for some sort of stand against fuckwittery! I'll continue to follow the stories of the slight less 'excitable' people on this and one or two other threads if you don't mind.... Good luck to you all with the pending new arrivals!

Frank I've not looked that much yet. Me and my mum looked round a Mothercare today, but I'm hoping to go round Kiddicare soon as well. I'd like to buy things each month so it isn't such a rush and bind on our cash!

That being said, I like the look of the Vista, I'd have to convince CGH that it was a good idea. Hopefully when he realises that cheaper prams are pants he'll be more receptive to it!

It's not that I don't want to be on the antenatal threads but I think I have decided that I am better just flicking through them. The people on there are lovely, I just can't do all the huns thing.

Ginge I found Mothercare didn't have a great selection. Kiddicare and John Lewis were great though. We ended up buying from Kiddicare as they had an ex display model which had some money knocked off!
HWHNN is very much of the "buy cheap, buy twice" school of thought and he was the one who initially picked out the Vista. He loved doing all the research on reviews etc

Oh Ginge if you can get there do go to Kiddicare! We went to Mothercare who were rubbish and just plugged the Mothercare ones. They also took our budget and just added about 40% Well if you go for this one instead.... Not good at all. Kiddicare otoh knew all their pushchairs, brought it all in on budget, (we bought the baby style oyster including carry cot, car seat and colour pack. She gave us a discount and it was less than £400). Also the toilets are worth the trip in themselves.

I iz tired after a night shift.

Thanks for the reassurance, Winks and Dor. This time next week the 12 week scan will be done and we will have our Harmony result. Eek.

I haven't bothered with the August AN thread this time round. Last time I jumped straight on to the October 2013 one and then had to drop off. I was then upset every time I saw it pop up in Active (I hid it but they filled the threads so quickly there was often a new one showing up). I'm somewhat dismayed to hear that the hon and lol crowd have invaded though.

Hello all! I'm so far behind this thread that I haven't managed to catch up with all the news. hope everyone is well and all the differs are enjoying themselves!
On the pram front... We have recently moved little pink into the buggy part of the vista. I tried her in it and she fell asleep. She never slept well in the carrycot. I found it hard to let go off the carrycot part as that is for lickle babies and my girl is getting big fast. although I have to say she is more fun and I am enjoying her a lot more than I every did the newborn stage.

It's a shame they can't tell you what kind of baybee you're having in advance. If I'd known Faithlet was going to be a needy, refluxy baybee I wouldn't have forked out for the carrycot - if we used it 10 times that's all. Majority of the time she was in the stretchy sling. She does like being in the stroller now.

We had a fab AN April '13 thread. Most of us defected to FB. There's about 100 of us and there's posts every day. There were a couple of hunners on there but they don't use FB.

MrsPeacock hello, are you diffed now then?

Waves to all PESH and CRESH. Just a quick question, when should I start thinking about Stuff? Still in denile, so no desire to buy anything... SB is trying to make me accept that we need a bigger house. But baby stuff seems an alien world still! I dread going to Those Shops, too much trauma...

We are just starting to think about things, driz, now we've got the anomaly scan safely behind us. DH spent Sunday researching pushchairs, and we now have something of a list of things to procure - most of which we have been offered by friends, so hopefully it won't be too expensive.

I know what you mean about denial, though! I can cope with it when I'm allowed to disengage - so on MN, and talking to DH. Whenever friends/family ask questions I can generally cope, but as soon as it gets round to speculation about me I feel very vulnerable and want to run away (generalities I can live with, but pregnancy/childbirth/baby chitchat directed at/about me is horrific). It's especially unhelpful when no-one's experience will be the same as yours, so it's useless info and just scaremongering. I have a friend who keeps telling me how I will feel, as if I will have an identikit birth to hers. Given that our fertility and pregnancy experiences are wildly different, that seems unlikely...

I think the first thing to remember is that every pregnancy/labour/baby is different, no two are ever the same so ignore, ignore, ignore anyone who tells you how it will go.

We didn't buy anything until after the 20 week scan, just to be on the safe side. We did do research into big items like prams, car seats, etc though. The first big items we bought were nursery furniture, followed by the pram and car seat. If you feel comfortable, have a look into any NCT sales near you as they can be great for picking up smaller items. We got a moses basket, activity gym, various items of clothing and other bits and bobs at the one we went to. They seem to hold them twice a year, autumn and spring, around here.

So, 37 weeks today We now have a fully baked Turnip [sticks head in sand]

So far, we have bought a cuddly elephant :)

HWHNN has a thing for the Jellycat toys! Thankfully he's only bought one so far, but he gravitates to them every time we go into John Lewis!