August 2014: growing bumps and 20 week scans!!!

[Owlysims]

New thread!!!

Hi everyone!

Hi meme, I'm also a final year PhD student. I'm glad to see I'm not the only crazy one trying to finish and have a baby at the same time . I hope your Uni is being good about it all. Mine is not too bad but my scholarship doesn't provide SMA . Good luck with the thesis.

Am panicking about mat leave and money now :-( I really don't want to go back to work too soon. What are other people doing?

I've got to go back to work in Jan, Travis. Can't afford any longer as I've only just had 9 months off with DD. Not ideal, but that's the way it goes. :-/

God knows what I'm doing, Travis. DH's business up in the air at the moment and I am the main earner, and it's all suddenly gone a bit quiet for me too. Might have to work all through the year at this rate, and just take off a week either side of the birth. :-(

Secretly that sounds horrid. Make sure you take enough time to recover. I've told work I'm taking the 52 weeks but I'm hoping not to have to go back at all. Have to get myself in gear to do something else

Well I am clinging to the plan that by then Fate will have magically sorted something out for me!

memedragon and crazylady2013, what area are your PhDs in? I'm full of admiration for you both, studying while pregnant. I find it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything!

Cant offer any advice on mat leave as I dont work I'm sahm and ds1 main carer he has sn and health problems wouldn't be able to hold down a job with all his illnesses (lucky of we get 1 week without him being ill)

dh took me out for mothers day tonight with the kids. It was his day off amd ds decided on the restaurant. Was lurvly!

I'll be taking a year off work. Secretly have the idea of ttc number 2 just before I go back but we'll see how we get on with number 1 first!

I had my scan yesterday and baby was pretty naughty. Bad position so we couldn't get all the measurements or find out the sex. Things seem to be in the correct place though which is good and definitely alive in there! Back for another scan mid April. It was a massive relief to see it as have hardly felt anything yet and hospital didn't listen for the heartbeat at 16 weeks so I was pretty anxious!!

I only get 20 weeks mat leave but will add a few weeks holiday on if poss. I wish I could take longer really!

Glad to hear I'm not the only one crazy! My uni are being pretty nice about it all, which is good. My PhD is funded by AHRC, so I get some paid maternity leave, but only up until the end of my original funding period (end of September). I'm going to start it beginning of July, take the three months paid then another two unpaid. So I'll be going back when the baby is only 5 months. I can work pretty much when I want though, as long as it gets done, so the plan is to try and get most of my work done evenings and weekends when DH can look after the baby. Will hopefully do some teaching in the Spring term, so the baby will have to go into nursery for a day a week maybe. It's all a bit up in the air and uncertain, but I'll just have to hope we can work it out.

secretly, my field of study us early modern literature. It has been hard to concentrate while pregnant but I think I've actually become more productive - it's partly wanting to get as much done before the baby comes as I know it'll be so hard once she's here, but also I feel like my career is even more important as I will soon have a little person relying on me. Generally I feel fairly optimistic about it all but I confess I'm prone to bouts of anxiety about how we'll manage. In a bit of a bad mood today as I've not had the best week - barely got any work done as I was ill, found out about the gallstones and to top it all off tonight my pet rat bit me

Sorry to hear it's been such a rotten week for you, memedragon. I hope the bite wasn't too bad. Not been a great week for me either - dd gave me her horrible cold and is also being monitored by gp for a bit of an unusual illness. Hopefully next week will be better! My MA was in modern literature; I think your PhD sounds very interesting. I work as a children's author and editor now, and although that's a world away from the kind of literature I studied, I feel that my studies have helped my career in all sorts of ways.

Londonchick, I went back from mat leave 18 weeks' pregnant with this baby. I'm not amazingly popular, but don't care! :-)

I asked the sonographer to let us listen to the heartbeat as the midwife hadn't. It was lovely!

Happy mothers day to those of you already with children and for all the first timers, it will be us next year, can't wait to get first ever mothers day card.hope you all have a lovely relaxing day and you get spoilt rotten.

Happy mothers day to everyone x x

Hooray, have finally felt baby kick at 23 weeks, because we have had to wait so long the good bit was dh got to feel it too. With maternity leave I too am hoping not to go back and would like to ttc number 2 with not to big a gap as dh and I are both 35 plus. Leaving will be odd as I will know but won't be able to tell anyone in case financially I have to go back but after 11 years it will be hard saying goodbye without actually saying it.

Morning. Weeza I can't quite believe that next year I will be celebrating mothers day as a mother .
Secretly, my PhD is in plant biology. I'm looking at plant cell walls to make the production of biofuels easier and cheaper. So I spend a fair amount of time either in glasshouses or the lab.
Meme, I'm also so in the air about the future as I will have 2 months to go back and finish probably after having 6 mnths off. Hoping to have most of my lab work finished so I will only have to go back a couple of times a week. The rest will be spent trying to finish writing up with a baby attached. DH has been very good by saying I don't need to rush back but I still worry about how we will afford it (he doesn't have a huge salary - before I got pregnant we were both looking forward to me working again as my salary would be the main one). Hope you are feeling better.

We're planning on using the split parental leave provisions, so I "give" my unused maternity leave to mr euro. The original plan was for me to take 4 months and him about 3 months (i'm the higher earner, so it makes sense to split it and mr euro is enthusiastic :)), but the stupid rules don't let you transfer the leave before 20 weeks (this is changing next year, but that will be too late for us), so I will probably have to take 20 weeks (but will inevitably end up doing some work in that time as one of my cases is kicking off in the autumn with not one but to court hearings after being dormant for the past 3 years - awful timing!) and then mr euro can take a couple of months.

We are splitting leave too...I'll take 24 weeks and DH the remaining 15. Makes sense to do it like that.

Not too bad a bite secretly, drew a little blood but not much. I was just a bit sad about it as I've he's usually such a friendly little thing, but that's the second time he's bitten me since Christmas. Both times I think I startled him and he was scared, he's quite old and frail and he's alone now since his cage-mate died at Christmas, I think he gets confused and nervous. Anyway, I freaked myself out by googling rat bites and discovering that you can get all kinds of deadly diseases even from pet ones. What if it's passed something into my bloodstream and it hurts the baby, aaargh! This is silly of course because I've had him for 2+ years and I'm sure if he had a nasty disease I'd have caught it before now. In fact he bit me a couple of months ago and I was fine. I am a terrible worrier, God knows how I will cope when I've got a baby to worry about!

Meme its a mothers (bloody hell cant remember the word) sense? The word like gut feeling? Damn that makes us mums worriers.

Mothers natural instinct to worry! There I got it!

Well itsme I suppose there's at least one area of motherhood I do feel reasonably prepared for then!

Sorry, isitme not itsme

Lol. There is lots of stress involved and worrying but most of the time all is well.
When your child is not well you just know.

dont mean to scare anyone but I was 17 when I fell pregnant with ds1 18 when I had him and at around 2months old he had meningitis and septicaemia.

That morning he woke up he was hot and was really grunting like he was uncomfortable. I put him on my chest and laid down for a bit thinking he just needed rest.
He was still pretty hot and so I asked dh to look at him and he agreed he was hot and something was wrong. Took him to gp who prescribed antibiotics but couldnt find a reason why he needed them apart from temp. He should have sent him hosp. He was still bad that afternoon and thats when we went hosp where he perked up and they sent us home

Next evening he was lethargic and screaming and just not settling so we checked his temp and it was 38.9 so we took him a+e where he was canulated and given a shot of antibiotics and sent to another hosp.
They still couldn't find out what was wrong so they did lumbar puncture to rule of meningitis. Me and dh were laid on a fold away bed. It was 3.30am when dr came back into us and said its meningitis.
He was in hosp for 10 days, he had iv antibiotics for 14 days (4days at home where community nurse would come) we were lucky as we caught it as it was getting hold of ds.
Ds smiled all the way through hos treatment.

Dr said that was mothers instinct that saved him as you brought him back despite being told he was ok.
So I think a little worry is healthy!

Wow that sounds incomprehensibly scary isitme, I can't even begin to imagine how that would feel. I am not really one to chance it, my local surgery are probably getting sick of me already - since being pregnant I've had loads of appointments and telephone appointments to check out various minor (and sometimes not minor) ailments.