due MARCH 2007-thread no ?????

[divastrop]

i cant see a new thread so i thought id start another one!

Kitty that's a very kind offer. Perhaps if everyone comes (i.e.e including those from further north) we could do it here - if its just southeners we could do it at yours or something? Just thinking of the travel implications for those north of Watford.

Mossy - you'll be very welcome to stay at ours when we meet - we've got loads of spare beds plus inflatables for the LOs etc

Our baby will sleep with me in the bed initially, then in the bedside cot, as I like co-sleeping with teeny ones. After that he'll probably move with the other children until he's maybe 2-3 and DS1 is 8-9; at that point DS can have his own room, probably in the loft. When DD is about 7-8 she can have her own room away from her little brother....well that's the plan anyway. I like them sharing when they're little, 'cos I loved sharing a room.

So glad the cat's turned up Jay - the exact same thing happened to my grandmother when I was a child - except the garage belonged to a mad neighbour who locked the cat in and it starved to death and was only found when my gran got the rspca to force the woman to open her garage - sorry - not very nice story but my granny lived in a dodgy area of Brighton which seemed to have more than it's fair share of mad people! (including her probably

Callie - we have a german pointer, he is lovely but completely mad. We have had to build a 6 fooot fence all around our garden because he scaled the 5 foot one and would disappear off for hours. We used to have one of those electric fences with a collar that gave him tiny shocks if he went too near the perimeter (he chewed the collar up one night in disgust).

Havent looked at the dog thread - is it a bit heated?

Like the new name foxy!

Off to sit down - dd had her b'day party this morning. The house was full of 9 year old girls and now I have a headache from hell.

Rosy - there is a place nearby where I walk the dog where people do that thing with dog poo in a bag. There is one tree that attracts the bags in particular - ds commented once it was like a christmas tree with dog poo baubles...

31 weeks (boy)

muppet-a house full of 9 year old girls.one 8 year old(who thinks shes 13)is bad enough.

the meet up sounds nice and would have been possible for me 3 years ago when i used to stay with my mum every summer for a couple of weeks,but now i have too many children and she only has 2 bedrooms.it would even have baan ok if ds and dd1's father wasnt such a dickhead that they never want to see him again,cos they used to stay with him for a week in the summer.

i think i'll just move back down south like i was going to 2 years ago...just need to win the lottery first.

dp took dd2 to his grans this afternoon,apparantly shes been fighting with her uncle(dp's little bro who is 1 next week).i took ds2 and dd1 to the soft play place (there are 2 here,the wacky is where the dossers go ,the other one is clean and well-staffed,i went to that one)cos ds2 is driving me insane.i wish i had his energy.i really cant wait for monday,although my sleep pattern is so disrupted i dont know if i'll be able to get up in time.

30+3(girl)

fox-im getting worried about what will happen if some of us have our babies early or late and end up on the febuary or april post-natal threads

Diva, surely we'll just stay as we are. I mean I KNOW I will have mine in April, that's a given, but it had never occured to me to then go to the April postnatal. I'm sure they are all lovely, but not as lovely as you lot and I don't know them!!
Anyone having a baby in Feb can just hang around making us all until there's enough for a postnatal thread, voila !!!

Poo baubles - how nice LOL!!!

Diva how many children do you have again? Any chance you could come south with 2/3 of them and leave the older ones with DP for a day/night? You could stay at ours then, with Moss if she stayed?

Muppet - kids parties are very draining aren't they? I'm exhausted just thinking about them!

Must go and get those decorations down now.....

p.s. we deffo need to stick together post natal me thinks, after all the bonding we've done

i have 4 children atm,i will look into things further when summer is near.i would feel a bit out of order talking tp dp about such things cos a few months ago when i was very depressed i went through a control freak stage and wouldnt even let him go to his dad's house.now i'm worried he thinks thats what i'm really like iyswim.

i'm so when i look back over the past few months,now as the end approaches and my sanity is slowly starting to return.im surprised dp is still here tbh!

i think i will have this baby in march,even if im induced it will still be the start of march,i just had these visions of being the only one on a march post-natal thread

Our term finished on the 22nd and back Monday, will have to get dressed before lunchtime again then

Fox the paramilitary organisations are still going strong but there is brilliant work going on here behind the scenes which is never heard about. And mediation experts sharing their knowhow on an international level now so its all good.
One point though, in the areas 'run' by paramilitaries your car isn't likely to be stolen by joyriders, unlike where I live now!

I'll be so jealous if you guys have a meet up! I might have to fly over!

rosy-you could always borrow a boat,sail to here,then we can travel south 'collecting' people on the way...moss is about 90 miles from me(i briefly went out with a lad from st.helens.he was a binman,and a very strange person).

im picturing us all travelling down south in a hippy-style camper van now.

in reality,i cant see me being able to get down there.travelling was so easy when i only had 3 children

If I have the baby tomorrow I'm still coming on the post-natal thread with you lot!!! Don't care what the month is - but please, little one, stay in the cooker nice and snug until 8 March as you're supposed to - so you grow and I get the benefit of nearly four weeks off work .

For meeting, London would be better probably if everyone can come(apart from those overseas, sorry Eids and Leo, don't mean to leave you out - fancy a trip to the UK???) despite the lure of the swimming pool in Brighton, because probably a lot of us will have somebody we can stay with. My eldest sis lives there so that's me sorted. The most difficult thing is going to be learning everybody's real names and remembering to call them them - unless we just stick to our MN names of course.

Muppet, any chance you could put a pic of your dog up? After my experience with my friend's dog, I love German pointers and I always said if I could ever have a dog, that's what I would get.

I just found out earlier that one of me and DP's best mates had a miscarriage three days ago. She and her partner and their two kids were over ours on Boxing Day eve as they always are along with some other people so I'd only just seen her recently. She was 8 weeks apparently. I didn't know she was pregnant, because they obviously weren't saying at that stage, and I only know about the m/c cos I saw her sister in town earlier. Now I'm wondering what's the best thing to do - wait for them to tell us, call her, get her flowers or something - is it really insensitive to have a fairly heavily pregnant friend commiserate you on a miscarriage before you tell them yourself? What do people think? This is the third of my friends to have a m/c since I got pregnant, and someone else I know a bit did too. I'm gutted because we would have had kids just a few months apart in age which would have been brilliant.

Rosy, didn't mean to leave you out - you're obviously overseas in one way, but not the "abroad" way so I forgot.

callie-i would personally wait for her to tell you officially if she wants to.in my last 4 pregnancies theres always been at least one friend/aquaintance whos had a m/c when ive been in the last trimester.its really difficult to know whether to just keep out of the way or not.but ive never been in that situation myself,so i dont have a clue how the person would feel

Callie, I agree with Diva, I'd wait until she brings it up because then it will be because she's ready. It's very difficult beinf around pregnant women when you've lost a baby.

you mama's worrying about getting your children up for school on Monday made me smile... after two weeks holiday I have no idea how I am going to get up and get going to TEACH!! Kitty, I know what you mean about being exhausted by the end of term (at my school, we all were and we finished at 3 o'clock on 22nd - last minute) but, I have to say, that I was really pleased because it meant we weren't back until the 8th. Some school's have been back since Wednesday.

I'm envious about your nurseries... once we need a cot, we need to move!! Our place isn't big enough to fit another body. Dd's bedroom fits her bedroom furniture and her - plus, she is 10 and I don't think it would be fair to put an infant in with her. I have had so many moments over Christmas / NY commiserating over it being our last.... I will really miss our spot on the river.

Definately for a post-natal forum... it shouldn't matter when the babies are born - I'm due Feb and decided to stick here once I got to "know" you all. As for a meet up, that's s great idea.

Laughing at the chav comments too!! Where we live is two extremes... lots of young banker-wankers earning mega bucks at Canary Wharf or the City and then the complete opposite. Dh calls the mum's at the school gate the local mafia. They are something to be seen to be believed.

Callie, news of the m/c must be hard. Hope that your friend does ok to get through this. You know her best to know what sort of support she needs... my thought is that you don't want her to feel like she can't approach you with bad news because you are so (happily ?!?!?!) pregnant. I think I would send a card or a note offering condolences and reminding her you are there to chat, if she needs it. Ball is in her park then.

Yeah, I think you're right. I don't want to upset her even more, even if I mean well. I suppose part of me just thought, oh well, she'll know I know when she sees her sister, so I didn't want her to think I don't care by not saying anything, but you're right, I should wait.

It's bizarre, as I said in my last post, four people I know have had them, one twice in one year, yet in the years when I was TTC and failing to, everybody I knew just about seemed to have children just like that. It's a turnaround all right. That's why I'm always so wary of asking people whether they're thinking of having children/having more, because you never know what their situation is. Somebody was saying to me once, oh you should do it, they're great, and I thought - you have no idea what you're saying.

Ooh, x-posts there Kiwi.

Callie... it broke my heart to learn that a friend had two mis-carriages this year. Our pregnancy wasn't plannned, in fact after years of trying and being unsuccessful we had decided that we were happy with life as it was . However, while we went through the trauma of arriving at this decision (beginning IVF made us really consider how much we wanted this) my friend was going through the should we / shouldn't we dilemma of whether they would extend their family and we used to discuss our situations at long length. I only found out about her miscarriages when I told her that I was pregnant - for which she was over the moon but I couldn't help feeling awkward and wondering what cards fate / faith were dealing.

Foxy where are you, you're in London aren't you? I try to remember these things but my memory ain't what it used to be. Although I can't remember what it used to be so it could be what it used to be....

I would love to make a meet-up, but at this point I don't want to make any promises, I can't drive yet and don't know when I'll pass my test. Although I think I'd probably get a train to London anyway rather than drive. Would I be able to bring my lo with me? I want to breastfeed him so don't know how I'd be about leaving him a night.

Diva how did you get to be going out with a binman from St Helens? You were just visiting on a Friday morning at eight o'clock and there he was resplendant in his hi-vis jacket??

Diva we could always have a mini-meet up, you and I! I think we're the two most Northerly here? We could meet somewhere in the middle for a day out!

Booboo that sounds so cute that you kept your old magic roundabout shade from your baby room! I have an old teddy bear from when I was a baby that I will pass on to Bertie. To be fair it's just a bog-standard grey-ish teddy bear and we'll get him far nicer ones too but it's the idea of the thing...

Kiwi we will be in the same position as you when we have no.2, whenever that is! I don't think I could bear to move though, I am already trying to convince dh to start saving now for a loft extension...

Callie that is sad news about your friend. I am not sure what you should do, possibly waiting might be the best thing and leaving the ball in her court. I had an aquaintance (sil of dh's best friend) who had a mc / stillbirth at 23 weeks, it was incredibly traumatic for her and the worst was the NHS couldn't / wouldn't give her a reason why it happened.

She is a psychiatrist though so has trained as a Doctor, and knew all the right people to talk to; she went and had some tests done privately and they found out what it was. This year they can ttc again, after 12 weeks she'll have to have a stitch put in her cervix.

I heard through the "grapevine" as it were that she will feel up to talking to me again when she is pg again, that she isn't ignoring me out of anything bad but that she just couldn't cope atm.

Apparently the NHS won't test for this thing unless you've had two mcs which seems really unfair to me.

On the meet-up subject, it would be good to know (roughly, if people don't want to be too specific - near so-and-so will do) where everyone is, to see if there is a more central point than London that we could all make it to for a daytime meeting and return the same night if that's easier for some people. I said London because it's often easier to get there even if it's further away, IYKWIM. Although the advantage of an overnight stay is no-one needs to worry about drinking (although I suppose those breast-feeding still won't be able to have much - I am including myself in this group, I hope).

Kiwi, do you mind if I ask you as I'm not sure from your post, did you actually go ahead with the IVF or did it happen naturally? Don't answer if that's too personal a question. I was in the queue for IVF (and would still have been waiting by this stage and for about another year probably on the NHS - and that after a year's delay while they sorted my innards out!) but either the clomid worked after the fact or I just got lucky. Not dissing the NHS at all btw, almost certainly the only reason I'm pregnant now is because of some fantastic treatment and surgery. I have to say after having the surgery etc the year before I was profoundly grateful not to have to go through more medical procedures, although I would have of course.

The baby had hiccups last night. I think that's either the first time I've felt it, or the first time I recognised it.

I signed my soul away to Bounty yesterday and last night during an awake period about 4am I watched that DVD you get on what the baby can hear/see. Awwww.

31+3 - or 60 days to go

Callie, mine had hiccups last night too, it's cute but a bit annoying, its like having hiccups yourself once removed...

I'm a big fat grump today, everything is such an effort, my bump sticks out 1 mile, I weigh 1 tonne, my spd hips are making it hard to walk, (though could be worse) Yesterday I slowly picked up and put away a trillion little toys and this morning they've been playing and it's as if I did nothing! Argh.

I need a cleaner desperately now, when dh is here he makes even more mess, the kids try to help, bless them but you know...a 15 year old boy who needs carefully broken down detailed instructions, an almost 4 yo and a 2 yo, they are not exactly kim and aggie plus team. sigh. I failed to get the bins out in time twice over the hols so there are bags of rubbish everywhere.

Oh well, must stop moaning. My sister surprised me yesterday with a beautifull jade green velvet jacket with sequins and little buttons and I love it. I can even stretch it over my ridiculous bump.

31 weeks today. (boy)

Moss - around here it's 3 consecutive m/c's within 2 years. Bit of a PITA if you have difficulty conceiving AND difficulty holding on to them, because they won't investigate either

Callie - I'm in Warwickshire, and so is Amie. I have to say the thought of negotiating London public transport with a buggy and a lively 5 year old in tow, plus overnight things, doesn't fill me with confidence! It's bad enough doing it on my own for work when I'm only going for a day and only have to cart my laptop with me.

If you can somehow let your friend know that your thinking of her, and appreciate what she's going through, without putting her in a situation where she has to talk about it that would probably be best. I hated it when people who knew either totally ignored it, or when they came out with banal things like "it'll happen when the time is right" - not a lot of comfort when you've been trying for years anyway and it doesn't seem that the time will ever be right.

Mad escaping dog for you Callie

Ahh cute doggy.
I haven't had a mc but everyone around me has. I never know the right thing to say, what can you say? And I've easily become pregnant and popped out my babies and I feel all guilty about that then in the face of my friends terrible pain. It's a horrible difficult thing.

Hiya

Have my book club later today in Stoke Newington, so am in a good mood The hostess always lays on extremely nice grub...

Diva - shame if you can't come to a meet as I'd love to meet you

....And Moss, Amie, Lunar

When we get to July, you lot must remind me about the meet and I'll invite you all over for a picnic anyway - see who can make it at the time. We're in Richmond, SW London, very easily accessible from M25 etc and tubes/trains.

Kitty, perhaps we can also do a seperate trip to Brighton as well for those who can get down there? I'm determined to get to the beach this year, as I was too tired in summer 2006 due to being in 1st trimester.

I can't wait to get my body and energy back when this baby is born. I dreamt last night I had a motorbike and it broke down - I think it symbolised my body

Rosy your jacket sounds gorgeous

Callie its very awkward when you're PG and a friend MCs isn't it? You feel as though you are rubbing salt in their wounds. I have two friends and one sister who can't conceive, which made me very cautious about how I told them my "news". One has really kept her distance during this pregnancy. She tried for a few years conceive, the went for some tests in prep. for IVF only to be told that she was pre-menopausal in her early 40's. Its so unfair as she would make a brilliant Mum (she used to run a nursery)

Our DCs broke up on 21 December as well and are back tomorrow. So when get back from the bookclub I have to run round tonight getting all their "stuff" ready for the morning

I washed all our newborn boys clothes yesterday, so their tiny legs are dangling from the drying rack {aaaaawwwww}

32 weeks today!!! (baby boy)

Rosy - we're really lucky aren't we, some people have such trouble trying to have a family and that's all they really want

Has anyone been following suejonez thread - she is adopting a little boy from Kazachstan? Can't do the link unfortunately