June 2016 #7 - We're still waiting for the second trimester "bloom" but healthy babies and stronger kicks all around!!

[nehagarg]

Here is the next one people.

Stats here!

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oTx71GeTR-ilVPTpIhNhutAwZPqNyYNEyIDwO80PmKQ/edit#gid=0

Yep I second more protein! I have yoghurt, berries and sugar free granola for breakfast on scrambled eggs. I don't go anywhere without a bottle of water now, especially the tube or long meetings. Also a small bag of sweets or cake to try and avoid a sudden sugar crash. Glad you are feeling better now though!

Glad your feeling better now biking I did something similar with my first. Was standing talking to colleagues on minute and saton the floor the next after everything started spinning. Not had it this time thankfully.
Is anyone else really hungry? I had 3 slices of toast for breakfast thismorning and was still starving by 9.30 (and I've got to try and keep my blood sugar levels down so really can't just stuff my face all day)

Eggs for me, and I think there are a few sausage sarnie aficionados on here too!
Also things like toast with peanut butter, and muesli with nuts and yogurt as a second breakfast mid morning

Right, I'll start with those then, thanks everyone.

I do also wonder if I partially just need to eat more, I had 2 slices of toast and a latte for breakfast, and then it was about 11 that I started feeling so bad. I'll take your suggestion eastend and start carrying snacks around with me.

Grubby ooh yes peanut butter... Biking I'm definitely eating more, esp sugary things but find the odd sweet it enough to make a difference. 10p bags of Haribo are a lifesaver- maybe you can get something similar in the Netherlands? Also an evening sleep works wonders!

So I was planning on working until 37+4 but after getting mat b1 form today been told I'll need to take more annual leave before hand as I won't be allowed to carry as much as 4 weeks over...gutted lol so now think I'll be going at 35+4 instead it seems so early but suppose i am on my feet all day

I wish lou I have to take my holidays in the school holidays so I don't have to pay for childcare, no one able to watch the girls, so I'm working up to 37+3 I suppose I'm lucky that I'm getting a fortnight off over easter. I'm working for the next 4 weeks, off for a fortnight, back in for 5 weeks and 2 days then I finish - provided I've not gone before then!

I am divergent I was gonna take annual leave during summer but obvs gonna be on mat leave I've got a week during Easter hols but still leaves me with 6 weeks..so was gonna take 2 before and carry 4 over but not allowed ps the seven weeks is including public hols

Oh dear biking that doesn't sound great! I've been carrying food around with me wherever I go since I got pregnant- I've always eaten loads anywhere and my blood sugar seems to drop quickly and I feel sick, headachey and faint if I don't eat regularly, but even worse since I'm pregnant. I have a huge bowl of porridge with a banana and handful of berries on it every morning and I'm generally starving by 10am. I went through a proper hungry phase a few weeks ago where started taking an extra mid-morning sandwich to work with me, but it seems to have settled down a bit now and i can survive with just fruit mid-morning.

I meant to say, I've been having braxton hicks contractions for several weeks now, but last night they really ramped up- I had about 10 an hour from about 9 o'clock till I finally fell asleep around midnight. I woke up loads of times in the night and had several each time before I got back to sleep again. I was going to ring the midwife today if they carried on but they seem to have settled down to just 1 or 2 an hour today. Anyone have any experience of such frequent BH?

Mollie those BH sound grim!!! Poor you!!!

biking I wouldn't make it to 11 on that breakfast- on a work day I'm more like:
2 slices of really really sturdy super whole meal toast (I get it from a particular baker, nothing from the supermarket is anywhere near as solid!) usually with an egg and a large glass of whole milk, and a piece of fruit
Large bowl of nutty muesli with a pot of whole yogurt and a decaf coffee at about 10:30
Massive lunch (usually frozen leftovers- veg stew, veg curry or similar with tons of brown rice or baked sweet potato- ordinary potato or white rice just wears off within an hour)
2 more slices of super sturdy toast with peanut butter. 4 slices if I can only get ordinary brown toast.
And two to four pieces of fruit through the day. And I get home absolutely starving.
I keep away from sugar, or I get super starving and bloated by mid afternoon. With DS all I wanted to eat was pasta with red sauce, and now he's the same, this one is clearly already a whole foods freak...
(On non work days it's a bit more hit and miss, but still tons, whole foods, and low sugar- or I start keeling over. In normal life I am not a particularly virtuous eater at all!!)

Sounds like I need to eat more... Never something I have had to work at before!

I shall add eggs to my breakfast tomorrow and then try and get to the shops for portable snacks.

Mollie I feel your discomfort! I have been having teally strong BH for a few weeks. I just try change position if possible( ie stand if I was sitting ).
When I was pregnant with DS they got so bad they really took my breath away, but not painful just uncomfortable. I had close monitoring and they kept interfering with the baby trace- one of the trainee MW was convinced I was in labour .
I think if you are not in pain just mention it to the midwife when you next see her. This is my 3rd baby and they are definitely stronger this time!

Currently stuffing my face with hotel chocolat amaretto kisses (which are apparently non alcoholic but you can't tell) and enjoying bubs kicking in response.

So an AIBU question- I pretty much stripped the next sale of cute baby wear. Purchases were agreed with DH beforehand (the joy of joint finances!). Now they have arrived, we ended up having a massive row debate about whether they are too "masculine"- they are multicoloured "transport" patterned and some with a cute dinosaur print and he thinks people will make assumptions that our LO is a boy and we will get fed up with that. This led on to him saying children should play with mainstream toys e.g tractors for boys and dolls for girls otherwise they will get bullied. He was then surprised that I called him sexist. I feel quite strongly that if we do have a little girl, I don't want to dress her as a princess until she is big enough to choose for herself. Is this the pregnancy hormones making me so annoyed about this? Ok maybe blue is typically seen as a male colour, but red? Green? Buses? The damn dinosaurs?! Arghhh! [eats another chocolate]

Eastend YANBU in my opinion. We're hoping to do the same, although it is difficult. I don't see why it should be an issue for a girl to wear blue clothes and boys to wear pink (and actually in the past these were the gender-associated norm colours). I keep hesitating from buying things thinking 'maybe it's a bit girly/boyish' so I think it's partly ingrained in all of us to think like that, even if we want to behave differently. Not sure how you can convince your OH... (Sorry not a very helpful post!)

Eastend I'm totally with you! We are having girls and I love the dinosaur/animal/transport prints on baby grows. I'm also not a big fan of all pink flowery princess stuff. Luckily my DH feels even more strongly about this than I do! Kids should play with whatever they fancy - and I can't imagine anyone teasing a toddler or baby girl for having a train set I'm sure once you have your baby your DH will want it to just enjoy as much as it can get its hands on - sod whether it's 'boys' or 'girls' toys or clothes! Your babygros sounds lovely! X

Thanks ladies, appreciated! We have agreed not to buy any more stuff until bubs is actually here (I am sure I have bought more than enough anyway!) so at least non of it's going back. I think I was actually speechless when he said boys are should be more attracted to things that go "brrrmmm"!? Oh right, and we should encourage our girls to be female engineers (if they want to be) how exactly?! And if we had a little boy who wants to be a ballerina?! We are great ones for hypothetical arguments, lol!!! Maybe I should have just stuck with white after all, sigh!!

Sounds fine to me eastend if no2 had been a girl we'd still have re-used all DS1s baby grows!
Reminds me of the time DS went to nursery with a pink dummy (he'd picked a new box himself while shopping, I think he was just over a year) and one of the nursery staff was really surprised as it was a girls colour! He still likes pink now (4yo) although he doesn't really have much pink stuff anymore

We've always tried to be be pretty neutral about toys, clothes etc. but what is hardest is that you get given a lot of things and wardrobes etc rapidly become more 'girly' or 'boy'.

But what really convinced me we were right was that DD when she was 3 went through a phase of refusing to wear anything but dresses. Eventually I got to the bottom of it and she said it was because 'people only tell me I'm pretty when I wear a dress.'

My heart broke in that moment for her, and I went round and told family, friends at church etc that I wanted them to stop calling her pretty in a dress. I wanted them to find other ways to compliment her; for being kind, for trying hard, for a good idea etc.

Ultimately I still have a princess loving, Disco dancing girl. But I hope she understands her own value and absolutely lives Lego. I don't mind what she becomes, but I want her to be happy in her own skin and not care how others view her.

incidentally DS loves train and transport and is as 'boyish' as they come but his identity is not wrapped up in how others view him, he couldn't give two hoots!

Sorry huge rant over. You may have hit a nerve with me!

That's horrible biking that a 3 year old felt like that. My DD was never one for dresses etc until a few years ago she's now 9 and it's all about the hair and lip gloss but she always played with my sons trains and he loved her buggys. My friends Lo is only 2 and he has a little blue buggy that he absolutely adores.

I know we are having another girl and have to say I've bought some very pretty girls babygrows from the next sale, although my dh must be the opposite because I got one that's blue with flowers which I love and he wanted me to return it because it was too blue for a girl! I dressed dd1 the same when little and having a big brother she was around both kinds of toys. Now at 8 she has never liked dolls or princesses and always favours animal things and dislikes dresses unless a very special occasion, I wouldn't call her a tomboy but she's somewhere in the middle!! They all grow and find their own style!!

Eastend I feel the same! And biking that's such a shame. I'm constantly astonished by how embedded everyday sexism is in our culture- it's so important to try and break the pattern. But really hard to do!

I'm having a similar thing at the moment (I think I've already moaned about it on here, sorry everyone!)- we were given a huge box of 0-3mths clothes which was so kind, but they're almost exclusively blue. What about all the other colours?!! It seems daft to go and buy lots of other stuff when we have so much already and he'll have grown out of them in a few months, but I really don't want him in blue exclusively.

Same with the clothes I got given Mollie. And they come from a friend who is quite vocal against sexism for babies.

Maybe buy a multipack of white for when he is a few weeks older and intersperse those with the ones you have? Thats what I am doing. Got my eye on some really cute white tigger babygros for after bubs is born and I know how big he is.

I've bought a few clothes for baby that dh has said are a bit boyish (a gray dungarees set with zebras on from JL and a bright free sleep suit from Debenhams) but if we have a girl I'll just put a bow around her head lol sorted. Dh is definitely fine with a girl playing rugby or a boy doing ballet etc

Also... Baby bear has been making my bump visible jump for the first time this morning whilst I was in the bath and I'm so being pfb but it just felt magical like the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Nearly cried lol silly pregnancy hormones. Dh will be gutted he's missed it as before he left for work this morning he was talking to baby saying kick mummy hard so I can feel lol

Thanks all! So far we have a mix of white and multicoloured- a couple of bits are probably a bit stereotypically boyish but I thought I could add a few more girly bits to if needed to balance it out a bit. I'm probably overthinking this all a bit but it's beginning to dawn on me that I have no idea how to actually raise a well adjusted child. Biking your scenario would totally break my heart- was this while you were in the Netherlands? I kindof expected it to be a bit more neutral there. Mollie and Belle it's reassuring they find their own identity independently as they get older!