Due August 2021 - Third Trimester!

[Daffodil21]

Not totally up to date, sorry!

@wimbler - EDD 29 July, surprise 💛
@coffeeandrainbows1- EDD 4 August (but most likely July), Boy 💙
@Jessicapebbles - EDD 5 August (but having C-section at 39 weeks, so really July), Girl 💖
@Smurf123 - EDD 5 August (but likely to be July) 💛
@WhatEvenIsSleep - EDD 2 August, Boy 💙
@ready2020 - EDD 4 August, Girl 💖
@Xaxnxdxrxexaxandrews87 - EDD 4 August, Boy 💙
@Smushty14 - EDD 6 August, TBC 💛
@Rattyclife - EDD 6 August, TBC 💛
@Dia12 - EDD 8 August, Girl 💖
@Biscuitcat - EDD 10 August, surprise 💛
@ElonaWise - EDD 11 August, TBC 💛
@Runnergirl123 - EDD 11 August, TBC 💛
@PurplePansy05 - EDD 12 August, Boy 💙
@Srtdr - EDD 12 August, surprise 💛
@Daffodil21 - EDD 12 August, Boy 💙
@Inmypjsagain - EDD ???, Boy 💙
@BananaHammock23 - EDD 13 August, surprise 💛
@MrsB2019x - EDD 13 August, Girl 💖
@Magik01 - EDD 13 August, Boy 💙
@Aaaaa1519 - EDD 13 August, Girl 💖
@Carefree1 - EDD 15 August, Girl 💖
@DressyGerbera - EDD 15 August, surprise 💛
@lucyrp - EDD 16 August, undecided 💛
@BertieBotts - EDD 16 August, want to know! 💛
@WolfMother326 - EDD 17 August, surprise 💛
@Caz1226 - EDD 17 August, Boy 💙
@Lille4 - EDD 17 August, Girl 💖
@Redskinsucks - EDD 17 August, TBC 💛
@RockyRockyRoad - EDD 18 August, can't wait to find out 💛
@Smallbean27 - EDD 19 August, surprise 💛
@WatermelonKisses - EDD 20 August, surprise 💛
@Alittlexmasmagic - EDD 22 August, surprise 💛
@Millymay13 - EDD 22 August, TBC 💛
@Whatshouldbemyusername - EDD 22 August, surprise 💛
@LottSE20 - EDD 22 August, TBC 💛
@Notinthestarsigns - EDD 23 August, TBC 💛
@Winecoffeeteamum - EDD 23 August, Girl 💖
@LaceyMermaid - EDD 24 August, TBC 💛
@Fran919 - EDD 25 August, surprise 💛
@ava50x - EDD 25th August, Boy 💙
@Ghhh - EDD 25th August, Boy 💙
@northernsquirrel - EDD 26 August, surprise 💛
@LyraShaeLilly - EDD 27 August, Girl 💖
@ame88 - EDD 28 August, TBC 💛
@diamante11 - EDD 29 August, Girl 💖
@HopefulB - EDD 29 August, TBC 💛
@CountryGirl84 - EDD 29 August, TBC 💛

Ugh I have a cold. Its been building since I was away last week. OHs nephew had a very gunky nose so I think it's from him. I'll take a lateral flow test just in case though. Feel OK apart from sinus pressure and bit of a sore throat. Last thing I want now though!

@PurplePansy05 DS school day is from 9.10-3.30 ☺️but he does go to breakfast club 2 times a week when my mum is working and can't do the school run for me which starts at 8.15 I think 🤨

Interesting re the hours, thanks! I was just thinking the other day how our LOs will cope with long days at only 4 yo, but equally I heard some schools do shorter hours for the youngest children and I couldn't imagine how parents manage to work if a child goes in for 2 hrs in the middle of the day. Anyway, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. So much to learn over the next years...or even a lifetime! It's like a whole new chapter opening now, I never had to consider so many things as I'm slowly finding out now. xx

Nursery fees can be prohibitively expensive. We pay £1170 for 3 full days per week (we are south east commuterville and sadly that’s par for the course) but the tax free child care top ups contributes £2000 a year which does help. She turns 3 in December so then we will qualify for the 30 hours free 🙌🏻

We are really lucky in that my husband gets 6 weeks full pay pat leave with the option to extend by 6 weeks unpaid. He can spread it out over the year which he did last time and was really good as we didn’t need 6 weeks right at the start. I only get SMP despite working for my company for 10 years which is insulting! I’m actually thinking of retraining next year and possibly going back to uni but we shall see!

@wimbler 😱
Mine is £575ish per month for 3days a week less tax-free inclusion. That's been great for me as I've been able to consistently make overpayments into the childcare account to maximise the tax-free element, I'll then withdraw (and repay) my overpayments which will help cover nursery fees on mat leave. I'm also on SMP which sucks so quite glad I saved that way x

@PurplePansy05 at my last doctors' here they did finger pricks for iron level testing every week. I found it was least painful in my ring or longest finger. Try different fingers and see if it helps. Actually I've got a little finger with only half the nerves (old accident), so if I could get them to do it in that one it was even better! But weirdly, very painful if they poked me right on the border of where the remaining nerves meet the numb part.

@Ava50x Just had a look at that BabyLo Next2Me. Looks good for the price for sure. The only thing I am not keen on is that drop - why do they all have these?? I always found a level surface to be the important thing personally. Also if you have big babies it might be outgrown fairly early.

@Inmypjsagain about labour - I went through my old birth stories and kind of identified what the problem was. So it turns out I am a massive wimp :o Or have particularly painful labours (prob a wimp, TBH!) and tend to struggle and panic when the pain ramps up even slightly, which for me happens right in the early stages so somewhere around 1-2cm. In my first birth I was lucky to have a really helpful midwife at that stage (I had planned a home birth) and she helped me calm down and gave me some coping strategies. But with DS2 I was kind of left alone during this stage and when I asked for things like the birthing pool, epidural, they just agreed and let me try them, rather than saying hang on, you're only a little bit dilated, let's try (XYZ) first. Then DS2's labour became really difficult for me to cope with and only really recovered when again I had people giving me loads of instructions towards the end.

So my first thought was great! I've identified what the issue is and I just need to explicitly ASK - for instruction or suggestions, and to find out what stage I'm at. I think they kind of left me alone because most women prefer to be left to get on with things, and they only gave me vague information about my dilation because they didn't want to discourage me. But I didn't want those things and so it will be better this time if I'm upfront about what I want, rather than just expecting them to magically know via telepathy :o

But then I thought about it and I thought well, ideally, I'm not even meant to be AT hospital at 1cm dilated, am I? And if I turn up in that stage of labour they're just going to send me home. Last time they didn't, because my waters had broken and they wanted to give me antibiotics for GBS so they wanted me there. So then I've gone a bit back and forth about how I'm even going to manage in the early stages and what happens if I get totally lost in this panic again. I keep reading books about how if you let the panic take over then it will lead to a more stressful/painful experience and I feel like yes, I know, but HOW do I not let the panic take over? I think I will talk to DH about it before I have my birth planning appointment at the hospital (which is in a couple of weeks) and then I'll talk to them and see what they say and then I'll talk to DH again. Realistically he's my only tool/coach/whatever to keep me out of that panic state. I tried to explain this to him last time, but I don't know that I did it very well. And then because we were in hospital and he didn't know what my dilation was either I think we kind of both felt like the pain relief they were offering could "fix" it and when it didn't then neither of us really knew what to do and I was not in any state to communicate with anybody at all apart from to shout at them :o

Has anyone else been feeling more sick in the third trimester ? The last week I've felt quite sick a few times for no reason whatsoever 🤢

@BertieBotts my hypnobirthing course covers this pretty well. It's about preparing yourself for moments of stress and fear by breathing techniques, relaxation methods, relaxation mp3s, having as much knowledge about the situation as you can get, taking your time to think about what you want and being prepared for all circumstances.

Obviously when the shit hits the fan all that could go out the window but the aim is to have done enough prep with all that that it becomes second nature to find your happy place and not panic.

If I can find a way I'd happily pass on any mp3s or info from my course if you like? It's not everyone's cup of tea though.

@MM1993 I can't get over that day rate!!

@BertieBotts I'd agree with @Ready2020 about the hypnobirthing, if you've not tried it already. The thing I've found it really useful for so far is getting my blood pressure taken - I get awful white coat syndrome and my BP rockets to something scary whenever they tried to take it, but since doing some hypnobirthing breathing while they take it I've managed to get totally normal readings first time!

@lucyrp yes I've definitely found I've been feeling sick again, especially when baby is doing some big movements, it's horrible isn't it? Sending lots of sympathy.

@PurplePansy05 transition into primary is usually run differently by each school - some have a really long period of short days, some it's full days from the get go! Legally speaking though your child is entitled to a full time education (so long as they're the right age, and assuming it works the same in Wales as in England) so you can push back against extended short days if it causes a real problem for childcare, or even if you feel it wouldn't be beneficial for your child to have the disrupted routine, especially if they're used to full time at nursery.

I'm so jealous of those of you whose partners have good paternity leave! DH gets one week paid, one week unpaid (or statutory maybe, I'm not as familiar with paternity leave rules), so he's only taking the week. We've tried to arrange his annual leave so he's off for as long as possible in August , and also hoping that baby arrives on time/a touch early so he's at home for as much time as possible in the prebooked bits of his leave, though I have a horrible feeling that he/she will be really overdue.

I've got a hypnobirthing book and CD (which to be fair I have never listened to) since last time around, and I did a course the first time round (not hypnobirthing but included some relaxation techniques) and I am very familiar with all the stages of labour, it just doesn't seem to help. I also have books which are less "hippy" which do have the same promise that they will keep you out of the panic state but then it doesn't work for me in the moment. It's a bit like how I read everything about breastfeeding before my first baby was born but then when he arrived, I couldn't remember any of it and hadn't a clue what I was doing! Probably practising is the key but I won't find a class in English here.

I am not a person who is very good at relaxing on cue I tend to be quite laid back in general, so I don't find I need these things and I just get bored/impatient/feel silly while practising it so I never get to the state where I can turn the relaxation on and off. Probably that's the issue, but I must not be the only person who that applies to.

Also this is probably me being nitpicky but I get really irritated by the general tone of my hypnobirthing book. Just call it a contraction, no need to call it "uterine surges", why do you keep using "birthing" as a noun (like "your way to a gentle and calm birthing") aaaaaaargh. I don't believe there will be a pain free birth no matter how much I prepare because I've done it twice before, so all the insistence that it can be pain free (subtext: And if it's not you're just doing it wrong) rubs me up the wrong way as well. I do not like the implication that if you get pain relief/have an instrumental delivery/etc then you've failed. No matter how much they try to insist they are not saying that, they then go on to imply it over and over again. I don't see why it's helpful. I'm not bothered if I have to have some kind of intervention, I am just bothered about getting through the day. I hate how everything in parenting/childbirth seems to be this whole one way vs another way camp and you can never seem to find helpful advice on any one topic without the author feeling the need to explain why the opposite way is terrible I mean if a method is good enough then surely it stands on its own two feet, why does the author need to convince me not to do something else?

Ah well, I find the course I'm doing really helpful. They've never said its going to be pain free nor that an assisted birth is failure. They just let you know the options when the pain comes and the techniques that might help. The last session we had was all about assisted birth and what could happen and what pain relief was available if I wanted it. Yes it did also explain the breathing techniques etc that can be used but that was only part of it.

I guess it just depends on your course /teacher. It's a shame it's not your thing but I'm finding it useful.

@BertieBotts which course did you do? I got the Positive Birthing Co one when a few people flagged it was on offer - I didn’t find it preachy and think it has been useful - although I agree I don’t have a problem with the word contraction, but maybe that because I associate it with muscles rather than only labour. They make an app called ‘Freya’ which may be worth a look? Had a ‘surge’ counter, guided relaxations, breathing etc. I’m imagining you could just switch it on and disengage brain!

@Hoares3 oh are you enjoying that ? I found it awful and a waste of money even at £12. Just having a woman talk at you for hours on end isn't my thing, was hoping there would be short videos, diagrams , animated bits etc to help OH but it's so boring we fell asleep both times we tried to watch it and i fast forwarded through a few clips and it was still her talking so I gave up 😬

@Hoares3 sorry tagged wrong person! Was meant to tag @HopefulB

Been in for monitoring today, which is the first time for any pregnancy. Reduced/very few movements this morning so made the call and went in. Baby seems fine (perked up as soon as monitor on 🙄) but my bump measurement had dropped off the line so need to go for a growth scan & twice weekly monitoring until scan is done, so back on Monday x

@BertieBotts I so agree with you about some of the frilly language - some of it feels like looking to make a word a problem when it isn't (especially contraction - the muscle IS contracting, why not say it?!). But if you take some of the hippy dippy stuff with a pinch of salt I find the concept of it really helpful. I also struggle though, like you, with the putting down of other methods, that doesn't always feel very woman-centred or positive to me. I think I'd like a pragmatic hypnobirthing course where they tell you that actually, yes, it does hurt, but the reason we think hypnobirthing is a good idea is xyz

The course I did was years ago and was just an NCT course but teacher really good - v different to the descriptions of NCT from MN at the time! I did find that incredibly helpful in terms of what to expect etc. We always did a relaxation during that course and I was having reiki healing from my mum regularly throughout that pregnancy as well. But I didn't really find I could access these things until labour had gone on for a bit.

Your course sounds good Ready :) I think the problem is I'm getting a bit overloaded with too many "possible tools/techniques" - maybe I just need to stick to one and actually practice it rather than hoping that reading about everything will stick.

The Hypnobirthing book I have is the Marie Mongan one which to be fair I think is quite outdated now - a friend gave it to me when I was pregnant with DS2 as she'd found it useful. I am probably being petty letting these things like words get to me.

I've got the book Give Birth Like a Feminist but haven't got very far into that one yet. Hoping that one will be better. Also like Juju Sundin's Birth skills, but again didn't actually end up using any of them last time except for visualising the contraction being like a rollercoaster building up up up up for the first 30 seconds, and then rush down for the last 30. I got DH to count me every 10 seconds which really helped me keep a sense of "this is temporary and will end" but that probably only helped for the first bit of early labour, there was a point at which it didn't help any more. DS2 being back to back won't have helped. Fingers crossed this one stays in a better position. Apparently his back is to my left right now, but I definitely felt some big movements today, so he might have moved again.

@lucyrp I couldn’t watch it all in one go, but 1-2 short videos at a time was ok. I think as an intro to the concept without being preachy the content is good - the delivery could definitely be improved - and I have a reasonable tolerance for rubbish e-learning videos due to work!!
The Freya app has ‘up’ breathing - in for 4 out for 8, with the intention that you do 4 of those to your contractions, so that may fit with your rollercoaster Bertie?

@HopefulB I tried that but everytime I just thought oh god not you and your voice again 🙄 sorry I sound so negative but couldn't believe how much positive reviews it has but yet it's just the woman talking ?!🤷🏼‍♀️

No need to apologise! Everyone learns differently, some people can’t take info from
passive sources at all.

Anyone else find hiccups too cute?!
I’ve only just started feeling them, but it properly makes me smile 😊

Yes I love the hiccups! But they make me a bit anxious as well because they reckon DS2 inhaled too much amniotic fluid before birth and it was because he hiccupped too much. I have no idea if that's just something they said to make me feel better though.

I did have a look at my Hypnobirthing book tonight and it has three breathing exercises and one of them is in for four, out for eight. So I thought I might try and practice that even if I do nothing else / don't follow the whole "course" through.

I don't know how to recognise the hiccups

Re hypnobirthing, I posted many threads ago I have a book from The Wise Hippo, I was hoping it would have some useful info regarding breathing and calming techniques in particular...but it was shit. I am so disappointed I bought it. It had grand reviews, but it was more of an advert for paying and attending their course, which I didn't realise. There's no substance to it. It's too late for me now to sign up and I don't want to spend any more money. Does anyone know of any good videos, YT for example, showing some breathing/calming techniques to apply in labour?

I am actually quite open to know more about hypnobirthing. I have been into meditation post MCs when I struggled with sleep for months and found them incredibly helpful in managing my overall anxiety. I'd like to see something similar applicable in labour, hypnobirthing or otherwise.

Can I just mention, my NCT is gearing up to be a shit one too, after a delayed refund they sent me vouchers for nappies and baby products that were out of date and no one has contacted me at all about any WhatsApp groups or anything. It's starting this weekend and I'm not having high hopes, the coordinators clearly need someone to coordinate them first 🙄 xx

Hope everything is ok @alittlexmasmagic. Give us an update when you can on Monday, it's good they are checking up on you and your little one xx

Hiccups feel like the baby is kind of clicking or pulsing rhythmically.

Yep, hiccups are much more repetitive than other movements, you could think it was their pulse, only it’s slower (more like the speed of yours). Obv. I can’t be 100% sure that’s what it is - but if it’s not I’m growing a drummer 😂