Fab Feb Fourth Thread: are we blooming yet?

[onwardandupward]

Here we are! This should do us for a few weeks...

Hi everyone how are we this Sunday afternoon - reading all those horror birth stories...I had to have an emergency c-section last time and prob will this time so the whole natural birth thing has passed me by....everyone has such a different story don't they.

Have spent all weekend without ds clearing out our house in anticipation of moving. We were supposed to exchange last week but didn't so better luck this week. Whether we move or not the clearing out bit has been a very cleansing experience (!) and long overdue. We've had trips to the tip and to the charity shop and I've sorted all the baby clothes out. If we have another boy, then we're all set up - if it's a girl, at least I had white babygros and vests but I suspect the rest may not be ok for a girl....we'll see(and no doubt I won't be able to resist the shopping trips for a girl).

I hope we haven't scared away any first timers ! I agree herbgarden, every birth story is different and I guess the most important thing is the baby and mother get through it and come out the other end as healthily as possible (literally in the cae of baby!)

I am lucky in that I have had 3 fairly easy births (although the second one hurt more than the others).... but I have always gone into it accepting that anything could happen . I think it must be really hard if you have your heart set on giving birth in a specific way and then things go a different way.

We've had a lovely Sunday afternoon bike ride taking advantage of a break in the clouds !

What's everyone else up to ?

evening all, dp gave me a lovely long lie in this morning and my dad called around in the afternoon to see the kids. i think his friend dying last week has really shocked him the man was a few years younger than my dad and was so full of life, my dad hasn't fully come to terms with it yet but i think it's spurred him into making sure he spends as much time as possible with the kids. they were delighted to see him and had great fun showing off the kittens to him

laidback, that's the key isn't it?remembering that birth plan or not, best of intentions or not, sometimes things won't happen the way you expect or want them to. i think if your prepared and informed even when things go wrong you can come out of it happy with the outcome.... a healthy baby. nothing else really matters.

Am shattered! DS has a stinking cold (so keeping himself - and me - wide awake most of the night) and DH has been off climbing in Switzerland from Friday, so have been coping with ill clingy toddler AND entertaining my parents (cue lots of cooking and tidying all the time to stop my mum criticising me - love my mum to death but she is a total nag) - thanks goodness they've headed home now so am going to aim to have a nice chilled out day at London Zoo with DS tomorrow (weather permitting) before DH gets home late tomorrow night and am just keeping my fingers crossed that I dont get DS's cold (colds seem to last for ever when I'm pregnant).

Mum brought all my maternity gear that I was storing at her place down - I'd forgotten how much I'd got last time round! Suspect will get away without buying anything this time round (fingers crossed).

Hope you're all having a fabulous bank holiday weekend.

Ps KT - welcome to the thread. Hope you're blooming (I just seem to be swelling rather!) and enjoying your pregnancy.

Hello all - welcome back swampy!

I went to my mum's today and laid about while she made a roast dinner and entertained dd. Then I ate lots of chocolate cake. Lovely.

And she even plated up DH a roast for after work so I didn't have to cook when I got home

She also announced she had got out all of dd's old baby clothes- I have moved so many times that I had completely forgotten how much I had asked her to hold on to.

There was bags and bags including all the little sheets from her moses basket and lots of little vests and babygros! I thought I had nothing left and instead I came home with 3 bags of stuff!

you've all mande me remeber how many boxes of baby stuff are lurking under tha stairs to be gone through.

have decided to start clearing the spare room this week and setting it up as babies 'room'. baby will be in with us but lord knows i don't want the piles of baby gear in with me too so their room will be a dumping ground for anything baby related til they're about 8/9 months

am wondering if i should have set myself such a amammoth taks as there's wardrobes to be dismantled, furniture to be moved, cots to be assmebled, and all the baby stuff will need washing at some point before feb, i have enough trouble keeping us i clean clothes without 20 boxes of baby crap to be cleaned [sigh]

rant over, sorry for the interuption folks

Yep, agree, to all the first timers- don't have your heart set on anything re birth plan and you won't be disappointed. Unless you have a "textbook" labour it's likely you'll have to just go with it and see what happens - most of my friends experiences were nothing as imagined......but we're all testament to the fact that it can't be that bad else the rest of us wouldn't be doing it all again (and again, again !!) - my worst nightmare was a c-section and I remember the consultants words "I'm afraid there's only one way out now" like it was yesterday. But despite that I'm not scared about having to do the c-section again.....We were all fine.

Markstretch - DS is now 2 and I seem to have about 10 plastic crates of stuff which I have anally marked on the outside of the crate with age range and content ( I even thought about numbering them and getting a spreadsheet together before I decided that I was going a bit far and surely should have better things to do with my time !!) - we are moving house though so thought my boxes might go astray in the mass of boxes we'll be packing up soon !!.

Hope you don't get the cold dinkystinky - I got it off ds a couple of weeks ago and it was horrible as you can't take anything for it - save for paracetemol. I'm pretty allergic to lots of stuff so I'm a bit more sniffly anyway so that coupled with a cold made for a slightly miserable time. There are lots of cold bugs going round at the moment aren't there.

We're having a well earned day off tomorrow after our clear out weekend, to see friends for a BBQ- ds is back tonight after a 2 days at grandmas had a great time but was knackered and a bit tearful before bed. Let's hope we don't have a 5.30am wake up call...

At least if you start doing it now PT then you won't have such a mammoth task nearer Feb - can you do it bit by bit ?? We've always used our spare room as a dumping ground so not sure what's going to happen when no 2 arrives. DS was in his own room from day 2 from hospital ....I know I know....I'm not a co-sleeping type - and we had one of those baby sensor things in his cot (never was quite sure what I'd have done had the alarm actually gone off other than panic wildly) so baby no 2 will probably do likewise. We put ds in a moses basket in our room for the first couple of nights and it was hopeless so tried his own room and suddenly he was happy. He loved being swaddled too so the Miracle Blanket will be making another appearance !..

lol, our spare room is currently functioning as;

pc room (only for one of the 2 pc's since thursday though)

study room for dp
music studio for dp
greenhouse for my plants (huge window and space for grow lights for things that are struggling)
storage facility
library

eek..... i have no idea where the vast majority of this will go as this was where we dumped everything we didn't want anywhere else in the house! have to get the dismantled cots out of the kids room as they keep climbing them though.

stoopid builders, it's all their fault, we have an attic but the only access is a door 10 ft up the wall of the spare room that's only a foot square so nothing can fit through it

So want to go to bed now but between DS's coughing and the annoying loud police choppers out there for the Notting Hill carnival, there is no point in even trying for bed for another couple of hours. Maybe should stick a v dull dvd on and hope I drift off on the sofa instead....

Herbgarden, Pinktulips - totally agree with youre not having your heart set on a birth plan and being informed.

Biscuitytrousers - think you've used an old list there as have updated my stats on at least 2 lists and that list has still got my old stats on. Think Neerly did the latest one....

dinkystinky - I have Metallica blasting out near my house - yes I am near a very LARGE Festival......uuuugh. Thank god it's over tonight. We never seem to go away this weekend so I have to get the earplugs out !!.....

PT - gosh a well used spare room. We have ironing board (always up as I'm too lazy to "do" the ironing as a scheduled chore IYSWIM) and washing basket with clean laundry to go away, linen basket with dirty laundry waiting for the wash (bathroom too small to house it) computer printer (where do people put those horrible things when you don't have an officey/study type room?) a mountain of boring admin filing in a plastic crate and a cupboard full of things like wrapping paper, cards, files of bills, passports and all those cables which come with every piece of electrical equipment you buy now - surely we don't need five sodding cables to attach said piece of equipment to the TV???.....

Must find new homes for all above items !!....
Luckily we have a great loft although dh moans every time I ask him to put something up there saying "god it's going to be full up there soon ,surely we can throw something away??"....and I think we have a good loft in new house (if we ever get into new house - I am hopeful) - we don't have any more room in new house but hope to one day if we win the lottery and can build an extension....

Aaaaaaaaargh - I've been pining for MN for two weeks and get home and DH decides to spend ALL NIGHT surfing for a CAR yesterday!!! We've never had one in London but figure with three kids the time may have come. Who knows, I might even learn to drive .

I'm lucky swampster my dh isn't interested in surfing the net otherwise he'd have a fight on his hands.....

Must go to bed - have been watching that prog about the bloke who cycled round the world. God he must be fit. I feel like a right slob now.....

Mine almost never surfs - that's why it hurt so much yesterday. Then he had the nerve to be cheesed off when I sent him to bed at 1am.

So is anyone actually blooming yet? I'm better than I was before my holiday - then I felt to sick to even post (but never too sick to lurk). But I don't think I do blooming any more now I'm over 40.

Happy Bank Holiday all!

So far this morning we got up and went swimming at a lovely local gym thanks to my friend who has a membership and took us as her guests. It had a great outdoor heated pool so we spent most of our time in there.

Then I went and bought all dd's new school uniform- got 2 skirts, 2 pairs of trousers, 4 polo shirts and PE T-shirt for £13!

Now home and going out later to buy dd a new chest of drawers as her clothes no longer fit in the little one I bought her as a baby so I guess hers will now be passed on.

And it's only half eleven. Does this mean I am blooming and losing my knackered-ness?!

sure sounds like it

all i've done is get up, get dressed, ditto for kids, clean dining room of soil, recover the plant pot the kittens keep diggging up (plastic this time as tinfoil just seems to make it a game), fed menagarie, fed children, fed self, put a load of washing on, hung up washing, cleaned kittens gunky eyes, gave up listening to toddlers whinging for tv and turned the blasted thing on seeing as we seem to have hit midwinter early here , had cup of tea and decided screw it.. fuck all to do except MN

i miss swimming with the kids, only downside of being in the middle of the country is you don't have handy things like toddler pools anywhere. dd won't let me hold her in the water but can't swim so i need to be able to bring her to a toddler pool.... besides which, even if she let me hold her i'd still have ds to deal with, not much fun treading water with a toddler under each arm

Forget it.

I am knackered, I've got a splitting headache and I am pissed off my house is full of so much crap!

I want my bed.

Where is everyone today?

Oh yeah and we bumped into DH's sister and mum in the city.

I like them very much but the first thing his sister said to me was 'ooooh you're big aren't you?' and then his mum said 'Are you sure it's not twins?!?! Look at the size of you!'

Fuck. Off.

grrrr.

families....

I spent this afternoon with my brother (the only member of my family I am currently speaking to) and his wife and dd.

He has very odd ideas about what kids like eating - wagamama (er ok but not that great as there's loads of chilli and weird stuff you have to pick out) and made a massive fuss about going to the playground. He says he hates going to the park (I'm a bit of a park fan) and hates reading kids' books because they are "boring".

Yes, sometimes I tire of reading Thomas books for the 1,000th time but DS adores them and reading to kids is one of the most important things you can do for them.

He is a very status conscious person and I think he finds it hard to enjoy things that don't have a monetary value/snob appeal to them. Which is a shame.

I like having ds cos you can eat sandwiches in the park and not care what anyone thinks about you!

Hello all - hope you had a good day today. DS loved London zoo and canal trip afterwards to Little Venice and amazingly I feel semi-human today despite lack of sleep last night due to Carnival/DS; either must be getting used to it or just relieved DH is back tonight and can deal with the nocturnal ministrations to tetchy toddler! Herbgarden - you have my most heartfelt sympathies about the festival near you.

Markstretch - sorry about your rude inlaws; if is any consolation my sister (plus cousin and sis's boyfriend) came over yesterday evening and my sister's first words to me were "my, havent you um expanded..." (she is my younger sister and has known am pregnant for abit but must be comparing me to last time round when wasnt this huge this early on) - delightful! On plus side her extremely non-observent boyfriend didnt even notice I was pregnant until my sister pointed it out to him... Cant believe that I still havent told people generally at work that I'm pregnant (they must think I've been piling on the weight like nobody's business) - have been wearing my fat suits with jackets and long tops round the office for weeks...

Hi everyone....oh dear MsLucy that's sad about your brother - funny as he already has a daughter so you'd think he might relax a bit wouldn't you. Like you I tire of reading books to ds for the millionth time and could probably recite The Runaway Train word for word but I can see the pleasure that ds gets from it (he's only 2 and a bit) and he already finishes some of the sentences so it's really sweet to listen to him trying and it won't be long probably before they just don't want you to do those things for them anymore and just grunt at us !!....

Swampster - I don't think I'll ever "bloom" during this pregnancy - I'm 38 and reckon I look permanently knackered - a bit grey round the gills with a couple of bags under my eyes.....very attractive. Even a bit of make up only does a temporary job.....

markstretch - I am huge already and reckon I've grown not least due to my enormous appetite at the moment. I eat at least as much as DH. My DH has commented about the size of the bean vs the size of my belly - why though do people feel they're able to comment...

Right, enough of my waffling, must get back to my recorded Eastenders.

PS - Hurray the festival is over and the grungy welly wearing teenagers have departed leaving devastation in their wake ! No earplugs for me tonight.

dinkystinky - I can't believe you've not told work yet. You must be hiding it well behind your "fat" suits- must admit I couldn't wait to get into my stretchy mat trousers so I didn't have to keep popping the button open on my suit come 3pm so told everyone as soon as I could...when are you going to spill the beans ?

Where are all those other people off the list - do you think they have wonderfully exciting lives with no time for MN ? Good on them eh?!

Herbgarden - my DS (2 and a bit) does exactly the same with reciting/finishing lines of his favourite books: I think its absolutely brilliant (shows their memories are working well)!

MsLucy - your brother sounds like some guys I know who have kids; they dont spend v much time with their kids and when they do its on their terms only (so they go to restaurants the adults will like, eat adult food, do adult stuff only); I always feel sorry for them as they're missing out on the really simple pleasures that having little kids bring (especially the opportunity to behave like a little child yourself - DS and I spend at least an hour today running around the house hiding from each other and leaping out and roaring at the other one - brilliant fun).