Frugaleers Marching on!

[Cagliostro]

Hi everyone, new thread as previous one full.

All welcome to chat all things frugal (and a whole lot more besides) - do jump in, we are a friendly bunch!

Cross post! CONGRATULATIONS CAG.

Ps I make beeswax candles. It's pure beeswax. It's not difficult but you will need to buy the wax from a beekeeper.

Oh Cag that's very major news. CONGRATULATIONS!!!! Best of luck for a healthy pregnancy - we'll be here to hold your hand all the way through. We need a baby smiley.

I dunno, I leave you alone for a few weeks and look what happens

Thanks all! I'm not sure how many weeks TBH, I don't even know how to find out. My periods have been messed up for a while and also I've been feeling sick a long time, which makes me think I'm a few weeks further along. I was actually only taking a test to properly rule it out as the GP gave me some stomach meds for the nausea. I was genuinely expecting a negative. Which I would've been a little disappointed by.

I'm feeling a bit guilty TBH that my first reaction was a bad one :( worlds apart from my first two pregnancies. I know that's silly though as it's not like the baby won't be adored! DH's smile was huge when I told him too.

Cag. Oh. My. Goodness.

How do you think the Caglets will take it? What did DH say?

That's a mothers' day bombshell right there!

Cross-posted. Well, goid for DH. And don't feel bad about having a mixed reaction. It wasn't planned. There are pros and cons even with planned ones, but with planned we've just had time to decide the cons don't matter. You have to do that processing in real time.

Exciting!

You can buy the clear.blue tests that tell you how far along you are but they only go up to 5-6 weeks iirc. Best bet is get to a doctor, they'll do bloods.

DH is worried about me health wise (so am I although I do know plenty of people who have had healthy pregnancies and babies despite having the same health issues) but his first reaction was the biggest grin I've ever seen :o

DD will be ecstatic as she has been going on about having a baby brother or sister for a year or more. I think that might just be because she wants to name it after her favourite book characters 🙄 Not sure about DS, he's not keen on babies 😱 But we aren't breathing a word until I've had a scan anyway

Am I supposed to book a GP appt now? It's been so long I can't even remember 😳😳😳

Amazing news Cag. Many many congratulations! It's totally okay to be pleased and scared all at once. I'm 45 and if that happened to me I would feel exactly the same. Like you say, it's another new person to love. Brilliant.

Oh my that's a bumpy route lonely, rude to waste this glorious weather. I'm planning around 15 tomorrow morning, off road.

I have discovered Lidl!!! There's been a new, pretty big one built near (ish) to us but definitely on a route that I could take to get home from work. Wow, so much nicer than Aldi, or our Aldi at least. Like walking round Waitrose but with Aldi prices in fact. And quiet, even on a Saturday morning. I'm converted. I spent £75, but a lot of that was on supplies for the horse box for the season i.e pasta, porridge, water, rice, cleaning stuff, cereal bars, sauces etc. And 2 massive bunches of tulips for M'Day. Their fresh produce and bakery was particularly impressive.

Back to Cag, just so chuffed ofr you.xx

Congratulations Cag. Have you still got all the baby stuff?

NSD.

Lidl bakery is the best. Their fresh stuff is far superior to aldi round here. Prefer aldi for some other stuff.

Cag, take time to process the news. Congratulations if you are happy about it. It's also fine to not be happy about it.

Lonely i have the coil and get the hormone cycle to a much lesser extent without the bleed. You might be experiencing that as it make me more emotional.

£20 fuel for car

need the pain au chocolate are particularly delicious! I usually have one as a snack leaving the carpark. Not now as I'm trying not to eat crap, but this never lasts long.

cag so pleased for you, yes, you have some serious health problems, but you have changed your life to accommodate them as much as you can, a new baby will fit right in. Huge bonus no1: no frantic getting everyone and baby ready to leave for school every bloody day for baby to poonami as you shut the door. Plus you will be super overcrowded now, back to the housing forms!

Congrats Cag, I was wondering with the sickness!

£40 haircut
£10 coffee with Mum
£11 Lidl on stuff DH forgot to pick up
£8 Waitrose on pudding for tomorrow plus stuff you can't get in Lidl

Two loads f washing dried on the line - love this weather!

Nope! Decluttered all that a long time back. Apart from a few nice toddler toys like duplo which I hadn't got round to selling. Literally don't even have any baby clothes! It'll have to be a minimalist baby 😂

Haha re overcrowding oh god 😱😱😱 beyond crazy! Maybe we will have moved by then?!

Life/Lonely Lidl tips appreciated indeed.

In fact, I think my discovery of the joy of Lidl is far superior to Cags discovery of being pregnant if I am truthfully honest.

Another one with the Mirena, it works for me, but the hormones take a while to settle if that helps?

Oh yes the housing! Being pregnant will def help getting a bigger house I think its lovely, your kids are that bit older now so will be able to help out lots and 3 is a nice number of children. Yes to making an appointment with the GP if your not sure of dates I think they would send you for an early scan?? Don't worry about baby stuff, they don't need much early on and most stuff you can get second hand.

I am all done up ready for dds show - eek!

BTW I remember reading the rules when we first went on the housing list and IIRC they don't count babies under 1 as people anyway :o

Thanks so much everyone it's good to overshare talk it through here!

Oh for sure need :o :o huge congratulations on your Lidl discovery 😍 I'm intrigued about your comparisons to Aldi as we just had a new one open which I need to try, whereas we have a couple of lidls dotted around.

Would they really do a scan just for me not being sure?! I've got an appt on 18th April (first available!) ironically to discuss my dodgy cycle and the nausea. That's why I'm so confused and surprised - I felt sick an awful lot last month too, although not quite so severely, and I DID test then as period was late, and obviously it was negative. So I thought it was a stomach thing! 😳

I obviously don't know how the NHS works as we don't have it here. But I'd imagine with your underlying health probs cag they'd scan you as soon as they could? But please correct me if I'm wrong.

So....start a sweep on who'll be next....?!

Went to look at the house. The garden was huge. For a size comparison it had a shed and a full size trampoline in it. We could have added a hot tub. Swings. And possibly kept a pony in it.

House itself was nice. But there's something that neither dh nor I can put our fingers on. There's just something about it we didn't like.

Trust your instinct em

Oo need the 1kg tub of natural yogurt is about £1.19 le yum

It's a shame life as the garden was to die for. But the garden sold the house iyswim.

It was also £15,000 technically over budget. 3 double bedrooms (one only just) and probably the same amount of living space as we have now. It wasn't in our minds worth the £515k price tag.

So we've decided to leave it. It could be nice. It needed painting everywhere. But if it's still there in a month or two and if we haven't sold maybe it's worth another look.

Food for thought though.

Speaking of food...dh is making a Vietnamese soup/ramen type thing for dinner. Mmmmmm.

Cag I don't think they will scan you early for your health problems but they probably will if your bloods can't give them an indication how far along you are (I think it is reasonably indicative up to a point but not later). You might get more scans in later stages though.

Rubbish that babies don't count towards housing. I appreciate they sleep in with parents at first but they do have lots of stuff that has to go somewhere (even minimalist stuff!)

Hopefully you'll have some local friends who will pass on some stuff? You should be far enough behind me that I can send you some babygros

cag congrats! Such lovely news. Lots of frugaleering babies around!

Cag!! In my area they would offer you a dating scan ASAP.

That's all I have time to write right now need to get the dc dinner.

It's not the one then em. It's early days for looking.
Ironically the is a Moses basket and rocker in the window of our charity shop

£10 Chinese

Omg Caglio CONGRATS!! Yes there does seem to be lots of people having babies on this thread! I am jealous and broody!!

Absolutely exhausted again from volunteering with the refugee kids. There was waaay more kids who showed up this week and it didn't work out so well at first as a bunch of the boys were all being naughty and not listening and the teenage volunteers were all totally useless again and didn't do anything even when I asked them to do basic things urghh. Eventually things calmed down a bit but next week DH is at work so can't come so it will just be me and idk how that is going to work . If anyone has any ideas of good activities that need very little resources and not much space that kids with sometimes very limited English can do...let me know :')

Spends today just £4.20 which was DH's bus fare to and from town. We spent £11 on craft stuff for the kids but got £20 back so have another £9 to spend on future stuff for next week or whatever.