Due in Oct 2012 - part 4!

[Angelico]

Back for more...!

I found a manual pump worked fine. I used to use it on the other breast while I fed DS as this (apparently) sets of the let down reflex. My boobs were suprisingly leaky though . I used a (very big scary) electric one while in hospital and hated it. I like being in control I think.

Hey peeps, it's a busy day on the board! :o

Livvy sorry your mum was such a muppet. I'm sure she will come round once the news sinks in and will adore her darling GC! Sorry to hear about the carpal tunnel thing too - I haven't had it so far in pregnancy but got it last year from typing (occupational hazard of writing). GP referred me to OT who handed me some splints and said, "They probably won't work but you can try them." I just eased off the typing tbh! At least the pregnancy one goes away...

Squid hope you got a good rest today - you are probably cream crackered after the demands of your week! x (and :o at the eyes in the fridge, secretly plotting how to pull this kind of stunt on DH as he is quite the prankster at times, especially God forbid on April Fool's day - revenge is a dish best served cold and all that :o) Is it bad that I laughed my ass off at the 'crying over spilt milk' thing? It was genius!

Gucci having sleepover envy now - must get my friend up to stay :)

Kyrria lol at size 10 ankle :o I reckon my ankle is a size 0 but it's the only bit of me that is... :o Try not to worry about the weight but I posted a link last night with guideline weight gain (ONLY IF IT WILL BE USEFUL AND NOT DO YOUR HEAD IN!!!) I wanted to know because my heaviest ever was a stone heavier than pre-preg weight and I started to get back pain so really don't want to put on 5 stone if I only need to gain 1 stone - if that makes sense. Oh - and that girl in your work sounds like a right cow. I'd be tempted to threaten her. "If you say anything else I will kill you and eat you." etc :o

Beeblebear - am at the idea of a fake belly! It's genius! Tbh I don't need it as like Fjord I am definitely showing already, mostly because the bean is measuring big at the minute and is pushing out my tum flab. At least I have a pregnant shape rather than a pudge shape is what I'm thinking. In fact, got a rather sexy, clingy top thing from H&M yesterday.

Sympathy to Smily and Midget on breast pumping nightmares. There are a few on Amazon which are reasonably priced and get v good reviews, might ask midwife about rental ones first though nearer the time. The trouble is they only have a few and they seem to give them out to peeps on benefits first so may end up buying.

Nearly Monday -aaaarrrggghhhhh! Some soup and toast will cheer me up, also knowing all my groovy new maternity clothes are in the washing machine, ready to dazzle the world this week :o

Cross posted (no wonder, last post was a frigging book)

Milk - glad all is well with you and bean, good luck with essay!

Orange good to know about that let down tip, will try and remember it. We need to compile a list of MN wisdom gleaned on the board :o

YAY! I love lists!

I have a bump picture on my profile now. It's enormous!

Milk good luck with assignments, I have 3 due in May (shouldn't really be mumsnetting now).

Wantanorangw. I think you still need to make your profile publlic for us to see.

Hi all,
totally knackered today for no reason. Went to bed with DS for 2 hours today and better after.
I used an Avent breast pump. The kit comes manual or electric but I always used the manual. Medela seems to be a popular brand also.
I often found with BF that while feeding off 1 side, sometimes the other flowed copiously (the let down reflex). Especially if it was a while since the last feed.
BF is hard at the start but it gets easier, it really really does. The recommendation is to BF exclusively for 6 months - I found I needed some pumped milk for a day away (even a few hours) from baby for a wedding/funeral/shopping trip. Also if you pump before going to bed, and then dad does the first night feed you can get several hours of unbroken sleep before your first night feed. I found pumping manageable, you have to get into a relaxed zone - it helped me to think about sex
Also if you want a night on the razz, you probably should pump and dump next morning and you need a substitute feed.

Yomping Sorry about the bike. I can so relate to the upset re stuff. On the 1 hand, I am thrilled to be pregnant. But while I'm pregnant everything pisses me off. I blame hormones. Poor DH, like yours has to suffer it - he thinks I'm pissed with him. I keep telling him he's the best part. Lots of things infuriate me - including dopey unhelpful shop assistants. I try to keep it in and then vent at home.
I have lots of friends, far away, but a shortage of local ones - we moved here after marriage. Distant friends are not part of your every day life but they are still your friends. It is most likely that this friend is having a small wedding.

40+ DS 20months, EDD Oct5.

Hi everyone, I haven't posted for ages but it's good to see that you're all still here :)
I've had a horrible week really, had a major meltdown yet again on my poor mother. Worries about living situations, not having any kind of space to store baby stuff but wanting to collect bits when I like them, see them, can afford them etc etc. Poor Mum gets it everytime, had a huge row with her and told her to get out of my car because I didn't want to talk to her and I really upset her. Went back in to her house 5 minutes later and apologised profusely and told her everything that was wrong!!! She made me a cup of tea and beans on toast by way of apology for what she said that caused the row in the first place......
livvy my mum was like that too, but the week after she was fine. At the end of the day it's happening now so they will have to like it or lump it, and generally they'll like it :)

I also went out and bought my first pieces of maternity wear today I bought trousers for work and a dress for my holiday with mum in june... Matalan has a fab maternity range if anyone is struggling to find stuff!! However I nearly died after an hour and a half of walking around shops, next time i will be sitting down in a coffee shop every half hour for a rest!

I'm also showing much more than I probably should be, if I hadn't had my scan already I would think I was having triplets. Really struggling with that tbh (and I'm so sorry if this offends anyone, but I really need to whinge). I've always been my size and never worried about my weight but I just feel horrendous at the moment. I'm podgy and its all new to me and it's just plain wierd. DP keeps telling me to not be silly and I look great, but its still me. My boobs have also grown (even more, the amount of money i have spent on bras in the last two years is ridiculous!) to a size E.... and they feel like they weigh a ton!
Squid may I also add *wanting sex ALL THE TIME to that list? You'd think I'd have gone off it...

So nice to read your posts, it cheers me up every time. Especially the spilt milk thing- I also laughed my head off, spot the beginner

Anyway, my eyes are closing so I'm off to put them in the fridge ahahaha the land of nod.. lots of love to you all xxx

squid I went through a few breast pumps because ds had bronchiolitis (spelling?) and couldn't feed and by far my fave was the avent one because it has little suckers all the way around the pump so you can move it around and empty your breast effectively. My first pump broke when we were away in the lakes and we had to tour the small town chemists to find anywhere that sold one! I found the whole bf business really hard. Took us a while to get the technique right and as I think I must have a slow 'let down', each feed took ages and ds used to get frustrated and writhe around which hurt. As people have said, it is a painstaking process so worth getting the right kit. I found the electric ones made me feel more like a cow being milked! Nothing wrong with a bit of arm exercise!

I know bf is the best option but I am really going to try not to let it get me down this time as I felt under so much pressure to do it right and for long enough. One of my best friends could just discreetly feed anywhere in 3 minutes flat and I was there fannying on for 40 minutes each side. I realise that very little of that is relevant or interesting to you squid sorry. That was more a bit of an outpouring from me! Maybe some of you may feel less alone if you too find it hard when the time comes. I had a really good peer support lady at the sure start breastfeeding class which is something to remember if anyone does. But hopefully you will all be naturals like my lovely friend. :-)

think I've got my profile public now.

Morning. Slight panic in the Angelico household - woke up to find brown discharge (like at the end of your period) and a minuscule piece of pink tissue (literally about 2mm). Phoned EPU for advice and they said to come in. I am now panicking that the back pain etc on Sat night meant something was wrong :(

Fuck, this is going to be a long morning, can't be seen until lunchtime, can't face work so going to have to call in. Just sat in loo and cried. The funny thing is I'm sure I felt the bean kick last night, just as I was going to sleep - it woke me up.

I'm 16.5 weeks.

Morning angelico

Ok easier said than done but don't panic. Brown discharge tends not to be sinister and normally old stuff so could be something of nothing. Make sure you mention the fluid leak too but it may be nothing. You ate doing te right thing getting checked out. Watch a good film to fill in time and be nice to yourself. Let us know how you get on, thinking of you.

Big virtual hugs and strokes x

Morning Angelico. I'm with Midget, try not to panic :( Thinking of you, let us know how you get on.
big hugs x

Just a quickie to wish you well Angelico - I hope all's good and v.glad you're being checked out soon. Will be thinking of you.

Thanks Mickey, Guccigirl79 Fjordmor Midget and Angelico for the "she'll come round" thoughts re my mum. I thought she might have sent a text or said something positive by now but I'll just have to leave it. We're going down for the weekend in a month's time so hopefully she'll have had a chance to get her head around it by then. I'm a bit gutted cos I wanted to do pregnancy-comparison bonding with her, but c'est la vie. Fortunately my sisters are being SUPER, really supportive, so that's great.

Re carpal tunnel, I'm definitely making it worse by doing lots of yoga (as well as typing at work) but am trying to modify the poses to reduce the pressure on the wrists and have been taping them up. So hopefully it'll calm down. I may try this accupuncture malarky and if it works, I'll let you know, FjordMor

angelico - scary, but as I understand it, fresh red is the big worry and brown is the less-big worry (though still pretty damn worrying!) (And

Jumping in on the vitamin d thing - they had a thing about this on the radio the other day, the science man (that's the technical term, that is) said that vit d is made in the skin under exposure to sunlight, but basically no-one in the UK makes any in their skin between September and May so vit d tablets for us is probably a really good idea. The deficiency leads to rickets (rickets! So Dickensian!)

I don't know if anyone here is Asian or Black or has otherwise high melanin content in their skin (I wear makeup shade 001, personally - I have skin the shade of a fish's underbelly) but the more melanin, the harder it is for your skin to turn sunlight into vitamin d, so the more good an idea it is to take the supplement pills.

Oh and briefly, a note on booze - may I direct your collective attention to this. It's a review of medical literature - they've read over lots and lots and lots of research and tried to pick out patterns. Here is your key take home:

"Studies involving a total of about 150 000 pregnancies sought a link between low-level alcohol consumption and abnormal pregnancy outcomes. Very few showed a statistically significant link, and the results are undermined by the failure to take other risk factors into account... Studies in a total of 57 000 pregnancies showed no effect of minimal alcohol consumption on the risk of malformations."

...and your link: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22413723

Pubmed itself is a database of online medical journals - the Good Stuff, if you will. A lot of medical research isn't free to read, but this stuff is.

(Another tip-top place for accurate, usable health info - squidkid will, I think, tell you the same - is cochrane.org. They do the same thing, they scan all the research they can find and try to come to scientifically valid conclusions about treatment. It's not always an easy read, but it's always bang up to date - and as accurate as science can be.)

(Actually when I clicked through to get the URL this was the feature article: www.cochrane.org/features/pain-management-women-labour-overview-systematic-reviews and that's a topic that I think we're all interested in!)

My midwife gave me a free supplement containing Vit D, Vit C and Folic Acid even though I don't qualify for the healthy start free fruit, veg and milk because of my income- worth asking your midwife. Any UK based people with low income or on any benefits on here, make sure you find out if you qualify: www.healthystart.nhs.uk/ and claim what you're entitled to!
My thinking is might as well take a supplement because it's so hard to get enough Vitamin D even with a healthy diet, and there's no point in trying hard to get enough calcium if you don't get the Vitamin D to allow your body to absorb it.
Angelico sorry to hear about the panic, but good for you for getting checked out immediately. Plenty of people have spotting and seemingly strange symptoms throughout, so try not to panic. Keep us posted. Big hug.
Londonlivvy Your mum can shut up.
Have a good day everyone!

anjelico hope all went well at the check up, you're doing the right thing and I'm sure they'll be able to reassure you.
I had bleeding at 11 weeks and turned out to be nothing, v worrying at the time though. It seems to be very common though and usually no good reason.

This is going back a bit, but fjordmor, I really recommend this for bump support - saved my bacon in my last pregnancy, on my feet at work all day. Taking it off I felt like my bump was going to fall off!

Man, I can sympathise with all those with aches & pains. My pelvic floor feels like it's going to fall out any day, my lower abdomen is constantly achey (stretching, I suppose) and I constantly need a wee. I'm trying to drink lots to combat the hideous, hideous, hideous constipation, but I'm weeing about 4 times an hour! Going out is a nightmare! I remember all of it with DS, except the horrible pelvic floor feeling. I suppose it's just not in great nick these days, despite squeezing for all I'm worth. I also suspect my pelvic girdle pain is in the process of rearing its ugly head again. It never really went away after DS - in fact was worse after he was born - so I suppose it's to be expected.

Um, in good news! - got my 16wk appt with the midwife today, so am looking forward to hearing the heartbeat. Am interested to see how DS reacts to it all (he probably won't notice)

Zoe thanks for the summary on booze! Hooray for booze - although these days I'm in bed by 9 mostly and can't really justify opening a bottle of wine. Might buy some of those mini bottles the supermarkets sell!!

Blimey DS has been asleep for 3.75 hours - should probably go and see if he's still alive

Sorry, angelico fingers firmly crossed for you that there's nothing wrong. Thinking of you.

Angelico Just hoping that everything is okay for you.

So this week I have 16w midwife appointment on Wednesday and Consultant appointment on Thursday,and I have to go to Manchester and back tomorrow (from Surrey) so it's going to be a long week.

I ordered a doppler quite a few weeks ago but have resisted the temptation to use it till last night. Anyway, couldn't hold off any longer and heard the heartbeat load and clear last night - was amazing!

Really hoping everything is ok Angelico - you did the right thing not going in to work and getting it checked out ASAP!

Just wanted to come and post a link to this really really lovely timelapse video I found online - a filmmaker videoed his daughter weekly from birth to age 12! Very cool. Maybe I will feel differently when DC is here but I am really excited about my baby growing up to be a real, thinking, rational, intelligent adult!

I'm sure everything will be fine Angelico & that you will come home totally reassured & stress free! Sending you & big hugs :) Let us know how you get on xx

Had a weird 'pain' if you could call it that earlier,it felt like it was a bit crampy/stomache achey but only lasted about 10 minutes before it eased,nevertheless it made me feel horrid & I had to come home from the shops.Could this be the first flutterings of tiddler mooching around or am I just being overdramatic?? Any thoughts??

Thank you all so much - you're all so lovely it's nearly making me cry again. Long story short - old blood - very mysterious?! - but bean fine, good heartbeat etc. In fact was moving legs so much ultrasound lady couldn't take measurement at first She was sceptical I felt movement last night until she saw those giant kicking legs! :o

They were lovely, said I did the right thing coming in, not to worry too much about a little bit of brown blood. So... so far in this pregnancy I have had a) bizarre green discharge b) watery sweet smelling discharge and c) brown bloody discharge all of which are supposed to be signs of doom according to google (or at least infection with the green) yet bean is going strong while I worry myself to death!

Was too late to go into work so going to go and lie down for a while and take deep soothing breaths. Is anyone else finding this whole pregnancy thing stressful or is it just me?!

Thank you all again, will have a proper read and reply later xo

And Gucci it might be the bean or it might well be ligaments stretching - I got those pains really badly on Sat night after being at shops on Sat day. x

I'm staying well away from google when it comes to analysing symptoms. Google is not our friend! I have stretching aches and pains all the time in my lower abdomen, my tits are still really sore, I have the irrational urge to be violent towards random people on the tube, and a muscle above my eye has been twitching all day (tiredness maybe?).
I'm sure all these are natural symptoms, not to be worried about! But if I googled, it would take less than 30 seconds to assume something is seriously wrong. But I agree, it's hard not to analyse every tiny thing. I really thought I was having at ectopic to begin with because I had really one-sided cramping and shoulder pain. Ruined the forst 3 weeks of being preggo.
Great to hear all is fine, Angelico! Great news! And great that they took you seriously.
Quick question re. 16 week appointment- should that be with a midwife? My midwife told me that should be with my GP as it's just a general check up and to get results from the first blood tests (for blood type etc). Any thoughts, anyone?
27, #1, 13 +3

So glad all is well Angelico, such a relief. Definitely time for , and maybe a snooze...?

Bella I'm totally with you on the headaches, fairly constant nagging headache for about 10 days now, sometimes focussed above my eyes and sometimes at base of skull. Used to get really bad headaches, then I was having physio to help but have had to cut back on that due to bean, so am not sure if these are pregnancy headaches or back/neck headaches. Trying to stay off painkillers, not sure if I'll last though.

LondonMrsS I've got my 16 week appointment tomorrow, with midwife, need to take urine sample (am so bad at hitting the pot ) and get bloods done as bean wouldn't sit still for nuchal measurement at scan. I expect there'll be usually weight and blood pressure -anyone else know what else happens in this one?