Needing some pointing in the right direction

[Sweetooth92]

Hi, I was wondering whether anyone could offer and help/advice? I have a million and one questions running through my mind and hopefully some of you lovelies can assist.
Myself and DH found out at the weekend that we are expecting. First baby for me-DH has DD (8) from his last marriage. Estimating at approx 5 weeks going on dates of last cycle. Don't want to bore DH further as I know he's already done it all before but where do I start?! How do I start the midwife ball rolling? Do I see my gp/call the surgery. Can I continue my current exercise routines as usual? In addition if anyone has any ideas on what we will need to get ready for the arrival that would be really helpful. Rough quantities on clothing, and invariably all the other things we will need. Ideally I would also like to use cloth nappies however DH seems to be against this so if anyone has any insight onto the perks of this in hope I can change his very stubborn mind that would be really wonderful. Thankyou

Congratulations! I'm 6 weeks today, first pregnancy; get in touch with your GP, they should refer you on to the midwives, I'm currently waiting for my letter through but from what I've been told, the booking appointment is made by 8-9 weeks and the scan at 12 weeks.

You're fine exercising! But you will start to feel the fatigue :p so do try to rest.

Chill about what you'll need for the arrival! You're still VERY early on, so you have PLENTY of time to work that out.
At least I'm trying not to make myself worry about all of that yet; but you can always look at places like Mothercare on their registry (app) to get an idea.
And babies do grow fast, and by the time the little one is here, you'll probably have 50x more stuff than you need. A friend of mine is already on that boat and she's still got a while to go yet!

Luckily for me my husband is all for us going down the cloth nappy route as he's of the same mind as I am that it's cheaper and better for the environment in the long run.
Try getting him to understand the benefits of the cloth nappies!

Congratulations to you too!
Thought that may be the case I shall give them a ring tomorrow and see what they say-just didn't want to call them if I needed to go about it a totally different way and just look silly.

I've no desire to go mad shopping or anything yet just trying to prepare my bank balance for when that's necessary as we still are mid renovation of our house which swallows an immense amount of our finances each month but should hopefully be about done come winter (hopefully!!)

Shall try and get him to listen but I suspect I'll be wasting my time. He can be quite close minded if it's anything different to what he has done/would do.

Thankyou 😊

Is he going to take paternity leave and change all the nappies himself? If not then I suggest you just order some cloth nappies and tell him that's what your doing. This is your baby too so don't hand over the rights to parenting decisions to DH!

I'd ring your GP and ask the receptionist how referrals to midwives work where you are, I think this varies across the country.

With my GP surgery, you have to get the pregnancy confirmed by a GP / nurse (wee sample) before they'll refer you to midwives.

I don't think I'd worry too much about what's needed for baby yet - plenty of time for that if you're only about 5weeks.
But the big purchases that you may need to budget for are prams / pushchairs, car seats, cribs / cots.

Congratulations! Give your GP a call and ask what the procedure is for booking with midwives - some places will allow you to self-refer, others need you to see the GP first. Usually you'll have your first mw appt between 8-12 weeks and your first scan at 12 weeks, unless there are problems beforehand. If you're not already taking folic acid and vitamin D supplements, then you should start, and have a read of the NHS website on foods to avoid.

Apart from that, don't worry about anything else for now, it's still very early days. Budget is pretty elastic - from a few hundred to thousands of pounds! You can get lots of stuff second hand if you need to save - eBay, FB selling groups and NCT sales are your friend!

Cloth nappies - unless you're dead keen, I'd wait until after the baby is born. We used disposables for the first 4 months and then switched once he wasn't doing multiple explosive poos a day and was a bit bigger (a lot of the one-size-fits-all ones aren't great for tinies). It also meant life was a bit more under control so I could manage the washing schedule - especially important if your DH isn't on board!

Congratulations! The first trimester feels long! Just give your GP a call and they will refer you to the midwife.

My partner was/is apprehensive about cloth nappies, but I do all the laundry and I'm going to be doing most of the nappy changing as I'm taking 12 months off work so I just haven't given him any choice. We will use disposables as needed (on holiday, etc).

Cloth nappies are similar to bras and jeans - we all have different shapes and sizes so different nappies will fit different babies.

Good resources for learning about the different types of cloth nappies are:
The Nappy Lady
Green Mountain Diaper (only ship to USA but good for general info)
Kelly's Closet (another US company, not sure if they ship to the U.K.)

I'm primarily going to use cotton prefolds and I bought a variety of wraps to see what work with my baby. I've also bought some all in ones and pocket nappies so a bit of a mix.

Congratulations! You're post just made me all broody and nostalgic. I was in the same position as you almost exactly a year ago.

Just call your surgery and get an appointment with GP and then you'll get a booking in appointment with a midwife. You should get a load of reading material and somewhere will be a rough schedule of when and where you will have appointments....it's pretty much an idiots guide, which is what I needed. DH also has an 8 year old from a previous relationship, but he had no idea about anything to do with pregnancy.

You've got such a long time to plan and buy baby stuff... there's some really good pregnancy books that will give you lists of stuff you need. Essentials are clothes, nappies, formula/boobs, somewhere to sleep, car seat....and loads of muslins!

I exercised up until about 28 weeks, but I wasn't that fit to begin with and I've known people to exercise up till the end, you will just have to moderate or change the type of exercise you do as you go along.

Can't help with the cloth nappy situation as my DH wouldn't use them if I paid him! 😂 So good luck!

Forgot to mention that a lot of councils will give you a couple of free cloth nappies! Have a bit of a google or ask your midwife. I think my council gave me two.

Thank you :)

I didn't know what to do either, I actually just walked in to the reception and said, "hey I just found out I'm pregnant, I have no idea what I'm doing, can you please advise?" and the receptionist said to just see my GP to get things going.
I think you can get in with the midwife by referring yourself in some areas (not mine, apparently), but I felt more comfortable seeing my GP as she had a chat with me before hand; you'll be waiting weeks before hand so it's nice to have a bit of information laid out sooner than 8/9 weeks.

Ah, I must have misunderstood a bit but I understand what you mean now; I'm just putting money by every few weeks in the hopes we can get things later on.
Other than that I have absolutely no clue, and that's a bit scary 🙊

I agree with haveacupoftea on that one!
I think he needs to chill out and actually see things from someone else's viewpoint, be open to the idea.
Maybe say something along the lines of if the cloth nappies don't work out, you can go down a different route.
I know we'll be having regular nappies just in case, but we really are set on reusables; and they come in some adorable prints :p

Thankyou all for your input some great advice above! It seems that there isn't one set way of how things work and it varies regionally so will definitely call the drs tomorrow-we go on holiday for a week at the beginning of June so wanted to make sure if anything needs doing before the 12 week point there is time! (Probably should also check if I need to inform insurance/all is okay to go as planned!)

Definitely seems like I need to toughen up with the oh a touch and not just take everything his way as a given-was concerned I was being unreasonable there 😳 happy to have some middle ground but for day to day at home routine I can't see why cloth can't be considered.

Thank you all again! It's so tough to know where to find these answers when we are trying to keep it to ourselves for the first 12 weeks (though my parents being on holiday with us for the last week of that bracket may be interesting)

Yep call Dr and receptionists should know procedure for your area (these vary wildly!!). But you should have your booking in appt before you go away, probably. Where are you heading? Bear in mind that you need to check re Zika if it's certain places abroad.

You can keep exercising, if the overwhelming exhaustion doesn't over take you but be careful to keep yourself from overheating.

I told my mum and dad very early on as I'm RUBBISH at keeping secrets and if things had gone wrong, I'd have needed their support.

It totally baffles me it's different! Thought it would be one system 😳 We are headed to turkey-had all my required vaccines the other year and followed them up afterward so I'm covered for 25 years (can't remember what vaccine it was without checking) fingers crossed it is all okay or I'll have one very disappointed little girl who has been counting down the sleeps to holiday since we booked 5 months ago!

I would prefer to tell them whilst we are away if everything goes okay and we get to that point-I'm very close to my mum and see her every other day & we speak daily so to not share will be hard-however it's only fair we treat both our parents the same and we aren't anywhere near as close to DH's parents do not as inclined to tell them yet, whereas if anything goes wrong I'll need the support of mine on hand

I don't think it's unfair to tell your mum first if you're close. The measure is, who, if anyone, would you tell if anything went wrong? For me it's the other way round and I told my ILs but am hanging fire telling my DM as we have a different relationship.

Anyway, congrats!

God I thought it was fair to tell MIL too. She bloody well told all and sundry. Then had the cheek to ask if it was ok to tell people. I said NO since DH hadn't told his dad at that point.

I think that's made it clear then that fairness isn't always the correct approach! How awful