40 + yummy mummies with baby tummies and those who've 'popped' - come hither!

[jeanjeannie]

Come join our merry (talkative) band of ladies who lunch - feel sick - are getting fatter - sleep deprived or run off their feet with babies! Some of us suffer all of the above - while trying to retain an air of calm and mystery

All we ask is you play nicely, eat cake and indulge in the occasional gossip and moan about our ills....or anything else that we can think of.

We're like grumpy old women....only not so grumpy...

whaddyyyyya mean neddie???? Of course I'm perfect

I had forceps on my first one which eased the way nicely for parking a van up there baby number 2

Think I'm off to Ikea today. DH isn't letting me out for fear I'll run off with my lover so I'll have to escape out of the back door

Hospital appointment this afternoon for general check up on the SCBU unit. Great to see all of K's 'aunties' again!

Off to pick up DS#2 and two of his friends this afternoon on their return trip from seeing friends at Bangor Uni. I expect they'll look like tramps even after just 2 days

well done seeing off O's attempts at early rising hedgepig one 4.30am start is more than enough!

lovely video kaz you can just see the quiet determination in Kezzie she looks so grown up!

no secret assignations over the meatballs now y'hear jw

[shudder] at the idea of forceps. My previous two have plopped out easily (well, hardly, but all in one piece and no stitches required) but who's to say this will be the same? Mind you, it's roomy up there these days so hopefully it won't get stuck - but if it did I'd rather go under the knife than around the forceps/ventouse. Not much chance of either with home birth and I don't fancy a transfer to hosp in ambulance so this baby had better play ball.

JW Would DH have been annoyed/jealous if you'd told him in advance? It's good that he noticed something was different about you, shows he is actually looking! And does this mean ex is back from his honeymoon and was showing off his tan?

Neddie glad all your antenatal stats are looking good. I'm 23 wks and have only put on a stone because I'm still throwing up. I'd rather be fatter and fuller!

But ahem ahem, what's this about correcting your DC's Wiltshire dialect? Tut tut, regional dialects aren't incorrect, they just obey different rules. Regional accents are another thing entirely. Can you tell, this was one of my big subjects at uni and now I'm inflicting it on you? . The most probable scenario is that your DC will speak one way with their mates and then change register for talking to you, teachers, and eventually bosses etc. but may choose to keep their local accents. My DS (6) has only just stopped saying the northern and southern variation of lots of words ('look at that girAFF/girARF' or 'Do I have to have a bAth/bARth?') because I have northern vowels and his dad has southern and although neither of us have ever corrected him he's just tried to be diplomatic . He now has a light version of Nottingham, an accent I find impossible to imitate.

JJ do you sound Nottinghamesque? My dad had his Lancs accent beaten out of him by the Jesuits at grammar school, and mum moved all over the country, so neither had much of a regional accent. When I went to school in Sheffield I was constantly accused of being posh, then as soon as I moved to London people reacted as though I'd done a clog-dance wi' me whippet every time I spoke so I became a professional Northerner just to be contrary

I am always amazed when people say they had their regional accents erased by school - I work with a couple of people who are originally brummies and you would never know it as they were taught to speak with a fairly posh neutral accent. Being Irish of course everyone has a "regional" accent no matter where they come from so there's not much point getting rid!

what's so terrible about venouse/forceps ermintrude? I ask in all seriousness because I don't know much about it but D was delivered by ventouse (which beats the alternatives hands down!) and I don't seem to have suffered any ill effects - it was done under spinal bloc so I didn't feel anything.

*crawls in on knees after being at soft play place during half-term

hedgepig routine? what's that? I'm still having to comfort Verity in our bed - twice last night...Ggggggrr. Mind you, she's dribbling like a dribble-hound so I think the top teeth are a coming. Sounds like a red cross is still daubed upon your door.

neddie fab news on your ante-natal check. Am of your weight! I LOVED my elective c-section - t'was a breeze, as opposed to the emergency which was hell. Never felt a failure for not pushing - can't be doing with beating myself up over that.....when I can be beating myself up over weaning and feeding nightmares!!

ermintrude only a bit of an accent left here. Both parents came to Notts just before I was born - so being from London they always said 'bARth', 'gRAhss'..etc - so I just swung from accent at school to none at home. I'm very southern now - except when I'm drunk

Kaz that video is amazing - so young - so determined!! Verity now has three words in her vocab...Cat, Tata (DP is called this - it's a Polish/Serb thing) and Book....and she concentrates so hard before she says them she looks like she's pooing Mind you - she doesn't move much - practising for University Challenge and not the Olympics

Your day sounds full jw Hope all goes well at SCBU and have a fish and chips for me at IKEA....don't fancy meatballs today BTW....you're a naughty lady....furtive meetings with ex indeed Hhahahaha, good on your DH for noticing the make-over though....doubt if mine would....got to much sawdust in his eyes from the continuing tree-felling!

And I echo hedgepig this thread has often kept me quite sane...I know, hard to believe OK mush over!

erminturde I've met up with my ex before and told DH beforehand and he's been ok about it. Btw, this isn't my ex husband who as we speak, it on the plane back from India. Naw, this is my ex partner who I lived with for 5 years. We split up about 8 years ago and had a couple of get back togethers but as always, it falls apart as intrinsically it's a flawed relationship. Like I said, no idea why he still wants to meet up. He knows my set up and he's living with someone....who knows?!

Btw, I used to have a real Manc accent (think liam Gallagher) but then I moved down the road to Stockport (Cheshire) and was ribbed beyond belief and quickly dropped it and it stuck. I then went to live in Portsmouth a few years back and completely dropped my flat northern vowels. Cue another move back north, more ribbing for saying 'grars', 'barth' etc. My DH does a take on me and I sound like Penelope Keith

No time for Ikea today as DH was mid way through doing web site design so maybe tomorrow. 2 thornton's choccies for lunch and no breakfast make for a grumpy me. Will have a nice dinner/tea/supper to make up for it........oh and I'm really looking forward to Ikea meatballs. Not had them in ages.

JJ, yay to soft play. A bit of toddler mummyness I am not looking forward to getting back into!

I'm imagining you as a lairy local on a Saturday night in Nottingham. Gets pretty scary from time to time, not that I'm about much Saturday night. Or any night. Sob.

mrsb Apart from having a basic gut reaction against large things being stuck up my fanny - I'm talking seriously outsize metal things here - I have friends who've had awfully slow recovery from ventouse or forceps delivery, including a few whose pelvic floors are completely shot. All depends on the skill with which they're applied and the urgency of the situation I think, and of course they're sometimes vital. But then, I can't bear the idea of epidural either, and spinal bloc can sometimes make pushing harder, therefore making intervention with ventouse etc. more likely. I know some women plan to have an epidural and are usually happy they did, but I'd rather be in a considerable amount of pain before anyone went near my spine with a needle. A skillfully-applied ventouse has saved many a life, and not harmed the mother, so I'm not in any way 'anti' them - which would be a bit mad and pointless - just shit-scared of the idea I might ever need one.

Whereabouts in Ireland do you hail from? In the north I can recognise a Derry from a Belfast accent, and in the south I can usually pick out a Cork accent but that's as far as it goes. DH and I spent our first holiday together travelling in the ROI and staying on Aran and it was the most relaxed and romantic time imaginable. Sigh.

JW erminturde?! charming!

Ah, just ex as opposed to ex-DH. I thought it was a bit murkier than that, heh heh.

Sounds like you're like one of my sisters who always takes a bit of whatever accent prevails and just naturally shifts into it after being somewhere for a couple of years. She really sounds quite Londonish but then comes home and is instantly a Yorkie lass. Most people's speech patterns change a bit according to how long they live in a place. I had a fantastic sociolinguistics tutor at uni who could identify all sorts of tiny subtle things and place someone with 10 miles of their home anywhere in Britain. I remember one girl saying, in cut-glass upper class, 'But I don't have a regional accent!' and he laughed and said 'Surrey. Probably Guildford' which was spot on. She thought she spoke without an accent, but accent just means the way you say the words so we all have one.

Sorry, doing it again. Maybe I need to take a course or something, that would stop me harking back to the good old days when I was learning things!

I'm from Sligo ermintrude - so not too far from where you may have been. You being a literary type may know it as the place where WB Yeats lived and is buried and wrote about. I have to say a Sligo accent is a terrible thing - thankfully I don't have one but my much younger brother does and he writes his texts in it which is very painful on the eyes .

I'm glad I didn't know all that before I had D, mind you it was an emergency situation so there wouldn't have been much opportunity for worrying about it. The spinal block was scary but had to be done as, if the forceps hadn't worked on the first attempt, it would have been c/s time. It was v odd pushing though as I couldn't feel anything so I was kind of pushing with my mind.

But I don't seem to have suffered any lasting effects, I had a bit of a psychological thing for a few weeks about having the placenta manually removed but I am over that now.

Having had one, I feel the same way about inductions as you do about forceps ermintrude never again.

ermintrude and mrsB I hadn't realised you were both from Ireland [duh emoticon]

mrsB the idea of manual placenta removal makes me feel all weak and funny

Have to say I was expecting to feel odd about a spinal but I really felt nothing, zilch....suddenly my legs felt warm and then numb! My mate is a doctor and he told me that he'd been on some rota that meant he'd been giving epidurals the previous week and he said that they were the one thing he hated doing as they made him feel all odd Thank goodness he told me after I'd had the girls. He was stunned when I told him they didn't hurt!

ermintrude I think your tutor would have me more West Bridgeford than St Annes Although I like nothing more when home to run riot down Forest Road with my polystyrene tray of mushy peas, chips n' gravy I did once grab a girl who tried to jump our cab after two hours waiting in the freezing cold and chuck her handbag in the fountains on Market Square Is Goose Fair still on in the autumn? Oh that was one of the highlights of the year!

What I love about this thread is I learn stuff all the time I have never heard of sociolinguistics Ermintrude you degree course sounds like it was really interesting. I come form the midland side of Shropshire quite close to Wolverhampton but I sem to have avoided most to the west midlands accent (I think/hope). Obviously a few beers or being at home brings it out.

Give me and epidural and ventouse over a c.section any day, but I had an epidural very early on in the induction so just sat around chatting and reading the paper whilst the synco' did it's stuff. It took a couple of goes to get the epidural working properly and those contractions I could feel on one leg I know I would not have been able to stand without the epi. The induction etc were not in my birth plan but I think you just have to go with what happens on the day and work it out as you go along.

So are you hoping for a home birth Ermintrude, how exciting.

Hi - is there where the 40+ preggies are hiding out? I'm 43, 16wks pregnant, and feel like I am an alien in some the younger groups. Any room for me here?

Hi Triggles this is where we hang out, please don't be confused some of us already have babies but just can't leave and some of us are expected. How are you feeling?

We even have a list of who is who I will see if I can find it.

The only criteria for being here is you must like CAKE!

I always thought that homebirths were the province of daft lentil weaving earth mother types - now I think it is by far the more desirable option. Of course I didn't know then that they actually let you have the gas and air at your house and two midwives - instead of half of one!

welcome Triggles and congratulations , I am, like hedgepig, one of the ones who couldn't leave - I have 6 month old. Lots of others are up the duff tho.

Do you have other kids or is this your first?

Oh heavens, yes - I loooove cake! Thanks!

I'm feeling okay - am going a bit nuts as I have SPD, on crutches, and trying to keep track of our 2yo son all day! (he's currently taking a nap) DH works nights, so he's gone at night, and asleep during the day. But he's been wonderful about helping out so I can stay off my hip as much as possible. I just feel like I never leave the house, but yet I don't get anything done around here either! Just hanging up the wash is exhausting. Thankfully, our 22yo DD lives with us (along with her 3yo son), so she helps out on her days off. I get irritated as I just want to putter about getting things done, and instead I'm stuck on the sofa. It's like enforced bedrest and making me nuts!

Ok - that's me in a nutshell right now. Although we do have another DS (he's 24), DIL, and 2yo grandson (a week older than our DS2). They don't live with us though.

I found it!, I do like a list, makes me feel like I am in control of things

Mum41 Daughters 18 and 15 and 5 and twin boys born July 2008 Fraser and Regan

johnworf 42 - (Katherine) Born 28 May 08 (16 weeks early, due September 14th 2008) 4th baby. Others are 23,20,17

jeanjeannie 43 - (Verity) Born 30 May 08. Iris is 2.

mrsb (Darragh) Born September 08. has an older DS too, can't remember how old though.

hedgepig 42 (Oliver) Born October 08. Also has Ben, 5.

Tee 40 due June 09. First baby.

Ermintrude13 due June. Also DD 10 and DS

Duchesse 41- boy of 15, girl of 13, girl of 11, due number 4 in August.

FloriaTosca 44;(Alexander) born 26 Sept 07

Neddie 41. Girl 16, girl 6 1/2, twins due Sept 09

ladymac due April, 5th baby. Elizabeth born April 07, Grace is 12, DD1 24 and DS 20

Tabitha8, 43. Little Tab due June. First ever baby.

kaz1967 (Kezzie) Born July 2008.

bonzoDoodah 41 DD1 18months, baby due in July

Oh, and hi hedgepig and mrsboogie! thanks for the welcome!

mrsboogie - I know a lot of people seem to be opting for home births now, don't they? I'm too terrified of what might go wrong, so am just not comfortable with it. But that's just me.

I used to be the same Triggles but I have changed my mind I think.

Hedgepig bounces up and down excitedly this must mean you are thinking of another MrsB. Triggles it sounds like you have a very busy house without your DS living with you and boo to the SPD, have you seen a physio? I'm not sure if they can do anything but they may be able to

Hedgepig - yes, I have been to physio. They gave me that tubex thing - which is not a whole lot of help, the maternity belt - which is helpful only when standing, a bunch of positional information - which has been somewhat helpful, and the crutches - which have been helpful but drive me insane! She's also having someone come out to the house (so I don't have to trek back in to their office) to see if they can get a "perch chair" for me so that I can use it in the kitchen so I can actually do some cooking and washing up and stuff without all the pain. So that's not bad, really. They've told me to limit my walking to as little as possible, so I'm to some extent housebound. DH is worried sick about it, to the point where if I get up he's already jumping up saying "whatever it is, I'll get it". I've had to explain a couple times - no matter how good he is, I STILL have to go to the loo myself - he can't do it for me!

Hi Triggles offers up a HUGE slice of jam & cream -filled Vicoria sponge

Here is where we indeed hang out (like the young folk would say) and talk. Boy can we talk. Actually we have phases and recently we've been shooting through threads - even I can't keep up and I'm one of the worst offenders.

Big congrats on the bump and woah...what an impressive family - well done you! Sorry about the SPD - it's evil. I just escaped crutches as I had my DD1 at 33 wks - I think a few more weeks and I'd have had to give in - t'was hell. Walking up stairs is virtually impossible and as for turning over in bed....poor you

I've popped both of mine - so I also hang around here like a bad smell I'm 43 and have DD1 (Iris) 2yrs 3mths and DD2 (Verity) 8mths - I'm also permantly tired as DD2 seems to require very little sleep - day or night

Hahahah yes, mrsB go on - go on, have another - MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE......

thinking is as far as it goes hedgepig

blimey Triggles you do have a lot on! Oooh and a grandma as well - how fabulous! The SPD is awful isn't it. I had it a bit or something like it and barely left the house for the last four weeks. Should have seen a physio - they can show you ways of stopping it getting worse I think.

jean - oh yum - victoria sponge - have I mentioned I've just passed the morning sickness and am stuck on "permanent hungry" right now?

poor you on the lack of sleep! DS still wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night, but usually talks to himself for a few minutes, counts his blocks, sings a song or something, then goes back to sleep. I've no idea why.