Wednesday 28 March 2012

bump diary

This one covers 3 weeks: 23 weeks up to almost 26 weeks (I'm 26 weeks in two days), and I think I've seen the most change yet...I look pregnant whatever I'm wearing now which is nice.











Look how much of a fashion victim I look today in my leggings and baggy shirt, a look which I abhor in the Leeds student population. I seem to have lost all shame. It's a slightly different look with a belly poking out though. Speaking of which I've ALMOST got an outie!! Any day now it's going to pop! The maternity dress my mum got me is the blue tunic I wore with a grey cardi on the third picture up, it'll serve me well as I swell especially in this unseasonably hot weather.

x x x

nesting

I'm 25 weeks and 5 days.

The nesting instinct must have set in, as I've been doing some proper mum cleaning. I found myself stood on a chair in the kitchen giving the high-up surfaces a "deep clean", for about 3 hours the other day. And I'm also feeling a need to set out a nice space for the baby at home. We're really lucky to be living in a 3 bed house, and we loosely call the two spare rooms my "sewing room" and "Dan's room" for his work stuff and music stuff. Baby is going to have half of my sewing room...I realise that needles and choke-hazard buttons aren't exactly baby-friendly, but the long term plan is to move before she gets to a crawling stage so it's more a place just to put a cot and make nice. She's going to be in a moses basket in our room for the first 6 months, so it's possible that the top room will never even be used as a nursery, but it's nice to have the space to make a nest for her any way.

I've been moving my sewing stuff/general crap down to one end of the room, so that she can have some bookshelves for children's books and toys, and room for a cot. My sewing space is a bit of a dump, but I've long given up on being a person who can have a tidy work space...I'm far too much of a hoarder.








And baby's shelves so far (I will manage to make them less full of junk as we buy more actual baby stuff)...



Exciting times! x

Friday 23 March 2012

back ache

I'm 25 weeks today!

I don't want to make this a place to have a moan, but unfortunately not much has been going on apart from back ache. I've been off work because it's pretty unbearable. I know that everyone's different and I've probably just got it worse than most mums-to-be, but I feel like a total failure of a pregnant woman. It's a glimpse of what it'll feel like when I'm failing as a mum...and it's not very nice. I've got physio next week and sitting in a hot bath helps, but it's really hard not to get upset about it. A mixture of being tired from not being able to sleep and hormones doesn't help. I've been crying at some really silly things; just today I cried at David Walliams swimming up the Thames on tv.

In cheerier news my mum bought me my first actual "maternity" dress on mother's day, which I'll point out in bump pictures. It's really nice and roomy! And I bought myself this maternity dress on ebay...



cute!

x x x x

Friday 16 March 2012

pinterest




I'm totally addicted to pinterest. I thought that blogger, tumblr and facebook were procrastination enough but pinterest has helped me reach a whole new level of time-wasting online. Most of my pins are related to my number one obssession, baby.

"follow" me here

x x x x

Tuesday 13 March 2012

bump

Week 21 - Week 23

It's growing by the day now, but it really depends what I'm wearing how pregnant I look. You still can't really tell in a coat, so no-one's stood for me on the bus yet. My time will come. However, my already bingo-wing prone upper arms are thick as tree-trunks. I'm exaggerating, but they're chunky! I wont even talk about my thighs and chubby cheeks, I can only imagine how round I'll be in three months time!







I forgot to take many photos in this fortnight, but three is plenty.

x

nappies!

I'm 23 weeks and 4 days.

Uh oh, I have become a mum and she's not even come out yet. I am going to talk about baby's toilet habits. Poo.

Nappies. Who knew it was such a minefield. Anyone reading this who is not a parent, or planning on being one any-time soon, probably doesn't know or care about decisions regarding nappies, but wow let me tell you it's pretty daunting. I try to be as "green" as possible, and even as a clueless non-mum I knew that disposable nappies are really bad. So now that I have to research, and believe me you do have to research, the options surrounding a more eco option I'm so torn between ideals/budget/practicality.

The world of resuable nappies has come on leaps and bounds, and there are several "types" of reusables to choose from, not to mention which brand. I have reached a point in my research where I'm actually watching promotional videos for nappies. What have I become. The main things I've learn't are:
- you can wash them in the washing machine at 60degrees
- some of the types come in two main parts - a fabric inner nappy and a waterproof outer, but some are all in one. you can also put in a liner to catch poos and this can be flushed down the loo. it sounds like the two parters are much better than they used to be and might be the most reliable for non-leakage.
- most reusables have adjustable sizes with various fasteners and poppers, so can be worn from birth to potty training.

One plus to reusables is that although you have to fork out a lot of money up front, you can save between £200-£600 by not using disposables, which is really important to us as we'll be having this baby on a tight budget. So we can be green and save some dollar. Win win.

Saying that, a LOT of the products I've been looking at are pretty expensive. I guess that a lot of people who choose to go green are wealthy and can afford to splash out of fancy patterened covers for their babies bums.

For example this nappy is £15, and realistically you're going to need at least 10-20 nappies otherwise you'd have to do a washload every day. Plus you need to buy nappy liners, and maybe "booster" pads for extra absorbancy at night. And add in the washing costs. Eeek.


Baba and boo is reasonably priced for an all-in-one nappy (the nappy lingo is "pocket" nappy as you tuck in a pad to a pocket inside the nappy). They're £9.25. And the patterns are much cuter/more subtle than a lot of others I've seen. It wont let me copy and paste a picture but here's a link

And at the beginning I thought a pocket nappy would be great, mostly because I didn't want to worry about an outer waterproof layer. But advice seems to be that getting a two-part nappy works out cheaper and is less likely to leak. The cheapest set I've found is £121.90 for everything I should need including 6 covers and 24 inserts (you dont need to wash the waterproof cover each time you change the insert, just when it gets soiled), lots of liners and a bin to seal away dirty nappys until wash-time. The nappies are made by econobum and I like the really simple white design.link here

But I'd like to get a few different single nappies to see what works/what baby likes best. I've come around to the idea that we should use disposables at the very beginning, because most reusables wont fit until baby is a certain size and despite me eating like a pig that past few weeks, I suspect that she'll be quite small like I am. We'll definitely get eco-disposables though, so at least they're biodegradable. Plus realistically we'll need disposables for when we go out and stuff, but even if we only use resuables half of the time I'll be proud of at least trying.

Sorry for the nappy talk. From now on I'll try not to be so boring and just post about cute outfits.

x

Friday 9 March 2012

you go girl

I'm 23 weeks today!

Sometimes when drunk I like to talk about being a strong independent woman. In the stlye of destiny's child. I've obviously not been drunk for a while, but this pregancy business sure makes you think about your role as a woman. It was International Women's Day yesterday. In some countries they have a public holiday and women are bought flowers by their menfolk. I just ate a whole family sized bag of chocolate and had a bubble bath after work. It's exciting to think that there's going to be a new girl around the house... the cat and Dan are both boys so we needed another female to even it out. Well, just wanted to write a post about feeling like a woman really. I've never felt like a real grown-up woman before, so it's a lovely feeling to have reached a new stage in my life. Plus my new funny pregnant boobs have flung me into womanhood.

x