It’s official – summer’s over. I wore socks today. That hasn’t happened since about April.

I do like the fall though – I crave cardigans, cords, sensible shoes. Plus my heels could use the relief from sandals. Crap, sorry, of course I mean autumn – British people look at me in deep confusion when I say fall. Must say autumn. Must say autumn.

Spa break this weekend – even though I haven’t actually managed to have my leave agreed from work. What are they going to do, fire me? Oh I’d be so upset. Ha.

Oh god. My ticker says 100 days to go until offspring arrival. How scary is that. I’m just beginning to think in the last few days – what happens when it gets here? What am I supposed to do then?

Luckily today we actually started buying things so we might be ready for when it gets here. We didn’t manage to make a travel system/stroller/car seat decision but we did discover what a pain in the bum the BMW is when it comes to fitting in a car seat. We spent most of the day at Mothercare World in Watford, John Lewis, Mothercare again at Brent Cross, and Babies R Us. Managed to pick up a few entirely useless things like car window shades and toys as opposed to anything we actually desperately need for the first few weeks. But at least we came to some understanding of what things cost and where, possibly, we are going to end up buying them.

The good thing lately is that I seem to be getting lots of freebies. Today, at Boots, I got literally about £25 worth of toiletries – sunscreen, makeup and pregnancy speciality bath wash. Just ’cause they sent me coupons. I didn’t have to buy anything to get them. More freebies are to come, as well. That was only the first pack of joining their club. There are other offers that come in the post from other stores as well. Yes – blatant consumerism – but I like it.

Mark is out for the third night in a row and I am, for the third night in a row, in with the dog. With my ass on the couch. Hmph. Better get used to it.

The good things about not being a compact person and being pregnant:

• I can still wear normal clothes, especially summery type trousers/capris, although I am going for longer tops, and anything with a stiff closure (e.g. zip and button on denim) is uncomfortable (but still does fit).
• I don’t have any sense of ‘oh my god I can’t handle being this fat and I hate myself’.
• In fact, I haven’t actually gained any weight so far (not that I was trying not to, it’s just happened).

The bad things about not being a compact person and being pregnant:

• It’s almost six months now and there isn’t a bump that anyone else besides me and Mark can notice. Most people at work don’t know what’s going on, except if they’ve been specifically told, I think.
• No one is going to offer me a seat on a tube or a train.
• When/if I do need proper maternity trousers, they are hard to buy in my sizes, but I am hoping that what I have already purchased will have me covered for that brief time.

I think I’ve jumped straight from not being hungry due to nausea, to not being hungry due to a stomach that has a body squishing against it, with a brief interlude of a few days in the middle of August where I did actually feel hungry. I am so not interested in food except if someone nice makes something nice for me (thanks Mark & Emma last weekend!).

I had my glucose tolerance test (looking for gestational diabetes) yesterday morning. Basically I had to fast from the night before (no problem), then get to the hospital, have a few pints of blood taken, drink nasty sugarey syrup, and then have more blood taken 2 hours later. I didn’t tell them that about 25 minutes before they took the second blood I actually puked up the syrup. Oh well. That place always make me vomit. I did it the last two times I was there for scans as well! I have no idea why as I am not being sick otherwise. Luckily we are likely changing hospitals once we move!

My babycentre.co.uk email today says:

Your baby is responsive to touch now. You can have fun with him by trying to
tickle his foot when he kicks you or by lying on your back and rolling from
side to side, to see how he reacts. His eyelids open around now and his
heart is beating so strongly, it may be heard with a stethoscope.

This is interesting as the bean has been moving a LOT today and I think I even saw papers that I was resting on my lap during a meeting move. So we’ll see if I can get any reaction when I lie down for bed tonight.

Oh and thank you to the mommies brigade – the body pillow is brilliant. It’s amazing how good my back feels when I sleep with that thing between my knees, on my side. The only problem is that there seems to be a lot less room in the bed now, which is already king sized. I think I need to kick out the thing that snores before the thing that is soooo comfy…

As ever, an enjoyable weekend was had by all at Emma & Mark’s house. Managed to survive M4 traffic on Friday night to arrive to some great dinner – 3 courses even! On Saturday, we all went to the Abergavenny Food Festival where we couldn’t see everything due to the presence of the dog but we did shop on some nice stalls and had a great lunch in a church courtyard from a really nice little deli. Piper brought an interesting dimension to the proceedings when she decided to roll in cow manure as we walked through a field back to the car. Oh thank you dog. Luckily there was a river to at least start to wash her off in. And luckily Emma and Mark were unfazed by the disgraceful pooch.

Sunday was also great – we started off at the open air museum of Welsh Life, which is fantastic for us dog owners who bring the dogs to various places – they positively encourage them to be there, even providing bowls of water along the paths and posh pooper scoopers. See above, Emma, Mark and Piper with water outside St Fagans Castle.

Her Mark had to leave us for a family commitment but the rest of us ventured into Cardiff for lunch on the water. It’s super nice down there, and I don’t remember taking photos of it before although we have been there before, so here are some now.

On the waterfront:

The Millenium Centre:

It was great to see them, to be fed by them (always a treat!), and the dog is still pooped from all the activities; she’s crashed out on the couch, and pretty much has been since we got home last night. Which is the biggest success of all when it comes to her!

This is what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t let bad things happening at work get to you in such a way as to have a headache all day yesterday. Then, when you get home and sit down, you shouldn’t start seeing spots in front of your eyes that are swimming in swirls. I knew this was something to be worried about so I rushed to look up stuff, and yes these are the two main signs of pre-eclampsia.

Mark was out walking the dog while there was an electrician here looking at the house on behalf of the buyer, along with the buyer, so I called NHS Direct for advice. When they finally called me back (while I waited and panicked slightly), the nurse was actually going to call me an ambulance. I’m like, no, really, I’m not dying, he can take me.

So we had to kick out the people and just take off to Northwick Park. I got assessed right away, and my first blood pressure reading was high but the second one was okay. And still no protein in my urine. So I knew that I was okay, but we still had to wait to see the doctor for like almost 2 hours.

Have been ordered off of work for a couple of days. Great, you might think. But today I was going to try to resolve some of this stuff with my manager, and I’m worried I’ve missed the opportunity, and I am going to go back to a bit (a BIG bit) of a mess. But am trying not to think about it all or I will start seeing spots again…

Anyway, gave me an opportunity during a mini-shop to buy a body pillow! Found a super cheap one in a funny little store called Tchibo. Will test it out soon.

Random: I heard a Blue Rodeo song at Starbucks this morning. Those people need to bring back their honey bran muffin. As enjoyable as a Rise and Shine muffin is, it’s not the same.

Work sucks. That’s all I have to say in case people are reading this. I can’t wait to go on leave. I don’t care how much poop I have to start dealing with (literal poop in diapers, not work-related poop).

Looking forward to seeing Mark and Emma in Wales this weekend – will hopefully provide us with some light relief and good times as I need it.

It’s been quite the week. It started off okay, but for deadly sinusitis that I couldn’t do anything about until I saw a doctor (normally I’d just overdose on sinus meds). Slowly, however, work is turning into a complete nightmare, culminating in a really bad Friday, and I am going to lose my entire team if I don’t manage to fix a few things. Nothing under my control (it’s that damn thing where you have to work with people – here’s wishing I just worked with computers or something) and I am not sure if I am going to be able to make anything better – so it’s going to be really stressful. Actually it already is really stressful. Looking forward to stress leave…

I started changing my last name this morning. Which is interesting. We had to open a joint account because several people gave us wedding gifts to Mr and Mrs Willer, and I needed to change my name at the branch to get that joint account opened (luckily we both happen to bank in the same place anyway so it makes it easier) – but we only got ourselves organised enough to do this today. It was the first time I’ve had to sign my name something other than Emma Bowman and it was very bizarre and I have no idea how I am going to remember to start doing that. Now only about 50 000 other people/organisations to notify that I am doing this. Eek.

We also FINALLY managed to get most thank you notes out to people this morning for their generous gifts. I was about to explode if we didn’t get those finished soon.

We’re giving an extra thank you to Mark’s dad and step mum tomorrow as they really exceptionally helped out before and after the wedding. His dad was fantastic, doing so much around the house with Mark like sanding the parquet floors, and many many odd jobs. The day after the wedding, both his dad and Zari and their friends cleared the entire marquee with Tami. We’re taking them out for lunch up in Warwick where they live, and we’ve got a few nice bits to give them (including the Laura Secord chocolates I found at Selfridges – yes they cost a hell of a lot more than they would in Canada but I couldn’t even believe they were there and at least they are getting something special!).

And can you believe it…Mark actually sold all his DJ equipment this week. Yes I almost had a heart attack too. He didn’t get as much cash as he really wanted but we really needed to get rid of all of it. He really shouldn’t have saved it for the wedding.

23weekscan
Originally uploaded by emmabean.

Latest ultrasound scan is here.

Only took, what, 2 visits and 2 hours of body manipulation in order for the technicians to get what they were looking for!

So we are trying to decide which parent this kid gets its uncooperative nature from (you all know it’s not me). Literally, yesterday at the hospital, what I thought would be a 15 minute appointment turned into a two hour ordeal of actually being asked to go on all fours in order to make it move, to go eat some chocolate and take a jog in order to make it move, etc. I was scanned lying in several different positions and in the end it turned out that moving to a different ultrasound machine got them the detail they wanted on the heart (being able to view all chambers and valves).

No, don’t worry, I really have nothing better to do than yoga on an ultrasound table (no work to do, my boss doesn’t care, don’t worry…)

Haven’t managed to buy that body pillow yet, as you have all recommended – better get on that one.

Still on the Mexican kick – had to take another trip to Chiquito’s last night, though it wasn’t as good as the first visit. Went to see Anne this week who made me a fantastic meal of salmon, broccoli and basmati & wild rice and I realised it was the kind of thing I should have been eating all along (brain food really). I always thought if this happened to me I would go on some serious healthy eating kick. Little did I know that the thought of even opening the fridge would repulse me so much and I really just don’t feel like eating most of the time anyway. I’ve been pretty good with fruit, it’s all I want for lunch most days, but not so good on the rest of the food groups. Bean does not seem to be suffering for it though – all measurements normal, all limbs present, etc. Thankfully.

Next up, in a week and a half, a fun morning at the hospital doing the glucose tolerance test (oh joy).

Was sick this morning. Why? No good reason. Thought that was all done!

Guess who’s pregnant too. Bridget Jones. Helen Fielding has started writing her weekly column in the Independent again, sort of picking up where she left the story off before but just forgetting that a bunch of years have passed since then so it’s in the present. This week, she puked in Daniels’ new car and on his feet. Ha ha. Serves him right. It better be Mark’s kid… (she’s not sure right now).

My Mark managed to feel a kick/hiccups/something this morning. If I lie on my back it’s really easy to get the movement felt.

Starting to have problems with sleep, though. If I lie on my back, I start off comfortable and it reduces my chance of heartburn. However, if I fall asleep like that, after a while I have a back ache, and need to roll on my side and bring my knees up. On my side, the heartburn increases. I’ve been on one Tums a night for a while, but I think it’s going to get worse. And I am not used to this backache thing.

Also noticed this week that public transportation is becoming more of a nightmare. It was hot and steamy earlier this week, and it sort of stayed that way down in the tube tunnels. So everyone smells, and it’s stuffy and I want to get off the trains. On top of that, I climb the stairs to leave the station, and my legs are feeling really heavy. Ugh.

Only 3 months of this commuting hell to go (only?!) – have decided to have my last day at work 5th December. Taking 9 days holiday, then we are closed for 2 weeks, and then my actual maternity leave starts 2nd January. The due date. At least I won’t be on reduced pay until then.

1. Get a nice person to bring you bran muffin mix from Canada, as you are a lazy baker. In this instance, I have Tami to thank as part of my fab birthday gift (which also included Fuzzy Peaches among many other excellent items, mmmmm).
2. Defrost frozen blueberries you bought during a blueberry spree earlier this year.
3. Measure and add ingredients with aid of excellent aquatronic scale, a wonderful wedding gift from Maria and Joel.
4. Add said ingredients (including proliferation of blueberries plus regular mix) to excellent maple leaf muffin tin, a wonderful Christmas gift from Maria and Joel (has also featured in previous blog posts!).
5. Enjoy your creations (and in your eagerness, remove from said muffin tin too soon and have half of them fall apart – but who cares, they taste the same).
6. Share your joy with only other living being at home, but they just don’t care as much…

Next to cook/assemble this evening, guacamole to go with nachos, I think…