Notes on Growing a Small Thing - Second Trimester

So. We're now at 22 weeks and time is moving quickly! We have about one month left before we get into the third and final trimester, so here's some reflections on the last couple of months.

I can't lie, there are a lot of times I've found pregnancy hard work, especially the first half of the second trimester - perhaps because I was partly expecting some kind of magical transition from sickness to bouncy maternal glowiness, and that just didn't happen. No energy surge here. I did have the luxury of finishing work at around 17 weeks (for non pregnancy related reasons) which, to be honest, has been wonderful, particularly as the nausea and sickness has always been worse in the mornings so not having to commute to a rigid timetable has been really useful. Nonetheless, up until around 20 weeks I was still being sick at least once a day every day, and that does get tiring. Happily since then it's died down a lot, although (as I found this morning!) the sickness does still rear its head every now and then!

Added to this, over the last couple of weeks I've been experiencing various levels of pelvic girdle pain (also known as symphisis pubis disfunction). This is a phenomenon affecting the joint and ligaments around the pelvis during pregnancy, and causes radiating pain around the same area, particularly when doing things like walking, moving quickly, turning over in bed and getting out of the car. You have to change the way you approach movements - sleeping with extra cushions, getting a bit of support and standing up slowly etc, and since I've done that it's got more bearable. Walking for more than about 5-10 minutes (particularly without a husbandly arm to hang on to!) is getting to be a bit of a no-no though - now is the time to be glad that our house isn't too far from town!

I realise a lot of the above sounds pretty negative, so I should also point out that I am finally starting to enjoy being pregnant. The bump started to appear at around 20 weeks and has popped out a little bit more the last week or so - it's fascinating to see.

We've also had our 20 week scan which was lovely as it felt like a very long time since the last scan so it's easy to let your imagination get carried away. We had the scan at 9am and MiniPearTree was not impressed by that - he was curled up in a corner as far away as possible and didn't want to budge. I did feel quite guilty having to jiggle up and down trying to get him to move - in the end I had to lie on my side so the sonographer could pick up measurements! We did get to see the tiny limbs (miniature waving fingers! eeek!) and he was opening and closing his mouth too which was amazing to see.

The scan results were all fine so we've allowed ourselves to start thinking more seriously about the nursery and buying bits for the baby. The first thing we ended up buying was a car seat (how responsible of us) and a couple of baby gros (frivolous but who can resist the cuteness of Pirate Duck (from JoJoMamanBebe) and a Star Wrap (from Tuppence and Crumble)?!). We will now buy some more sensible things... honest!
 
By far the best thing about the last few weeks has been starting to feel MiniPearTree move around. Up until now, it's mostly been just after lunch, during episodes of Pointless and in the evening as I get into bed, although the last couple of days he's been pretty active at all sorts of times of the day (hello 5am, we meet again...) with some pretty hefty kicking going on every so often. It's a strange sensation but one I've got used to very quickly, and already I think I'm going to miss the movements after October - it's rather wonderful lying in bed really early in the morning knowing that it's our baby making those movements.

As the second trimester comes to an end, I certainly feel a lot more positive about being pregnant but I'm not sure I'm one of those women who has a magical maternal time and feels like their entire purpose is to be pregnant. Much as I don't want to wish the summer away I'm looking forward to October and having a newborn far more.

[Disclaimer: I should also add that all references to 'he' in this post and any others are for illustrative purposes only - we have no idea whether MiniPearTree is a girl or a boy and couldn't have found out if we'd wanted as he kept curling up and crossing his legs, so all will be revealed in October!]

One Year Ago

We did this

 

 

It's been a busy year - marriage, a new job for me, packing and moving house twice (and more house viewings than is good for anyone) and our latest adventure along the path to parenthood. But it's also been wonderful - full of happiness, laughter and planning for the future. So thank you Alan for a wonderful first year of married life - and here's to many many more.

Wedding Rings - Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design

As we're coming up to our first wedding anniversary (What? A year already?! Afraid so...) we thought we would send our rings for an anniversary polish while we take a weekend away. Although it'll mean we don't have our rings for our anniversary, we do have cheap 'travel rings' for holidays so won't be completely ring-less.

I never did write a post about our rings so now seems to be a good time.

We knew we wanted our wedding rings to (a) reflect us and (b) be a little bit different, and we searched for a long time to find what we wanted. We thought a vine leaf engraving pattern with a stone in the middle would be interesting, and eventually we came up with a design on the back of the Evening Standard on the way home from work one evening (wedding planning tip - always keep pen and paper in your handbag!). We decided that as the main colour in our wedding would be blue, sapphires in our rings would reflect that.

Our first stop was the place we bought my engagement ring, as the lady who helped us design it was so lovely and helpful and we had loved the result.

A shame, then, that the experience this time round was so awful. The man we spoke to was of the 'yes this is what you want, most people have one like this' conveyor belt attitude and it made us feel unspecial and rushed. Alan had never worn a ring before and really wanted to try lots of different shapes and thicknesses, and this guy just wasn't interested. We had also decided we wanted some engraving, and were told that unless we had the exact specific design, they couldn't do it in case we didn't like it.

Well.

Some friends of ours recommended Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design for personal designed jewellery so having spend hours browsing her website in excitement we decided to make an appointment. We chose the branch near Hertford - they also have a workshop up in Cambridge.

They were running really late, which wasn't a good start and made us nervous as they shut at 4pm on a Saturday. However, they did make us plenty of drinks and certainly didn't seem to be clockwatching as we were there far later than 4pm in the end.

We met Sarah, one of the designers and explained what we were looking for. She was fantastic and both Alan and I were able to ask plenty of questions and try on lots of different types of rings. She drew out our design in a much more technical fashion than my bit of newspaper for us to approve, did lots of different costings based on various factors such as metals, stones. We even got to look at and examine the different sapphires and choose which ones we wanted.

This was great fun until the tweezers went 'ping' as I was holding them. Cue five or six people in utter silence, on hands and knees looking for a tiny tiny blue sapphire on the floor. Luckily it was found - I've rarely been so embarrassed!

We left the workshop at well past 6pm and were really pleased that they'd stayed open for us. We were already looking forward to seeing our rings!

When we finally picked up our rings just before Christmas 2012, we were overjoyed. We were blown away that they'd managed to make our little design and associated ramblings into two beautiful rings, with no fuss and plenty of creativity. Amazing.

 

We've since been back to the workshop a couple of times for resizing and polishing and we've always been made to feel so welcome. I love visiting their workshop - some of the pieces on display are stunning. If you want a special piece of jewellery made, I would highly recommend Harriet Kelsall Jewellery.


Not sponsored in any way - we just love our wedding rings so much it was time we shared them with you.

Making a House a Home - The Master Bedroom Stage 1

Doing some DIY on Easter weekend? Living the cliché!

After the success of painting the "spare room" we turned out attention to the master bedroom.
We worked our way through a number of swatches, and finally settled on Farrow & Ball, Chappell Green.

The bedroom is north-facing, so we hoped this colour would bring some life to the room without making it feel dark.

Our blank canvas

This paint requires a base-coat and two top-coats - a daunting prospect, even without the four day weekend. Like with the first room the wallpaper here was very shiny, which meant that it took two base-coats before we were happy to continue.

All this work - just for a base-coat

We almost wondered why a base-coat was needed. Surely it would only make sense if we were painting over a strong original colour, but with this room originally being white it seemed a little unnecessary. I'm glad that we stuck with it - the base-coat covered up the shiny wallpaper and helped the top-coat to stick better.

The finished room

We're really happy with the final product. It took most of the weekend to get one top-coat on though, so we had to finish off a week later.

The toughest part was the edging. The plastering underneath isn't the smoothest, and the join between the wall and the ceiling / skirting board is bumpy. Every time we tried to get the brush or roller closer to the edge we ended up getting paint over the line. After a while of getting very frustrated we decided to leave a small gap in the painting.

Frustrating gap at the top!

The plan is to look into getting some coving, and hope that this covers the gap! Otherwise we'll break out the masking tape and work our way around slowly.

The finished product

We have a new bed arriving next week, and are looking forward to having the new room come together.

Notes on Growing a Small Thing - First Trimester

Having introduced our newest adventure in my last post, I thought I would write a post on our experience of pregnancy so far. Probably like many other musings on the subject, this post about the first trimester contains mostly nausea, a large selection of carbs and a few days of bone-aching tiredness. Being one for reading and research, I'd read plenty on the subject of early pregnancy and what to expect. Nothing really prepared me for the reality...

1. The textbook information you find is that nausea/sickness can kick in from around six weeks and tends to fade off at the start of the second trimester. Mine kicked in even before we knew I was pregnant - fleeting moments of nausea and lightheadedness at first (so, 3-4 weeks) and then developing into daily sickness from 5 weeks onwards, ramping up in intensity every week, with the odd day of respite. And although I was practically counting down to the start of the second trimester, the sickness is still going strong at nearly 16 weeks.

(On the flip side of this - neither my mother nor Alan's suffered from sickness at all - many women don't! *sulk*)

2. It's not morning sickness, it's just sickness - it can strike morning, noon or night. Definitely more of a morning thing for me, though, in an almost clockwork-like manner - 'Get up, shower, feel nauseous, get back to bedroom, be sick'. Yup, pleasant.And often followed by 'eat breakfast, leave house, be sick on pavement/in drain/ on train/ on station platform, buy second breakfast to eat at work'. Even better.

The sickness I've felt in the evenings has been completely different - nearly always attributable to something specifice I've eaten, or realising I've overeaten. And then there's the random moments, where you think of something, or you smell something and it sends you running for the nearest bathroom. Coffee? Eurgh. Assorted something in the fridge? Excuse me for a moment...

Pregnancy sickness is also different to other sickness. Often, if you get a sickness bug, you start feeling weak and being sick, it lasts for a day or two where you can't do anything other than lie in bed. With pregnancy sickness, you feel fine one minute, the next minute you have your head in a bucket, and then you feel better again (and repeat ad, erm, nauseum). Timing doesn't come into it.

3. Everyone gets different symptoms, and you don't get all of them. So far for me, the sickness has definitely been the low point - I haven't been exceptionally tired, apart from the odd days here and there, and although I've had a few other symptoms (noone ever tells you about the sore boobs and the sluggish bowels!) the nausea has definitely been the one that has had the most impact.

4. Your food preferences are apt to change from week to week and even day to day. And they won't necessarily be the same as anyone else's. For me, it was marmite on rice cakes and citrusy fruit juices at first (then I started being sick and haven't had any fruit juice since!). For one week only it was jacket potatoes. Then it was hot green vegetables and spicy foods. During the last weeks its been pasta, and tomato and vegetable based dishes - and at the moment I can add salads and cheese to that. (M&S cheese scones are my current 'food heaven' - so good!). Conversely I've gone off foods as well - mostly fruit and meat, but also cakes (I KNOW!) and other sweet foods, like hot cross buns and chutneys. Not chocolate chip cookies though, they're good.

Early on, I also went off tea (no, I don't recognise myself either) - along with the sickness, it was one of the first signs which made me suspect I was pregnant! Luckily that one has come back slowly, although I'm finding I do prefer decaffeinated tea at the moment.

5. Crisps. You will want all the crisps. Even at 9am. Salt and vinegar flavour if possible (later on, paprika). And you will feel guilty. But it will help (at least a bit) with the sickness, so don't feel too bad about it - however, do brush your teeth afterwards! And drink lots of water.

The First Three Months

At first you are there in the shadows - passing seconds of lightheadness; increasingly frequent, yet initially fleeting, moments of nausea. You are there in the cups of tea I make, and then leave on my desk for two hours because I haven't even noticed I didn't want them.

A week or so later, you show a little more of yourself; you are but a line - but at the same time, such a wanted and hoped-for line. Is this real - is that really you? It's a little early, so who can be sure?

You are there in what is not there the next day. Nor the next, nor even the day or week after that. And still, we daren't quite believe. It feels such a quiet way to announce yourself, when in our heads and our hearts there are fireworks. We smile, we jump up and down, we hug each other over and over. We... don't quite know what we're supposed to do next.

Finally, a week later, I pick up the phone. It feels so alien, announcing that I need to make an appointment to see a midwife. Surely, this is something other people do?

You start to make yourself more known. You do not like tea, most meat or sweet dishes. What you do like varies from week to week - marmite, potatatoes, broccoli, spices, pasta, tomatoes, salt and vinegar crisps. You do not seem to like my morning routine and tell me about it every morning somewhere between 6.30am and 7.30am - you will continue to do this, with increasing will and strength for the next 8 or 9 weeks (and possibly beyond).

Seeing the midwife makes it more real - questions, forms, due date predictions, blood tests. We head back to work afterwards, buzzing with so much excitement I expect everyone to be able to tell what is going on. We want to keep it a secret from the world for now, so the only person we tell is our personal trainer, just to make exercising a bit more realistic.

The next weeks pass slowly, in a haze of continuing nausea and sickness, tiredness and yet insomnia, lightheadedness and overall a slight disbelief that we could possibly be this lucky. Each day that ticks past is another day closer to the first scan - what if you are no longer there? What if it was all just a mistake?

Finally, the day arrives. We wake up nervous, and spend the morning working at home before heading to the hospital. Car parking is a nightmare, and we are so nervous at what we will find. Have I dreamed the whole thing?

And then - there you are. You cannot see us, but we see you, and how wonderful it is to catch a proper glimpse - you are surprisingly active for such a little person. There are hands, fingers, legs, feet - even your brain and a heartbeat. We stare, mystified, throughout the scan, barely daring to breathe.

For a little while at least, we can almost believe in magic.

Making a House a Home - Making a Mark

We've been in our new home now for over two months - it is amazing how the time has flown!

The first couple of weekends were spent making a big push to unpack and set things up to make the place liveable and then the tiredness of months spent viewing houses, packing boxes and moving home hit and we have allowed ourselves a few weekends of lethargy.

But we have been aching to start to make our mark on the new place, and we started by painting one of the spare rooms. We'd wanted to start with the master bedroom, but neither of us having painted a room in many years we thought that we would "practice" on a smaller room first.

Frances had found us a colour at the first search - Laura Ashley - Duck Egg Blue.

Testing out our choice

It was a two coat paint. The first coat didn't really seem to stick too thickly. We weren't sure if that was intentional or not.

The first coat

We'd bought some masking tape to put around the borders to keep them clean while rolling paint on. What we didn't bank on was the entire roll being used up before even finishing the first coat! It seemed to be faster to continue without it and use a kitchen towel to mop up any slips anyway.

Finished? Not quite.

The second coat made an immediate difference, going on smoothly and covering the original streaks. It dried nicely, but it was still patchy in places.

We're not entirely sure why this happened. Perhaps we were a bit cautious with the thickness of paint going on the walls, or perhaps the texture we were painting on was too shiny to hold the amount needed. Either way, we're glad we decided to practice in this smaller room first.

A couple of weekends later we put on a third coat. Slightly worried that it would dry differently to the original coats, but we needn't have been concerned. It all blended in smoothly and the finish is now perfect.

It feels good to have given part of the house a burst of colour to make it our own!