Welcome back to the "sneeze wee"

So I we t to see captain America and totally broke the rules by downing the drink before the previews finished. This of course led to the plot spoiling need to "water the daises" I went to the loo which was a long walk as I was in the farthest screen from the entrance ,OF COURSE! I was mincing down the hall looking like I was trying to crack a walnut in my arse!
I finally made it to the toilet when I got the itchy nose and EPIC fail! I sneezed. Of course I then peed myself. Oh the joys of pregnancy.

Luckily I was already in the bathroom and it had one of them super dooper hand driers. I quickly dried my underpants and off I went back to the film. No one will ever know. "cue dr evil laugh"

Except you guys of course x

Toilet trauma

Luckily this is not my first time being pregnant so I didn't freak out when this happened but I wanted to post this to make first time mums aware. I went for my pap the other day (smear test for those of you in England) it was a little painful as usual. I didnt think any more of it until I went to the loo and saw blood and some tissue like substance staring back at me from the bowl. What the hell is that?????

Panic not my friends. Luckily it is completely normal after having your pap when pregnant. First time round I was not so relaxed and calm. I was sat there crying on the loo wondering if the aforementioned "duck billed platypus" tool had gone too far. What if the baby saw it? What the heck would it think was happening??? I was clearly wrong but hormones do some crazy shit to your logic.

My lovely midwife reminded me that it goes no where near the baby. It is all good.

Hide and seek

Today was my 11 week appointment. I was due to have a pap smear, 8 vials of blood taken a d finally hear the heartbeat.

I went in and first thing was the heartbeat. This baby really gave us a fright. My midwife had the Doppler and she was searching around for the heartbeat. It was a very tense couple of minutes. We couldn't hear anything. Of course that scene from Marley and me came into my head again. My midwife then asked me to put my fists under my butt to raise the uterus and oh look there you are!!!! Little heartbeat pounding away. It was such a relief! I think all of us were holding our breath. My husband went with me and I am glad he did.

Next the dreaded pap smear. My husband saw the use of the "duck billed platypus" as he calls it and bless him he still stayed. What a rock he is. Thankfully due to My daughter breaking me on the way out I don't experience any pain anymore during pap smears.

It was then that I went to get 8 vials of blood drawn. Is it just me or was I actually getting
Colder as more vials were taken?

I am now on my way home to eat my weight in sugar.

My back is on FIRE!

For all of you who are going through a first pregnancy let me pass on some advice. Drink water CONSTANTLY!!!!! I didn't know this before that if you dehydrate you can get cramps almost like contractions.it can be very dangerous.

I experienced it once first time round and I was told to drink water immediately as there was a risk the uterus would contract. I got a warning sign today. I have a massive headache and my lower back is so painful. Kidneys are clearly struggling. I need to be careful to watch for UTI aswell.

Wow pregnancy is glamorous,,,,

The cat is partially out of the bag

Yesterday we decided to break the news to a close friend. We were at her house for the afternoon. We wanted to let our daughters swim in the pool. So I got to the house and she didn't notice the bump. Me and my husband laughed at how funny the situation was. I was really nervous as I feel slot for this friend as she is also trying to conceive.

She asked me why I wasn't getting in the pool and I just smiled and said ,"because I'm pregnant and don't want to show my belly". Needless to say there was no need to be nervous, she was more than happy for me. It was then that she finally noticed my rather large belly.

There have been alot of rumors going around the family and it is so hard to keep denying it. We are still waiting to the 12 week point. We are going to hear the heartbeat on Wednesday..... We will keep you posted!

Goodbye Heels..... Hello Flats

I have always struggled with a bad back but I LOVE my heels!!! Anyone who knows me knows of my shoe fetish. I am only 5'3 so I love heels, the taller the better.

I would advise all fellow preggos to get the flats as soon as you can. The relief is AMAZING and your back will thank you. Flats are now much more pretty and not so granny like. If you are like me and your feet grow half a size when you are pregnant then maybe find some stretchy ones.

Plus, they are so much more practical. In my 6 month of pregnancy last year I fell over in the garage onto my belly and ended up in hospital for 24 hours observation. I was woken every 30 mins by a nurse who looked like Lurch from the Addams Family. It was also new years eve.

The choice is yours. A fun evening with good grub, comfy shoes and a nice comfy bed. Or, fabulous heels, a night with Lurch and a delivery bed...

I know which one I would choose (this time round lol)

Hot and Cold Flashes

So we are going through one of the most major heatwaves in decades and I'm pregnant. Here come the flashes. The hot flashes tend to come at night and the cold flashes in the day. I got a major cold flash at work this week.

It was 100 degrees outside and with the air conditioning it was about 75 in the office. I realized I was struggling to type and when I looked at my hands my nails had gone completely blue!!!! So my colleague dug out an old heater and within 10 minutes they returned to normal.

The hot flashes come at night and get so intense that they wake me up. It's very difficult as I feel dreadful tossing and turning as it wakes my husband up.

Hiding from my friends

This is the hardest thing about early pregnancy.  All the books and Drs suggest simply waiting 3 months before announcing news.  It sounds simple right?  12 weeks...thats not that long.  and typically you dont find out yourself until you are 4 weeks gone.

I am finding it SO hard.  Even though the majority of my friends are in England I still have friends here who I havent seen for ages.  Its the peak of summer so there are so many parties.  I havent gone for my usual hair appointment with my girlfriend so my hair resembles that of a scarecrow.

It is even becoming difficult with the English guys because when I do webcam chats I am usually playing with my daughter but now I have to be careful what I wear and how I stand so as not to raise suspiscion.

I miss hanging out with my friends on weekends and having play dates.  It seems like the longest 12 weeks EVER!!!!

We are going to wait til the end of July and then announce it.

The subconscious waddle

I caught myself today walking in the office and I was waddling.  SERIOUSLY!!! I looked like I had just wet myself I was walking that bizarrely.

I don't know why it happens but I see so many early pregnancy fellows like myself waddling. I am only 9 weeks 4 days so I don't need to waddle.  My body just tells me to do it.  I have always been rather theatrical!!!!

I think it is because I have said goodbye to my heels and gone into flat shoes that I feel the need to waddle.

Wardrobe malfunction

Why does no one tell you about the lack of sleep. I am a belly sleeper so of course I really struggle with getting comfy.

I try lie on my left side but then wake up nearly on my belly and imagine my poor baby's face squished Into my inner colon.. Stupid I know but you just wait! That will be you.

I become so neurotic and try find any way of getting comfy. I tried one of those preggo body pillows. Firstly they are huge and even In my queen bed I feel smothered. But it also feels like you are straddling a horse at night.

So back to the wardrobe malfunction ...... It's been about a month since a full night sleep. I went to work with my sweater on inside out. Wow how special did I look.

Time to start labelling my shoes again lol!

ThermaCare Wraps are not invented for us preggos..

I went to to cinema to watch Harry Potter and wanted to prepared. I ALWAYS get lower back pain. I was first thinking of a hot water bottle but then my husband reminded me that I had a ThermaCare wrap. I thought; perfect. How laughably wrong I was.

It does work in the sense that you get about 6 hours of heat but the undignified act of putting it on in the car was hysterical.

I pulled my pants down while I was in the car and out flopped my belly. I then tried to stretch the band around my belly and all I achieved was a 2nd cleavage in my belly and a friction burn. I did get more lamaze practice as I puffed and panted to get the strap fastened.

How my husband will ever want to sleep with me again I will never know.

Thank the lord for Streaming! But to hell with automatic lights.....

So imagine the scene.....

I have been having a few issues lately in the old bowel movement area so it takes me more than a little while to go to the loo.  I have thankfully found solace in my phone as i have NetFlix on it so I have been able to watch Downton Abbey to pass the time....and a movement lol!

My building is like a blackspot for my cellphone signal but luckily the 3rd cubicle in from the door has a spike in the signal and if i rest it on the loo roll holder it works a charm. 

The only issue is the stupid lights!!!  Our bathroom lights at work turn off automatically if there is no movement for more than 5 minutes!!!! i then find myself plunged into darkness.  So then I have to rip the spare loo roll out and throw it over the door to re engage the lights.

It has now become a frantic race between me and the lights.  I find myself puffing and panting to try and finish before darkness.  Hey at least it gives me lamaze practice.

This ones for the husbands

So I am writing this in the hope that some spouses finally understand the random mood swings.
Last night I had plenty of sleep. Had a great day at work today. Came home and my husband had made dinner.... So why the hell did I get all arsey at him?

Answer: Hormones!

I hate throwing around the dreaded H word but they really screw with you in the first trimester. My husband asked me if I wanted pie or just the pot roast and I ripped his head off and said I don't care! I just want to eat. I heard myself say it and thought ," why did I just say that?" I immediately apologized but I felt terrible. I get cranky when I am hungry anyway but the mood swings are so bad when I am pregnant.

Needless to say I love my husband.. If you are reading this I am sorry x all the rest of the husbands out there please just smile and tell us everything is going to be ok and that we look nothing like a hippo and you should be good.

I'm hopefully going to get some good rest and wake up refreshed.

The pot roast was lush by the way...

The weird "Am I fat or Pregnant" Stage

So I am well into week 8 now and I went to the mall this weekend.  I am at the odd stage where people looking at you might think you are just fat.  The bump is definately there but it doesnt have the firmness to it so you get the dreaded "wobble" when you walk.

I was walking around the mall and desperate to shout to everyone "don't judge me.  Im not a couch potato, I lost 25 pounds on Weight Watchers Recently.  Im just knocked up. But cheers for looking anyway"

It is a difficult stage to dress.  I dont want to dress in anything too clingly for fear of the dreaded muffin top rearing its ugly head.  But I also dont want to wear a mu-mu.

I decided on some maternity capris and a long vest.  I cant believe I am in maternity pants already but the bump is so much more pronounced than last time.  I went to Mother hood Maternity and they had a great sale on pants and shorts.  BOGO 50% off!!!

The hardest thing is underwear.  No matter if I wear big or small underwear I keep getting muffin top.  That is my next project.  Find some comfy, none parachute style, vaguely eye pleasing underwear......I might be pregnant but I'm not dead lol!  gotta keep my man happy x

Relief on OH so many levels.

I am pleased to report that I am on day 3 of the new pre-natal Vitamins and the sickness has nearly all gone!!  I still have the occasional wave of nausea but NOTHING like before!!!!!  It is such a huge relief.

We also had a very stressful thing happen recently that may have also contributed.  We had to fire our current daycare for our daughter and find a new one.  It was for several reasons, price, conflict in schedule but mainly because when I went to pick our daughter (15 months old) up from daycare early, she was in the room alone completely unattended.  The main door to the daycare enters straight into her room as it is a family daycare.  the owner was UPSTAIRS!!!!  I was fuming beyond belief.

Needless to say now that the utter guilt in me taking her there in the first place has passed I feel much better.

When do we lose that feeling of guilt??? I feel like it is a hazard of being a parent that you realize every decision you make will impact on your child somehow.  I still find myself questioning if me emigrating over here was a good decision or not but hey I tell you it certainly was the right move.

I get horrified when I see the price of real estate back in England.  My old place was 534 sq feet.  Worth around $256K.  Now i live in a 2500 Sq foot detached home.  another 1000 Sq ft in the basement and it is valued at $211K.   Simply incredible!!!!

So Thankfully I do feel in a position to stop stressing and enjoy the rest of this pregnancy.  I have a week vacation coming up soon and I am going to spend it with my darling husband.  Our last chance to get some proper rest I guess before the craziness happens again!!

Woo Hoo ! I reached 8 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!

I am thrilled to have made it to 8 weeks.  That means just 4 more weeks to wait before we officially let the cat out of the bag.  I have been making sure that people only see my head and shoulders when I do skype chats with England.

So I am hoping that this weekend I should start to feel better.  My body has not coped with the OTC pre-Natal Vitamins very well.  I am sicker than usual and I am so unbelievably constipated its not even funny.  Coming out of the loo with blood shot eyes is never a good look!

I called the OB and they are sending a prescription out to my pharmacy for me.  We have a busy weekend ahead so I hope that they work.

I cant believe I am already 8 weeks!!!  That is scary.  The baby is apparently the size of a raspberry.  So why do I look like a hippo??????????

Little Girl in her Mamma's shoes

I had to post this as it was just so sweet. My daughter is 15 months and she is obsessed with putting shoes away in the storage bench. The other day she picked up my flip flops and carried them to the storage bench. She then put them on the floor and went all quiet. When we peeked she was stood there trying to put her feet in the right part of the flip flop with the toe band in the right place.

This simple act of pure curiosity and innocence was so refreshing and magical.

Insomnia. Hello! I haven't seen you in a while

So for those of you who have never experienced sleep deprivation take it from me it's not fun.
I don't know if it's because I'm so excited or the fact that I can't sleep on my belly but I NEED sleep.

It was the same with the last pregnancy and I was so surprised last time. I had never heard of pregnancy insomnia. I thought that all fellow preggos could sleep anywhere due to exhaustion. How wrong was I. I was prescribed ambien last time which I hated as I felt I was drugging the baby but I felt so good once I finally slept. I think my husband was excited at the fact that One of the side effects was having sex while not fully conscious. I'm sad to say sorry husband but I was one of the few that didn't fall victim..... At least not that he is letting on anyway lol!

So I'm gonna play it by ear but we will see if I can get any sleep this week.

Wardrobe issues

So I am 7 weeks along now and I swear I look like I did at 3 months last time. I have a definite bump. I have given up trying to hide it at work because I just went through weightwatchers and suddenly ballooned. Between that and throwing up rather publicly they all guessed. The issue is with neighbours, family and friends. I have some friends trying to get pregnant and I feel nervous to tell them as I know when I was trying to conceive I hated everyone who was pregnant. Yes it's completely irrational but I wanted them and their fertile womb away from me.

So with the wardrobe I have had to be creative. Lots of flowy dresses. Nothing clingy and if I can I will carry my daughter to disguise the bump. All of my old maternity clothes were from winter and we are in the height of summer so I will just have to go to the shops.

Nose of a bloodhound

One weird side effect of pregnancy that not many people talk about is the sense of smell.  I could probably beat my dog in any sniffer dog contest right now.

I dread opening my fridge as it smells like everything is off and my husband looks at me as if im mad.  We came in the house last night after being out and I swore that the house smelt of....well...sh!t for lack of a better word.  I said to my husband..."please tell me you smell sh!t"  he responded with "no"  i said "what do you smell?" He responded, "nothing. it smells really clean".

Its so confusing.  I proceeded to clean the kitchen....again as i was convinced the waste disposal smelt.  I can also smell my daughters diaper movements within minutes of her doing them... I will say "  i think she has pooed"  and my husband will say that he cant smell a thing.  Lo and behold when we checked she has pooed.

Lets not even talk about the diaper genie.  There is only so much smell that those gadgets can keep inside.

I guess the upside is border patrol could hire me to sniff out the coke heads lol!!

Morning sickness is not time sensitive

Morning means nothing.  For me the sickness comes at any time of day.  I have rarely actually thrown up but when I have it has been at work of all places.  My office all know as it was just to hard to hide it.  Most of the times I just get the wave of nausea.

For those of you wishing to know what it feels like lets do a little exercise:

You have eaten very little all day.  you go for a "quick drink"  at lunch with a friend.  You stay until the rest of your friends come out in the evening.  You have a quick bag of pork scratchings then continue to drink.  You have a very questionable kebab on the way home and get home at about 1am.  You then drink some hot milk and go to bed.  You look up and the window jumps off the wall and starts spinning around the room and the only thing you can do to stop it is have one arm and one leg out of the bed.  Any slight movement threatens to show your stomach content................WELCOME TO MORNING SICKNESS!

What makes it worse is my sense of smell.  Everything in my house smells grose! normally nice smells do not make me want to chunder everywhere!

Cold baths again

Pregnancy is a marvelous thing but even everyday things make you realize just how fragile our bodies are and just how risky the first trimester is.  I suffer from back pain and towards the end of the day my lower back feels like its on fire!

The only thing that cures it is a nice hot bath.  Sadly the OBGYN said hot baths are a no go.  I cant let my body temperature go above 101 degrees so that means the bath water can be no hotter than 100 degrees.  Sounds hot right?

Think again.  Its that really annoying kind of luke warm. The temperature where you would instantly turn on the tap and feel the hot water slowly seep down the bath.  But no.....Im stuck in a luke warm bath with a huge swimming pool thermometer which I now obsessively check every 5 minutes hoping and praying that it goes to 99 degrees so that I can put in some hot water.

Needless to say my back doesn't really get soothed so I go back to old faithful. My hot water bottle.  It works a charm most of the time.  unlike last night when the numpty I am I wasn't watching as I was filling it up and got the wooly cover a bit wet.  I felt a bit soggy.

I just have to focus on the positive.  There is a beautiful baby growing in there and it is a pure delight to be pregnant again. 

The sono-dildo!

Well it was our 6 week scan the other day.  i braced myself for another encounter with the dreaded sono dildo.  Why is it that Hollywood never shows someone getting a 6 week scan trans vaginally????  I was terrified the first time round when I went for that.  I had never heard of having a sono done like that because no one tells you!!!

The bit that makes me laugh is the way they put a condom on it.  I mean....really?????  Its not like I'm going to get pregnant.....well more pregnant than I really am.

So all went well this time.  Thanks to my daughter making more than enough room on the way out There was no discomfort.  We saw the tiny little heartbeat which was the most reassuring thing.  Whenever I go for the 6 week scan I cant help but get that scene from Marley and me out of my head where Jen Aniston and Owen Wilson are told there is no heartbeat. 

There is a small bleed in utero but nothing to worry about (yeah right! dont tell me then cos now i will worry).  Now every time I go to the loo I get petrified Im going to see blood.

Thankfully we left with smiles on our faces and 2 pictures of our little kidney bean.