As yet unnamed!

Half way done...

with the ante natal classes. Last night was pretty fun as we learned about the first few days after birth, what to expect at the hospital and the entire process. Glad I'm on the private ward though as I would hate if Kirk had visiting hours and stuff. He can sleep in my room overnight if he wants to which is far nicer than "come see your daughter between the hours of xx and xx". Of course he will come home each night though or else Mimi will be alone and she doesn't do alone very well! We also learned how to change diapers on dolls. It was super easy of course as the doll doesn't move or cry like a real baby would. I had a hard time taking it seriously and was rotating the doll around on the table until Kirk asked if I was planning on doing that to our daughter. Oops. Didn't even realise I was doing it. He was much better than I was, very careful and gentle, so he has earned that responsibility since he is so good at it. We saw pictures of the meconium poo and all I can say is I hope I don't eat right before a diaper change. The midwife was telling us about her first baby and explosive poo. Apparently the baby did one and it went EVERYWHERE and a week later they were still finding bits of poo. How gross! I will have to put plastic sheeting down under the changing table, wear a rain coat and protective face gear and hope for the best. Kirk seems to be wearing his rose tinted glasses and thinks it won't be so bad and that even if she does do an explosive poo it will be ok as it's our baby and she will be cute. Yeah, nothing cute about poo all over the place though, no matter how cute the baby may be. If poo all over was a cute look, babies everywhere would be out and about covered in the stuff. How funny will it be if when the time comes I deal with all of this just fine and Kirk passes out each time?

Less than 6 weeks to go....

Yay!

I can breath again today and my stomach can handle food without feeling like I am full after 2 bites. Last night it was the worst with feeling like I might explode after dinner and then struggling to get enough air when I was trying to get to sleep. I woke up this morning and for the first time in a long time felt like I was breathing like a normal person. I wonder if this means baby has dropped? I know that your first time around baby drops at around 33 weeks so I'm not too worried. I also read that just because baby has dropped doesn't mean labour is imminent. It can take 2-6 weeks. I'm hoping I'm looking at 4-6 weeks as 6 weeks is exactly when my c-section is scheduled. Also, I really want baby to have an April birthday so she has to hold on for at least 4 weeks and 5 days more!

I started cutting my fabric for the basket linings and realised I would only have enough of the pink polka dotted stuff for 6 baskets so I did another search on ebay and found something else I like. It looks kinda retro which is cool. I find that the retro look appeals to me when I'm scrapping too. For the first time I tried a "make offer" route of bidding. The seller had the fabric on buy it now for £4.99 per half a yard or best offer so I offered £4 per half yard. I wanted 5 yards overall and she accepted my offer so I "saved" £9.90 and she also does free first class post. Not too bad! I expect the fabric will be here later this week so I will be busy with my sewing machine. I will do 6 baskets with dots and 3 with the flowers. I think they will look ok together?

Tummy Update

Not sure you can see a huge difference but let me tell you, I FEEL a huge difference. I'm getting kicked non stop and constantly have a foot in my ribs, arms tickling my side and a head butting against my bladder. I know this happens to everyone at this stage but honestly it is so annoying. I know it's better than feeling no movement and freaking out but it is so uncomfortable for the most part. She seems to sleep at night when I am asleep though so thank goodness for that! It's more during the day when I am sittting on the couch and stitching that she goes nuts.

Time for a late dinner. Baby wants Chinese food... seems to be a weekly craving!

Growth Scan

Scan today revealed... it's a foot! A happy healthy female foot. Hahahaha. OK, all joking aside the scan was fine. Hard to get a good picture of anything though as she is smushed in there and had her face covered with her hands. She is head down so I was right in thinking her feet are in my stomach and ribs at night time. Her growth is normal and estimated birth weight is 7-1/2lbs rather than 8-1/2lbs so that's cool! She'll be able to fit into some of her smaller newborn clothing items. Scan showed her right kidney is a bit larger than the left, Dr called it a Duplex Kidney but was not concerned. Baby will need a scan after birth and possibly antibiotics to prevent any urinary tract infections but it won't be a serious life or death sort of matter so we're not really all that worried. We knew about this at the 28wk 3d scan and even then the Dr who did that scan was not concerned. I am so glad we got our 3d scan done when we did and that baby was breech at the time so we got those great clear photos. It's much harder to get a good face pic when they are head down apparently.

Blood pressure was also down again so that is good as it had crept up a little bit last time around. Next appointment is in 2-1/2 weeks (@35wks)for routine bloods and stuff. Not too many more visits to the hospital before the birth!

Nursery Progress Pics

Finally I have a few pictures to share to show the progress made in the nursery. I still need to clear the clutter off the window sills, figure out some curtains or something and put clothes and stuff away. First I will need to paint the unit with the baskets so it's white and matches the rest of the furniture and then make the basket liners. Once all that's done we can unpack the baby monitor and such and will also get some bookends so we can put baby's books on the basket unit as well since we don't have space for a bookcase in the room. The changing table will be done once the side bits of wood arrive, hopefully tomorrow. I called their customer service and the only suggestion they had was to send me a replacement piece of wood that is causing the door problem but in order for me to replace it, I would have to take the entire unit apart due to the way it's put together. The door doesn't bother me *that* much to want to start over. The warranty is for a year so if it poses a problem in a few months I will call for the replacement part. Honestly, I had no energy today to argue with people anymore!

I took a nice 2 hour nap this afternoon as I was just totally exhausted. I woke up this morning and could barely move as my hips and back hurt so badly. Baby must've had a growth spurt again or something as Kirk came home tonight and said "wow your tummy has gotten bigger overnight". Of course he may have just been nicely telling me I am getting super fat but at least the comment was directed at my tummy area! Not to worry, I'm not sensitive about stuff like that as I know I'm only fat now because of the baby and will lose the weight once she is born. I refuse to be a fat frumpy Mom and am giving myself a year to lose all the weight and then some. I figure it took about 10 months to put it all on so it's fair to have a year to take it back off. After that it's hard to justify why you still haven't lost the weight unless you just get pregnant again!

Tomorrow morning we have our growth scan (in 3D!) at 8am. Hope the baby is ok and is growing normally and also hope I get some more cute pics to scrap. It's our last peek at baby before she arrives. We should also get a better idea of her estimated birth weight. So far the estimate has been 8-1/2lbs at the last 2 scans. Guess it's better than having a floppy 6lb-er and as I'm not pushing her out I am not all that worried!

Running out of patience

So... the fittings and instructions that were missing for the changing table arrived today. I checked to make sure all the actual changing table parts were there now that I had the checklist in the instruction booklet. No big surprise that there were 2 pieces missing. The two small side support pieces that fit to make the top frame of the changing table were no where to be found. So, another call to their customer service to request the missing parts to be sent to me. No apology, just "oh dear" which is standard I suppose. Seriously, who do they have packing these things? How hard is it to check off all the parts as you put them into a box? It's something you could manage with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth, a cup of tea in your hand while yapping on a mobile phone so it should be one of those basic jobs anyone could manage. I bet you could train a lobotomized ape to do a better job (no offense to apes, I'm sure they are far more intelligent even with half a brain than these people I am dealing with!) Then, I finished assembling the actual unit tonight and the right door is misaligned and I can see what the problem is. There is a piece of wood that you screw in the magnetic catches onto and it's extending a tiny bit too far on the right hand side so the door can't lay flat and as a result it's crooked. I hammered it a bit to try and push it back and it made a slight difference so the doors at least close but you have to close the right door first then the left. Do it the other way and they both fly open. So, I guess I'll be making another call to customer service tomorrow and ask if they have any suggestions beyond "oh dear". All of this shouldn't be so difficult.

On a more positive note, I got the rest of the things I needed, like items for my hospital bag, nappies, wipes and so on. I just need to build my latest unit from Argos, hope the baskets fit and if they do, make liners. Then I am done and can kick back and relax and be done with dealing with morons for the time being. I think it will be a well deserved break!

More fun from the nursery

No pictures to share today so far (maybe later tonight, depends on how much I get done) but we had more assembly fun yesterday. Totally sarcastic there just in case you missed it. We put together the chair for the nursery, one of those gliding/reclining deals. One of the long screws was faulty so it wouldn't screw into the bolt on the other side. Upon closer inspection we saw that the first thread of the screw had been damaged a bit. Kirk just laughed and said "well, one more person you can call and yell at on Monday" but I wasn't willing to be so easily defeated. I remembered I own these metal files for dollhouse stuff so got them out and managed to shave off some of the damage and voila, the screw worked and the chair is done. And no, it won't fall apart because of it, it screwed in properly and I've sat in the chair a few times and madly glided with all my lard ass weight on it and it's still in tact.

I think so far we have had a problem every single step of the way. You would think that anyone working in a pregnancy related field would do all they could to make sure there were no snags as it can't be good having all this stress over such minor things. The amusing part is one of my parent's neighbors told my Mom the other day that in England, people have ALL their nursery furniture and stuff delivered on the same day that Mom brings baby home. I seriously doubt this is the case as I've never heard of anyone waiting *that* last minute not to mention with how inefficient things are in this country, that would just be sheer stupidity to wait until then. Imagine trying to put stuff together with missing hardware and getting organised with missing or damaged furniture all the while recovering from birth and dealing with a screaming baby... please tell me the neighbor has just been smoking crack again.

I'm wondering what excitement today will bring. I've started building the little shelf unit from Argos, the key word being little. I'm not sure if it's going to work in the baby's room but it will definitely work in my craft room so we'll have to see what happens. I found an alternate solution though so I'm not too worried. Despite all the hardwork going into baby's room, I'm being kicked and punched NON STOP, the ungrateful little one! She must be going through a major active stage or something, she doesn't ever seem to stop moving. I guess it's better than the alternative of being worried that I'm not feeling her enough so I shall stop whining now. 32 weeks today and only 7wks2d at the most until we get to meet her.

Time to go hammer. The neighbors will love me.

Progress Report

I had hoped to do an update last night but things didn't quite work out as planned. The changing table came in two boxes and I managed to open one and carry the contents upstairs (took about five trips!) and then gave up as the other box was even larger. So, Kirk carried it up this morning and left to get his haircut. I opened the box... no instructions but worse, no hardware. Seems nothing can go smoothly and of course their customer service is closed today as it's Saturday. Hopefully they are utilising the day wisely and teaching their employees that SELF ASSEMBLY furniture items need something called hardware or else the customer is shit out of luck. I was worried that the other two items would have this problem but luckily it was mostly ok (I think they need to update their instructions to match the parts they include in the boxes).

Anyway, the cotbed is made and turns out it IS a drop side despite it being sold as not drop side. Must be a new feature as the floor model didn't have the drop side. Not that it would've affected our purchasing decision anyway. The wardrobe was a bit cumbersome to build but went together faster than the cotbed somehow. I take back what I said the other day about Kirk and building stuff... he did far better than me today. I had no patience whatsoever and no attention span. All I wanted to do was throw the screw driver out the window a few times and complain about the missing hardware. Really wanted to get stuff done this weekend but should've known it wouldn't happen.

I will of course call on Monday to complain. I would bet these English companies have had more complaints in the last week than they have the entire time they have been in business. Not that it will make one bit of difference of course. :::sigh:::

Furniture...

is in da house! Eight flat packed boxes were just delivered though I haven't opened any just yet. I'm going to locate the boxes for the changing table and take a small piece upstairs each time I go up so that I can get started with putting stuff together today! I'll get Kirk to help me with the wardrobe and perhaps the cotbed but otherwise... think it will go more smoothly for me to do it on my own. Self assembly furniture and Kirk are kinda like oil and water. Enough said!

Just waiting on my Argos shelf unit with baskets, and the fabric I got on ebay has already been sent so should also come today! Will have a busy weekend tidying up and getting the room ready. Am excited though as it's a mess in there at the moment and it's been driving me insane! Well, more insane than I already am of course.

Will post progress pics later today!

Got some cool fabric!

After a search on ebay I found some fabric I like for the basket liners I need to sew for my storage unit. I am pretty bad at math and as Kirk isn't home I tried to figure out how much I needed and then added on an extra meter! I figure if I work on the stuff soon enough and run out then I can order more before the person sells out as they had more! I've never used my sewing machine for anything other than scrapbook paper so I hope I can manage on fabric! I'll do one liner first to make sure it works before I cut up all my fabric too :)