Six weeks to go

How time flies. I am now 34 weeks pregnant, and suddenly time seems to be running out before the arrival of our first baby.

But if anything life has got busier recently. I have now had all the corrections signed off for my thesis so my Ph.D. is finally all finished, but I have just taken on two jobs to get in some extra cash before baby. Nearly a year and a half with no second income after my bursary ended has certainly taken it's toll on our finances. In between working in a cafe baking cakes and serving coffees, and filling in during half term in a local shop, I'm on my feet more now than at any other stage of my pregnancy.

We are also full flow on our latest house project - the bathroom. We bought a suite nearly a year ago in a sale, and it has lived in the nursery-to-be ever since. As we would quite like to have our baby things sorted before too long, the bathroom suddenly became a priority. I has been our hardest project to date.

As it now stands we have a bath, toilet, much needed extractor fan, and new towel radiator connected. No sink, no tiles, no flooring. We sill have the old shower in place, but this will soon go once the bath is fully functional.

In ten days we had overnight visitors on nine of them! How wonderful to see so many family and friends, but not ideal with an incomplete bathroom, and especially with only one toilet. It has also meant the renovation has slowed almost to a halt. So we have to move it up a gear now to get it all done.

And then we can start on our nursery. I just hope we have enough time.

A nicer type of rain...

This last weekend I had my baby shower, a wonderful afternoon tea and games organised by my sisters. The theme we chose was children's books, and each guest was invited to bring along their favourite childhood book to make a library for the baby. Each book was presented with an owl bookplate, and will make a wonderful collection for the years to come.

I also had a fantastic nappy cake, full of amazingly useful and lovely gifts from toiletries to toys, beautifully presented and tied up with wonderful royal blue vintage ribbon. We are planning to use reusable nappies, although not for the first few weeks, and even the nappy choice to make the cake was perfect for me, being biodegradable nappies.

With some of my closest friends spread across the globe and unable to make the journey to West Wales from Canada, Peru, New Zealand and Scotland, the gathering was small, but still perfect.

While fizz and tea flowed, and red velvet cupcakes, shortbread, cheese scones, 'baby feet' gingerbread, and a 'baby in the cot' cake were consumed, we played a variety of games. These included guessing the the arrival date, weight and sex of the baby, putting a towelling nappy on a teddy (surprisingly difficult when it has a tail!), guessing the size of my bump, a famous babies quiz, and remembering lines from nursery rhymes. Prizes were baby themed sweets: milk bottles and jelly dummies.

I was touched to see the book character decorations that I made for my sister's baby shower two years previous, made a reappearance at mine.

A fantastic afternoon, and part of a lovely weekend with my family.

20+2

20+2

Last week we had our 20 week scan. Thankfully everything seems to be growing right for the baby, although (s)he doesn't like having photos taken! At every scan (s)he hides away, and this time put his/her hand over the face when the sonographer tried to look at it.

The scan is incredible in what they can look at. Ours wasn't the best picture, but even so we could even see the valves of the heart opening and closing among other things. And we are now certain the baby has all it's limbs and is growing well which is great.

The only problem at the moment is that I have placenta previa, with the placenta, as the sonographer put it, partially blocking the exit. So we go back for a scan at 32 weeks to see if the placenta has moved out of the way (fingers crossed). If not, this baby will be exiting through the sunroof, but we are hoping it doesn't come to that.

19+6

Although I have felt faint flutterings and potential baby movements for a couple of weeks now, I was never 100% sure that it was the baby I could feel moving. But at 19+6 weeks, while having a bath, the baby suddenly turned into a jumping bean! I felt a sudden kick and when I looked down realised the kicks could be seen bumping the skin low down on my stomach.

As soon as the other half of us got in I yelled for him to come and see, and thankfully baby obliged when he asked, and gave his hand a good kick too! So we both got to share in the amazing moment of the first absolutely certain kicks. Things are definitely beginning to become more real now...

A little while later...

I haven't written a bog post for months. Busy, stressful, and yet amazing months.

After months of hard work, in which my husband says he barely saw me, I can now use the title Dr., having passed my PhD viva last week. I have three months in which to do my corrections, but this long weary stressful journey is nearly at an end. And I am infinitely ready for this particular journey to be over.

But a new journey is just starting. I am now 18 weeks pregnant, and (sometimes) believing we will become parents at Easter-time. A somewhat unknown, daunting journey is ahead of us, but one I cannot wait for.

24th September. 12+1

Looking back at my sister's blog, she started blogging about Pip-to-be at 10 weeks pregnant here. Somehow I didn't feel ready to blog about my pregnancy until I felt a bit more confident. I had a miscarriage at over 11 weeks at the beginning of the year and so this time round, have felt very cautious about getting to excited or taking it for granted that things would progress well this time. We have now had two scans, and I have heard the heartbeat, and so I should be able to believe a little bit... and some days I now do. The other half of us spent the first 12 weeks in a nervous state, but is now getting very excited. I cannot wait for him to be able to feel the baby move.

We were lucky enough to be offered an early scan at 10+3 (due to our worries after the miscarriage last time), and although we have no photos from the time, we will never forget the relief of seeing a dancing, wriggling foetus doing backstroke and kicking off the side of my womb. The journey to the hospital felt like the run-up to an exam, fearing the unknown, hoping for the best. But what a fantastic feeling to see this pregnancy progressing well.

We then had our 12 week dating scan at the end of September. At first he (?) was face down and refused to be photographed but after some turning this way and that on my behalf, was prodded awake enough for measurements to be taken. The sonographer tried to get some better pictures but we were happy just to come away knowing the foetus was doing ok and to have a visual reminder of it.