Being quite the seasoned “tryer” when it comes to pregnancy, I have an extremely good radar for picking up useful articles concerning fertility. A recent one caught my eye for its fertility tips, and another that had an interesting statistic on fertility and age included. Both were in The Telegraph (one of the only papers that doesn’t constantly…
Before I was pregnant I seriously couldn’t understand why expectant mothers always seemed to wear stripes. And then my bump developed into something the size of a hot air balloon and I worked out why stripes were so appealing: it’s a kind of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude. You can’t hide the bump so…
This week has been mostly fuelled by vast amounts of refined sugar. I know. It makes me feel terribly guilty, but I just don’t seem to be able to stop myself from reaching for the sweets, the Coca Cola, the ice lollies. The simple remedy would be not to buy them, but it’s like an unstoppable…
Having reached the last couple of weeks of my pregnancy, I’ve been doing a little thinking about what I actually needed, wardrobe-wise, as my baby bump grew. In the first three or four months, the main focus was just on getting comfortable; there wasn’t a mountainous bump to accommodate, but I felt a bit angsty and irritable in my…
Crikey! Full term. I’m 38 weeks tomorrow and – as all and sundry keep telling me – the baby could come at any time. It had better not, though, because I still have loads of work to do! I reckon by Wednesday I’ll be done and dusted and ready to relax, but that goalpost has…
Full term tomorrow! Argh! You’ll be pleased to know that I’m starting to get myself organised with baby stuff. I have vests. I have a nappy. (One. It came free in this weird NHS pack I got handed at my last appointment. But one is better than none, surely?) I have breast pads, maternity pads,…
One of the things that has most surprised me about pregnancy: the absolutely outrageous things that people say to you. Totally and utterly insensitive, unthinking and – quite often – bizarre. Now I have to hold my hands up and say that I, too, have said some of the things below – and I’m not even sure…
I meant to say in last week’s diary entry, but it was a short one and I forgot: I feel as though I keep jinxing myself a little bit when it comes to pregnancy ailments. Basically, I have had nothing to really complain about, health-wise, throughout my entire second and third trimesters. All of the…
Creeping in with my 34 week pregnancy diary mere minutes before the deadline (Monday is my “new pregnancy week” day and it’s ten to midnight) and I must warn you from the start that this is a short-but-sweet entry. For two reasons. Firstly, I have moved house – again! – and the holiday let I’m in this…
I am having a little freak-out, this week, if truth be known. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of what I can only call unreadiness. Perhaps something to do with the fact that – really – baby could come at any time, yet I have no clothes for him/her, no nappies, no crib, no pram. I do…
When doctors fill you with confidence… “I’m not sure which way the baby is lying, I’m afraid, I’m not much good at this!” In the words of Ace Ventura: alrighty then. What are you good at, Doctor? I hope we’re not, by some random hand of fate, stuck together when I give birth. I get the…
Pregnancy Week 31, AKA, “sh*t gets real”. It hadn’t really hit home until this week that I am actually going to have a baby. Up until now, it has almost been an abstract concept: I’ve been so caught up with pregnancy and the different stages and wondering at all of the changes that my body has gone through,…
The memory part of my brain is now completely non-existent! I had this whole diary entry planned out in my head (there was a long-ish train journey to do) and it was – quite frankly – hilarious and interesting and worthy of some kind of journalistic award. But all that’s left of the post, in…
Pregnancy, at the moment, is being completely upstaged by ongoing accommodation issues. Our house renovations are going to take much longer than anticipated and so we won’t be back home before the baby is born – it’s all very unsettling and nerve-wracking. I’m usually quite an independent person with an adventurous spirit, but for the…
This week was the week when I started thinking sh*t, at some point in the not-too-distant-future, I’m actually going to have to give birth. I wasn’t actually going to start thinking about birth just yet, because twelve weeks is a fair old amount of time to get used to the idea, but my Zita West book…
Well, this week has been a bit of a shocker in terms of stress levels, what with packing boxes and having to drop off Mr Bear the cat at my parents’ house and moving and then realising that there is absolutely no reception at all at the place we’ve moved to… I feel as though we’ve…
Creeping on in with the “26 weeks pregnant” diary entry one hour before the cut-off – it’ll be 27 weeks by the time I wake up! I had massively good intentions for this blog last week – loads of post ideas and so on – but I have been moving house, so I hope you’ll forgive me!…
This was the week in which I was supposed to book a GP appointment as part of my “maternity care programme”. Actually, this was the week I was supposed to attend my GP appointment, so I suppose, looking back, I should have booked it weeks ago. Or, because my local doctor’s surgery requires approximately four months’…