A slight case of overblogging

So, I'm now running 5 days late and counting. I saw the midwife on Monday and she reckons baby may well turn up of its own accord at the weekend - but all is well in the meantime and there's no need to try do anything to hurry it up just yet. Seeing them again next Monday. Quite happy to continue to potter about and enjoy all this unexpected leisure time - definitely not bored yet.

So what I have I been up to? We bought a new bird table from the RSPB and built it. I've finished the last Wheel of Time book (review on librarything), read a book on coping with starting a family from Relate (review on librarything) and started the next in Tad Williams' Shadowmarch series. I finished my jigsaw. Clare came round for lunch at my house, I took cake round to visit Lucy and Edward, and I've had lunch in town with Cat from our NCT antenatal group (3 of whom now have baby boys - the rest of us are still waiting). The internet did a good impression of being fixed for 10 days, and then broke again, so I've got another engineer booked for Monday (if I'm around!). And today I've done some more baking - chocolate fudge cake (using this cake recipe and this icing recipe) and cornflake cakes (using up the icing, which turned out to be about twice as much as needed). It's all good.

Well, I'm now just over 39 weeks pregnant - which means about a week to go until my official Due Date. Apparently most babies are born within a week either side of that, but first babies are often late. All I can do is wait and see, but there's no sign of this one getting ready to emerge just yet.

I can't believe it's now four whole weeks that I've been on "maternity" leave (technically I'm using up normal annual leave at the moment, and my maternity doesn't start until my due date). The time seems to have flown by and I'm still really enjoying it - and not in the least bored yet. I've been enjoying some crochet, and done a bit of a jigsaw, and found time for more reading than I've done in ages - not to mention some baking (flapjack again this week - less overdone this time) and plenty of time just chilling out at the computer. I've even been to the garden centre and bought some plants for the newish border in the back garden, and it's looking much nicer.

It's been a lovely weekend being able to share some of this time with Mike though. Yesterday we had a brief potter to the shops in the village and wandered over to have a look at the river, and found a map showing some permissive footpaths/bridleways we weren't really aware of before - so today we went out for an explore. A bit of a grey day but lovely and warm and it was a nice little walk of about 5 miles. Feeling good - if a bit tired. Here's a map:

Map

As for the intermittent BT broadband problem - well since the second engineer we've had a few dropouts still, but it's mostly been better than it was before that. It does still seem to go when we're on the phone though - that probably needs more testing - and I won't be convinced it's definitely completely OK for a while yet.

I think next week I don't actually have *anything* in my diary in terms of meetings or appointments - so will have to try and make the effort to be a bit more sociable and go see a couple of people perhaps while I still have the chance!

This week has been largely characterised by lots of time waiting for BT. Last week I finally got round to reporting that our broadband connection keeps dropping out intermittently. It's been doing it for a while really - at fairly random intervals it just drops out for between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes - sometimes just when we're on the phone, and at other times it's every half hour, and sometimes it's just random. Anyway having replaced the ADSL filters in January, and replaced an elderly handset on Wednesday the errors were still happening, so I spoke to them on Wednesday last week and they made me plug the router into the master socket for 24 hours to see if it fixed the problem. It didn't, so I spoke to them again on Thursday, and after a basic line check which was fine the second-line support team promised to call me back on Monday morning after their Exchange team had had a chance to investigate (they suggested Friday, but I said Monday since I knew we were going to be away Friday night). Since then there has been an inordinate amount of waiting!

On Monday I waited an hour for them to call me, then tried 1471 and discovered they had in fact tried to call me on Saturday while we were out, so I called them up a bit cross, and they didn't exactly apologise but did agree to send me an engineer on Tuesday afternoon to come and see if they could find the problem. On Tuesday I waited in all afternoon and the engineer didn't turn up - I replied to their text message notification to complain, and got a courtesy call just after 9pm. It seemed there had been a "communication issue" between the booking team and the engineer. Anyway since the issue seemed to have gone away temporarily they promised to call back on Wednesday and check if it was still OK. Of course the connection started breaking again overnight, so on Wednesday morning I called them again rather than waiting for the call back, and after quite some time waiting on hold another engineer was booked - this time for Friday morning. On Friday I didn't actually have to wait long for the engineer! Amazing! He came, was polite and helpful, but couldn't actually find anything wrong though he admitted he couldn't stay and monitor indefinitely to wait for another problem.. He did move our master socket upstairs into the room we keep the computers in, and replaced it with a modern filtered one, which means the other sockets in the house now only act as phone lines, but no longer need ADSL microfilters attached to them. About an hour later the connection dropped again, and after a couple more outages I called BT again - and they've booked me yet another engineer. This time the earliest they can manage is Tuesday morning, so once again I wait.

Since then the connection has actually been up a bit more reliably than before, but still drops out when we're using the phone. An improvement I guess - we'll see how it does over the next couple of days! It's just as well I've been at home though! It would be even more irritating if I were having to take time out of work for this, rather than time I was happy sitting around doing jigsaws, reading, geeking and crocheting :)

There have been other bits of waiting this week too - waiting for baby - who is fine to stay put for another couple of weeks as far as I'm concerned - and waiting for assorted parcels in the post. I now have more maternity bras (you really needed to know that) and we also have a baby bath, changing mats, and a nice new chest of drawers in the nursery for baby clothes with a changing table on top. We've put the pushchair together too and packed the hospital bags, and been for a tour of the Rosie Birth Centre - which was lovely. All feeling much more ready than we were a week ago!

So after a very chilled out day at home yesterday the plan for today is another relaxing morning, then to head into town this afternoon to see Wreck It Ralph at the cinema and go out for dinner. Since as several people have pointed out we might not get much chance for that sort of outing for a while :).

So what did I do with the rest of my first week of maternity leave?

• Tuesday: went swimming, celebrated Same Sex Marriage Bill passing second reading, did some more crochet of baby blanket.
• Wednesday: helped man UCU stall at university induction event in the morning, UCU general meeting at lunchtime, SW class early evening, followed by NCT breastfeeding class. Long day!
• Thursday: a bit of gardening, and melted chocolate and cream together in preparation for making chocolate truffles, started trying to choose pushchair (big thanks to everyone who offered advice). Ordered useful boxes from ebay.
• Friday: Exciting Ocado delivery - quite a bit of shopping covered in fabric conditioner. Wandered into village to replace some of it from Co-op (some of it was rescued by washing). Finished making the chocolate truffles. Tried a couple of course :) Boxes arrived so sorted through two chests of drawers and managed to considerably declutter as a result. Found a taker for the chests of drawers too!
• Saturday: Another 10am to 4pm NCT ante-natal class. Then mum and dad came to visit. Made apple crumble. Sorted big pile of baby clothes and other goodies from Steph and Dave. Early night.
• Sunday: cooked breakfast, then into Peterborough with mum and dad to look at pushchairs. Home via Pizza Express in Huntingdon. Waved mum and dad off then actually ordered pushchair online. Still too full from lunch to have much more than cheese and crackers for tea - though I did also eat the last slice of Christmas cake. Finished baby blanket!
• Monday: lazy morning reading in the bath and then chilling out, then midwife appointment in the early afternoon (see below for more details). Gym in the evening for Pilates with Clare.

As for the midwife appointment: Urine tests still fine, baby measurement still good, blood pressure good - all excellent. Less good> baby appears to have moved into a fairly breech position. Midwife called Addenbrookes and they should ring me back tomorrow to make an ultrasound appointment to check for sure - and if so then probably arrange to try and turn the baby some time next week. There's about a 50/50 chance that will work apparently. If not they'll probably want to book me for a C-section at 39 weeks because they don't like to attempt a breech birth especially in first time mums. Obviously it isn't really ideal when I've been hoping for a nice natural birth at the midwife-led unit - but hey, if it's unavoidable then there's no point fretting about it. In the meantime I should stay active, choose upright sitting positions where possible, and try doing some kneeling down with my chest lower than my hips - they suggested doing a jigsaw on the floor, which sounds like a plan :) I probably won't try moxibustion though the student in with the midwife suggested it as a possibility.

At least in the meantime I have a haircut to look forward to tomorrow, and coffee with Gail - and then on Wednesday the pushchair should arrive and Joanna's going to come round for a cuppa too. And Friday we've booked ourselves a night away at a nice hotel to celebrate a slightly belated Valentines - in Cambridge :)

Pushchair:

Blanket:

So on Sunday night afternoon last week it started to snow quite heavily, and Mike and I went out for a fab walk in the snow - which cunningly lasted just long enough that our roast lamb had 2 minutes left to cook when we got in :) Having gone out after dark we didn't take the camera, but were amazed at how much light there was. Walking around nine wells nature reserve we even turned the head torches off, and it was like wandering round in a black and white photo. Beautiful. Monday morning the roads were well covered in snow - a good couple or three inches probably - and it was obvious that even the main roads wouldn't be very clear yet, so rather than push the bike to the end of the road and then cycle I decided to walk and get public transport. At least some trains were cancelled and others late, and the buses were reporting severe delays, so rather than the nearly a mile into the village for a one-every-20-minutes bus which is unreliable at the best of times I decided to take the longer walk to Addenbrookes, where there are *loads* of buses into town to choose from. It's about 2.5 miles, and even with 5 minutes stopping to take photos it took about an hour, which isn't bad! Took Mike's hiking walking stick, which has a nice spike on the bottom, but still had a rather scary moment crossing the road on Macaulay Avenue, where the cars had started to polish the snow into ice already. The photos have all been added to my snow album on Facebook, but here's a quick preview:

Tuesday I decided it would be too icy to be safe, and worked from home. By Wednesday morning it was starting to look a bit clearer outside, and the bin men turned up having failed to come on Monday, so I thought I'd make an attempt to get the bike as far as Hinton Way on foot - and ended up giving up in under 100 yards - it was just *too* slippery to be safe. The road on Macaulay Avenue was like glass, and the pavements were only slightly better in being lumpier! So another day working from home was called for - once I'd got over my fright :) It thawed a bit during the day though, and with the help of my trusty stick I did manage to make it out on Thursday and Friday - with quite a bit of walking on the road where the pavements were icy - and only 20 yards of really difficult stretch on Thursday and 10 on Friday. And despite the forecast there was no more snow overnight, and now the sky is blue, the sun is shining, it's well above zero and hopefully by the time the weekend is over it will all be gone and we can get back to normal :). It has been very beautiful at times - but just a bit too treacherous.

Bump is now 34 weeks old - 2.2kg which is about the weight of a cantaloupe melon, and 45cm long. Next midwife appointment is on Monday - must remember to ask about the whooping cough jab, since they haven't mentioned it to me yet! Our NCT antenatal classes are 10 til 4 next Saturday and the one after - which actually now turns out to be a bit of a nuisance, since we were hoping Evan and Gina could come and visit, and mum and dad wanted to pop down too - and do us a huge favour and bring some baby things from Steph and Dave. I'll be on leave by then though - since this week will be my last week at work - so perhaps we can work something out.

Speaking of work it's been another pretty busy week - some useful scripts written, some more showing Julia of various bits of the postmaster job, some fixing of people's broken email programs (I've gone off Eudora even more than usual) and some success in finding good ways to make other ones work (getting Thunderbird to display more information from our LDAP email directory than previously thought possible). Lots of things ticked off my to-do list, and only a few items remaining - one of which is to have a go at some of the interview questions they're planning to ask my maternity cover! Could be fun, but mildly intimidating :) Apparently the advert should be out early next week. I've also been tidying out my desk and starting to fetch things home - bit of a panic as I thought I'd lost an important key but it turned up again in one of the things I'd brought home. I've been tidying my desktop computer too - and am now busy downloading all the odds and ends of personal stuff that has accumulated at work over the last nearly 11 years. Only about 40 minutes download time remaining :)

Mike and I are still ticking along nicely enjoying the easy life - Les Mis was great last weekend, and we had a nice dinner out too - though it ended up being somewhere else and with a long wait. It turns out all the chain restaurants on the leisure park are insanely busy at around 7pm on a Saturday - who would have guessed! Planning on taking it pretty easy this weekend - some bird watching in the garden for the RSPB, and someone coming to pick up the two bedside tables that have been lurking in the living room for the last couple of weeks :) I bought haggis for Burns Night, but we ended up having something else and it will be our tea tonight instead - yum. All in all life's pretty good.

So, since last week we ordered a crib for the bedroom from the NCT. Steph and Dave have kindly offered to let us have Ollie's old cot for when the baby is a bit bigger and moves into their own room - but I particularly like this one as you can securely attach to the side of the bed and lower one side to provide a sort of bed-sharing feature. And even if we decide we don't get on with that it folds up beautifully and has its own carry case too - and is a much better size for our room than a full size cot would be. It arrived on Thursday night (dropped round by our next door neighbour who we hadn't seen in a while and was delighted to hear our news). We've put it up today - very quick and easy and no tools needed!

Today at 32 weeks we're up to 1.7kg and 43cm long - which is apparently the weight of a fresh coconut. I'm starting to feel really quite *big* now and no doubt that will only accelerate over the next few weeks. Hard to believe there's only 6-10 weeks to go! I'm still feeling mostly well, though very tired. Bump is still wriggling away - which is always reassuring - no matter how well my midwife appointments go I can't help having moments where I worry. But at my last one on Monday my BP was fine, no protein or sugar in my urine, uterus is measuring the right size for the number of weeks, and my blood test results from 28 weeks had come back normal - apparently my iron levels have actually gone *up*. Still gaining weight within guidelines too - though nearer the top end after Christmas for some reason :) All good.

At work I've finally completed the one major project which we wanted to get done before I start my maternity leave - which was to get our new internal mail server into service. It's been running as a test service for quite a while - but now those few users who still have an actual local mail account (mostly test accounts and system accounts) are running on an Exim/Dovecot system on linux, rather than a Sendmail/UW IMAP system on an elderly HP! We had a few teething problems on Thursday when we swapped the delivery over - but it does all seem to be working fine now. I've got just 3 weeks of work left now - and just a few odds and ends of scripting to do, plus continuing to help Julia understand the bits of my role she'll be covering. They do have leave to employ someone as maternity cover, but that won't start until March since before then I'm actually on maternity leave. I think they're still drafting the job description and haven't advertised yet!

Apart from that it's been a pretty quiet week. I've actually made some progress on knitting the scarf for Mike which I originally hoped to have finished by *last* winter. Perhaps it'll be done for next year. BHF had a collection locally, so all the unsold books went out last week (hopefully they arrived to take them away before it rained!). I've also contacted them to take some unwanted furniture so they'll be coming round tomorrow to collect two old bedside tables and two DVD/CD racks. And the latest Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson book has been picked up from the Post Office - finally the Wheel of Time series is complete! Though I'm going to insist on finishing the Tad Williams I'm in the middle of before starting on it.

Looking forward to a quiet week at work next week and then Mike's parents coming to visit next weekend. It will be lovely to see them!

A not very quick and somewhat random review of the year (so far :), in varying detail, with lots of links to photo albums on Facebook.

( Read more... )

We're planning to finish the year off with a quiet day today, and by cooking ourselves a lovely dinner to celebrate New Year's Eve tomorrow. It's been a good one. I can't promise to write as much next year, but it's definitely going to be fun!

[Other years in review: 2011, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.]

I'm quite enjoying keeping LJ a bit more up-to-date, even if it's been a couple of weeks since my last proper post, and I'm mostly posting in bullet points. Since then I've:

• Planted a David Austen rose in the garden - Malvern Hills
• Started to get into posting pictures on Instagram - though I prefer not to play with the filters
• Had my first free NHS dentist appointment (maternity perk)
• Bought some nice new clothes from M&S, ebay and Isabella Oliver with my birthday money
• Had my first UCU committee meeting, a meeting for Pensions Officers in London, and a union event on stress and workload in the department
• Had a lovely day off work with Mike: a frosty walk taking lots of photos, Christmas shopping, cakes from Patisserie Valerie
• Went out to the Crown and Thistle in Great Chesterford for Mike's work's Christmas party - excellent meal and lots of fun
• Watched some Masterchef, some Time Team, some NCIS, and the rest of season 2 of The Walking Dead
• Whinged quite a bit about the heartburn I've been suffering from - though it's improving a bit now
• Posted Christmas cards, wrapped Christmas presents, put up Christmas decorations and iced the cake!

In the coming week I have a glucose tolerance test, a midwife appointment, a haircut, my work Christmas lunch, my Slimming World group's little Christmas party, and then we're off up North for a Christmas with the Blairs in Mirfield and Littleborough - which I'm looking forward to lots. In the meantime here's some photos, and a link to the album from our frosty walk

Yesterday, as well as celebrating my birthday some more with a day off work, lots of relaxing, and more cake, I had my 25 week midwife appointment - a little bit early actually as I was only actually 24 weeks on Saturday. It was pretty routine, with one minor exception:

• Urine test: indicated small amount of sugar in urine
• Blood pressure, excellent, 110/60
• Fundal height measurement: 24 cm, perfect for this point in pregnancy
• Confirmed I have a second GTT booked for 28 weeks, and they'll do the routine full blood count and antibody blood tests then too
• Noted the letter from the consultant at the hospital saying I'd be OK for midwife led care if the results of the GTT are fine
• Confirmed consent for me to continue with Slimming World's healthy eating plan until next appointment
• Advised to book next midwife appointment for 28 weeks - now booked
• Suggested I ring the Rosie maternity hospital and book a tour

So the only worrying thing is the sugar in the urine - which she was all set to start explaining to me (not knowing my history) before I mentioned I already had a GTT booked. Sometimes apparently this is just a one-off anyway, and may not be a sign of impending gestational diabetes - and the fact the baby is measuring normal in size is a good sign there too. We shall just have to wait and see but in the meantime I shall be endeavouring not to be *quite* so generous with the cake and chocolate in general as I have been this weekend! Even if it does turn out to be gestational diabetes I know I'll be able to manage it - and at least we'll be aware.

One thing I completely forgot while I was there was to ask for my Mat1B form, which I need to hand in to my employers to confirm my pregnancy. I have to notify work by the end of this week of when my due date is, and when I intend to start my maternity leave, and it would be much more convenient to give them this form at the same time (though not technically a legal requirement) - which was my main reason for booking the appointment a bit early! Popped back in and talked to the receptionist and they're going to arrange for it to be ready to pick up "in a couple of days" - so I'll try pop in tomorrow. Still, having the appointment yesterday meant Mike could come along too, and he got to (just about) have a listen to the baby's heartbeat. I'm not sure it was terribly exciting for him, but it was nice to have him there!

So, what have I been up to since my last post?

Socially there was Sally's 30th Birthday party a couple of weeks back, consisting of a ceilidh and lots of cake and cheese. I danced a little less then I normally do at these things, and certainly kept the spinning a little less wild, but had a good time dancing nonetheless - and it was nice to catch up with people too - though as always there were folk I feel I should have said hello to but didn't get the chance. I skipped most of the cheese but had far more cake than is strictly good for one in one evening - mmm cake! And last weekend (while Mike was away at John's Stag Do) I invited a few friends over to finish off a half-drunk decanter of port while it was still drinkable and to eat lots of cheese and trifle. Good fun. To make up for not seeing each other much at the weekend Mike and I both took Monday off and had a lazy day playing Minecraft followed by seeing Skyfall at the cinema and a Chinese dinner out - very tasty but we were so full after our starters that we took the main course home as takeaway and it it for Tuesday's tea! There was a very pleasant retirement do for a colleague at work too.

Pregnancy wise, last week I had my Fetal Anomaly Scan - which is technically optional but pretty much standard these days, and that confirmed that basically the baby has all the right bits in all the right places, and seems to be growing well and moving about much as you'd expect - and we've got a couple more pictures to prove there really is a growing creature in there. They didn't look to see whether it was a boy or a girl, so we'll wait and see when it's born - no more routine scans from here on in. Both Mike and I can feel it moving now. The standard measurements of fetal growth are now from head to toes, rather than crown to rump, and in the last couple of weeks we've had a 26cm banana (quite big, but plausible) and a 27cm carrot (rather more unusual!) - can't wait to see what Saturday's fruit or vegetable will be - a cucumber perhaps? I've definitely got a noticeable bump now, and people outside my direct team at work are now starting to notice and wish us well. Still putting on weight within guidelines - though if I were to carry on at the rate of the last fortnight I'd be getting a bit on the too heavy side - so a bit less cake for a couple of weeks should be a good idea.

Work wise things have been positive - though it's very strange training up Julia to cover for me while I'm gone. She's now doing lots of the things I normally do! But I do have plenty of projects to keep me going in the meantime. Need to start thinking about when I want my maternity leave to start, and notify work within the next three weeks or so. And towards the end of that I'll have my next appointment with the midwife too - on my birthday of all days :)

All in all life is pretty quiet, but good.