A few weeks back Jamie suggested that if there were something, outside of the house and baby raising, that I would like to do he would gladly look after Norah so that I could go and do that. I instantly said I had nothing else I wanted to do and then felt completely crap. After years of wanting nothing more that marriage and babies, now that I had it there really was nothing else I wanted to pursue. What I had always feared had happened - I had turned into my mother. That meant that I would throw my life into raising my kids and when they were gone I would have nothing left in my life; no friends, hobbies, interests. I can tell you ome major panic ensued.

A few days later I realised there are plenty of things I like to do; I enjoy a swim, sitting down to a good cup of coffe with a book or paper. They’re not highbrow pursuits I grant you, but they are things that are not possible, or not as enjoyable, when you have a baby in tow, who needs feeding, cleaning, attention, etc. So I asked my man if I could have saturday mornings to have a swim or whatever took my fancy. 

And so this morning I arrived at the gym at 9, had a lovely swim, a long soak in the shower and then headed into town for breakfast; scrambled eggs and a LARGE cappucino. Cafe Blue at the Blue Haven in Kinsale do a lovely breakfast and I took my time reading the paper too. 

It may sound silly but I defintely feel invigorated after that (so invigorated in fact that I have now planned to make Sunday lunch for 6 adults and 3 children next week). A break from the norm and time for myself make it very easy to come home to a cranky baby and a tired husband. And I am very grateful for this respite, as I know there are plenty of husbands/boyfriends/partners who don’t offer this to their other halves. So thank you Jamie, I love you

Last night I moved my blog to Wordpress. I am happy with it - although I think this theme is going to get changed - but it is the final stage in an ongoing saga.

You see I wanted to put together a page about my crochet. I make alot of thing; blankets, clothes, toys, etc and give almost all of them away. So, a website would serve as a memory of the things I have made. This has been in the back of my mind for a while, but recently, since I seem to have more time being mother to the best baby in the world, I thought I would actually do something about it.

I wanted the site to be connected to my blog as well as have the same look and feel. This is not easy to do with Blogger. So Jamie suggested that I try using a content management system for the crochet site and leave my blog where and as it was. I tried Joomla - REALLY bad idea. They say it’s simple to use; liars! I will admit that despite having a computer science degree, I am about as computer savvy as my mother (there are good reasons for this among which laziness plays a large part). Joomla is a nightmare, but I thought it was just me being dim. I called on Jamie and even he couldn’t figure out how to do the simplest thing. We gave up on Joomla. And unless you are some sort of Prince of Geeks you will stay away from it too.

I also tried CMS Made Simple. These guys have recently won some award for providing a user-friendly CMS. And it is much easier to use, very friendly.  The only reason I gave up on it is that after a quick conversation with MGB, I realised he was right, I should just move my blog to Wordpress and then I can have as many pages as I like, all happily connected to and looking like my blog.

So that’s what I did last night and here is my first Wordpress post. I was also proud to find out something that Jamie did not know about Wordpress. Within your theme you can make custom page templates. This I found very useful and the fact that I taught Jamie something knew made me feel good. It also means I am now a bit of a geek!!

Anyway after all that effort it may be sometime before you see a crochet page here, since making the page prevents Jamie from using that laptop and prevents me from getting actual crochet done. But I will get there…. eventually.

Today was a big day; I got dressed! Well, it’s not like I’ve been walking around the house naked or anything, but I put on clothes, rather than just wearing my pyjamas for the day.

I also went outside. (Actually, I went outside yesterday too. J’s Dad took me to our house to pick upsome clothes. I don’t really want to admit to this venture since I did it in old jogging bottoms and a pyjama top.) Today I went for a walk - with baby.

I put on a jacket and a hat on her and tucked her up in her pram; put on a big fleece on me and went for a walk. I walked for 30 minutes, but not sure I got very far. I’m walking alot slower than I used to, but it’s a good start. Norah didn’t even notice she’d left the house and is still sound asleep as I write this (hence I’m able to write this).

Not alot else going on in the land of Mummy and baby. We eat and sleep, and eat and sleep. On Monday we have to go to the doctor for her 2 week check - that will be exciting.

As most of you will be aware I had my baby last Sunday, 24th February 2008. A little girl, Norah Mary. She is wonderful, and we are now both at home and doing well.

During my antenatal classes the teacher was very keen that we should be spreading positive birth stories. Western culture has given women a built-in fear of birth which does not exist in other parts of the world. She feels that by spreading our positive birth stories, rather than the horror stories that are so often told, we can overcome this fear and teach women to enjoy the experience of childbirth.

To this end I want to tell Norah’s birth story but I have to give advance warning - many people may read this as a horror story. For me, because we had a happy ending and achieved the ultimate goal - a happy, healthy baby and Mum - I can only see positives. I also need to warn that it is long. What follows is a memory dump of my day, last Sunday.

I have gallstones and due to flare-ups of horrible pain, I was admitted to the maternity hospital for observation from Thursday. Each time the pain would flare up, I would need Pethidine and as a result they needed to keep me overnight to monitor the baby. On Sunday morning, I met a surgeon who was very positive in that, he agreed that the gallstones need to come and that he would be the man for the job, but none of that could happen until baby was born (due in 4.5 weeks from that day). I was told to stick to a strict NO FAT diet, continue to take the medication that had been prescribed and call him when baby was out for an appointment. I was about to be discharged.

As I had been fasting for an ultrasound scan of the gallbladder, which was now cancelled, they brought me tea and toast, so I wouldn’t have a weakness I ate the toast with no butter, just marmalade and within 30 minutes was doubled over in screaming agony (again)! Pethidine was administered and 30 minutes later the nice midwife came in to begin the trace of baby.

She couldn’t find the heartbeat and I didn’t worry cos as baby moves so does the heartbeat. It took a few minutes than longer but eventually there was baby’s heartbeat. However, the heartbeat kept disappearing and going low! She called another midwife, who thought that for safety’s sake they should call the doctors.

The doctors arrived and didn’t like what they were hearing from the trace machine; Internal examintation, not dilated, no explanation to be had:
‘Okay, Hilary,’ said the nice blonde doctor, ‘we’re moving you downstairs to the labour ward, we need to break your waters and see what’s going on in there.’
With that, me and my bed were gone from the room and I started to panic a little. I tried to console myself that it was all ok, and this was just a precaution. I didn’t have the opportunity to ask any questions and I didn’t want to seem like a silly billy.

In the labour ward my waters were broken; the heartbeat didn’t improve and they were worried about leaving baby there. So, they started to prepare for an emergency ceasarean section. I was whisked into another room, given a spinal block and all this time ten different people came to explain things to me and ask different questions about allergies, or what could I feel here. To say at this point that panic had overtaken me bodily would be a gross understatement. I lay there silently hoping everything would be ok, but really not sure what was happening at all.
The aneasthetist was being helpful telling me what was going on:
‘They’re just making the incision now’, she said
‘Thanks’, I said, ‘you don’t need to tell me everything’, and I smiled weakly.

In a short few minutes someone said:
‘you have a baby… girl!’, and I heard a cry. I breathed a sigh of relief and they held up this little blue, mucky person above the screen so I could see her. Another few minutes and I was being wheeled back out of the room.

I was still in shock as all this happened so fast, but all I knew was that my baby was alive and healthy and I was a Mummy. Ten minutes later Jamie was wheeled into the room and our little family was together for the first time.

I forgot to say: The reason for the distress to Norah was a true knot in the umbilical cord and she had managed to get herself wrapped up in it. Afterwards the doctors tested the blood in the cord and said that Norah was not deprived of oxygen for long enough to cause any concern. Phew!

Today I’m 30 weeks pregnant. This means that in 10 weeks I may have my baby! (I say ‘may’ cos my Mum went overdue with me and all my brothers, so I expect the same to happen to me so it might still be 12 weeks before we get to see Beanie in the flesh.)

The picture on the left is how I look now. I feel huge and awkward; I’m finding it hard to get up out of chairs. I walk slower; Jamie is often a few feet ahead of me before he realises I’m not there and I waddle a bit. It’s all a sign that things are progressing.

Right now, our baby weighs about 2.5 pounds. Average birth weight for babies is 6 - 8 pounds or so. This means that our baby has to more than double in weight in the next 10 weeks. This puts the picture of my bump into perspective; I have ALOT of growing to do!

This also explains the constant tiredness - I’ve been feeling like a right lazy lump for the last week but now I think I’m going to start taking afternoon naps

The start of a new year/era/episode should come with a review of the one gone previously. I saw this on another site (yes, I’m stealing ideas, there is no limit to how low I will stoop to appear interesting) and decided that a review of my travel would be the most interesting thing to do, since I spent most of my time travelling anyway. Here is my year by places visited:

Prague, Czech Republic (x2)
Hungary, Budapest (also x2)
Sczcecin, Poznan and Warsaw, Poland (1 day in each city so not as interesting as it first sounds)
Barcelona, Spain (and I even had spare time to visit a tourist attraction!)
Southampton, UK (x11)
Zagreb, Croatia (x2)
Hannover, Germany (as ever not interesting)
St. Petersburg, Russia
Zilina, Slovakia
Olathe, KA, USA
Athens, Greece
Ljubljana, Slovenia (x2, also visited briefly Izola and Lake Bled)
Roscommon, Ireland
Tobago, Caribbean
Moscow, Russia
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Actually, this year wasn’t that boring since we moved from UK to Ireland (Cork), I managed to keep my job and work from home, settled into a new house, Jamie got a job, we bought lots of furniture for our new house, and we’re having a baby.

2008 is going to be a good one. Happy New Year to all.

Well, I can definitely say that this Christmas was different.

While at J’s parents place on Christmas day, killing time before the serving of the traditional turkey and trimmings, I was struck with a bout of (what I thought was) indigestion pain. J’s Mum, being a clever nursey type, said that’s not indigestion. It’s apparently not supposed to be that bad. So following two calls to South Doc and one visit to South Doc, I found myself sitting in the A&E department of CUH.

After 3.5 hours, the nice American/Canadian doctor said ‘I can’t provide pain relief cos you’re pregnant’ and sent me on a wheelchair ride over to the maternity hospital.

After another round of poking, peeing into bottles and answering the same questions, they decided they liked the look of me and kept me for the night. So after missing my turkey and trimmings, I got a bed and tea & toast at 1:30am, 26th Dec. And why? It’s most likely I have gallstones. I spent St Stephen’s night in hospital too - as they were about to discharge me that morning, my body decided that bourbon creams with tea (recently consumed for elevenses) were a good reason to attack and the pain came back. I got Pethidine for that

Since leaving hospital I have had 1 bout of the extremely severe and horrible pain from gallstones and as long as I stay away from chocolate and rich or fatty foods I should be fine (so far so good).

That’s about the most interesting thing that happened over Xmas. I do have to thank J’s mum who provided us with leftover turkey, so I got my seasonal fix. We didn’t travel anywhere for fear of getting struck down in gallstone induced agony.

I have a scan booked so they can confirm the presence of gallstones, as long as Beanie keeps his big head out of the way. But even so, nothing can be done until Beanie has made his exit/entrance (really depends on your point of view there, doesn’t it?). I have normal liver functions - how many of you can say that!

I will keep you posted, although, gallstones aren’t that interesting.

Well there are (at least) 100 days to go until the appearance of Beanie, so what’s happening….

Baby kicks. These are funny. They usually come when I’m lying down going to sleep. Much to the annoyance of many people around me who would like to feel a kick. I have decided that this is better than any DNA test for proving this is Jamie’s child - champion sleeper, rarely awake It took me ages to realise they were baby kicks but now they are getting stronger I’m sure what they are - when they do come!

Not alot else happens pregnancy. I had high blood pressure for a while, but this has gone back to normal. I’ve stopped travelling for work now - which is great as planes and airports are not fun places to be when you’re pregnant.

I’ll try to keep you posted better and if I get over my laziness will eventually get around to putting up photos of Beanie - in bump form of course!

I think this is something all pregnant women go through. At that phase where there are no outward signs of pregnancy and things like morning sickness have eased, you start to doubt if it’s really happening. could you possibly be pregnant without any tangible evidence to support it. Complete strangers can look at me and they won’t know I’m pregnant - I haven’t got a bump. This has lead to severe cases of bump envy - all other pregnant women have better bumps than me.

And so, the debate has raged in our house as to whether I have a baby bump or not. J says I obviously do, but I think I just look like I ate a large lunch and may have wind!

This morning, however, I remembered the Test! When I first found out I was pregnant, I asked Jamie to measure the ‘inny-ness’ of my belly button (many women’s belly buttons pop out when they’re pregnant and I wanted to be able to check if mine would do that). Anyway at that stage Jamie was able to up to the first knickle of his index finger into my belly button (I’ve realised, just now, how seedy this sounds and yes I have a VERY inny belly button).
Last night I insisted the Test was repeated. This time J was only able to get half-way to the first knuckle on his index finger in. This means that whether you can visbily see the bump or not there is something in there putting pressure on my belly button in an outward direction!
I am less inny than before ==> therefore I must be pregnant!
QED

Well, after 4 years of being without a TV we have succumbed and purchased one this weekend. We picked it up on Saturday and unpacked it yesterday.
The strange thing is, in the shop it looked like a normal sized TV (see left). Probably because it was surrounded by similar sized or larger TVs; but sitting alone in our living room it looks huge. It’s actually a little scary so I’ve taken to avoiding the living room at the moment (I haven’t even drawn the blinds today).

Don’t, however, expect comments on the current set of TV programs as we still don’t have TV channels. Living in a valley we can’t get good reception on terrestrial channels. So we rely on Sky to provide those, along with some more interesting channels. It could take two weeks for Sky to turn up and install everything but that’s ok we were prepared for that. We have recently received a shipment from those wonderful people at Amazon containing Season 3: Battlestar Galactica and Series 6: 24. We will put our TV to good use!!