The pregnant posse

Photos finally through from our last NCT class.

The "pregnant posse", as coined by a shocked regular at the Chamberlayne pub at a night out en masse a couple of weeks ago (from left to right, Anne, Laura, Kate, Wenda, Ami and Nathalie):

And their plus ones (Martin, Reuben, Matt, Jim, Vip and Danny):

If you can't stand the heat

This morning, while cooking the component parts of a fish pie (for lunch tomorrow, you understand, not for today's breakfast) Kate caught fire.

Well, her dressing gown caught fire.

Or rather, the protruding area of her dressing gown containing Stav, caught fire.

I don't think this photo does justice to the scalded item (everything in our house is a hue of beige, so light burn marks are well masked) but it provided some excitement on an otherwise wet and windy Friday morning.

Maiden voyage outfits

Mine and Stav's stripey outfits for exiting the hospital.

It's going to be like having a matching handbag, but a hundred times better.

The truth hurts

With a fast diminishing wardrobe of clothes left that will fit a tellytubby esque girth, I'm fast forwarding to post maternity wear. So when I saw this jacket in the Observer, I justified it as being baby practical as it was wipe clean. And the colour was bright so aar Stav's vision would be endlessly stimulated.

Size 10, leather jacketed, pram pushing, yummy mummy, here I come.

Oh, how the dreadful, appalling, reality hurt when I donned said jacket and some tactful person suggested I look like an overweight Power Ranger. Thank God for refunds.

The death of chivalry

The only people who stand up to offer their seat to Kate are other women.

And since she's sporting a bump that unquestionably looks like it's holding a baby, as opposed to an excess of pizza and chocolate, there seems to be no excuse for men not wanting to offend. Which means they're just lazy and selfish.

So, if someone could just pass me my soap box and a copy of The Daily Mail, I feel a 'problem with today's society' rant coming on...

And the votes are in

Kate Girl, 7lbs 1oz, 22nd March

Matt Boy, 8lbs 6oz, 2nd April

Catherine Boy, 7lbs 3oz, 21st March

Jools Girl, 7lbs 2oz, 23rd March

Jen Girl, 6lbs 12oz, 25th March

Phil Girl, 7lbs, 17th March

Olly Girl, 6lbs, 3oz, 26th March

To spice things up a little, we're trying to get everyone to pay £1 per pot (for each of sex, weight and date), so a massive £21 at stake.

Which we'll wangle back from whoever wins it anyway, by guilting them to put it into a baby trust fund for arr Stav.

Not that we're bad losers or anything.

Instructions. And destructions.

Following my problem-free construction of our push chair (which admittedly only involved clipping wheels onto a pre-assembled chassis) I decided it was time to up the ante and try to get the car seat into the car.

There were lots of lovely diagrams from the Swedish manufacturer. Including this one warning us not to try and screw arr Stav into the chair with his head.

Thank God we've been told that one.

8 months...

...and literally bursting at the seams...

Holy ballpoint banana

Our changing bag arrived yesterday; a purchase, I hasten to add, that I left to my darling wife.

And she's come up trumps - it's black, zippy and... well a bag. But perhaps what makes it stand out is the sheer number of pockets.

18.

18 pockets, of different sizes, each with its own zip, clasp or magnetic closing device.

How sensible, you might think, everything has its place. The slight problem being that Kate could fail to find something even if it was in a clear plastic bag, which is clearly labelled and only holding one item.

So posessing a bag which has 18 pockets is only going to end in tears.

Watch this space.

Do I look ridiculous in this?

Question just asked by my one of my politically correct colleagues: "Have you found that people have begun laughing at you when you're trying to talk about something important?" It may well be time to hibernate...

Floor coverings

Not only will Matt shortly be getting used to Dad as a new name, he also has another one to contend with given to him by my Brother and his nephew: Uncle Carpet. Weep.

The name game. Part deux.

5 weeks to go and it’s time that I won the naming dispute. Here are my tactics:

1. Pre-birth, but heavily pregnant.
   Small but extensive ammunition available to use against my beloved. General (but extreme) discomfort, Braxton Hicks contractions, hormones (equalling spontaneous explosion of tears timed conveniently to appropriate conversation) and looking like a Christmas pudding on legs. All of this means that Matt’s attempt at advancement is akin to him walking through a heavily laden minefield.
   
   
2. Labour.
   Similar to me possessing a nuclear bomb and him coming to the battle armed with a blunt fork. Should be in the bag shortly after this, particularly if I’m strategically blood-spattered.
   
   
3. Post birth.
   Baby blues, night time feeds, bleeding nipples and stitches. All heavy duty grenades that will eventually destroy the opposition (erm, I mean my gorgeous husband...)
   

We're feeling VERY positive

Last NCT class yesterday evening. The last class surely being an opportunity to send us off into the night optimistic that this baby thing will be, if not easy, then at least enjoyable. Instead, it went a bit like this:

Leader: “I want you all to write down what you did over a 24-hour period last Saturday or Sunday, breaking it down into hourly chunks”.

Cool, we thought. What a lovely thing to do; reminisce about what a nice weekend we had – lie-ins, reading the paper in bed, lunches, a spot of shopping and dinner with friends.

Leader (interrupting our reverie) and with a somewhat menacing glint in her eye: “Now I want you to look at 24 hours with your new baby. And what I’d like you to do is to fit in eight 1-hour feeds, your own mealtimes, a couple of laundry loads, one hour’s downtime, a wash (for you), a few hours of crying (who cares whether it’s yours or the baby’s at this point) and some sleep. Take this, times it by 7, and remind yourself that this is your life for at least the next 6 months. Okaaaay, you’re all set”.

Gulp.

It's art imitating life

Well, advertising anyway. Which should actually mean the ad agency have done their homework, but I digress. Now's not the time to start analysing advertising strategy.

So, so sooner should our pram turn up than a friend sent me this link to a new ad for Lloyds TSB featuring a pregnant couple trying out different prams.

He asked me if it resonated with me.

Resonate?! You must be kidding.

Where are the arguments over different brands, the trips to endless shops, the returning home to compare prices online, then arguing again...?! It's totally unrealistic. Harrumph.

I jest. But what really did make me chuckle was the hilarious stream of comments complaining that the ad was promoting formula over breast-feeding, simply because the pram the couple end up buying has a feeding bottle on it. One of them even says he's going to change bank as a result. Brilliant.

Childcare

Yes, I know we haven't had the baby yet (due 6 weeks last Friday, so we're a little ahead of ourselves on this albeit important point).

But I've found that this is one of the things that friends with babies approaching toddlerdom somehow manage to get you thinking about way before time. I think Kate was only 4 months when it first became a discussion point.

Waiting lists for local nurseries (long), child minders until the age of 3 when they can start going to the waiting-listed nursery (expensive) etc. - all seemed to get us geared up. Like we haven't got enough to contend with at the moment.

My bedtime reading of late seems to consist largely of Ofsted reports. Fun.

How do we settle on a name?

"I know," says Kate. "You relent."

7 and a half months

Apparently, there's now a WHOLE baby in there.

Is pregnancy a competition?

It involves almost continuous testing of stuff such as blood pressure, weight, glucose levels, iron levels, heart rate, size of uterus, general anxiety, position of baby etc etc. And whilst I'm not entirely sure whether there's a 'right' answer or a 'top score' for any of these things deep down I still think that it's definitely a competition that I can win...

Spot the difference

Before:

After:

The baby clutter begins. What will become of our beautiful home?

The pram arrives

After what feels like weeks of buggy-browsing, endless debates about whether or not we should get a Bugaboo or an iCandy, and then a nail-biting wait once we'd actually ordered a Brio Go, our '3-in-1 travel system' is finally with us, all the way from Sweden (or Thailand, by the looks of the stickers on the seemingly endless number of boxes):

Almost 2 hours later, tah-dah:

Actually all I had to do was put the wheels on, which was just as well as there were no instructions in the boxes. Brio have made so many "cockings" recently, accordingly to the delightfully Swedish and very apologetic shop assistant at Kidsen who I spoke to.

And I know what you're thinking: no, we have NOT chosen a pram to match the colour scheme of our house. It just happened that way.

Stav the Chav

I came home last night to find that Kate bought arrr Stav a baby velour outfit:

We don't know if we're having a boy or a girl yet, but one things for sure: we're now having a chav.

Pregnant and poorly

Having been felled last week by the flu bug, I spent three days in bed digging down into depths of self-pity that I never knew existed. And which no amount of sympathy could assuage. Particularly when I developed an ear ache on top of the flu because I'd been laying on one, heavily laden side for too long...

Catching some zzzzs

Or not, as the case may be.

There has been a distinct lack of sleep going on in our house since we got back from Thailand - from all two and a half of us. Initially, I thought it might have been jet-lag but this is getting ridiculous.

The 'beep beep beep' is quite cute, but not at 2.30am. Every morning.

I thought this constant knackeredness wasn't supposed to start until AFTER the baby's born. And to make matters worse, the general response from people (okay, guys at work) has been 'Get used to it'.

I have considered moving into the back bedroom, but would like our child to be born in wedlock.