I never seem to get time to update here anymore...hardly surprising I guess with a little one to take care of!  Anyway, I have a new blog for our little girl here:  http://www.blogtext.org/lanternhill/

I suspect updates here may be few and far between and I'm actually thinking of going back to pen & ink to try a proper diary again in 2007, but over on the lanternhill page I'm hoping to keep a regular record of our little family's doings...

We have a picasa page of photos of our little one - if you'd like to see them please leave me a comment or email me and I'll let you know the URL. 

It's been a long time since I wrote anything for the Dimsum website.  I'd been thinking of writing something about the baby for a while, and when the editor got back in touch it prompted me to sit down and have a think.  I had every intention of writing a nice piece about my thoughts/feelings re having a half Chinese baby on the way, what we're thinking about how to raise it etc. but as I wrote what came flooding out was something else entirely.  I obviously needed to write about my two little lost babies first.  Anyway 'Water Babies ' has gone up on the site today.

So, this morning we had our tour of the maternity department at the hospital.  Much to my great relief we heard no screams whilst trotting around.  Both the labour ward rooms, and the midwife led unit rooms have stereos in all of them which made me feel happy as then I can have some distracting music on, or even just the radio...with each day now everything starts to seem a lot more real somehow.

They showed us the birthing pool too.   I've kind of ruled that out, since the idea of sitting in a big pool that gets increasingly filled up with mine & baby's 'gunk' is not that appealing   I was glad to see though that all the birthing rooms are ensuite and had showers - I love showers more than baths anyway so am glad I'll be able to clean myself up as and when I want to.

They showed us pics of what the baby's cord looks like when it's clamped afterwards.  Husband asked if there was any way of guaranteeing an innie or an outie for a baby's belly button - turns out there isn't!  Poor dear husband - he's really funny about belly buttons and is watching mine anxiously as it creeps closer to the surface of my belly...he really doesn't want it to pop out, so quite how he'll cope with the week when our baby has a whole bit of cord hanging off I don't know!! 

I love being noticeably pregnant, having people look at my tummy then smile up at me.  However, as the bump gets bigger, I am discovering new 'issues' that I hadn't ever considered before being pregnant...

Sleeping at least is going better nowadays.  I've taken to having a cup of cocoa before bed - this was impossible for me in the past since my IBS would've then kept me up on the loo all night.  I've really been enjoying being able to have cereal with milk, eat yoghurts, ice cream of course and milky drinks with no adverse effects.  I'll miss that after the baby arrives, unless the miracle fix continues somehow.

Putting on my socks, however, is turning into something of an event.  It's a reason to be glad we've had such hot weather I suppose, since then I don't bother with socks.  But this week is a bit cooler and this morning I really needed to put some socks on as my toes were chilly.  Sometimes I forget that I have a completely different body shape, so as I automatically bent forwards to pull on one sock I found that I couldn't actually reach my foot!  I tried twisting around and crouching and all sorts, but in the end had to sit on the edge of the bed and do a weird folding type position to get the sock near enough to my foot for me to wrestle it on.  I've taken a great many things for granted in my life, but I'd never really thought about the blessings of being able to easily put socks on before...

I sense that I am heading towards that time when I have to beg my husband to fasten my shoes for me (is this why I'm wearing my flip flops all the time?!).  I really need some more new knickers too as my purchase of bigger sized ones about a month ago are now getting pretty indecent!

I'm beginning to wonder too what I'll look like after the baby pops out - where will all this extra 'me' go?  I have nightmares about a huge sack of skin flollopping around over the top of my jeans...I'm also thinking about how strange it will be to be just me again.  At the moment the baby goes everywhere with me.  I'm never alone.  It's been a strange experience for me as an only child as I've always enjoyed my own space yet now I have this little person inside me and I can't escape from them.  All good practice for once baby actually arrives and I'm on call 24/7 I'm sure   But still, it will be strange when there's just me in my body again, and I wonder if I won't feel a bit empty, and alone, like I did after the miscarriages.

There will, of course, be plus sides (along with the obvious one of actually meeting our baby), since once the bump is out & about I will once again be able to eat PRAWNS!  Hooray!  And I'll be allowed to reach up for things, not have to worry about people banging into me or me banging into furniture, and in bed I will be able to curl up and over onto my tummy without any little pokey fingers & feet digging into me saying 'hey, I get squished when you sleep like that'!  And my socks.  I will be able to put my socks on without turning into a fat contortionist, and shave my legs in the shower without slicing chunks out of my ankles and knees! 

Three more items completed, either for my little one or for the babies of friends...

I actually like all 3 of these so will probably end up keeping them! 

The weather has been much more to my liking this week, even feeling a bit chilly on a couple of occassions!  I'm on iron tablets now after a visit to my midwife, no adverse reactions so far so that's good, and I've piled up an extra duvet in the bed, plus extra pillows, in an attempt to make myself a kind of nest that, theoretically, cushions the bump a bit more and helps me sleep!  My sleep still varies, but last night was a good night so I've had a good day today.

I had my exercise this afternoon walking into town and going to the library.  I picked up the new Murakami book, looks like it's short stories in this one.  I currently have about 4 books on the go which is dreadful.  I've been missing my intensive reading recently - it was such a luxury to just read for hours on end when I was being so sick at the start of the pregnancy (the only plus point to all that vomiting!) but since I've been feeling better I've felt compelled to try and 'do' things rather than just sit and read.  However, I'm thinking now about how I won't have time to just sit and read much once the baby comes  (maybe not for the next 10 years or so - argh!) so I should just indulge myself now

I have the cushion on my needles still, and also a cardi for my friend's baby, she's due next month so I've got time.  I'm doing a fairly plain cardigan pattern but fancying it up with a little pattern with some other coloured wool around the bottom and around the cuffs.  I haven't done much with changing colours in my knitting before so this is a play experiment really.  I quite fancy trying a pattern with a colour chart to follow, but I also want to give cables a go at some point.  At least if I try all these things on baby items then they're not too big to do if it turns out to be a nightmare!