The Liebster Award

I am rather astonished to have received a Liebster Award from the lovely Baby 1 - Mummy 0.

To say I am astonished is really an understatement, as my blog is so small and new, it really means a lot. Thank you so much to Baby 1 - Mummy 0 for my nomination!

If you want to read Baby 1 - Mummy 0's Liebster post, you can do so here.

So - without further ado...

About the Liebster Award

The Liebster Award is given from one blogger to another, it enables bloggers to find out more about new blogs and their authors.

The rules of the Liebster Award are as follows:

• Thank the person who nominated you and post a link to their blog in your post
• Show the award on your blog or in your post
• Answer the 11 questions asked by the person who nominated you
• Write 11 random facts about yourself
• Nominate 5-11 bloggers that you feel deserve the award
• Create a list of new questions for your nominees to answer
• Once your blog is published, let your nominees know that they have been nominated and link them to your post for more details

Here are the 11 questions that Baby 1 - Mummy 0 asked (and my answers!):

1. What made you start blogging?

I’ve always been interested in writing and, as an extension of that - blogging - but I’ve frequently struggled to find a topic or theme for a blog. I’ve had a few blogs in the past and never kept them up-to-date as my interest just fizzled out. In the case of this blog, I started it when I found out I was pregnant, although I was thinking about it starting it when we were trying for a baby. I’ve found my pregnancy relatively easy to blog about – as it is quite an all-consuming (and exciting) part of my life at the moment. I hope to continue blogging once the baby arrives but we will see how that goes. My blog is mainly for me, I thought it would be nice to have these memories captured, and if other people want to read it then that is a bonus. It also really is a ‘secret diary’ as no one ‘in real life’ knows I am writing it.

2. Where is your favourite place in the world?

I know it’s a cliché, but I love to be beside the sea – I don’t mind where, I just love the feel of being near the vast, open water.

3. Do you have any pets?

Sadly not – I would love a dog more than anything and my husband and I plan to rescue some retired greyhounds in the future, but we made a decision to start a family first. We will hopefully add some canine friends to the family later. 

4. Who is your favourite historical person and why?

That is a difficult one – I’ve always been more interested in learning about events in history (the grizzlier the better!), rather than the individual people involved.

I am going to go with Queen Elizabeth I – as she had such an interesting life story; declared illegitimate but ultimately crowned Queen - and her reign was pretty impressive.

5. If you could do any job in the world what would it be?

I would love the talent to be a professional artist and sell and exhibit my work. I studied Fine Art for a year at university but dropped out. I don’t really think I would have what it takes to ‘make it’ in the art world, but I think that would be a very cool thing to do for a living and to be successful at it.

6. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be?

I am going to cheat and say SANDWICHES – because there is such a variety I would never get bored.

7. What three items would you take to a desert island?

A never ending supply of sun cream (I am pale, freckly, and burn easily!), my husband, and a towel (because I am a true frood, who believes that a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have).

8. What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

My late grandfather’s partner died a couple of days before my wedding day. He insisted that I wasn’t told about it and came to the wedding and celebrated with us. While I felt terrible afterwards that I hadn’t known (his partner was in hospital and I asked him on the day of the wedding how she was) I felt a massive sense of admiration and affection for how incredibly selfless he was to put our day before his grief.

9. What is the weirdest sentence you have found yourself saying to your kids (mine for example probably was 'we don't like roundabouts'?

My only child is still within the bounds of my tummy right now, so we don't converse very much yet (or rather the conversations are very one-sided)... BUT I do like to sing to my bump throughout the day. I make up songs about what I am doing, which probably sounds quite odd to anyone listening in.

10. What would be your ideal holiday?

I love adventure and exploring – I am not one for lazing on the beach for days on end. I would really love to visit Antarctica one day as its wildness and isolation absolutely fascinates me.

11. What’s your biggest regret (if you have any!)?

I am working on not having any regrets, as they are pointless things (unless you learn a lesson from them that you can use in future situations), although I am very guilty of dwelling on the past. Actually, my biggest regret is probably all the time I have spent dwelling on the past!

11 Random Facts about me…

1. I only eat wotsits with a fork.

2. I am the only left-handed person in my family.

3. I have a fear of large isolated objects (think pylons, big statues and sometimes really big clouds).

4. I have dropped out of university twice (go me!).

5. I’m obsessed with birds – chickens, pheasants, pigeons, grows, geese, songbirds, water fowl – I love them all! My husband actually thinks I might be part bird.

6. I know how to ring church bells (campanology).

7. I believed in Father Christmas until I was about 18 (and I still do a little bit).

8. I once had a sculpture exhibited at Blenheim Palace.

9. I only eat peas with tartar sauce on them.

10. I’m not very good at drinking alcohol (so pregnancy suits me!).

11. I met Fred Dibnah once in a pub in Reading – he was lovely.

I am nominating the following blogs:

Fox in the Hollow

Cotswold Mama

Dad Pains

Glitter and Labradors 

Sing your own song 

These are my questions for them to answer:

1. What is your earliest memory?

2. Do you have any phobias?

3. What is your favourite animal and why?

4. What do you like most about blogging?

5. How long have you been blogging for?

6. Why did you start your current blog?

7. What has been the greatest achievement in your life?

8. If you could be another person for a day, who would you choose and why?

9. What is your greatest passion in life?

10. How would you describe your sense of humour?

11. What is your favourite colour?

Trying to Conceive

I wanted to share the story of our journey to conception, as it might be helpful for other would-be parents out there who are in the process of trying to get pregnant. When we were trying I found reading the experiences of other people invaluable.

I will start of by saying how, with hindsight, I feel incredibly lucky that we fell pregnant with relative ease, but over the course of our, relatively short, journey I did feel very much like it would never happen!

It took us five cycles to get pregnant – we started trying in May and I took a positive pregnancy test in September.

Month 1

Our first month trying we didn’t do any tracking of fertility signs at all. I had been recording my period for a while using an app (Clue), and we started trying during my estimated fertile time (or so I thought at the time – I’ve since learnt a lot about fertility and the monthly cycle and now realise we must have tried too late that month). That first month I fell into the trap of thinking getting pregnant was as easy as just having unprotected sex; I also had a wealth of ‘pregnancy’ symptoms (also known commonly as pre-menstrual symptoms too) and so I was quite upset when I inevitably turned out not to be pregnant after all.

Months 2-4

The second month trying was when I started to take things more seriously (also known as obsessing!) and tracking fertility signs. I read a LOT about trying for a baby and implemented the following:

• Downloaded the Fertility Friend app
• Bought a basal thermometer and started tracking my basal body temperature each morning
• Tracked my cervical mucus – looking out for the fertile type
• Bought some cheap ovulation test strips and started doing urine tests

As a scientist I love data, so the collection and tracking of all this information really fascinated me and over months 2-5 I really learnt a lot about my body, fertility signs, and the ins and outs of the menstrual cycle.  I really loved the Fertility Friend app and a lot of what I learnt came from the app – I would definitely recommend it to anyone trying to conceive who wants to go down the tracking route.

Here’s an example of my Fertility Friend chart from July last year.

The basics of the chart explained...

The blue line is my basal body temperature, measured orally each morning on waking, before getting out of bed. Generally speaking temperature dips on the approach to ovulation and then rises up again rapidly once ovulation has occurred. It will then stay higher until your next period starts (or will remain high if you have fallen pregnant).

The red cross indicates when I am likely to have ovulated (calculated by the app, using an algorithm, based on the data I was entering.

The boxes below the chart contain other data I was entering including: quality of cervical mucus (CM), the timing of intercourse (BD), result of ovulation tests taken (OPK). You can also record any symptoms you wish (the list provided by the app is almost endless). Note - I've removed the specific details of this information from the chart above as it is quite personal!

The days before ovulation are referred to as the Follicular Phase. This is when the follicles in your ovary are maturing, until one (or occasionally two!) matures completely, becoming the egg which is then released. The follicular phase is typically the phase that can vary in length and any variation contributes to irregular periods. My periods ranged from 29-37 days over the months we were trying and this was  driven by the length of my follicular phase.

The period of time after ovulation has occurred is known as the Luteal Phase and is generally much more consistent cycle to cycle; it can vary by a couple of days at the most and should last no longer than 16 days. If you are not pregnant then your temperature will begin to drop towards the end of the luteal phase and your period will start. If you are pregnant then the temperature will remain elevated beyond the length of your normal luteal phase.

OPKs

As I mentioned above – I also purchased some ovulation tests (known as Ovulation Predictor Kits and shortened to OPKs), and I have mixed feelings about them. They work in a similar way to a home pregnancy test – you dip them in a urine sample – but they measure luteinising hormone (or LH), which triggers ovulation, rather than the pregnancy hormone. They have a control line and a test line, when the test line is ‘as dark or darker than’ the control line this indicates that you are having the LH surge (which will be shortly followed by ovulation). Below is an example of my tests from one of my cycles – you can see the test line on the right getting progressively darker.

I had a few issues with the OPKs, that meant I found them quite stressful to use, including:

• The ‘as dark or darker than’ thing is subjective – I would look at the test and be unsure if the test line was really dark enough
• You have to test in the afternoon – a pain when you are at work!
• It is advised to test up to twice a day as you could miss the LH surge testing only once a day
• You need to avoid drinking too much liquid in the 3 hours before you test (just not practical and also contravenes that ‘you should drink lots of water when you are trying to conceive’ advice)
• Linked to the above point about water – I found the concentration of urine had a big impact on how dark the line was, which just led me to constantly doubt the test results!

That said, when combining the OPK data with my basal temperature data, they did generally line up pretty well, which gave me more confidence in the OPK results, but I don’t think I would have gotten on so well using the OPKs in isolation.

Month 5 – the Fertility Monitor

For month five I mixed things up a bit by purchasing a Clearblue Advanced fertility monitor - but I kept tracking my temperature as normal. 

This monitor, essentially, does the same as the OPKs but comes with a machine that reads the test result for you, so you don’t have to interpret the lines yourself. In addition it also measures two different hormones – oestrogen and LH. Oestrogen decreases when LH increases and by measuring both hormones the monitor is more accurate than an LH test alone.

.

The monitor itself has a very simple display and gives you three different fertility ratings when you do a test – low fertility, high fertility, or peak fertility. It also allows you to record when you have sex, but you can’t use it to record other data (like cervical mucus or temperature). The monitor only asks for a test on certain days each cycle and it stores all your data each cycle and will ‘learn’ your cycle as the months go by and get smarter about when it asks you for a test.

The other big plus (for me at least!) of the monitor is that you must do the test with first morning urine. I found this so much easier than doing OPK tests in the afternoon as I could get the test out of the way in the morning and just forget about it.

The downside to the monitor is that it is expensive – both the monitor itself and the test sticks you need to buy to use with it. I got my monitor on offer from Ocado when it was on offer and I had a £20 discount voucher so I only paid around £50 for it, but it retails at around £120. The test sticks also cost around £35 for a box that should last 2 cycles (unless you have very long cycles!). I got my tests from Amazon as they cost a bit less, but still expensive. However, I would say the cost was absolutely worth it and I loved using the monitor, I would definitely use it again if we try for a second baby.

Whether the monitor really is magic, or perhaps it was just ‘our turn’ but I found out I was pregnant the first month we used it.

Here’s my chart from the month I got pregnant:

And my first positive pregnancy test (you can also use the monitor to test for pregnancy and each box of test strips includes four pregnancy tests):

And the second one I took ‘just to be sure’… a lovely strong second line and it came up straight away.

As you can see from my chart, my temperature was high for sixteen days and I tested on day 16. My luteal phase normally lasted 14 days so, when I took my temperature on the 16^th day and it was still high, that was my first clue that something might have happened. I couldn’t resist testing any longer at that point. Although I must admit, when I took the test I still didn’t really expect that it would actually be positive. I had cramping which I thought was signalling the imminent arrival of my period, so I honestly couldn’t believe it was true! I will say that each month I tried to resist testing early to avoid the disappointment of a negative pregnancy test – somehow I found my period turning up less disappointing than taking a test and getting a negative, hence waiting for 16 days to test. I am glad I waited though as there really was no arguing with the line on my test.

So that is the (rather lengthy!) story of how I got pregnant - relatively easy compared to what some couples struggle through and for that I am very grateful indeed. I'm here now at 24 weeks pregnant it seems like a long time ago I was holding my breath each month, but also I can still remember exactly how it all felt. It has definitely one of the most exciting journeys I have ever been on.

Good luck to anyone out there who is currently trying for a baby!

Perambulator

We bought our pram a few weeks ago – one of the few purchases we made before the 20 week scan because I was irrationally excited about getting one.

I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of choice available – so, so many different makes, models, options, colours – it was quite mind-boggling.

A such I went through a process of elimination to narrow down our choices, even before we stepped foot into a shop. I used online review sites like Made for Mums (http://www.madeformums.com), Push Chair Expert (http://www.pushchairexpert.com/), and Mumsnet to find suitable options and read reviews to work out which ones got a lot of praise. There may even have been a comparison spreadsheet built, but let’s not talk about that!

Our main requirements were:

• Decent suspension (we live in a semi-rural area with very rough pavements)
• To be able to use the pram on all surfaces, not just paths (we are keen walkers and like visiting gardens, etc.)
• Decent basket size
• More than 1 year warranty
• Easy and relatively small to fold (I will be using our smallest car on a day to day basis, which doesn’t have masses of boot space)
• Travel system compatible

In the end we bought a pram that wasn’t on our initial shortlist at all (of course!) – an iCandy Peach All Terrain. I had always admired the iCandy prams, but had earmarked them ‘crazily expensive’, so I avoided looking at them when in the shop.  However, I stumbled across it whilst Googling three-wheel/All terrain pram models, and it ticked all of our boxes. When I saw it in the shop I really fell in love. It didn't have any of the niggling issues that I had found with all of the other prams we had looked at, and it's very pretty to boot.

https://www.icandyworld.com/uk/en/product/peach-all-terrain

http://www.johnlewis.com/icandy-peach-all-terrain-jogger-with-silver-chassis-toucan-hood/p1787523

The main advantage points for me were:

It’s SO easy to remove the seat unit and carrycot (it has ‘memory’ buttons which you push in, and they stay pushed so you can lift the unit off with one hand).

It has a really big basket!

It is so smooth and lovely to push, with decent suspension and big ‘off-road’ tyres. 

The fabric is lovely and smooth (silly I know, but I am quite a tactile person and I just love the way it feels!). 

It folds small and is easy to fold (it has a carry strap you can lift it with when folded) – the wheels can also be removed for cleaning / to make the fold smaller. 

The front wheel can be locked into position so it doesn’t swivel – this should be good for pushing on rough surfaces. 

It’s generally quite a compact pram all around, while still having loads of features and meeting all of our requirements for a pram.

In fact the only ‘negative’ about it is the fact it doesn’t have a gated bumper bar, you have to remove it completely, and the bumper bar and handles are foam (I prefer leatherette!) but these are very minor complaints.

I can’t wait to start using the pram now, it’s still in boxes in our house and I am having to resist the urge to build it and push it around the living room! I can’t believe that in around 17 weeks’ time there will be a baby to go in it. 

Changing Bag Love - Pacapod

Since the 20 week scan I have started to allow myself to relax, get more excited, and to think about buying baby things, finally!

Today I’ve been having a browse for changing bags, because - well - a bag is a bag and a love bags, so it seemed like a good excuse.

My absolute favourite so far has to be the Pacapod Sydney bag in Charcoal Leather. Oh my lord it’s a thing of beauty. It’s also an expensive bag – I’ve never spent £220 on a bag in my life! Although one could argue I will probably use a changing bag HARD so it’s worth the investment, right? Plus it’s LEATHER and grey leather too (my particular weakness). In all seriousness, it’s packed with features and looks like it would be a great investment if your budget can stretch that far.  

Sydney Bag - Charcoal
http://www.pacapod.com/sydney-designer-baby-bag-black.html

My second favourite is the Prescott bag – it looks like a really stylish satchel – what’s not to love? The contrast between the two fabrics turns a simple black bag into something more interesting, and it comes with all the same awesome features as the more expensive bags in the range. I feel like perhaps canvas would be a better choice anyway, from an ease-of-care perspective. I can imagine my husband wouldn’t feel too uncomfortable carrying a bag like this around, when required, which would be a bonus. This one is £115 which seems more affordable too.

Prescott Bag - Black
http://www.pacapod.com/prescott-black.html

Finally I quite like the clever Oban bag in Elephant. Another grey one, but in fabric this time. This can be converted to wear as a backpack, which I think is particularly cool and could come in handy when you need your hands free. I actually think this one is a bargain and I would happily spend £80 on a good quality bag like this.

Oban Bag - Elephant
http://www.pacapod.com/oban-elephant-grey-changing-bag.html

The thing I love about Pacapod, is how lovely and compartmentalised everything is (the ‘pods’ are so clever!), it feeds into this ideal that, once the baby arrives I am somehow going to be more organised than I am now. I’m going to be like the mumsactresses in the Pacapod demonstrational videos, I just know it!

I also love the fact that they really are grown up looking bags. I’m not a fan of the frills, cupcakes, kittens, flowers, and other fripperies (yes I’m looking at you Pink Lining!) that so many changing bags seem to come replete with. These bags are really stylish, they don’t scream yummy mummy at all, in fact they could easily pass as just a lovely handbag, rather than a changing bag specifically.

I am also obsessing over the pram-hook that allow you to neatly clip the bag to the handlebar of your pram, rather than using the strap of the bag. It looks so convenient and well designed, and means no putting your bag in the pram basket and taking up vital space.  

Pacapod Pram-Hook
http://www.pacapod.com/pram-hook.html

Now I just need to find a stockist so I can go and have a play with some of these beauties!

Would love to hear opinions from anyone who actually owns a Pacapod bag. Of course if I actually take the plunge and buy one, I will report back. 

Half Way – Bump Progress

So I haven’t been very consistent so far in taking bump-selfies (‘Bumpies’?) but I thought - to celebrate making it to half way - I would share my progress so far. 

Unfortunately I only took photos once during the first trimester (too busy celebrating the joy of pregnancy by throwing up!) so there is quite a big jump from 5 to 13 weeks.

Seeing them all together makes it feel much more real, because when you see your tummy day in, day out the change is so gradual that you don’t really notice it (well, I didn’t anyway!). 

Please excuse the sexy array of mis-matched pyjamas; I have, at least, spared the world my 19 week shot - taken in just knickers and a vest - which I don't think the internet is really ready for. ;-)

5 WEEKS

13 WEEKS

14 WEEKS

17 WEEKS

18 WEEKS

20 WEEKS

21 WEEKS

It's getting bigger!!!

20 Week Scan

I am excited to say – we made it safely to the 20 week scan!

It was lovely to get to see the baby again, and my how they’ve grown.

Happily the scan went very well, with all measurements, etc. normal. Baby was yawning and wriggling like crazy – if the amount of kicks I’ve been getting lately is anything to go by, this baby will be a fidget, like it’s mum! I'm being jabbed from the inside as a type. <3

It's odd to think that, all being well, I now won't see my baby now until it's born. It seems like quite a long time to wait. I'm looking forward to hearing the heartbeat again at my next antenatal appointment at 25 weeks.