Chelle’s World

Happy 4th July! 13 weeks to go ….

Vicky arrived this weekend and with in 5 days she got a tattoo and a hair cut. The tattoo is sweet. Took and hour and a half to do and is the length of her right thigh. It’s healing well and she gets lots of complements on it from strangers.

Murphy of course has been pushing his luck since she arrived. He’s close to getting the wraith of my pregnant hormones on him and loosing one of his 9 lives.  He has always been a really bad begger of food and we’d almost snapped him out of it. Hes now worse than ever, because there is someone new in the house. You think we’d never fed that cat.

Vicky has also experienced our pet toads on the porch “They are well cute!” she exclaimed. She is also pretty impressed by the fire flies Not so much by our resident daddy longlegs spider that lives on the sliding doors tho haha.

Tonight we’re going to a 4th July party. She’s really excited. There’s gotta be some irony in there somewhere over an English person being excited about 4th July. Our friends are hosting a block party, so I need to get my bakey bake on later so we can take a cake.

In other news, I’ve finally finished Autumns butterfly mobile after 3 weeks of swearing, taking it to bits and putting it back together again. I’m finally happy with it.

I brought some wooden butterflies, painted/stickled the tops and covered the bottoms with patterend paper. Varnished them. I then got two different sized embrodery hoops, attached it all together with fishing line. I then covered the hoops with ribbon, added hairy string, flowers and stickled the fishing line. Wala! Heres a few different views.

Autumn is doing well, although I think she’s trying to make an early appearance at the moment. She’s been kicking me right in the top of the cervix today SO hard. I swear at one point I saw a foot come out and wiggle. I think I have a 10lb Kangaroo in there vs a 2lb baby!

Her movements are becoming so much stronger. She likes to play games with me. The other day she stick, I assume an elbow or knee out, so I rubbed it with my finger then stopped and she kicked me! So I rubbed it again, stopped and she kicked me again! Sassy lil moo haha.

Here is you 27 week belly pic. 27lbs later. Oh how I miss my toes.

So we have a cat window seat in our living room. 90% of the time either one or the other is on there watching the squibbles and birds outside. The last couple of weeks tho they’ve taken to sharing it. I’m not sure it was made for 20lbs of cat, lets hope it holds!!

Stalking those Squibbles.

Awww cuddles.

OH HI MUM!!

Just a quick post in honour of moving over to the 3rd Trimester.  14 Weeks to go!!

28 years of life. Scary prospect. Nearly 30, even scarier! Still pretty much look the same haha, well the cheeks are slightly less chubbier and I no longer dress in clothes that look like a pair of curtains from a nursing home

Its odd seeing a picture of me that young knowing I’ll soon be pushing out a daughter. Ah the innocence of being a 3 year old.

Yesterday I was told I had to be up and ready to go by 845am. After a night of awakeness from heart burn that was easier said than done. My lil girl is giving me some hassles before she’s even out here. It didn’t feel like your average case of heartburn. I mean I’ve had it for the last couple of months on and off, but this bout hurt so bad it made my arms and whole chest ache and no amount of tums or zantec was shifting it. That mixed with muscle back spasms from .. hoovering .. yes you read correctly, hoovering. Apparently my back is so old and mangled from carrying a child I can no longer push a simple hoover around!

Well anywho I was up and ready and I got handed a bag containing a gift card for 2 facials. My first at 9am yesterday. What a way to start a Saturday Mornin’! I loved my last one for mothers day because it totally got rid of my pregnancy acne for about 3 weeks. Hopefully it will do the same next time. Thank you hunneh!

Last night we went to dinner with Ashley, Marlyn and Ryan. Longhorns. AWESOME baby back ribs. AWESOME cheesecake. We shall not discuss what else was eaten, because I do believe it could have fed a small country. HEY, I’m growing a child dammit!!

Although I nearly punched the waiter and muttered something about “oh you wankers” to the table as 10 wait staff came out clapping and singing with an ice cream sundae for my birthday haha.

We went and saw “The Proposal” I learned I do not miss living in that shopping complex one bit. SO crowded and loud on a Saturday night. The movie was fabulous. Very very funny.

Thanks for dinner guys!

In other news, one week till Vicky gets here. Very excited! I’m wondering if she can handle these temperatures tho. I took this today as I was pealing my skin off the seat in the car. (Excuse the blurriness, I took it on my phone)

I also have a new favourite animal. These lil guys.

Toads!

They come out at night and sit on our porch eating all the annoying mosquitoes. He was quite big, about the size of the palm of my hand, but we have lots of little ones too. During the day they hide under the bushes and mulch in our garden and in between the stone front. We also have a lizard. He is called Frank. Frank has a blue tale, moves at the speed of light but frequents our driveway for a good sunning and then comes to the porch for a meal of bugs. Between these, humming birds, inch long black ants with pincers that make the cats think twice we have a regular lil zoo going on here.

Ok, off to be a domestic Goddess.

25 Weeks gone … very quickly! I’m wondering how fast the last trimester will go. Only another week and I’m there.

I had my 25 week check up this week. Fundal high is 25.5 cm, I’m 179lbs (started at about 157)  and blood pressure was 118/62. Gone up slightly!

My 29 week appointment is booked. Its time for the god awful glucose test. Pretty bog standard over here to check for gestational diabetes.

My daughter has taken to mooning the world in between punting me in the vagina. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being kicked in the hoo haw from the inside. As for mooning, every now and again you’ll see this butt stick out and move right to left. I have yet to get it on video, but it is my goal! Shes one classy chick!

As part of our child birth classes this week, we took a tour of the maternity unit. Its pretty spiffy, very homely. It has mood lighting, really nice birthing beds, a pull out chair bed for dad. Each room has a jacuzzi tub which I’m really happy about as I wanted to labour in the tub. They have TV, phone, internet. Perhaps I should “twitter” my birth process. I can see it now ….

“FK ADAM AND THE APPLE, GET THIS KID OUT!!” bwahaha

They also have a really nice NICU and nursery. They are also very pro keeping the baby in the room and breast feeding right away.

I’m looking forward to giving birth there.

Of course the other milestone this week is turning 28 on Saturday. Twenty freaking eight. That’s nearly 30! That is a very scary prospect seeing as it don’t seem that long ago I turned 18 haha. John has something planned for Saturday morning for me but won’t tell me what. I shall post about it tomorrow!

In other news this week was my last full time week at work. Its getting to much to sit in that chair for 9 hours a day. Not good on the ol’ 90 year old back at the moment. So now I will be doing 5 hours a day up until I finish on the 13th August.

Well with out further a do here are week 25 belly pics!

No stretch marks yet! But I do see I’m starting to get that line under my belly button that pregnant girls get!

So this weekend I got my crafty craft on and made some letters spelling out Autumns name for the Nursery wall above her crib.

I had pondered just buying some ready made ones, but none of them tickled my fancy. So I brought some plain wooden letters and decorated them myself. I’m quite happy with how they turned out.

And for all these it cost me about $15 (Around 9 GBP) Not bad considering the bog standard 2 tone painted ones are going in the shops for $5 to $6 PER letter.

These are the wooden letters plain straight out the shop.

This is the after result.

Here is a close up of each letter.

I brought some scrapbook card stock in patterns I enjoyed. I wanted a kind of distressed look about them, but to be bright.

I first painted the whole letter in a light purple paint.

I then cut out the shapes and glued them to the front of the letters. Once it was dry I trimmed the paper down and sanded the edges in to the wood to kind of blend it and give it a distressed look.

I then inked the edges with brown ink. I didn’t just put the pad right on to the letter, I got a foundation sponge, dipped it in the ink and then on to the letter as it gave me more control over where the ink went. I also sanded down the backs and sides of the letters.

I then varnished them with a matt varnish. I was thinking about a gloss, but as I was going for a distressed look I thought it might make them look too “new” I was pondering a crackle glaze but didn’t have any.

I then added the embellishments, buttons, stickles, hairy string, flowers and butterflies.

I finally got a small video of Autumn Marie kicking me! She’s been very shy every time I got the camera out, but today she wanted to show the world she was in there

Look at the right side of my belly button for the first one, and just beyond my belly button for the 2nd one

It’s strange to say that and a lil bit morbid if you think about it. When you reach 24 weeks of pregnancy you are what’s called “Viable”

This basically means if the baby was born from now up until full term they would make an effort to save her and keep her alive.

None the less its a mile stone I’ve very glad to have reached.  So with out further ado, I offer you a 24 week, 20lbs heavier belly!

Its been busy this weekend!

I decided to cook a months worth of meals and freeze them.  I’m pretty exhausted when I get home from work, so this way I just need to take stuff out in the mornin’ to defrost and shove it in the oven at night. It was hard work and shopping/being up on my feet set that stupid sciatica off again, but I’m sure I’ll be very happy at night

We’ve had some litte visitors to the garden the last couple of weeks. I put a couple of humming bird feeders out, and I’ve seen one or two, but getting a pic is kinda hard at the moment. They are just starting to come back around after winter and don’t really know its there at the moment. They will be in full swing by July tho and I should get some decent pictures then. The one that visited today was *tiny* Maybe 1 inch tall, SO cute tho.

In the mean time these little blighters are drinking all the necter! I filled that up 4 days ago haha.

I don’t mind too much really, they are honey bees and some what endangered around these parts, and they seem to love the stuff.

Look at their little butts fighting to a decent space to get some.

Their tongues are not quite long enough to get the nectar thru the little hole in the flower, so they’ve learned if they push the flower to to the side with their heads they can get their fill. The ants have learned this too.

Coming in for landing!!!

So in other news, I finally was able to get the wooden letters I wanted to put on Autumns wall. Its been a battle because for the last 3 weeks the craft store had *every* letter except “T” I was getting annoyed, but yesterday they were all there so I snapped them up.

This is them plain and undecorated. I LOVE the font they are cut in. I’ll work on them this week and post them when they are finished.

I also found these wooden butterflies. I really liked them. I am going to decorate them and make a mobile out of them for Autumns room. Again, gonna work on it this week.

OH! Before I forget and get a kick up the arse from it, here are some clothes my Auntie Carol (YES I CALLED YOU AUNTIE BWHAA!) sent over from England for Autumn Thank you!!

Yes, its true! 23 weeks. One more week and I’ll be 6 months along. How CRAZY is that?

So with out further ado, here is the 23 week belly pic.

So in honour of being 23 weeks I thought I’d write a little post about things the movies don’t show about pregnancy.

If course in the movies, girls put on about 1/2 a lb, have a glowing complexion, perfect boobs and just sail right through and somehow are full term with in 5 TV land months. Oh if it were that easy.

Boobs and monster nipples

When you first get pregnant, your husband my appreciate your expanding bust line, but when it feels like you have a monkey hanging off them with its teeth and they are gonna explode with every step you take, its no fun. Not only do you soon outgrow your bras, but your boobs become a road map of bright blue veins. Hardly attractive.

Then we have the nipples. Now you expect some changes. They go from lovely pink things to great big brown bumpy things. If you believe the pictures in the pregnancy books, your nipples will soon be up to your neck and resemble Kuato from Total Recall . Not the case for us all. However I have been looking at some breast feeding pictures, and I’m sorry but once those things are bigger than you baby’s head, there’s problems.

Aches and pains

Of course the wimmin in the movies swan around like its nothing and work up until 3 minutes before the baby crowns.

HAH.

3 words. Round ligaments, Sciatica. I’m sorry but I defy any woman to work when it feels like someone is shoving a red hot poker in to your back. Not only do you have to deal with this new center of gravity as your stomach develops its own moon, you have have to try and stay on your feet with searing pain thru you lower back.

Pregnancy farts

Now, not having a sense of smell, they don’t really bother me, but when you let one go and the cat gets up and goes and lays on the other sofa in disgust, you know you have problems with your butt.

You become a petting zoo

Its like people have never seen a pregnant belly before. They are magnatized towards it.  I’m gonna start charging for it soon.

Kicks in the cervix

If you ever want to get a girls attention, this is the way to do it. I’m all for feeling the baby moving around and kicking me here and there, but when it feels like she’s kicking you in the top of the hoo haw with steal toe caped boots while you’re driving, it becomes a whole other ball game. You never see the Mums in the movies jump 4 inches in to the air as they nearly give birth to a foot.

Walnut bladder

This is how I know God is a man, because a woman would never magically transform your bladder in to the size of  a walnut with the strength of an old stretched out balloon and make you eternally thirsty whilst pregnant. Waking up at midnight with a thirst like never before that you can’t help but quench with a gallon of water and then having to get up every 30 minutes to deal with the repercussions of your reenactment of a drinking camel is getting really old.

Heartburn

If, like me, you’ve never experienced heartburn before you’ve got knocked up, it can be quite the experience let me tell you. It sneaks up on you with out warning, and really whilst pregnant the simplest things can set it off, like laying down to sleep. Tums last a whole .23 seconds.  Between getting up to pee and feeling your esophagus dissolve in your own stomach acid, you’re doomed to never sleep again.

Belly

The growing belly. In the movies these ladies get this sexy pert little belly, when in fact you get stretched until you don’t think you can stretch anymore and you still have 3 months to go. Your belly button becomes the size of a small continent and you get that lovely road map of blue veins across it. Then there’s the “not being able to judge your own size” When you shut a closet door and you smack you belly, or if you lean to get something and your boob goes right in the middle of your gravy dinner, you know you have problems.

Pregnancy Brain

Of course in the movies, these pregnant wimmin can hold down a full time job as some big wig of a company, raise 4 perfect kids and cook dinner every night for their husband all whilst keeping a spotless house.

In reality you’re feeding the cats cornflakes, pouring milk on your toast, finding your keys in the fridge, putting your knickers on as a bra and walking out to the car in your PJs. Your brain becomes total mush for 9 months and theres nothing you can do about it!

Well that’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll have something else to write about the reality of labour and birth vs the movie/tv version in 3 months