Big Post of Photos: Craft and Bump

I have lots and lots of crafty photos to show you, plus two gratuitous bump photos to show you how quickly I ballooned :)

Crocheted applique - Hungry Little Caterpillar

Crocheted Applique - Spitfire with Clouds. This photo was taken before the sewing on was done

Crochet Applique: The Cat in the Hat (with bonus fish!)

Another photo taken before I sewed it down. A bit of a potions master onesie

Golden Snitch and broomsticks design

A giraffe inspired baby hat and booties

Pigeon inspired baby hat and booties

Plain old purple and cream baby hat and booties

An old fashioned flight helmet hat

Bump photo: Taken on the 2nd March

Bump photo: Taken on the 14th March

22 Weeks and 5 Days: Nearly the length of a ruler

It's been a while because Blogspot's new blogging format makes it nearly impossible to post from my iPad. So, my intention is to write a few posts here and then at some point work out a way to post them. Or find a more stable blogging platform . . .

The very empty baby's room as of last weekend.

I'm nearly at 23 weeks now, and definitely nice and round. Turtle/Squirm is moving around quite a lot now, particularly in the morning and mid afternoon through to when I go to sleep. So, quite a lot really. Also, it turns out that She or He is quite the fan of musical theatre . . .

We've nearly finished getting the nursery basics down (ie. sanding and painting the floor) and then it will be major shopping and decorating time. We're sticking with our theme of an explorer style nursery, and just trying to think about what we'll put in there. There's also been clothes shopping, stuff shopping and a fair amount of crafting going on. (Photo post soon!)

I've been fortunate enough to get some baby cuddles recently. My friend's baby is 11 weeks old now, and is absolutely cuddleable. I also told him about the pharaohs last time we had cuddles - I figure he really should be learning his history as early as possible.

It's a pretty quiet update, all in all. But there'll be photos coming soon, which will make the whole thing much more exciting :)

Halfway through! 20 Weeks . . .

Today I'm officially at 20 weeks, which I suppose means I'm at Hump Day :)

Unfortunately it hasn't been the best 24 hours. For the past two days I've had gas pains, but as I went to go to bed, I just couldn't get comfortable. I told M. I needed to go to the toilet, where I started vomiting. So for the first time this pregnancy, I was horribly ill every 30 to 60 minutes until 4.30am. Along with the vomiting, I had an intense pain in my lower tummy (higher than the round ligament issues I've been having) which was making it very uncomfortable to sit down, lay down or even walk around.

M. rang through to the hospital, where a lovely person had a quick chat with me, reassured me it was probably just bad gas, and suggested panadol and heat, plus to come into emergency if it got worse. Well, the Panadol came back up again pretty quick, but the heat allowed me to at least lay down on the couch for the night, letting M. get some rest (though he woke up every time I made another toilet trip)

 This morning, I took the day off work, before managing to finish and keep down a cup off tea without milk and a bun. Then after some sleep, I went off to the doctor (who was on time for the first time ever!) He found the gas in my stomach pretty quickly - my upper stomach echoed - and then proceeded to put me on a strict, bland diet.

For at least the next week, I need to cut out fatty, fried and dairy foods, along with nuts, chocolate, caffeine (nooooooooooooooo!) and fizzy drinks, plus I need to look at 6 small meals a day. I'm drumming for a second breakfast, like a hobbit :) Hopefully this will do the job and cut out the painful part. Tomorrow I have my 20 week appointment, plus my Physio class, so it should be a full and fun day :)

19 weeks and 4 days - with bonus ultrasound :)

One thing I didn't expect. The suspicious that my due date might be a day out because none of us considered the leap year . . .

In other news, all is going well. I'm increasingly tired, but that's partly because I have a very heavy workload at work at the moment. I have moments of dizziness and racing heart, but nothing too bad. The heartburn and gas on the other hand . . . (seriously, I had a days worth of gas after eating an apple!)

Yesterday afternoon I went back to the Royal Women's Hospital for my ultrasound. Traffic was going my way, so I got in early and tried yet another doubtful product from their food place. An hour before the ultrasound, I went to the toilet, and then went about drinking a litre of water. About 25 minutes later, I made my way up to the Medical Imaging department.

You go into the main reception and hand over your form and then they send you on, depending on what you're there for. I was sent to the Women's waiting room, which was actually quite lovely - they had obviously put some thought into the decor in there. It was mostly baby related, though it's also the area for breast scans and gynecological scans. I'd been sitting there for abut five minutes, when they came to get me - half an hour early! Unfortunately M. hadn't made it from work yet, so I asked if we could just wait a bit, which was fine. Just after he arrived, they called me again, so we were able to go in.

The lady doing the scan was a trainee, but she was really good. We said we'd had a couple of issues with the heart beat last time, so she tried to get straight in there. Unfortunately we have a real squirmer of a baby who was not cooperating, so we went to look at other bits. It was really cool looking at the brain and all the bones and thinking that this has all grown inside of me! Again, though, Turtle was not always the most cooperative with lots of kicking and arms flailing.

We finally got to the heart, which looks great and was beating very regularly. Our 'scanner' went to grab her supervisor to have a look, because she was having a few issues getting clear images. The supervisor obviously had a lot of experience and was a little lighter with the scanner, which was a relief on my rather full bladder.

The final verdict was one very active, but good looking baby (with incredibly cute hands and feet). My placenta is about 3mm lower than they like it, so they want me in for another scan at 34 weeks, but they're pretty confident it will move up out of the way. So about an hour after we went in, we were able to take our lovely images and head off (still none the wiser about whether Turtle is a boy or a girl!)