10 weeks 4 days - Gut feelings, overwhelming thoughts

Yesterday, Jonathan told his best friend since he was a kid (and who was our best man at the wedding) that we're expecting. I got the sweetest email from his wife saying congratulations, when's it due, hoping I'm feeling ok, and that J is waiting on me :D It's soooo nice to tell people! :D I can't wait til we get our scan done in a couple of weeks time - less than 2 weeks! Monday 12th! And see our tiny Sausage. The thought of it is already making me well up, that in one week and five days, I will see our baby. It's just... overwhelmingly wonderful.

And then, when we see that he (yes, for some reason, I'm just SURE it's a little boy) is okay, we can tell the world! All our extended family, and the rest of the friends we haven't told yet... I just can't wait :) And I can't believe I have to wait another TEN weeks before I can know whether I'm right - that it's a boy. I would absolutely LOVE a little girl too, but I don't know - something inside me is niggling that it's a boy. I think I had a gender dream last night, but I can't be sure. I don't remember the dream at all, but when I woke up I just got a feeling like "it's a boy". I would be absolutely THRILLED to have my little Robert Stephen. :D But I would also LOVE to have my little Chloe Anne. (Btw: Helen: I'd rather the parents didn't know the name choices - would love to surprise them at the birth, so please keep it to yourself ;) Thanks sweety)

Oh, and lately I'm SURE my tummy is getting bigger, at least feeling firmer. I won't put a new picture in the belly gallery until 12 weeks though, otherwise I'm sure there won't be a lot of difference to look at. I'm definitely peeing more too, I'm finding myself getting up quite often during the night to pee, if not, as soon as I wake I need to go. And then several times during the day, even if I've felt like I've not drunk a lot, I seem to pee LOADS! hehe. My breasts I think are generally getting less tender, which is great. And my sickness aka slight nausea is even better these days when I have a cup of tea first thing when I get up, and am hardly bothered by it at all :D I am so lucky with that. I can't believe how lucky I am. Definitely counting my blessings with that - especially since I know my sister-in-law suffered terribly. I know that Nicky is pleased to be an aunty - she can't be one on her side because her two sisters - well, one of them doesn't want children, and the other one can't have children. :( And it's entirely possible at this stage to think that our children could possibly share the same birthday! Her due date was November 23rd, mine was November 22nd. Although I'll wait and see what the dating scan shows. Unfortunately, it's doubtful that our children will get to see each other very much - Since they live in Chester, and we live about 30 minutes east of Northampton, it's quite a distance. And with both of us with small children, it may be more of a weekend visit every year than a quick day trip every month or so. I can only imagine how hard it is for mum and dad, since they have to travel up to Chester from KENT to see their grandson! A good 5+ hour journey. At least it's only about 2 hours from Kent to here, so Sausage will be able to see all his grandparents fairly regularly.

Thanks Linds for your comment about the layout. :) I like it too! Thanks for reading as always xx

New design for Little Sausage

I was browsing design sites, and I came across a site that had some nice designs on - even if most of them aren't firefox compatible! :) So I decided to use one of them to give this site a more "fresh" look. And I really like it :) Yellow, which is one of my favourite colours, plus it's "neutral" (so good for both a boy or a girl baby!) :)

I've been feeling good this weekend. I got up around 9am today, sat at the computer to drink the cup of tea J made me, and I've felt NO twinges of nausea at all today! Maybe it's the earlier start? Some days I'll go through and not feel pregnant AT ALL, other days I'll feel all the "bleugh" ness of early pregnancy - tired, nausea, general lethargy. I can't WAIT til I get to see my tiny one... know for sure he/she is in there and is ok. And have something I can hold in my hand and say, yes, look, you can SEE I'm pregnant - here's a picture of my baby! I'm 10 weeks and 2 days - and how surreal that feels! Just over two weeks until the scan! But yay, 1/4 of the way through, double figures!

Well, it seems our name for the bump isn't quite what I was expecting it to be - the name "Little Sausage" or just "Sausage" seems to have stuck whenever J and I talk about it with each other! I don't know whether that's better than "Haggis" at all! :D

I was watching a random girl's belly gallery slideshow to music several days ago, and the song that went with it was Savage Garden's "I Knew I Loved You" which I have listened to goodness knows how many times - I have the Affirmation album it features on. And I only then realised how appropriate it is for this journey I am embarking on - and indeed possibly every other woman who's dying to meet their tiny babe.

Maybe it's intuition
But some things you just don't question
Like in your eyes
I see my future in an instant
and there it goes
I think I've found my best friend
I know that it might sound more than
a little crazy but I believe

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

There's just no rhyme or reason
only this sense of completion
and in your eyes
I see the missing pieces
I'm searching for
I think I found my way home
I know that it might sound more than
a little crazy but I believe

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

A thousand angels dance around you
I am complete now that I found you

- I Knew I Loved You (Savage Garden)

Until next time, keep your chins up, and thanks for reading xx

9 weeks 5 days - feeling better

I've been struggling a bit with the feeling of sickness the past few days - not actually BEING sick, but definitely the feeling. And a few times I've even gagged. :( I asked Jonathan if he could bring me up a cup of tea before he left for work in the morning, and it seemed to help loads :) Surprising though that I managed to drink it before it got cold - I do love my lie-ins, and tend to fall asleep again for a while after he leaves for work - doh! ;)

I had my blood test done yesterday to check my blood type, rhesus, and anemia/HIV/rubella etc. Only I forgot my hand held notes and had to walk all the way back home for them in the pouring rain :( Luckily I was fitted in again, and was back home after the jabs less than an hour after my proper appointment - which means the walk there can't be more than 15 minutes - probably about 10 minutes or so.

On Saturday I will be TEN WEEKS pregnant. That's a quarter of the way through! I wish I knew what being pregnant was already like - it's so hard to tell whether things are going as normal, and whether I get a "good" vibe or whether it's just something else. But I think I get a good vibe from this pregnancy. I still have no real inkling as to whether my little one is a boy or a girl. I think right now, I would love Chloe Anne just as much as I would love Robert Stephen :) The name Robert Stephen means a lot more to me personally than Chloe Anne - Robert being the little boy in the nursery who was just lovely and gorgeous and sooo affectionate, and Stephen being my brother and my father-in-law. Chloe is a very sweet name, but has no "special meaning" as such, but Anne is lovely as it is the name of Jonathan's grandmother, who died in 2003, a few days after his birthday. I'd only known her for a couple of years, but she was a lovely lady, and seeing her deteriorate in the manner she did before her death was devastating beyond words. It would be nice to carry on her legacy in a little girl - her great grand-daughter. Maybe I should suggest to Jonathan about possibly double-barreling her name, so her name is Chloe-Anne rather than Chloe. (One of my friends at school was called Lesley-Anne - people called her both Lesley and Lesley-Anne)

I'm sure that if Anne was alive today she'd be proud that Jonathan and I will be celebrating our three year wedding anniversary in two weeks time, it's such a shame she never saw us married. And I know she'd be proud and happy to know we're having a baby. The last thing she wanted when we saw her a couple of days before she died was to see us kiss. She couldn't ask us properly because her voice had deteriorated so badly, she had to motion with her hands what she wanted us to do. Goodness, it's so upsetting still to think about how she was in the weeks before she died, when I think about what she was like when she was well. We knew she was going to go soon when we visited her a couple of days before Jonathan's birthday - it goes to show her strength that she held on a few days longer so she didn't die on his birthday. Ack, here I go again, if she was here, she'd be telling me off for getting all upset about how she was. So I'll cheer up again so that when I see her again, hopefully in many years to come, she won't tell me off for being a miserable person lamenting on her death for so long! I am just glad I got to know her :)

Anyway, I'm feeling a lot more energetic today than I have been the last week or so, which is great, and also does wonders for how I feel I think. :)

My little one is now around just over an inch long! And his or her tail has finally disappeared. He or she is also no longer an embryo, but a fetus! I can't wait til I see you in a couple of weeks, little one.. and hear that you're in there and healthy and happy. xx

9 weeks - date for first scan

Wheeeee I have a date for my first scan! :) Monday 12th May at 11.45. I'll be 12 weeks and 2 days at that stage, well, depending on what the sonographer then says my date is!

The last day or so I've been feeling a bit under the weather, kind of "bleugh". The night before last I was unable to finish my dinner, and I hadn't eaten a LOT during the day. Then the next morning, I had to stagger eat my cereal, which is very unusual for me! I hardly had anything at all to eat that day, just a few satsumas after that, and that was about it until J got home, by which point I was starving, so we went out to Pizza Hut for dinner, I managed the starter and the main course fine, but I think the choice of dessert was a little unwise, because as soon as I'd finished it I suddenly felt a bit queasy. :( Went to the loo, and once I'd come out, I felt fine (well, better), so maybe it was just that I needed to go!

Not many people know that I am the Nicola who was behind RP Designs, a design site I created new layouts for until maybe... uhh.. 2003? 2004? So whenever I stumble across a layout of mine someone still uses, it's really cool :D Especially if they're on my friends list, and they don't realise they're using one of my layouts! Becca has made a Forever Friends layout of mine into a lovely Winnie the Pooh layout. :) It looks great :D It still fills me with a warm bubbly feeling to know that out there, people still go to my site and use my layouts. Nice to stumble across one every now and then :) All of my layouts for my new diaries I make myself, obviously, although lately, I've not been doing them from scratch, I usually modify one I like the look of, and change around colours and images. I might change this diary's layout to be honest, it's a little "heavy" and I think something in pastels would be much nicer and easier on the eye.

I'll get round to it at some point I guess! :)

I'd better go now, and get something inside me, before I start feeling ill again. A cup of tea will do for now, just something so my stomach isn't empty. It does seem to be getting worse in general which is odd, as I am now about 9 weeks pregnant, which is 3 weeks later than I was expecting it. Ah well, I guess I'll just see how it goes, go with the flow, that sort of thing!

I'm just so glad we've got a date for the scan :) I can't wait to see that my little one is all snug and healthy in there, and maybe hear its heart beating. Hopefully it'll be a magical day for us :)

8 weeks 4 days - appointment, hormones,etc

Ah ok, so I had the appointment yesterday afternoon. :) The midwife seemed ok, but a little cold to begin with, but by the end of the appointment she began to "warm up" a little. She went through medical background, genetic background and so on, took my BP which she said was fine, tested my wee for sugar (surprisingly NOT to see if I was pregnant - I still have had no medical staff confirm my pregnancy), and there was none in my urine. Since I have never smoked, (although was a passive smoker for some years when living with my mother) and have given up drinking since I found out I was pregnant, and have had no major health worries at all apart from a bout of depression about 7 years ago, she says I am fine and healthy (although rather unfit and overweight - she didn't say that, but I know it myself). She's sent off the paperwork to Kettering Hospital (where I will be going for the birth most likely) for my scans, and hopefully I'll get the date for the scan in the mail in the next 2 weeks. But she said it was more likely to be at the 13 week mark rather than the 11-12 week mark, since they said they're fairly busy (lots of women having babies in Kettering in November??). So I'm expecting a date between 16th-23rd May for my first scan. They're also going to do the downs and spinadafria or whatever it's called test at the same time. And next Wednesday I'll be going in to get my antenatal blood test done which'll let me know what blood type I am, and whether I'm rhesus positive or negative. She gave us a lot of information and a free pregnancy book too!

I'm noticing lately that my queasiness while isn't anything very serious as such, is preventing me from wanting to go and get myself much to eat, at least not where I have to stand and prepare it for very long. I feel queasier standing up, and it doesn't all go away straight away now, although it is fairly mild still.

Also... boy, my hormones are sure kicking in... I was watching SG1, the episode where Janet Frasier dies, and I was BAWLING literally. I've seen the episode before, and am well known for crying at stuff, but usually if it's cry-worthy, it'll be a few tears and that's it, but I was crying almost as hard as a time I remember when I was in the process of breaking up with my ex who I'd been with for 2 years. And a week or so ago, I felt some tears running down my face when watching Friends - not the episode where Monica and Chandler get engaged - which has ALWAYS managed to extract some tears... but the episode where Monica hurts her hand when playing Mike at table tennis, so Chandler takes over, and beats Mike for her. It was like "Awwww Chandler beat Mike for Monica! That's sooo sweet *sob sob*" and while I was all teary and stuff I was thinking "What on EARTH?? Why am I crying over this episode???" It is just bizarre, the things I cry over these days, and the INTENSITY of my feelings and how much I cry over stuff.

But it's sooo great, how pregnant of me! Before long I'll be crying over baby oil commercials where they say "now YOU can have baby-soft skin!"

Oh and on a whim the other day I looked up my old diary, diaryland still has it! And it has a good few years of entries, leading up to our wedding and also the years I spent at work in the nursery. I read quite a lot of entries about work - and can't believe I stayed there for so long. I read back at these entries and it all comes flooding back how I felt about some of these things, some of the people there. Which was a shame, because I *LOVED* working with the children. But after a while it seemed that every day I was coming home, feeling crap, and dejected, and feeling like it wasn't worth going back the next day. Which is why hopefully I will LOVE having children - all the rewards and benefits, none of the snooty colleagues, or mouthy parents, and no friggin paperwork! The only thing is that I changed all the names of the particular children in the diary, so when I read back a particular one, I had no idea who was who! Well except for a couple of them, who I worked out from the description in the entry. But yes it's certainly possible to get attached to children you work with, so I have no DOUBT how much I will love this tiny being inside me.

Wow, a lot of waffling today! Hope you're all okay. x

8 weeks 3 days - appointment this afternoon!

Hi everyone! I forgot to also say thanks for your comments about the belly gallery. I don't have any clear idea about when the next photo will be - maybe 10 weeks? Every two weeks from then on? Or maybe every 4 weeks so that it shows amongst my flubber more? That's the main reason for wanting it - to see how it changes and to have a record, because I'm sure when I'm bigger I'll not remember how I looked at 8 weeks, or whatever.

Oooh! And I can't believe my first appointment is FINALLY here! 4 hours from now I'll be in the room with the midwife :D My pee is sitting in the bathroom ready to transfer into the small tube thing I got given. But how embarrassing! Hehe. "Here, here's a tube of my wee, enjoy! Mmmmm what a lovely orangey colour it is!" Heh ok I'll spare you any more details. Guess I'm just bouncing off the walls a bit, to know I'm finally HERE. I hope we get LOTS of information to think about, and perhaps even a date for the scan. Oh my, I'm just soooo excited that I'll be seeing new tiny BABY in a month or so! I can't still believe I'm pregnant, really... truly.... pregnant! I mean, I've got used to the fact that I am now... but until I see the baby, I won't QUITE believe that inside me is this tiny being that's growing from a tiny egg into an actual PERSON!

My baby is now officially a fetus, not an embryo anymore. He or she is now 1.6cm in length. He or she now has eyelids, its hands now bend at the wrist and it has lost its tail. He or she even has tiny fingers!

Hmmm. I just read somewhere it's not uncommon to have an internal examination at this appointment - maybe that's just America, but I guess I will see for myself - good to be expecting it anyway, incase it does. Anyway, I'd best get downstairs, and get myself some breakfast.

Thanks for reading!

8 weeks 2 days - name rant, weekend, and wheee, appointment tomorrow!

Hi everyone!! Thanks for all your lovely comments about the names we've chosen! Of course they're not set in stone, and we might find ourselves thinking even when we're holding our baby boy (for example) and thinking "He doesn't seem like a Robert" But it's so nice for your comments. I told a couple of friends our names ideas and they both said "Love Chloe, don't like Robert" one said "But hey, it's not my baby." Which made me feel a bit "meh" inside. And think maybe what my sister in law and brother did with Ewan was right - not tell anyone until the birth and then say "His name is Ewan" then no-one will give any negative comments. "No, it's NOT your baby, and Robert is a GREAT name." I should have said.

I personally don't like the name Ewan much - but it's not my place to say that. If there was a reason not to use it, then fair enough. But as a bystander, simply "not liking it" is no reasons to dampen a name for someone who DOES. Anyway, mini rant over. I told my mum the names too, and asked her though if she did have any feelings about a name, to please keep them to herself, unless they were constructive (eg, my dad wanted to name my brother Mark. With a surname of Brown, when written down in a register, it would be written Brown Mark... not very good!) She did point out that the initial of both of their names, along with our surname (minus one letter) could both spell unfortunate words, but I don't think it will be much of a problem, if truth be told. Since our surname does have that extra letter on the front! And no-one when reading out for example M Brown would say "Mmmmmmm Brown", they'd say "Em Brown"

Anyway! End of rant and name discussion. The weekend was lovely, well yesterday. We went out for a meal, and I chose a vegetarian tart thing (just because I liked the look of it more), which in the end turned out to be a little bland if I got no pastry with cheese on it - seemed to be mostly sweet potato inside, but with a token amount of red onion and I don't think I saw any of the sweet chillis depicted on the menu. The garlic bread that came with it though was very nice. I gave the waiter some comments about the tart to relay to the chef, that I thought it would be nicer with less potato, and more variety of other veg. Then I ordered a raspberry cheesecake, thinking I'd get a normal cheesecake thing, the sort you'd get from tesco, but this one was handmade, and the cheese bit wasn't very sweet, and I think was made from actual cheese - mascapone or something. I didn't like it particularly so I got the waiter to take it back and bring me some icecream instead (which when I got was perfectly edible but had a slight taste of coffee or toffee - I wondered if it was because maybe my taste senses were mucked up with pregnancy, so I gave Jonathan a bit and asked him if he could taste any coffee/toffee-ish taste, and he could as well) But at least the soup starter was perfectly delicious :)

Dad brought along his pressure washer for the patio, because where the previous occupants had some plant pots on the patio they'd left rings where grime had gathered around but not underneath. And omg.... when Jonathan started... our patio was like... wtf? That was the colour of these tiles??? He could have done every other one and we'd have a very distinct chess board in our garden! Absolutely amazing, hehe :) After dinner and after the rest of the tiles had been cleaned off, we played a few rounds of a game we had, which was fun. It was one where you see who you're "in tune with" by everyone answering questions about one of the players, including the player themself, and seeing who gets the answer the player thinks of, and if wrong, if anyone got the same answer as each other, if either of those apply, you get points for that person. Unsurprisingly, I got over 30 points for Jonathan hehe, and about 17 for my dad, and a few less, about 14 for Caroline. "How many times a month does Jonathan scrub out the bath?" I said none, dad said 1, Caroline said 2, Jonathan said none. Hahaha :D Oh yeah, and "If Clive (Dad) was to dress up for a fancy dress party, what costume would he wear?" Dad said Superman (hahahahaha), Caroline said nothing, J and I both said Santa :D

But yes, had a lovely day! They arrived a little after 11, and didn't leave til 6! And never once thought "Bah, wish they'd leave already"

We didn't get the bookcases done in the end, but we can get those made tonight. I'll try and find all the clothes stashed in about 15 different boxes ;) And unpack them all into the newly finished wardrobe and chests of drawers.

I can't believe my midwife appointment is TOMORROW! I'm so excited. :) And so pleased Jonathan has the afternoon off work. His company writes computer games (usually for the PC - right now anyway, but he's worked on Xbox and PS games too) and they have "milestone weeks" which I THINK this week is... meaning they have to make sure they've completed certain things by the end of the week, so having time off during those weeks can be a bit of a pain. The latest game that got finished that he worked on was Hospital Tycoon, but he's worked on quite a lot of games. It's quite funny, I get to hear funny stories about how the game testers try to break the game so Jonathan and the other programmers can try and fix the bugs. One example for Hospital Tycoon was that apparently, it was possible for the game to crash while a patient was being sick and slipping on something at the same time :D But they fixed that one hehe.

Um right, diversing again. Oh yes! I had another pregnancy symptom yesterday morning! It was the MOST bizarre feeling I've had to date. One of my nipples (just one, not both, strangely enough) started tingling like MAD! It felt sooo weird! But so great - like YAY I'm pregnant! I can't WAIT til I start feeling my little babe moving around inside me. And I can't WAIT til the first scan! Only 4-5 weeks now! :D