Errr...

I thought we were keeping this a secret until week 12?

Week 7 : A trying weekend...

This weekend was hard. Morning sickness has really settled in now and Wednesday evening, John's nephew Ryan came to stay with us for a long weekend. He has behaviour problems that I normally cope with fairly easily but fatigue, sickness and mood swings meant I found this weekend very fraught. What is worse, we don't want to tell the kids just yet as they aren't exactly known for their abilty to keep a secret, so I couldn't explain and just had to tell him I had a stomach bug.

To add insult to injury, the weather had been really hot recently and I have found that if I get at all warm, that is when I start to throw up so I really couldn't go out of the house very easily and had to have the air conditioning, which we got to cool down the dog, on almost all the time and have cold baths.

Ryan has the attention span of a typical teenager so needed to be entertained and normally I would do loads of out-and-about type stuff with him so I needed to find stuff to entertain him until John was home at the weekend.

On thursday, luckily he slept late as I was out for the count, and then we played playstation demos while waiting for Kris. Annoyingly, he was really good at Ratchett and Clank and finished the demo completely (I had played it for about 3/4 hour, got about 2 foot into the game before dying each time) but luckily didn't have enough patience for the puzzle solving of the Star Wars Lego game or I may have had to strangle him.

Once Kris arrived, we headed for Toys R Us, the idea being to get Ryan something like an electronics kit that I could help him with to keep him occupied. However, having enjoyed the Ratchett and Clank game, Ryan was angling for that so we wandered round and eventually, to my suprise, he settled on a kitchen chemistry set. Unfortunately the set had instructions and things like beakers but none of the ingredients so we would need to go to the supermarket and pick up any bits I didn't already have.

First we nipped to Hobby craft. I had made Kris a crochet hat to celebrate end of exams and Cath had said she wanted one in pink. Kris doesn't crochet but, as the hats are just made of 5 granny squares, and so very easy to make, I was going to quickly teach her and then she could do it herself, so we bought a hook and some wool and got a free set of knitting needles with it. I was tempted to buy some more wool but as I have it coming out of my ears I managed to resist.

We then spend another £18 on ingredients for the kit and headed home. We were there about 10 minutes when John came home. I started to teach Kris how to crochet granny squares and Ryan watched TV. Kris had to run off to meet friends so we had tea and an early night.
Once John got home we popped out and got a DVD, both of them got annoyed with me as I insisted Ryan could not see anything that he was not old enough to watch and was strict about it. We watched the DVD and headed to bed again quite early - I was feeling yucky so needed it and Ryan was tired and is sleeping in the lounge, not giving us much choice once he headed to bed.

Next day again we both slept in late, had some breakfast around lunch time, and then set up to do some chemistry. We started in the lounge but soon concluded it would be too messy so decamped to the kitchen. I got a stool and told him that it was his experiments and I wouldn't interfere unless he neede me too. First we made salt dough, which took me back to my childhood - my mum used to make loads of it for us to play with instead of buying play dough. We then pushed it round the beaker to make a mountain and filled the beaker with a bicarb mxture to make a volcano. It wasn't very impressive so we shoved more bits in to make a bigger mess but Ryan was unsatisfied and wanted to watch tv instead!

I was feeling worse and worse but persuaded Ryan to at least dye the flowers we bought as a present for his Nan.

Once done he decided to have a nap so I watched Escape from Witch Mountain while he snoozed. I had promised that I would go to my mum's for a singstar evening in the morning and John insisted on driving me as he seems to think I will total the car the moment I get in it. He booked tickets for the new Batman film for him and Ryan and they would pick me up after. They headed off to get something to eat and then see the film but were back fairly early - John had booked tickets in our home cinema instead of the one near Mum's and was quite red faced as he hadn't realised. Instead Ryan and John went ice skating - again not the roaring sucess it should have been as t was "disco" night and John was the eldest there by about 15 -20 years and felt rather out of place. Still he soldiered on and Ryan enjoyed it and Johns bottom was only COMPLETELY soaked when he returned to pick me up.

On Saturday, I had booked John and Ryan into Go Ape - a rope course through the trees in Swinley Forest. I am terrified of heights so was quite glad that pregnant women were advised not to take part and instead took my camera to take photos of the boys. We were booked in for the 8.00 session so had to be up and at 'em early so it was still nice and cool under the trees. Ryan and John both did quite well and certainly enjoyed themselves, particularly on the zip wires.

By the time it was finished, it was quite hot so I was the lovely combination of queasy and hungry. We headed to an early lunch and then Ryan insisted he wanted to go swimming. We headed home for bathing suits but John couldn't find his so we nipped out and bought him a new pair, luckily for just £7. I was getting VERY hot and bothered now and didn't want to go swimming as I thought it was bound to be hot and humid and I would get worse and to add insult to injury, Ryan was insisting he had forgotten his goggles so had to buy some more (what is it with that family?! John is always whining about getting water in his eyes too). We finally got to the pool paid, Ryan tried on goggles and we went in. Even John remarked that when I got in I completely changed - the water was cool not hot and the atmosphere unsteamy - it was perfect. We pootled round enjoying ourselves and for the first time since morning sickness dug in its claws I felt perfectly fine. What is more, te two of us couldn't help but go all gooey eyed over babys having their first swim, Dad's teaching the kids to dive etc. I best bit was the section outside, which was really cool and fairly quiet and I could have stayed their for ages...

We eventually got out and, by the time we got to the car, I was feeling just as bad as I had been earlier but the little respite had improved my mood somewhat.

Next morning it was time for Ryan to go back - we had agreed that we would go to sunday lunch at his Mum's but I was feeling so yucky I sent them on their own and spent the day on the sofa with the air conditioning at full blast feeling sorry for myself. John was supposed to come home after lunch (we had originally agreed to leave the dogs at home as it was too hot to cart them around in the hot car) but then didn't arrive home until the evening but I was feeling so rubbish I didn't have the energy to object.

I spent most of Monday asleep, recuperating...

Week Four? : The next day

So we were VERY tired this morning as John had to go to work but we ended up doing another test (yup, still pregnant) and then chatting babies so that he headed off late. Getting to work, he had to explain why he was late to his boss and only managed "Yeah, about that..." before bursting into tears...

I have arranged a doctors appointment for Monday this morning and then spent the rest of the day pretending to work while my head goes "babybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybaby".

One thing I did during the day was work out my due date. It is calculated by couting 40 weeks from the date of your last period, not fromt he date of ovulation. This means that I am due on the 16th March so I am in week 4 of pregnancy. HOWEVER, my luteal phase (time between one period and the next) is only 24 rather than the average 28 days SO I ovulate 4 days earlier than standard so actually due on the 12th. This means I am just entering week five, so now I can have a look and find what stage Baby Juerss has reached. So I hit hundreds of websites - the best one I found is http://www.askbaby.com/, which seems to update your babys status twice a week.

So askbaby.com says :

You
This week you will be able to take a pregnancy test. You may know you are pregnant if you have done an early test, but will probably not be experiencing morning sickness yet. However you may notice other signs of pregnancy such as changes to your sense of smell. A plug of mucus has sealed your cervix.Your babyBy week five your baby's brain and the rest of the nervous system have started to develop.

Your baby is gently floating in amniotic fluid. The nose, eyes and hands are forming and basic hand 'plates' are present. The heart is now beating strongly at twice your own rate. Blood vessels have formed and a tiny umbilical cord has connected itself to the rapidly developing placenta. Your baby measures around the length of a grain of rice.

According to the picture, it looks like a giant blob...

I had a quick nap finally at about 4 ish and was still asleep when John got home - I was in a fog for pretty much the whole time. It was around this time that I realised "Mummy knows best", "You can't do/say that to a Mummy" and "Good Daddy's don't do that" could be used to me full advantage now and proceeded to make John's life HELL!

After talking we decided to only tell our parents and my sister for the time being, just in case, as John kept on coming up with frightening statistics on miscarriage in the first 3 months. We decided to go see both sets of parents at the weekend and of course Mum promptly phoned for an hours chat and I spent the whole time BITING my lip to stop screaming my news.

Probably a tad premature, but we spent the evening talking baby names and came up with a huge list for girls but only 2 for boys. We have also decided to put off finding out the sex of the baby until it pops out so it is going to make knitting and crochet (i have already started looking for patterns) a lot harder...

Anyone notice the whole world change?

It started off as a quiet night. John was upstairs doing some bits on the computer so I could get on with work the next day, I was watching TV and surfing the web. *DING* a message from upstairs, filled with love and romance "Do you want to snuggle in bed and watch question time?"

Hmmmm... a toughie that one as I LOATHE question time but can't resist a cuddle... I finally agree and head upstairs and get ready for bed. As I was sat on the loo, it occured to me that my period hadn't started today as it should so I suppose I could do a quick pregnancy test. We had been trying for over a year and had had many false alarms, missed periods where I couldn't bear to do the test in case I jinxed it. Eventually after a couple of days my period would turn up or I would eventually take the test and hopes would be dashed. Did I even have any spare tests, should I bother? After all, it was highly unlikely this month - we time when I was ovulating was the weekend of my cousins wedding which surely would have been a romantic "sex-me-up" type occasion where it not for the fact that John and I were sharing a room with my sister... Buuuutttt it would mean missing the first few minutes of Question time.... I rummaged through the cupboards to find the last one, lurking at the back, peed on the damn thing and carried on getting ready for bed.

I almost didn't bother checking the test before heading to bed but when I did I yelped and dived for the instructions (I hadn't bothered looking at them before -what was the point?). WHAT THE HELL DID CROSS MEAN?! Was it a cross to say sorry you did it wrong again this month or a plus to say you were 1 plus another now?! Damn it, I seem to have lost the ability to read!

I have always planned that, when I found out I was pregnant, I would be calm, not tell John immediately, go to the doctors to confirm it and then find some romantic way to break the news to him. What ACTUALLY happened is I ran screaming and naked as the day I was born into the bedroom garbling something like "Don't get too excited cos its early days yet and I may have done it wrong but LOOOK!!!" at a pitch that had dogs for miles around perking their ears up in interest.

John's immeadiate response was to make me go get the instructions and verify that I did it right and read it right. Typical bleeding man! He then wants to know if they can provide false positives and my response is "Of course they can but only a tiny percentage". So OF COURSE that tiny percentage must be us, right?! So after a little debate, we headed off to the nearest 24 hour supermarket to buy another test. But why stop at one? We came home with three, but not before sitting in the car park eating sarnies and me drinking as much as possible so I would be able to pee again when we got home.

This time, John insisted on doing the test himself as I OBVIOUSLY could not be trusted with such things as I hadn't kept an eye on the time and just checked when I was ready for bed and it (after he hid it for the full 3 minutes so I couldn't see) confirmed the first test. Of course, it was now no longer late night and instead early morning and we were both knackered but it took quite some time and frenzied giggling and tears beofre we calmed down enough to go to sleep...

So basically, it was an evening of thrills, spills and lots of tears, but lets not loose sight of the real issue here - I DIDN'T HAVE TO WATCH QUESTION TIME!!!!