Quarterly updates now, is it?

[syleth]

Still here! I'm having a quiet day in Cork, mainly lounging around in bed and enjoying our lovely hotel, while my husband brings home bacon (or lettuce). So...let's do 4 months in bullet points...

I'm in Ireland for two weeks, mainly staying with my parents. I've been spoilt, fed and generally kept like one of those Kobe steak cows. I feel very rested, very loved and very relaxed.

I got my degree! I went to my conferring ceremony earlier this month with my closest family and it was great! I guess I had thought that being OU, it would be less classically formal but it had just the right amount of pomp and ceremony. I'd post some photos but they're all pretty dreadful!

I have the greatest husband ever. We celebrated 4 glorious years married with a lovely meal in a gastropub somewhere in Sussex. We're just incredibly happy - he makes me what I am (on my good days!)

I had visitors to the house - it's strangely easier to lure people over when you have a house near the seaside, compared to a flat near Staines. luddism and Jo have been down, Maria's been over twice and we had a mini-barbeque a few weeks go to celebrate our new washing machine. Have to admit it's lovely having the space and the extra bedroom for visitors.

I went to Romania for work - a return visit to the same crowd in Transylvania that I went to last year. Despite being a bit tired and not being able to have a drink, the evenings were great fun (lots of discussions with amusingly tipsy people) as well as the days being quite productive.

I walked a llama. Maria and I chose the wettest day of the year to take some llamas out for a walk from a nearby llama and alpaca farm/sanctuary. They were lovely (although mad for carrots!) but I was wearing the least grippy shoes you could imagine and it was more like llama-lead mud-skiing at times. But still great fun.

We did little which you could call cultural. I think we went to the cinema three times (King's Speech (great), Paul (Well, it's no Shawn), Thor (oh dear))

Tackled the garden eventually - it's still looking quite unloved, but less like a jungle

Didn't buy the iPad2, despite it being gorgeous

Travelled to London a few times, to see friends and lucidestiny's family mainly, but didn't get to Ireland as much as usual. When I did travel home in January, it was for my Dad's birthday (which was pretty epic as we had lots of the family over). Hence have seen noone in ages.

I met some nice people for the first time

Worked - the less said the better

Felt a lot of sadness for some friends, both close and far away, who are going through a lot of grieving and worry. Why aren't there more words to soothe and more acts of kindness to help?

And, in parallel to all that, I'm now just over 7 months pregnant...

In the last six weeks or so, I've "blossomed" (i.e. I'm now officially enormous). It's a combination of genuine baby growth and enormous eating here in Ireland, as well as a bit of a slowdown in activity due to enormous girth. I'm essentially a huge bump with legs. Thanks to Peacocks, I have a new wardrobe of blue jeans with the enormous "pregnancy band" (which is much better than low-slung items) and lots of stripy tops - apparently thin horizontal stripes are the number 1 choice of ladies in my condition. To be honest, the big bump makes the rest of me look very proportioned, which is nice. I have the good shiny hair and glowing skin, probably because I have been eating tons of veggies and fruit.

In general, I feel great, although I'm beginning to slow down now. I have very little nausea now, which is a relief, and only get the dreaded heartburn if I eat very late at night. My internal organs are getting all squished up in my lungs now - my appetite is much reduced so I graze quite a lot. I have developed the pregnant-lady waddle (particularly if I'm tired) and I now walk at about 50% of my normal speed. I wouldn't take me treking through the Andies right at the moment.

I have a midwife - isn't that mad! I see her every few weeks and she says generally great things about my iron levels. All the tests to date have come back fine, even the dreaded glucose test (do you know how horrible it is to drink half a litre of Lucozade at 7am and then not be able to go to the bathroom for two hours!). She won't be with me at the big push, it'll be the midwives in the hospital. I did get into the hospital a few weeks ago for some baby monitoring (just checking the heartbeat) - it seems to be quiet and full of useful people. I think I get another visit closer to the day.

I'm doing a bit of pregnancy yoga, which is a lovely thing to do. It's strange to now be one of the big bumps, having been the smallest bump when I started. Most of those early classes have graduated happily to motherhood... which is a lovely thought in itself. Anyway, all the breathing is very useful and the stretching and positions stop me from seizing up altogether.

People are just lovely to me. I barely have to carry my own coat, hotels upgrade me on site and people on public transport are falling over themselves to offer me their seat. To help with that last bit, I have a badge from London Underground which pronounces quite vividly that I have a "Baby on Board". I've never asked anyone to stand up, but there's usually someone (usually middle-aged women) in the carriage who leaps up from their seat and ushers me to sitting down, at which point unobservant younger people notice the commotion and then offer their seat. I don't feel guilty about it any more, but I have vowed that, in future, I'll be more vigilant about looking out for women in my circumstance.

I'm a bit emotional, as is to be expected with all these hormones flooding through me. I usually keep it together in public or in work, but at home or in the car, I'm likely to burst into tears at TV adverts or music on the radio, or at sad news or thinking about sad things. Despite the floods of the tears and the wailing, I know in myself that I'm not depressed - I'm quite happy in myself and very excited about what's to come - although the poor child will probably be drowned in her mother's tears.

But enough about me....

We think the little person inside me is a "she". I say "think" because they can't say for definite, but during the second scan at 20 weeks, they took a good hard look and found nothing that would suggest it was a "he". I was seriously surprised, because I'd always had a "sneaking suspicion" that it was a little boy. So much for mother's instinct.

She's either a kung-fu master or a cheerleader. I can't believe how active she is. Usually it's at moments which are a combination of (a) having had something to eat (b) being relaxed (c) sitting on the sofa or lying down (d) being somewhere quiet - so reading a book in the evening on my bed triggers lots of kicks and punches. The kicks are harder, but the punches are more frenetic. Occasionally she rolls over or does a big stretch and limb-reorg, at which point I look like I'm about to split open.

According to the books, she's about 3.5 - 4 pounds at the moment (32 weeks), and about 18 inches head to toe. She's actually upside-down now (according to midwife) which is great because (a) it's good for brain development at this stage (b) if she stays put, she'll be in the right position for birth. However she may well move.

She likes when her daddy talks to her, which he does all the time. When she's very kicky, she'll calm down if you put your hands on the spot she's kicking. They say I should feel her hiccup or jump at a loud noise, but I've yet to notice that....

In terms of preparations...

She has a whole room now dedicated to her - we've been doing lots of shopping and we've got lots of great gifts already. There's only a few things still to get, but it's all stuff that could be picked up from Tescos if needed. The bag for the hospital is more or less ready - whether mother-to-be is as ready is another thing.

My anti-natal classes are later in May - a bit late, but we moved it so we could get to a wedding. I've read a few different books (I've moved onto "what baby is like" books, rather than "what pregnancy is like" books) and stayed away for the forums on the internet (my experience from the wedding is that the forums are often taken over by slightly attention-mad women who say alarming things, which cause you to unnecessarily re-think my plans).

I have a birth plan but I'm open to suggestion from the professionals if there's a need to go another direction.

I'm finishing work on the 3rd June. I think that's 23 days of work left, between bank holidays and all that. Oh god, I can't wait. It's a bit nerve-wracking because I don't yet have my replacement and it's not clear whether anyone will be in place before I go (probably not, realistically). From the 6th June, I'm on a week's holidays and then my maternity kicks in the following week. At that stage, my sister is coming to stay for the last week, to make sure I'm resting and not up ladders or on the blackberry!

So, that's it then. Exciting or what!