Month: July 2015

Week 12 is here and its the most exciting update to date and we exit the first trimester!

We traveled back from an amazing holiday in Cyprus on Sunday with the excitement of a scan waiting for us when we got back on the Monday.

This brought with it 2 great things, 1. the chance for us to officially see “bean” as we have christened him/her and 2. the freedom to start telling our friends the good news.

The 12 Week Scan

So on Monday it came.  The scan.  The moment we have been waiting for ever since the urine soaked stick was first wafted in my face!

We arrived at the hospital with a mix of nervousness & excitement and reported in to the Maternity Services department.  Sat around me in the waiting room were 6 other couples all eagerly awaiting their turn.

When we went into the room for our amazing moment I couldn’t help but become fascinated by the fact that there was a Dyson bladeless fan on the desk.  It was amazing, almost silent and yet the breeze it kicked off was incredible.  How can the NHS afford such tech….anyway I digress dangerously away.

The scan itself was the most incredible experience of my life.

First bit of news – “There is definitely only 1” – thank god for that, whilst it would be nice in theory to get our preferred quota of 2 in 1 go im not sure my nerves or bank balance could really cope.  Maybe the old wives tails about twins running in the family really are just a load of old tosh!

The radiographer did have some trouble getting the little blighter into the right position in order to get the measurements that she needed.  It turns out that even at aged -6months he/she has the stubbornness of it’s mother.  What followed next was my wifes single happiest instruction from a member of the medical profession…. “have a walk down to the shop and get yourself a chocolate bar, we need to wake little baby up” …. her eyes lit up.

After our recess we got back in and got to experience our first look at the babies heartbeat.  I almost melted.  People have asked me if I cried.  I didn’t but it seeing its heartbeat made mine go mental.

Here are some of the scan pictures – I may as well share them with you as I have been showing pretty much everyone I have seen in the last 4 days

      

I know they probably look like everyone elses scan pictures but to me they are just mind blowing.  I, sorry, we made that.  The fruit of our loins and all that.  The miracle of life!  What is amazing is that bean is only 5cms long but is already pretty much fully formed and even has teeth.

The good news is that so far so good.   Everything looks fine, nothing that makes anyone in a white coat nervous.  The only bad thing is that due to our slightly older age (33 & 32) we were offered the Nuchal translucency (NT) scan for Downs Syndrome which means a nervous wait on the horizon.  So along with measuring the fluid at the neck we had to go to another room for some blood tests (where there was another Dyson Fan….).  These are then combined with the OH height and weight and we have a nervous wait to see if we are considered a high risk or a low risk.  The painful part is that we are at the mercy of the NHS’s ‘no news is good news’ which means we have 7 working days to wait for a call to invite us back for more tests as we are considered high risk.  If we don’t then statistically we should be fine.  As I write this we are 4 days into the wait.  Fingers crossed.

The announcement

High on the news of the scan going well we decided that the time had come to break the news.  Suddenly a new weight fell on our shoulders… how should we do it.

Facebook.  Everyone does it on there so why don’t we?  We had told our family and close friends in person so decided to go with the message below:

It also meant that we got to buy our first bit of baby clothing (Im sure this will be filled with many more in the future).  Man they are cute little shoes.  Can’t wait to start buying more of these.

Anyway, that will do for now.  Enough of my rambling.

 

What I learned this week

1.  Never call your pregnant wife “chubbs” – no matter how much of a term of endearment it is meant to be.
2.  Trimester is a real word and there are 3 of them and being at the end of the first one is good!
3.  The NHS have amazing fan tech.
4.  Announcing a baby on Facebook is the best way of getting likes!

A slight delay this week as I am currently enjoying the delights of Cyprus. I’m writing this from the comforts of a sun lounger just outside of Coral Bay…. (check out
http://www.simosvillas.com).  We are on a long planned family holiday with the parents and brother & Mrs

So this week has been another quiet one whilst we wait for the scan in just under a week.  Nothing to report in the week just gone.

The main struggle this week has been and will continue to be the heat and the wife not being allowed to consume any alcohol!  I’m making up for the 2 of us though taking one (2 and 3) Keos for the team.

Time away is proving light relief from work and the stresses of planning for a family.

Next weeks should be a more thorough and interesting blog so I will sign off for now and get back to my beer!

Another week down and we get to the end of week 10.  Not too much has happened this week so I fear this may be a relatively short and potentially boring one.  Not heard anything following the blood tests, which is supposed to be a good thing, so yay!  We have now also got the date of the 1st scan which is a week on Monday.  Exciting times ahead.

No appointments or anything official this week, mainly just avoiding the growing mood changes which seem to be more frequent already.  I’m told these die down a bit in the 2nd phase, sorry trimester, so fingers crossed.

What I did do this week is try to download some apps for dads, but to be honest there aren’t actually any that are very good and none for the UK specifically.  If I knew what to do I would say that there is a huge niche there for someone to own.  I did download some of the ones for mothers to be which have proved insightful!  I now know that bean (as we are calling him) is the size of a grape and has teeth! A little freaky!  It also told me that my uterus would start to affect my moods and my nipples will start to get tender – they feel normal at the moment.

I also decided it was time to actually read up and learn what I have got me and the other half into so I bought what looks like a cracking book called “Pregnancy for Men” by Mark Woods.   I’m on Holiday next week so Ill get that read and can report back.  These posts might actually become a bit more insightful and interesting too.  This is the book (not an affiliate link, just for reference).

We had a wander around Mothercare yesterday too just to for a browse.  Shit me things are expensive.  Saw a pram that was £950 and from what I could see the only difference from the “cheaper” ones was that it seemed to come with a tiny adjustable umbrella.  I definitely think that I could modify one of those tiny trolleys and we would be sorted.

 

What I learned this week

1. A pregnant woman eats what she wants, when she wants.  There will be no input from husband, regardless of whether he means well or not.
2. Pregnancy shorts are really comfy to wear – Joey Tribiani was right!
3. We need to start saving more…
4. Battlefield 4 is better than CoD!