Pregnancy after multiple miscarriage: we did it!
I fully expected to be penning a week 41 post today: instead I am writing this with our four day [...]
Pregnancy after multiple miscarriage: we’re technically full term
Week: 37 Waist: 41.5 inches (+ 1 inch) Feeling: Grumpy At 37 weeks – that’s technically full term – the trials and tribulations of pregnancy are catching up with me. It’s been another hormonal week thanks to Braxton Hicks making my evenings uncomfortable, hot flushes playing havoc with my sleep and the discovery of a lump on one of my boobs. I went to the doctor who found not one but three lumps, but because they are all roughly the same size and shape he’s ‘confident’ they’re enlarged milk glands and told me to keep an eye on them and come back if they get bigger, change shape or don’t disappear after breast feeding. I reported this information to my midwife, who helpfully told me she has a friend who found similar lumps while pregnant which turned out not to be enlarged milk ducts, and she had to have them removed. Why did she tell me this? Why why why? […]
Pregnancy after multiple miscarriage: we’re engaged!
Week: 34 Waist: 40 inches (+ 1.5 inches, possibly owing to engagement) Feeling: Nice and comfy It’s official: the baby’s head is engaged. The midwife confirmed the momentous milestone on Tuesday morning, but I already knew because I felt it happen last Friday. I cannot describe the relief – my whole bump has dropped a good inch or so, meaning I can breathe again, eat a whole meal again, I no longer have heartburn and my whole upper body feels free. I’m so much more comfortable – for now. The realisation this had happened sent me running to Boots for all the necessary for my hospital bag, which I’ve now started packing. It also reminded me how unglamorous the immediate aftermath of child birth is. Big pants, breast pads and super strong night-time pads (or ‘wadding for every orifice’ as Misery Guts helpfully called them) are now in a bag by the bedroom door, as are new born nappies and enough pound coins to feed the hospital car park for a day or so. […]
Aldi maternity clothes: you could get more than you bargained for
As a forces child I spent several years living in Germany, where our local supermarket was Aldi. I used to like going there because of the bins of totally non-supermarket and often pointless items, like watering cans in the shape of gnomes and solar sunflowers for the garden we didn’t have, which ran up the middle of the shop. As of next week those UK bins are now going to contain a ‘capsule’ collection of maternity and baby clothes, and I’ve been sent a few by way of sneak preview. There are dresses (£11.99, pictured), leggings (£6), tops (£9.99) and even a nappy changing bag (£14.99). The range is part of Aldi’s ‘specialbuys’ collection, which go in store every Thursday and Sunday and are only available while stocks last. It will be interesting to see how long these stocks last. […]
Placenta booties: what’s the big deal?
I fear I’ve opened a can of worms. Yesterday a feature I wrote for The Sun newspaper about mums who made unusual keepsakes following the birth of their babies was published online, and as I write there are currently 142 comments on the story on The Sun’s Facebook page. Mainly bad ones. The main objection seems to be to taxidermy artist Alison Brierley who – quite naturally given she’s a taxidermist – made two pairs of baby booties out of the skin of her placenta (pictured, lit up by LED lights). Then there’s young mum Emily Jackson who discovered she loved breast feeding so much she had some of her milk solidified and set into a silver pendant to remind her of the experience forever. Comments range from the mild ‘yuck’ to ‘how sick’ to ‘they must be weirdos and freaks’. What’s the big deal? […]
Poor Michelle Heaton…
There’s a line I never thought I’d write. This week the pop star, who had a double mastectomy in 2012 when she discovered she was a carrier of the mutated BRCA2 gene and had an 80% chance of developing breast cancer, revealed she was in tears just hours after taking her new born son home because he was rooting for her breasts but of course she was unable to breast feed him. As a mum who loved every moment of breast feeding I can’t imagine what this must have felt like, watching a tiny mouth desperate to latch on but being physically unable to give him what he was so naturally searching for. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the star was then blasted for not breast feeding her baby and ‘promoting’ bottle feeding by an (ignorant) Twitter follower after she tweeted a picture of a bottle sterilizer she had received as a gift from Tommee Tippee. […]
Happy Birthday crummy mummy!
It’s official: confessions of a crummy mummy is one today and I’ve been blogging for a whole year (if anyone fancies sending me some cake, or better still, some champers, please feel free). A lot can happen in a year, as a quick flick through the archives has revealed: Twelve months ago today, in my very first post, I declared time on the milk bar and began a five month task of giving up breastfeeding. This was surprisingly straightforward and culminated in me mourning the process far more than BB, which I recorded for posterity by composing my first poem since my schooldays – An Ode to BB. There have been funny times, like the day BB woke from a nap having fashioned an exquisite bouffant while sleeping. […]
Boobie Beanie: a breast feeding mum’s must-have
Yes you did read correctly. This is a Boobie Beanie, aka a breast feeding hat, designed – you guessed it – with boobies in mind. If you’ve ever wanted to stick two fingers up to the person (there’s always one) who insists on having a good look when you need to breast feed in public then one of these on the baby’s head is the way to do it. […]
Breastfeeding: the aftermath
I know I promised not to write anymore on the subject, but circumstances have conspired to induce me to take to my laptop once again. It’s now been five months since I stopped breastfeeding BB, and in those months I have felt so under the weather that I hardly remember what it’s like to feel on top of it. It started with an eye infection which took three GPs to diagnose correctly, quickly followed by an ear infection requiring two separate courses of antibiotics. Then there was a tummy bug which lasted a full 4 weeks, forcing me to cancel social events and sending me to bed, twice. Oh, and then there was a nasty mouth ulcer. At first I put the feeling of general malaise down to the ‘fug’ of new motherhood, broken nights that lasted more than a year and running around after a toddler. But surely the fug oughtn’t to last two years. And, on reflection, feeling like I’ve been knocked over the head with a cricket bat by mid afternoon every day isn’t quite right either. […]
Go Myleene, that’s what I say
Poor Myleene Klass. As if your husband walking out on you after 6 months of marriage wasn’t bad enough, the singer cum TV presenter cum model is now being accused of attention seeking by revealing she encouraged family and friends to taste her breast milk. Whether she was courting attention or not – isn’t that the job of a sleb? – I don’t see why she’s come under such fire. How is drinking milk produced from a fellow human’s nipple any ‘weirder’ than drinking milk produced from a cow’s udder? At least it’s from the same species. And I don’t buy the public ‘outcry’ either. I think there’s a lot of ye doth protest too much going on. According to a study published in the Sunday Times in 2005, researchers found that one third of fathers had tasted their other half’s breast milk, and it was ‘fairly common’ for the dads to drink it not just once, but often. […]
Blogging: The story I never knew I’d written
Are ‘sharents’ – parents who blog, tweet and post pictures about all aspects of their children’s lives – doing their children harm by crossing the boundaries between public and private life? That was the loaded question posed in the family section of last Saturday’s Guardian, and it’s an interesting one. When I started blogging five months ago I didn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, and the concept of uploading photographs online on a weekly basis was a new concept to me. Now I can’t begin to count the number of pictures of BB that must be floating in around cyberspace. And therein lies an important point: I have never once used her real name – she has intentionally always been referred to as BB – and having googled her name on its own and alongside both mine and Misery Guts’, I am pleased to see that aged 21 months she has no digital footprint at all. […]
The benefits of giving up breast feeding
On Monday it was 20 months, 27 days and approximately 6 hours since I started breast feeding BB. Today it’s 5 days and approximately 18 hours since I stopped. It already seems like a lifetime ago. For her, I think it really is. After joining the library and taking out a book only to be read at bedtime – previously her longest feed of the day – and buying a Special Cup from which milk is only to be drunk at story time, just a week in she has already stopped asking for my milk and started asking for her book and cup instead. I never dreamed it would be this easy. To be honest, I’m even a tiny bit disappointed it has been this easy. But there are also upsides I hadn’t considered. 1) We have gained a good two extra hours in the day time. […]
Mammaries are made of this
An Ode to BB It’s been 21 months since you first latched on I can hardly believe how big you’ve become. For the first six months you drank my milk alone Sucking and slurping you were right at home. ♦ There was so much milk it would roll down your chin And collect in your neck in the folds of your skin. Daddy used to say we could open a factory for cheese Because by bath time it had congealed and resembled a nasty disease. […]
The last supper
So that’s it. After 20 months, 27 days and approximately 6 hours, last night BB had her last ever breast feed. As of bed time this evening, Misery Guts will offer her cow’s milk from a Special Cup instead. I won’t be there – I shall make myself scarce – because mummy = booby. It’s not days one or two that worry me, it’s on day three plus that I suspect things will get tricky. But we shall see. The last week, in which we cut out day time feeds completely, couldn’t have gone any better. By day four she was asking for milk pretty much on the hour, but was easily diverted, and while there were a few tears, these quickly dried up if orange juice was on offer instead. […]
It’s no use crying over spilt milk
Who thought giving up breast feeding would be so hard? Not me. I thought, if you let things roll, that babies just ‘gave up’ or grew out of it of their own accord. Silly me. I don’t think BB will ever grow out of it if left to her own devices. So after two days in which no breast milk was consumed owing to the fact Misery Guts and I were away, giving up breast feeding has (once again) started in earnest. Having read absolutely nothing on the matter or furnished myself with any kind advice, in a bid to avoid the dreaded mastitis or engorgement we’re going for a week of bed time feeds only, followed by a week of dropping those too. Is this the right way to go about it? Is this approach too hasty? Will it work? I haven’t the faintest. […]
