as first time parents

“You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice”.

After Thomas’ traumatic entrance into the world, he spent his first night in the world away from me, in the neonatal unit. This was incredibly hard, I was downstairs on the ward recovering myself and I really struggled. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, being apart from my baby, who I waited so long for. That night lasted forever, I could hear the mum’s and the other babies. I kept waking in the night, thinking I could hear him crying and I couldn’t find my baby. But it was the other babies. I could hear them comforting their babies and I knew my baby was upstairs and I couldn’t comfort him. This hurts my heart to think about even now.

What’s in mine?

“Labour is the only blind date, where you know you’ll meet the love of your life”.

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this for quite a while. I started writing my hospital bag list quite a while a go, and was pretty much packed by around 32 weeks pregnant. However, I kept getting things out, adding things to it and pretty much just rearranging it for the last few weeks. I have finally finished, zipped it up and it’s ready to go. Thankfully… as i’m being induced tomorrow.

Test

1 in 4 women carry Group B Strep during pregnancy without knowing. Testing can make all the difference (Strepelle, 2018).

Before my friend fell pregnant, I had never heard of Group B Strep. I remember the sheer panic when she got a positive test result back. She was sure her baby was going to die or be incredibly poorly. Like myself, before falling pregnant, she had never heard about Group B Strep and didn’t understand much about it. Luckily she tested, she got her results, antibiotics were given and her baby was absolutely fine! I knew then, that when I fell pregnant, testing would be on my essential baby buys list! When I started to blog, I wanted to raise awareness of the importance of testing.

What’s in little mans?

What have I packed?…

I have been thinking about what to pack in my hospital bags for quite a while and I managed to find time to write yet another list! I decided I would pack my bag and baby’s bags separately.

The Big Stuff

So I decided to write another list…

Having your first baby is definitely daunting, it’s definitely exciting and your definitely going to end up with way too many things! Especially if you’re like me… I love a list and love going shopping.

no more cake

Look at all the food…I can’t eat…

Asides from my severe pelvic girdle pain, my pregnancy was going quite smoothly. At my first antenatal appointment (booking in appointment) I was considered a very low risk pregnancy and not at an increased risk of gestational diabetes (something I hadn’t heard of before). So that was that, or so I thought…

And First Movements

One last adventure for the two of us, before our new adventure begins…

It was coming up to our first wedding anniversary and we weren’t sure how we wanted to mark the occasion. I was in my second trimester, but feeling quite good, so we decided to book a baby moon! We thought it would be a lovely way to celebrate our first anniversary, spending some quality time the two of us before baby arrives.

The Second Trimester.

Suddenly, you were my everything!

The first trimester was hard and as I moved into the second trimester, I noticed a massive difference in how I was feeling. I felt more like me, the old, non pregnant me. In fact, apart from my lower back and hip aching at the end of a long day, I don’t think I had many symptoms at all, to start with.