Code name: bump - thoughts and ramblings of a hopeful father to be

She's all grown up now...

2009-02-08T15:45:00.001Z

Earlier this morning, the dried up remnant of her umbilical cord fell off, and it looks to be healing very nicely.

The world's cutest baby girl

2009-02-08T15:42:00.003Z

This photo was taken when she was around 11 hours old... isn't she the cutemost, ever?

The birth of little Anneli

2009-02-08T15:41:00.001Z

We’d moved to our new home, in Onsala, just south of Göteborg (Gothenburg) in my native Sweden, at the end of December 2008. We were expecting a baby, of unknown gender, around the 13th of February.

Having recently moved, everything is upside down at the moment, and the shipment with all our belongings had just arrived from London on the 23rd of January, so we were in the middle of unpacking, thinking that we’d have plenty of time to get our stuff in order before becoming parents. Everyone knows that first born babies are always two weeks late, right?

Shortly after 9, on the evening of Sunday the 1st of February, I was in the basement, having just carried down an old hi fi system, to make room for the one that had just arrived from London. I heard the voice of my wife from upstairs, and although I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I could tell from the tone of her voice that something was going on, and thought at first that maybe she’d banged her toe into something again, so I ran up to see what I could do to help.

“Baby, my water just broke”

What? Really? Are we going to be parents already? (well, I’ve no idea what I said, but those were some of the thoughts going through my head)

I felt excited, nervous, happy, scared, and ran up to her, giggling to myself. There wasn’t really any doubt, but I still asked her if she was sure, then if the water looked clear, and if she felt anything else.

The water was all clear, so no cause for concern, and we decided she would have a quick shower, and then we’d call the hospital for guidance. We called the hospital around 21:20, and they said that if she wasn’t having any contractions, then there’s no hurry, but they did want us to come in the next morning for a check-up. Pretty much the second that we hung up, the contractions started, and they were regular from the first one. Not painful, but she could feel that something was going on. We started keeping track of the contractions (in a spreadsheet, obviously), and they were 4-6 minutes apart and lasted for about a minute and a half. A bit later, we called the hospital again, and they said that we could come in if we wanted to. If she wasn’t actually in labour yet, then we could still spend the night there, to see how it would progress. We didn’t hesitate to take them up on the offer, since the regular contractions and the speed at which things were happening suggested that it might not be long, and I really didn’t want to take the risk of having to drive down to Varberg (over 50 km, or 30 miles) in the middle of the night, sleep deprived, especially if my wife was then in serious pain and with chance of the baby being delivered any second.

We started to leisurely prepare to go, thinking that we’d wait for the dishwasher to finish before leaving. After a while of running back and forward getting packed, contractions started getting stronger and more regular, so we decided to stop faffing, and just get going. As I was carrying stuff down to the car, I realised that the rear seats were still in the house, from when we were lugging around dishwashers and fridge/freezers, so we had a bit more delay while I was trying to get the seats back, in the dark, whilst feeling sorry for my poor wife who was waiting to get going.

Eventually, we got going, and after a careful drive (I don’t think I’ve spent that long sticking to speed limits since my driving test), we arrived at the hospital a couple of minutes past midnight. During the last five or ten minutes of the drive, she was starting to get quite uncomfortable in the car seat during the contractions, as they were getting stronger and stronger. We parked in one of the three delivery suite parking bays, and navigated the labyrinths that take you from the A&E entrance and up to the delivery suite. After ringing the bell a few times, we were let in, greeted by the same midwife who took our phone call, and showed to one of the delivery rooms.

We were told that she would check the baby’s position, then health, and then do an internal exam to see how the labour was progressing. The first task was to check that the baby was head down, and since she wasn’t 100% sure, she did an ultrasound scan, and could see that the head was engaged, and that everything looked fine. We then had two devices strapped on to the belly, one to measure the contractions, and one to measure the baby’s heart beat , both plugged in to the same monitoring station, showing graphs of the two together, so that they could see that the baby was handling the stress of the contractions. This apparently needed to be plugged in for half an hour to give a good picture of what was going on, which gave me an impression that there was more focus on playing with electronics than the task at hand – delivering a baby. Yeah, I might be an IT and technology geek, but I’m also a sceptic, and believe very strongly in keeping it simple (some would say I’m lazy, but they don’t understand). I knew that the midwife was experienced and that we could trust her, but felt that the focus on the machines was stressing me a bit, so I tried to ignore the electronics. After all, it was my wife who was about to deliver a baby, and humans, as well as all other animals, have done this for squillions of years, without advanced machinery. Yes, it’s good to have medical backup if it’s needed, but we’d both rather avoid unnecessary interventions. Anyhow, after a bit of faffing, the midwife was happy enough with the pretty graphs, and went on to the internal exam. She informed us that my wife was indeed in active labour, and dilated 4 cm. I wasn’t surprised, but very pleased. The midwife suggested that we try going into the shower, as the warm water tends to help relieve pain, and so we did. We stayed in the shower for a while, then came out, and got back onto the bed. It’s all a bit of a blur, but both the nurse and the midwife stopped by a few more times, at some point I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee, we had some cakes that my wife had baked, and then the contractions started getting quite painful.

The average speed for a first time mother is to dilate approximately 1 centimetre per hour, and it’s not uncommon for labour to last for 24 hours before being fully dilated and starting to push. I remember at some point thinking that if this was to go on for 24 hours, it really would be one hell of an ordeal, because it was so intense. I was also expecting the famous “transition”, which is around 7-8 centimetres, which is when the woman tends to want to give up. “Screw this, I don’t want a baby, I’m going home” or “I don’t want a baby, we’ll have puppy instead”.

At around 3 am (not that I had the presence of mind to look at any of the clocks in the room until a few moments later), the midwife came back into the room and said she would do another internal exam to see how things were progressing. I remember mentioning that my wife had thrown up earlier, which typically happens at transition, and asking if she thought it was possible that she had progressed this far already. The midwife said that it’s not uncommon to throw up from the pain, and that that was probably what had happened. I was totally in disbelief when the midwife proclaimed that my wife was fully dilated, 10 cm – when she said that “you can just follow your body now”, it didn’t even register that what she was saying was that she could start pushing. Ten centimetres? Already? But it’s only been half an hour since it was four? It’s been two hours? Really? What time is it? Yes, between 1am and 3am she’d gone from four cm to ten cm, so things were really moving along quite fast.

I can’t remember what position my wife was in, but she got on all fours, which is a good position for pushing, since gravity can help. The midwife and I saw on the screen that the baby’s heart beat went down slightly, and the midwife asked her to change positions, and the pulse went up again. She said that since it was the first time, pushing would normally take one to two hours. The nurse came into the room, and they started preparing all the stuff that they needed for the delivery, while I tried to do what I could to be there for my wife. The weekend before, we’d been to a Profylax (pain management / breathing exercise) course, and I was trying to support my wife by breathing with her, listening to the advice from the midwife, and making sure that she was breathing deep and slowly enough. In a way, I felt like I wasn’t of much use, but at the same time, I could see that my wife was handling it all very well, and probably only needed to know that I was there by her side. After a while of pushing, the midwife said that she could see the head, and I looked down to see what was going on. I could see something small, pale yellowish white, that didn’t look like I what I had expected from brand new life. Part of me worried, but at the same time, I knew that if anything was wrong, the midwife would have acted on it. More and more head started protruding, but I was still mostly looking at my wife’s face, since I wanted to share the moment with her. When the head fully emerged, and she started pushing out the rest of the body, I decided that I’d wait until my wife could see the baby, before I looked, since I didn’t want to cheat by looking first. The midwife then placed the baby on my wife’s chest, and I lifter her feet up and we could see that we had a little red, shaking, slimy baby daughter. The feeling was unreal, and again, the time immediately after delivery is a bit of a blur. I was so relieved that it had all gone so smoothly, without undue pain or difficulties, and so proud of my wife, who coped so well and stuck with her wishes to not be induced, and to not use any pain relief other than nitrous oxide (AKA laughing gas, or gas & air).

Like many other people, my “understanding” of childbirth was largely based on movies and TV – the water breaking during a shopping trip or in a taxi, everyone panicking, the father, who was somewhere else when it all started, is either getting stuck in traffic, caught for speeding on the way to the hospital, having an accident, turning up at the wrong hospital, or all of the above. The woman generally tends to be screaming at everyone, in particular the husband. As pregnancy progressed though, I realised that all this doesn’t have to be the case, that you generally get a fair bit of advance warning before the baby is suddenly born, and that it’s not generally a great big panic. We’ve been discussing what we wanted the birth to be like, and as my wife is a generally very relaxed and calm person, who doesn’t get herself worked up over things, it seemed likely that she’d probably stay calm during delivery, and not have a complete personality transplant. I was also fairly confident, and determined, that I myself, would also keep my cool, and be there for my wife, giving her someone to depend on. As the due date was getting closer, I was more and more confident that we’d have the type of birth that we wanted, and that everything would go well – I just couldn’t really have imagined that it would go so quickly – as a father, I really don’t believe it could have been any easier. I believe that my wife’s attitude, and her preparations, went a long way to ensure that the birth was such a pleasant experience for all of us.

A few days later (I’m writing this on Friday the 6th of February), I’m still overwhelmed by feelings, and the fact that I am a father still hasn’t sunk in. It’s just completely unbelievable that we’ve got such a perfect, beautiful little baby girl, and that my wife delivered her, just that way that she (and both of us) wanted. I am so lucky, and feel so thankful to life that it has all gone so well, I’ve really got everything I could ever wish for. Well, there’s a few cars, bikes, boats and other crap that would be neat to have, but compared to having a baby with my wonderful wife, I’m really not bothered about anything else.

I know perfectly well that we’re far from the first couple in the world to ever have a baby, but nevertheless feel uniquely privileged. I don’t think that anyone can understand how happy I am, and I just want to run out and tell the entire world. Every time I look at her, my heart just melts.

Better rarely than never?

2009-01-21T19:38:00.008Z

I'm still here, there's just SO much to do...

Before talking about the millions of projects we've got going on, I'll start with a few pictures.

So, back in the summer, we got the house:

There's a pile of trees and stuff in the foreground, from when I was clearing out the garden a bit back in the summer. The lawn is slowly turning in to a jungle...

As mentioned in a recent post, we also got ourselves a car (a blue one):

We're starting to get things in order, and this is what the lounge looks like, when it's not too messy... We've got ourselves one of those big, clever, flat television thingies, but we're still waiting for the big, clever sofa that we'll be lying on when watching it, and whenever we decide to sit down and relax, there's nothing on that we want to watch anyway :)

We've painted what is to become the baby room, and laid down some new floor that we picked up for free (well, nearly) from IKEA.

Once the new floor was down, we bought a cabinet/changing table...

The main project we've got going on at the moment is rebuilding the cleaning cupboard in the kitchen into a general-purpose kitchen cupboard, for all our pots and pans that will hopefully be arriving from London later this week. We're also waiting for a new dishwasher, so I've got a bit of a plumbing exercise in connecting that. There's been loads of little electrical things that I've needed to sort out, and a few that are still on the list, like adding some more lights and making the electrical installation in the carport a bit more permanent...

We've just started unpacking the stuff that we shipped back in August, and as I'd feared from seeing the look of the boxes (crushed and nearly coming apart), quite a few things are broken. Like all shipping companies, the company we used (Nova Transport) don't take any responsibility for their work, so there's no way that we can get any compensation from them, despite it being obvious that they've been negligent when handling our stuff.

On the baby front, we've been to see our midwife a few times now, and been to two antenatal classes (föräldragrupp). It's been quite good, and it's nice to meet some other soon-to-be parents in the area.

Wifelet has been having some trouble with her hands going numb, because of what is known as the carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by nerves getting compressed because of general pregnancy-related bloating. Not much fun, as it's making it difficult for her to do stuff with her hands, such as typing, knitting, or anything else involving hands and fingers.

On Friday and Saturday, we're going on a Profylax course - breathing techniques that are intended to relieve pain during labour and delivery. According to the midwife who holds the antenatal classes, it's very obvious in the labour wards what couples have been to one of these courses, and who hasn't. My parents went on one back in the seventies, and they've been reasonably common in Sweden since then, or so I've been led to believe...

This weekend, we had a (married) couple of architects over to look at the existing house as well as the garden and suroundings, so that they can draw some suggestions for the upcoming rebuild. It's going to be a very big project, and might simply be a case of knocking the existing house down and building a new one... it all feels slightly daunting right now, and I'm not too excited by the idea of packing all our stuff down again, having barely started to unpack...

Only four or so weeks to go now before little squirt arrives, and so many other little (and big) things to do, that we keep forgetting about it. I hope that most of the big things will be done, so we can forget about other crap, and just focus on the baby when that day comes...

This post is likely to be riddled with typos and other fat-finger issues... Because of issues with my laptop, I'm using my wife's one, which doesn't have the touchpad disabled. I really really f***ing hate touchpads. It's completely impossible to type on a laptop with a touchpad, since the pointer just keeps jumping around all over the place, and suddenly you're typing in a different part of the page. I've also got a sticky plaster on one of my fingers, having managed to cut myself on an unusually sharp kitchen worktop at IKEA today... I'll hopefully get the little pregnant one to proof read it later, since I can't be bothered to re-read it all right now....

Let's see if I manage another post before the baby photos start arriving :)

"It's so weird that we're going to have a baby..."

2009-01-06T21:29:00.002Z

And then she had a bit of a giggle attack...

Yeah, despite her now being really large, and quite clearly very pregnant, it still hasn't really sunk in.

We're having quite a hectic time, but I've just finished laying new floor in what will be the baby's bedroom tonight, and we're done with all the painting in the house, so it's starting to feel like we're making some progress.

I keep meaning to post a proper update, including some photos, and I should get around to doing so sometime this week.

We're here!

2008-12-22T20:05:00.004Z

We arrived on Friday night on schedule, picked up the rental car and drove to the house. It felt pretty unreal when we arrived (and it still does), driving the roads that are so familiar, but trying to remember that we're not just here on holiday, we've actually moved here now.

We've had quite a busy few days, since there's so much stuff to sort out - not just the Christmas shopping, but also getting things like wardrobe rails, towels, pyjamas, curtain rods... oh, and a car! (Aunt A, don't read the rest of this paragraph, as it's all blah, blah, car, blah, and you'll get bored ;-) ) As mentioned, we'd eyed one up before coming, and we went to buy it today, after looking it over and going for a quick test drive. It was in great condition as expected, and is a real pleasure to drive, although we haven't driven it much yet. The engine is really great, and although it's a heavier and a hell of a lot less powerful than the M3 was (it is a family estate after all, and it's not an RS6 or an M5), I think I'll be quite happy with it. It's "only" got 185/210 bhp (depending on if you run it on petrol or E85 ethanol), but thanks to the turbo, the torque is quite reasonable when you put your foot down, so it should be good enough now that I'm settling down as a family man. It's a very comfortable and luxurious feeling car to drive, and I'm actually quite looking forward to long drives up to Dalarna to see our family up there.

On Saturday evening, I started going through the letters and packages from Telia (the previously state owned telephone company), relating to the broadband connection that we were expecting to have installed sometime in mid-January... it turned out it was all ready to go, and as soon as I plugged in it all just worked... it's nice being in a country where stuff just works (well, apart from getting a mobile... more on that later). As Lou Reed said in the movie Smoke, "I get scared in places like Sweden, where everything just works". So, we've now got our ADSL connection, which is not great by Swedish standards, since we are in a fairly rural area, but it's still faster than any ADSL connection I've ever experienced. We've also got digital TV over the broadband connection, but we'll hold off buying an actual TV screen until the mellandagsrea (most shops in Sweden have sales between Christmas and the new year), and in a few days our phone line will be switched over to run over the broadband connection. All in all, it will cost us about the same as the BT phone + very poor ADSL connection that we had in London.

One thing that wasn't as straightforward as I thought was to get ourselves new mobiles... Since I'm still not registered as a resident, it seems that credit checks just fail, and most companies aren't clever enough to let their staff use a bit of common sense. We could prove to them that we don't have a mortgage on our house, which does suggest that our finances are mostly in order... they can also check with our bank to see that we've got enough money to probably pay for the phones for about as long as mankind is likely to survive, but that doesn't help... One of the large mobile operators, 3, apparently won't talk to anyone who hasn't been a permanent resident for the last 6 months, regardless of their financial situation. That's lost them both of us as customers, as we were going to go with them, and they'll probably lose my mum as soon as her contract is up for renewal, since she wanted to be on the same network as us, for free inter-network calls. So, admittedly, not everything is perfect, even in Sweden...

The other night, the bump seemed to have another growth spurt - we'd just gone to bed on Saturday night, having enjoyed a nice steak with cream sauce (since we can get lactose free cream here, I can make cream sauces again, yay!!!), and both thought that the bump suddenly looked a lot bigger... it wasn't just gas, and it's stayed that way, so I guess the little squirt is still putting on weight.

This morning, before going to pick up the car, we went to Skatteverket (the Swedish tax authority) to register ourselves as residents. We caused a bit of confusion, for various reasons, including that Mrs Preggers' name change hadn't gone through here when we got married, but we hope that it's all going through, so that when it's all been processed, we'll both be entered in the population register as living at our new address, and Mrs Preggers will get her national ID number, so that she actually starts "existing" in this country. Without an ID number, you don't exist, and no companies or authorities know who you are...

On our shopping trip today, we got a Christmas tree foot, but since the boot was already filled up with the summer wheels (us Swedes tend to have one set of wheels for the summer tyres, and one for the winter tyre), there was just no chance of stuffing a tree in there, and we'll have to get one tomorrow. We even bought a tarpaulin so that it won't make the inside of the new shiny car all grubby :)

There's still so much stuff to do around the house, and before doing much else, we really need to paint the two small bedrooms. We haven't even unpacked most of the stuff that we shipped back in August yet, except for one box with a few CDs, before I realised that the broadband was active, and that we've got all the music we could ever need on the Interwebs.

It's getting late, so it's time for some rooibos and an episode of Desperate Housewives. And that's rooibos flavoured rooibos - not raspberry flavoured, or cactus and lime flavoured, or liquorice and mustard flavoured. Well, the last one was made up, but the Swedes (the rest of them, not me), are totally obsessed with flavouring stuff... there's so much mineral water that has been contaminated with lemon, grapefruit, cucumber, blackcurrants and all sorts of other things. Since those books about a bunch of old ladies who drank rooibos or something (haven't read any), rooibos has gotten quite popular here, but when we've seen it in cafes, it's always been flavoured with something, presumably making it taste just like all the other millions of flavoured "teas" that don't actually taste like tea at all. Silly Swedes... Oh, and Mrs Preggers have gone all weird, and suddenly started drinking her rooibos with milk and sugar, something she previously would have seen as a clear sign of mental illness. I'm not complaining that her taste is changing though, especially since she's recently started enjoying the smell of Islay whisky, and in particular Ardbeg (the best whisky in the known universe, if you ask me). She's wet her tongue with it a few times, without spitting, so I've really got my hopes up that we'll be able to enjoy a wee dram together after she's given birth, and maybe go on holiday to Islay some time - I spent a couple of days there with my father in 2006, and really enjoyed it.

Anyway, I think I said something about tea and telly...

So far, all is well...

2008-12-19T12:19:00.002Z

The moving truck arrived, and the cars had still not been moved... when the truck had pulled up, a woman came walking down the street and asked if we wanted her to move her car, but unfortunately she was the owner of the car in the middle of the space we wanted, and since a big truck can't quite squeeze into the space taken up by a Saab 9-3, it wasn't of much help...

In the end, they parked in the bay in front, just before the start of the bus lane, by the big sign that says "No loading, 7-10am"... I kept a nervous eye out for traffic wardens (thieving little bastards, I hate them), and the movers started working. The next thing was for someone to come and pick up our old bed, which the buyers had asked for to be removed, and we had advertised on Freecycle. Someone had arranged to come and pick it up at 9:30, and by 9:50-ish I was starting to get a bit nervous, since if we didn't get it picked up, we would have had to arrange to have it removed somehow, which would be both a hassle and an expense, plus we really don't like the idea of a perfectly good bed ending up at a landfill site.

Eventually, the traffic warden turned up, a new guy who I haven't seen before, and he was actually quite helpful. Mrs Preggers had already called the council to ask them to move the cars that were in our way, but they didn't actually do anything until the warden called them up on the radio. They started calling the owners of the cars, and we got enough cars moved to be able to park the truck in the suspended bays, and we didn't get a ticket for being parked in the right place. Shortly after the traffic warden, the guy who was taking the bed turned up, and we could mostly stop worrying for a while... That's until I got the bike up on the truck, and the movers started tying it down... first off there wasn't anything for them to tie the bike down to, and secondly they didn't really seem to know what they were doing. Since the bike is in absolutely perfect condition, I really, really don't want it to get damaged, and hope it will turn up in Sweden the same condition as when it left London.

Yesterday we cleaned the flat out, and then decided to call the estate agent to make sure that they were open before heading there with the keys, but they weren't answering! We decided to go anyway, figuring that we could drop the keys through their letter slot if they weren't open. We got there, and the lights were on, the opening times said that they close at 7, no sign saying "sorry, no-one's in at the moment, we'll be back at Xpm", but there was no-one in the office... we got slightly worried, but decided to drop the keys off with a note, and had a call later in the evening to say that they'd been received.

We're now getting ready to leave for Heathrow in an hour and a bit, and we've had the call from our lawyer to say that the money for the sale is in her account, and they're transferring it to us, so we should have it shortly! It's such a relief, and after a really hellish journey by bus and tube yesterday, we couldn't be happier to finally leave London...

The next post will be made from Sweden :)

Waiting for the moving truck...

2008-12-17T08:08:00.002Z

It's been a bit quiet here lately... very quiet...

There's been so much going on in the last few months, and I've kept thinking that I should post an update, but never gotten around to it.

We're now sitting here in the flat that we've lived in for the last two and a half years, waiting for the moving company to arrive to pick up all our stuff, in preparation to bring it all over to Sweden in the new year.

We've sold the flat, and although we've made a great loss, it's still a relief to be cutting our losses and getting out of here. Everything is pretty much lined up at the other end, with a rental car to get us to the house, my mum who's making sure that we've got some clean bed linen (can't remember what we left in the house back in July), and a bit of breakfast food (tack igen, mamma!). On Monday, we're hopefully picking up a new (to us) car, and then we'll just be waiting for our stuff to arrive from London, and for the post-Christmas sales to start, so we can go shopping for things like a TV (yes, we'll get one of those new fangled things), new mobiles, and whatever other stuff we'll need when starting our new lives.

I'll keep it short, because we don't know exactly when the movers will arrive, so I don't know how much time I've got. We're a little bit worried, since we've paid the council to suspend a few parking bays outside our flat, which is a requirement from the moving company... unfortunately though, the signs notifying people that the bays have been suspended aren't that obvious, and all the suspended space is in use, by people who are most likely at work by now... So, we're going to have to wait until 9:30, by which time we can get the council to come and move the cars that are in our way. Only problem is, if the movers arrive before then, they'll still need somewhere to park, ideally without getting a great fine. Did I mention that I'm really looking forward to leaving this place?

On the baby front (sorry, forgot the subject of this blog), things are going well. The bump is getting fairly large, and at our last checkup with our GP, she confirmed that the baby has turned to the head down position, which is great! Just stay put in that position, and it'll all be fine. We've been finding out a bit more about the birthing centre, etc in Sweden, and are looking forward to start seeing the midwives, going to see the birthing centre, and getting everything prepared once we've arrived in the land of herring and Volvo :)

Off to see if there's anything more that needs doing in preparation for the crew to arrive...

Picture from the ultrasound

2008-10-10T17:03:00.005+01:00

By popular demand, here it is... Click on it for a bigger picure.

Search engine keywords...

2008-10-09T18:12:00.009+01:00

I just had a look at what search engine keywords had caused random people to end up on the blog, and I thought it was quite funny...

Here's a list of recent ones:

- first gp visit when pregnant
- milestones in adulthood
- started * wakey wakey
- things for father-to-be to say to pregnant wife
- saab aero ttdi
- birthday present 30-year-old father-to-be
- saab 93 ttdi test
- there's no control line on my home pregnancy test
- pregnancy test positive no control line
- understanding father-to-be
- father-to-be
- pregnancy and eating lime
- saab 93 ttdi torque
- tube offered a seat
- pregnant wife has moved out
- should father go to the first midwife appointment?

It's a........ hmmm... nope, we don't know...

2008-10-09T17:51:00.003+01:00

This morning, we went for our 20-week scan (at 22 weeks + 4 days) at Guy & St Thomas's. The baby is still looking healthy, all measurements are normal, there's still one head, and twice as many each of arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes, and all those bits, and roughly 5 fingers per hand. Well, exactly five each, if we're to believe the sonographer.

What we couldn't see though, was whether it's a boy or a girl, since the shy little squirt was sitting fairly low, with the legs in the way, and refusing to move, no matter how much the poor sonographer was poking the tummy. She even told us to go for a walk and come back half an hour later, but the baby hadn't budged, so no luck.

So, we're still no wiser as to what we're expecting... we've thought about going for a 3D scan privately, but might just leave it, and let it be a surprise instead.

In other news, someone came around to view our flat yesterday, and seemed fairly interested. We're still waiting to hear back from the agent, to see if they'll be making us an offer - will probably call them tomorrow if we still haven't heard back.

Since the pregnant one has been working from home today, she's started knitting the first sweater for the baby (wonder if the bank she's working for realise that they're paying her to knit? allegedly she only knits while waiting for software to compile, tests to run, etc...). I'm sure she'll be posting pics on her blog as soon as she's done with it.

More heartbeat and kicking + belly pic

2008-09-26T08:49:00.002+01:00

I found the audio cable for the doppler, and yesterday we were playing with it and made a little recording. About 5 seconds into the recording you can hear a kick. For those of you who we don't meet in person too often, there's also a belly photo, in which she's wearing one of my shirts (I wasn't allowed to publish a photo of naked belly).

Yesterday, I could feel the baby kicking quite frequently, which is really cool!

Later today, we're off to Sweden, just for the weekend, to go to one of my friend's wedding. Will be nice to get a change of scenery, meet some old friends, and see dad and his wife. Will be quite exciting to see how they're getting on with their house as well, since they've a fairly big project under way.

I've felt it kicking!

2008-09-25T07:58:00.002+01:00

I've now felt the baby kick a couple of times! It's fairly faint, and a bit difficult to tell the difference between the baby kicking, and my wife simply breathing or moving a bit, but one kick was quite "clear", and as time goes by, the baby seems to be kicking both stronger and more frequently. It's now supposedly around 25 cm from head to heel, which is pretty large. Kind of amazing that there can be so much baby in her tummy without it being any bigger.

We've got a midwife appointment next week, and in two weeks, we've got our second ultrasound scan, at which we'll hopefully find out if we're having a boy or a girl.

We're all done with the flat, and have selected an estate agent who will be marketing it. They've got a key, and have been out to take photos for their web site and marketing material. We're really hoping to find a buyer very quickly, since it's hard to tell what the property market might do next...

It's kicking!

2008-09-14T14:01:00.002+01:00

About three weeks ago, my wife felt a small twitch in her belly, which she thought might have been the baby moving. She wasn't sure though, and said it could just as well have been her dinner digesting. The little twitches have become more frequent though, making it more obvious that it is indeed the baby moving around.

Yesterday, we were listening to the heartbeat with the doppler, and quite often my wife would feel a twitch at the same time as we heard one of the little noises that sound like a kick. Right now, she's sitting still on a chair after having been running around the flat for a while, and the baby is going crazy. It's still obviously quite faint, and far from enough for me to be able to feel anything with my hand on her belly. Not fair...

Tomorrow we've got a bunch of estate agents coming around to value our flat! We're done with all the big jobs, and just need to get some of the interior doors cut to fit with the new (higher) wooden floor and thresholds, do a bit of cleaning and rearranging, and the flat will be pretty much perfect. I'm really quite jealous of whoever will be buying the flat... it's been such a dump when we've lived in it, and they'll get a flat in a great condition for quite a good price.

Now I need to feed the wife...

She's eating lime...

2008-09-10T09:33:00.004+01:00

Long time no blog... sorry!

We've had a hectic few weeks... since my last post, the hallway and lounge have both been painted, then the kitchen and bathroom, and we've had new floors put down. We were thinking of being cheapskates and going with carpet, but decided to go with our original plan of solid bamboo flooring - looks great, and is several times more hard wearing than for example oak. As a bonus, since bamboo grows so fast, it's more sustainable than slow growing trees as well. So, the flat is now nearly ready to go on the market, with just a few little bits and pieces to sort finish off. We've also had my mum staying with us for nearly a full week, to celebrate her 60th birthday, enjoy a bit of London while we're still here, and generally spend some time with us. On her actual birthday, we went for a meal at l'Escargot, a very old restaurant in Soho, Michelin starred since '96. It's a great restaurant, where the food is just absolutely magic, and surprisingly costs slightly less than many of the more modern eateries in London, most of which come nowhere near the standard of this place. If you're after a really, really good French meal in a traditional restaurant with white table cloths, this is definitely the place to go. I would have to re-visit a few places such as Les Trois Garcons before I can decide if it's the best restaurant I've ever been to, but it's definitely in the top 5, probably top 3. Throughout her stay with us, mum was helping out with work on the flat, such as painting some doors and door frames, scraping and re-grouting in the bathroom, etc, etc... all very much appreciated!

Back to the supposed subject of the blog. As a by-stander, there's still not really heaps going on. During the first trimester, I was expecting her to have really weird food cravings, having heard of other fathers-to-be being sent out in the middle of the night to find ingredients for a pickle and peanut butter ice cream sandwich, or somesuch. My wife, on the other hand, didn't really seem to have cravings for anything weird at all. One day last week, she came home and told me that she'd "felt like a lime", so she went and bought a lime and ate it whole at her desk. I guess that's slightly unusual, but nothing on par with peanut butter with pickle.

The tummy seems to be becoming more visible as time goes by, and when she's standing, it's pretty obvious that there's something growing in there. She's been having a bit of pain in her hips, and I really hope it's not going to develop into full blown SPD. She's booked an appointment to see our GP next week, so we'll see if it's worth getting her to start physiotherapy to keep it in check. Last Tuesday, she started a yoga class for pregnant women, and hopefully that will help keeping her mobile as well.

Sometimes it feels like time is moving really slowly, but it's now only 3 weeks until the 20 week scan, at which time we'll hopefully find out if we're having a boy or a girl (depending on the baby's position, it's not always possible to say - it's also not 100% certain).

We've been getting better at getting a clear sound from the doppler, and I've been meaning to record and upload a bit more of the sound of the heartbeat, but couldn't find an audio cable that fits in to the doppler device. I've got cables of the right type (standard 3.5mm audio jack), but the connector end of the ones I've got is too fat for the slot in the casing of the doppler. We can start moving stuff back into the lounge now though, which should make it easier to find things, so hopefully we'll have another recording soonish. Even if you might not find it super exciting, we figure it's kind of a cool thing to have, and nice to be able to show the little squirt what he or she looked and sounded like before being born.

Happy birthday to me!

2008-08-22T07:35:00.002+01:00

It's all been a bit quiet lately, and I don't think I'll be posting quite as frequently as I did for a while in the beginning. There's just not really *that* much to report on from the baby front. It should be happily growing, but it's still invisible, and it will be a few weeks before there's much of a bump. We've been continuing to listen to it with the doppler now and then, which is really cool, and we can definitely hear it moving around and kicking. The kicks get really loud, and with headphones on and volume turned up, it makes your ears hurt... still quite interesting to listen to it though, and it will be a while before we can feel him or her kicking. One thing we have noticed during the few weeks that we've had the doppler, is that the baby has definitely moved upwards slightly, just like it should. She's also finally started putting on a bit of weight, which is good. Given how much she's been eating, it's amazing that she hasn't put anything on until now, but I guess it takes a lot just to support the higher metabolism.

Today is my 31st, so happy birthday to me! I'll be spending most of the day clearing out our lounge and hallway, to prepare for an army of polish builders coming in to redecorate over the weekend. Tonight, we're going to a local pub (Mason's arms) for a few pints of London pride, and probably a meal. It's turning into a bit of a regular celebration spot for us, since it's close to several bus routes, two different train stations, and serves some fairly decent food.

My lovely wife woke me up with a cup of coffee in bed, and two presents... one was the Haynes baby manual (for the Swedes: Haynes are famous for their workshop manuals for cars and bikes (I've got one for the XJR), but also make other handy manuals for things like babies and women), and the other was an EOS 30D (a digital SLR, the same one as she's got). It might seem a bit silly to have two identical cameras within one household, but it can get really boring when we're somewhere together, and she's playing with her SLR, taking millions of photos, and all I can do is watch her... no more of that problem now :) Also, if she does get into doing more wedding photography, having two bodies with different lenses on can be really handy. Thank you baby, I really wasn't expecting anything that extravagant.

Right, time for me to start packing things up, getting pictures off the walls, etc...

Translations

2008-08-14T21:09:00.003+01:00

I thought I should translate what my parents have said in their comments. My mum asks if we're sure that it's not a puppy barking, and my dad comments that it sounds a lot like he remembers from hearing my heartbeat... and that the sound still reminds him of a large ship diesel engine running at low revs ;-)

There was a comment the other day about the "Baby on board" badges that Transport for London provide - funny enough, I had sent them an email asking for one just a day or two before, and it arrived yesterday. Little wifelet has been feeling queasy on the tube several mornings in row now, to the point of actually needing to get off on the way to get some air :( I'm hoping that although the badge might not make a great difference to people offering a seat, it might make her feel more empowered and less shy to ask for a seat. It seems like one of those things that just won't happen unless you ask for it.

I remember reading or hearing comments somewhere from men who'd been put off offering their seats, after having had angry comments from young women, along the lines of "what, so just because I'm a girl, you don't think I'm able to stand up on the tube", or "I'm not pregnant, I'm just fat, and you've insulted me". I guess you can't win... I guess that since I've generally always been getting on the tube trains when their fairly packed (if I'm travelling at peak hours), so if it's been packed, I've been standing (you pretty much have to get on at an end station to get a seat at peak hours). If I had a seat, and saw a pregnant woman standing up, I would offer my seat though, and I have occasionally done so for older people, but I guess I can understand that if you've previously more or less been told off when offering a seat to a pregnant woman (or one you incorrectly believed was pregnant), that you might be put off.

We've been using the doppler device a few more times, to listen to the baby's heartbeat. It's quite neat hearing it beating away, and there's a few other noises as well - not that we've got any idea which ones are the baby kicking and which are just gas bubbling ;-)

Offered a seat

2008-08-08T22:21:00.002+01:00

Earlier today, I had an email from my wife, saying that for the first time, someone offered her a seat on the tube.

i must be looking pregnant - someone gave me a seat on the tube this morning :-) amazing!

At 13 weeks, she still doesn't look pregnant (except when she's really bloated), so the guy who offered her the seat must have really been paying attention... maybe he's got a pregnant wife, and has her her tales about never being offered a seat - just like I always look out for bikes when driving the car, and try make space for anyone filtering.

I haven't spent much time on the tube lately, and have always been trying to avoid peak hours, but apparently, my wife often sees women who are late in their pregnancy, standing for their entire journey, because no-one offers them their seat. I wish people in this city were a bit more aware of their fellow human beings...

Heartbeat!

2008-08-08T11:27:00.003+01:00

Yesterday evening, we decided to have a play with the doppler again, and now that we knew where to listen, we found it pretty much straight away.

For anyone who's interested in hearing it, I've uploaded it in the form of a video. The pictures are just the same as the ultrasound pics that you've already seen, but blogspot allows me to upload video, but not audio on it's own, so that's why I did it this way :)

First midwife appointment

2008-08-06T17:47:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I decided to order a doppler fetal monitor, to see if we can hear the baby's heartbeat. They're used by midwives and other medical professionals to check up on the baby, and there's also fairly cheap consumer versions, including the one I bought, which is called Angelsounds, and it's pink, which is my wife's least favourite colour :) It's a little plastic thingy with a volume dial and two headphone jacks (so that you can listen while also recording, or have two headphones plugged in). They are advertised to work from around 12 weeks, so it should, with any luck, work from now. We had a little play with it when it arrived this morning, with no luck, and also brought it along to the midwife appointment.

We had the appointment at 2pm, and there wasn't really anything new... lots of questions about our health, family history, etc, and 4 or 5 different blood samples taken from my wife, to test for pretty much everything you could ever imagine. We didn't really have much in the way of questions either, except for asking if she could give us any advice on using the doppler device. She had a quick go with it, but didn't have any luck, and then got her own one out, and we got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. At least now we know where to be listening for it, so we'll try again, and hopefully we'll soon have a recording for any curious parents who'd like to hear their future grandchild's heartbeat :)

Other than that, not much new...

It's starting to feel a bit more real...

2008-08-04T16:28:00.002+01:00

We've both been speaking to and exchanged emails with many of our friends and family, and it's starting to sink in a bit more, now that we're openly talking about it. I'm feeling a bit less like it's just a dream, and more like it's actually reality. Every now and then, I think back to the time before, and when we were trying to conceive, and dreaming of seeing that blue cross on the pregnancy test, our first appointment with the GP, seeing the baby on the ultrasound, etc... and now it's all reality! I know that there are many couples who have a lot more difficulties conceiving, and others go through the pain of one or several miscarriages, so sometimes I have to remind myself how lucky we've been so far.

On Wednesday, we've got our first midwife appointment, and I don't really know what to expect at all.

Thank you all!

2008-08-03T20:06:00.002+01:00

Thanks everyone for all the messages! It's really great to have been able to share the news with you all, although many of you had been suspecting it for some time :)

And since many of the new readers didn't realise it... if you have a look at the left, you can read about when we started trying to conceive (no details, I promise!), and the first twelve weeks of the pregnancy.

12 week scan!

2008-08-01T17:26:00.009+01:00

(You can click on either of the images for a larger version)

We've just come back from the 12 week scan, and this will be a short post, since a friend of my wife from university (he now lives in Canada, and they haven't met in 8 years) is in transit in London, and him and his girlfriend will be staying with us for one night.

It was quite magic, and slightly unreal, to see our little squirt moving about on the screen. It's now confirmed that it's one baby, which is good. He or she has exactly one head, two arms with one hand each, and the normal number of legs and feet. All good. The nuchal translucency shows a very low risk of downs, which is also a relief.

We're just so glad to finally be able to tell everyone!

Back to our old life...

2008-07-31T07:48:00.003+01:00

After two weeks in sunny Sweden, we're back to an equally sunny London. Probably a bit sunnier, even.

We had a really lovely time in our new house, which has had a fresh layer of paint put up by my mother (thanks again, mum!). It's really quite a transformation, and it probably hasn't looked so clean for at least 25 years (a family with three kids were renting it for the last 20+ years - and it's a small house, so it was quite crowded).

We were away for two weeks, and we managed to squeeze in loads of things, but at the same time, there was so much that I had planned that we never got around to.

The house was pretty well equipped, so there was little need for buying stuff, except for a bed and some food. There was some kitchen ware stored away in the basement from when dad started renting the house out, as well as a few boxes of stuff from when I last lived in Sweden. It was quite fun going through all the boxes of stuff that I stored away in dad's attic when I left for London.

We spent our time seeing friends and family, sorting out things around the house and garden, and making cherry cordial. There's a lot of berries in the garden, and the most prominent weeds are wild cherries, blackberries and smultron (wild strawberries - small and quite different from the variety you know from the shops). We've also got a fair bit of blueberries raspberries, and one bush each of black and white currants. On the second to last day, we finally got around to cutting down some of the densest shrub of hazel, cherry and oak trees - the sheer quantity of it was quite amazing, and it made three or four man-height piles. I think we'll have one hell of a bonfire this winter :)

I also convinced my lovely wife that we needed to look at cars, so that when finally move over, we know what we want to buy, and can start looking at the dealerships a few weeks before going, ideally having one lined up when we get there. The house is located in a semi rural area, and we will need to have one straight away. It's not an entirely straight forward decision... We've currently got an M3, which for a 4-door saloon has pretty good performance - a 3.2 litre engine, producing a claimed 321 BHP, which propels it from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.5 seconds, and has to be electronically limited so it won't do over 250 km/h (155 mph). You can't really change from this to a 1.6 litre Volvo estate... There are a few cars that I'd love to buy, and most of them would be completely useless for trying to travel with baby + pram + luggage ;-) Then there are the practical family cars, such as the RS6, which I've heard is quite easy to tune to around 550 BHP, which is great when you're running late on the school run, or trying to beat a Ferrari at the traffic light GP ;-) They also cost way more than I could justify, and we need to hang on to our cash so we can spend it on rebuilding the house. So, the answer must lie somewhere in between... it needs to have 5 doors, decent luggage space, be comfortable enough for 500 km trips up north to see dad and his wife, be fairly new (because we don't need the hassle of a car with problems - I've had enough of that for now), reasonable fuel economy, and still enough of an engine so that I don't risk dying from boredom. There's no point in having a super powerful engine in a family car - I'd be better off buying a second "toy" car, so I figured it's probably best to either get a powerful but still economical diesel, or an ethanol car that can run on E85 (85% ethanol - available at petrol stations throughout Sweden), petrol, or any mixture of both. E85 is *much* cheaper than petrol, and depending on the engine, gives around 20% increase in performance (since E85 has a higher RON than 95 Octane petrol, the SAAB increases the pressure from the turbo and the compression to get more power out of the engine). E85 does make the engine slightly thirstier, but the price per km is still much lower than with petrol.

Although they're both foreign owned these days, I'd kind of like to get a "Swedish" car, and both Volvo and Saab are good quality, and very comfortable cars. I don't like Mercedes, and I'm not a great fan of BMW (despite owning one at the moment). I would have considered Audi A4, but it doesn't do Ethanol. There's obviously lots of other cars that we could be considering, but then we don't have the time to test drive everything out there... After the test drives, the modern Volvos do feel a bit more like old man's cars, whereas the SAABs felt more agile and a bit sportier to drive - and my wife prefers the look of them compared to the Volvo estates.

After a few test drives, I could confirm that both SAAB's and Volvo's highest performance diesels are really nice. I also drove a Renault Laguna, at the Volvo dealer's, which felt very plasticy compared to the Volvo, as well as an Audi A4 1.9 or 2L diesel, which seemed to lack in low-down torque compared to both Swedes. The SAAB 1.9 TTiD has, as suggested by the double "T", dual turbos, one smaller than the other, to give loads of torque through the range. I then compared these to the SAAB BioPower (flexi fuel) engines, and for the combination of performance, economy and carbon footprint, the 2.0 turbo seems like a really good option. Not as much torque as the diesel, but still fairly decent, and much more nippy when you start getting higher up in the rev range. The clever sales man at the dealership, who could tell that I like engines, also talked me into driving the 255 BHP 2.8L turbo petrol engine, and although it was good, it wasn't exciting enough to justify the economy or carbon emissions compared to the two-litre BioPower, running on E85.

So, it looks like we'll be going for a low-ish mileage 2007 or 2008 SAAB 9-3 2.0T BioPower Vector. Would go for Aero, but it won't be available until next month, so we'll have no chance of finding a used one by November.

Sorry for getting carried away when talking about the cars... can't help it... I just like engines :)

As expected, we ate lots of herring and other seafood, and I introduced my wife to a few more Swedish specialities, including Isterband med dillstuvad potatis (a type of smoked sausage, served with dill creamed potatoes). We also celebrated our wedding anniversary by staying at a small hotel (Styrsö Skäret) on a small car-free island in the Göteborg archipelago. We had a very nice stay, cycled around the little villages, and then had a nice meal at the restaurant. When we got to the room, we were greeted by a bottle of Champagne, courtesy of our friends Johan & Anna - a nice touch which we really appreciated, although Mrs Bump could only taste the champagne, and I had to do all the drinking :)

We've been back in London since Saturday, and we were very pleased to see that our new boiler had been installed and was working. It's nice to have a reliable shower, and hot water that doesn't constantly cycle between hot-cold-hot... Everything in the garden has been growing like crazy... lots of tomatoes, and the grapevine is huge - we've had to cut off quite a few bunches of grapes, and put up some wires, since it's grown out of the trellis. Yesterday morning I mowed the lawn for the second time since returning, and realised that parts of it are suffering from being shaded by the ivy, which is taking over everything. So, I started clearing ivy and clematis out of a tree, as well as our giant (about 6m high) rose. Funny how you don't realise how overgrown things are until you start clearing them out... I ended up with a mountain of branches, filling 6 trash bags offcuts (after compacting), as well as some larger stuff that I'll probably end up burning in the barbecue. I spent several hours on a step ladder cutting and pulling out the ivy which was entwined with everything it could find, and doing its best to strangle anything that got in its way, and then probably another hour just clearing up all the crap from the lawn. Well worth it though, since the garden will be getting a lot more light, and you can now see a lot more of the giant rose! I like the garden a lot more than I like the flat... :)

On the baby side of things, my poor little wife is still feeling nauseous quite a lot, but she's been spared from throwing up in the mornings. The heat has been quite difficult, and we probably won't be going on holiday anywhere too sunny (we were considering going to the Maldives, where we went for our honeymoon, later in the year).

Tomorrow afternoon, we've finally got the 12 week scan, and I'm really looking forward to seeing our baby for the first time (unless you count the flicker on the screen from the first scan we had). I'm also very much looking forward to being able tell friends and family about our news, assuming that everything is well. I'm not really feeling too nervous, but I'm sure I will be tomorrow.

Phew, that was a long post... I've got more to share, but will do so later... I'll probably post again tomorrow, both before and after the scan. Next Wednesday we've got our first midwife appointment.

Off on holiday...

2008-07-12T03:28:00.002+01:00

We're just on our way to leave for our little holiday, staying in our new house and soon-to-be-home in Sweden... Can't wait to get there, and see what it all looks like, after it all having been painted by my mum (thanks!).

We're also done with the main bedroom here in London, which feels great, and when we return, we should finally have the new boiler installed!

See you when we get back... probably won't be posting while we're away, since we decided not to bring the laptops.

Milestones of adulthood

2008-07-02T22:13:00.003+01:00

Today, we passed another one of the great milestones of adulthood... we've now got an angle grinder! I know, it's not strictly related to the pregnancy, but I'm sure the kids will have lots of fun with it one day in the future :-D

Today was also the first time someone said "Is she pregnant?". Our plumber was here to lay the new gas pipe down, and when my wife had come home, he seemed to spot fairly quickly that she's changed a bit since a few weeks ago when he last saw here. Rather than quickly coming up with a good answer, I just went completely schtum, and probably looked more than a bit stupid. My answer, eventually, was the agreed "If that were the case, we wouldn't be saying anything until after the twelve week scan".

Other than that, not much new, unless you're interested in details about plumbing and stuff.

Off to bed, and the little wife is telling me that I need to fix the bedroom door (AKA tape back the curtain around the door frame).

It's gone quiet...

2008-07-02T07:54:00.002+01:00

The redecoration works take up most of the day at the moment, with a few brief pauses for food, and a longer pause for a bit of sleep at night. Since we can't put in the carpet in the bedroom until the pipes have been laid down, we've started on the outside of the house this week. Like everything else, the outside is turning out to be more of a project than we thought, with getting rid of flaking paint, filling dents, straightening out the bottom edge of the wall, cleaning up the messy filler left behind by the window fitters, etc, etc... We (well, father in law) have bought a clever mini scaffolding platform thingy that can also be converted into an extension ladder or stepladder. Today, we'll apparently be buying a grinder, to sort out some of the bits on the outside wall. It really is great having some help from someone who's done all of this before.

On the baby front, we've now got our ultrasound appointment for the 1st of August! This means that we'll be able to show them the picture of the scan before they head back to NZ. Funny how a month can sometimes seem so short, sometimes so long, but I'm really looking forward to it!

Other things I'm looking forward to are: seeing the bump growing, hearing the heartbeat, feeling the first kick, and slightly further into the future, getting rid of this flat, getting to Sweden, and seeing the little one for the first time.

Time to make some coffee and start planning the work for today...

Visitors

2008-06-29T20:49:00.002+01:00

Friday evening father in law and his partner arrived. My wife and I went to pick them up at Heathrow, and it turned out that they'd emptied every tax free shop between Auckland and London... Plenty of opportunity for turning down drinks, then :) I, on the other hand, was quite happy to help sampling, especially since there were a few single malts, three of them from Islay (I'm a big fan of Islay whisky, especially Ardbeg).

Since cooking seemed like far too much trouble, we went to our local French restaurant, Le Pot Lyonnais, which is always a bit of a hit and miss affair. This time, all the waiting staff were new (again - they've got an astonishing turnaround of staff at this restaurant), and one of them didn't seem to speak a word of English, so I ended up translating. We had to wait 15 minutes or so to order our drinks, and only got them a minute or two before the food. The food itself was fine, but we were all a bit disappointed by the crème brûlée , which was more like omelettes with sugar on top... funny, I don't think I've ever had a really disappointing crème brûlée before.

We've spent the weekend painting, sanding, discussing what to do with remaining DIY projects, and had a few meals and drinks in between... It's so much more enjoyable working on the flat when there's a few of you, as opposed to slaving away on your own. We're now done with the walls in the main bedroom, and they're looking great. It's ridiculous how much faster the painting went when there were four of us.

We're now back to sleeping in the main bedroom, while the kids are staying in the lounge, until we've got the spare bedroom cleared out and usable.

So far, I don't think my wife's non-drinking has raised any suspicion - I guess it's fairly easy to hide it both at home and in restaurants, so we'll see how we get on. Might get worse if she starts throwing up in the mornings, though...

Any comments?

2008-06-27T13:39:00.003+01:00

I can see that there are a few (although not many) people reading the blog, but I don't know who you are... It's kind of weird writing and not knowing who's reading, and what they think. Also, part of the intended audience (friends and family) don't know about the blog yet, so I obviously won't be getting any feedback from them until they've been told...

So, dear readers, if you're still there, please say "hi" :) You don't need to have a blogger account or sign up for anything - just click on the text under the post where it says "0 comments", and you'll be taken to the comments page.

I probably won't have much time for posting in the next few weeks, since we'll have visitors. They're arriving tonight, so there's still a fair bit to do with clearing the flat and making space in the spare bedroom so they've got somewhere to sleep... I've just finished putting a base coat on the walls in the main bedroom, so apart from the carpet, it's now looking nearly finished. Might need to put the door back up as well, despite not having painted it yet...

A busy week

2008-06-25T11:26:00.003+01:00

*phew*

Together with our assistant, I spent all of Monday (until 11pm) hanging lining paper in the main bedroom, and got it nearly all done. Yesterday, our plumber was here to cut a trench in the concrete floor for a new gas pipe, and to bury some heating pipes that went along where there was previously some (poor) built-in wardrobes. We need a new boiler, and in order to fit a new one, we need a bigger gas pipe, to provider enough pressure. As you might guess, cutting holes in the floor is a bit of a project, and it took all day. By the time the little wife got home, the carpet (including underlay, grippers, and linoleum tiles) was cut up and lifted out... there was dust everywhere, trenches in the floor, pieces of concrete spread out across the lounge and main bedroom, and it generally really looked like a building site, rather than a place where we'd be able to have dinner and sleep. Somehow, we managed to clear the lounge out though, and had a place to sleep again.

At the moment, I'm on my lunch break from clearing out the rubble from the main bedroom, and sanding the last few bits in there, since we desperately need to be ready to move back in by Friday.

Not much baby or pregnancy talk today... haven't had much of a chance to think about it, to be honest. Still over the moon, it still feels somewhat unreal, and I'm still a bit worried, but hoping and assuming that everything will go well. I guess we won't really stop worrying until the day in 30-40 years or so when they've both (we'll have two. Not one, not three, but two, because that is, as I'd put it in Swedish, lagom) settled down, and maybe had some kids on their own.

The more I think about it, I just keep coming to the conclusion that there's no way we'll keep the pregnancy a secret when my father in law and his partner are staying with us. Even if they somehow didn't notice that she's not drinking, there's still the issue of food. I generally feel that it's a waste to cook good produce - just slice it up and serve it :) Well, at least it definitely goes for fish... I love sushi, and when it comes to a good steak, it just needs to have a bit of a surface and be slightly warm, or just raw as in a steak tartare. Yum. Then there's cheese. We both suffer from a mild addiction to cheese, and obviously it's better if it's mouldy and not made from pasteurised milk - my dear father in law is familiar with our addiction, and will probably find it a bit odd if his daughter is turning down the Stilton, or a Camembert when it's just reached the point of making the entire neighbourhood stink of ammonia. Not really sure how to deal with this... And to JJ - if you're reading this after we've made the announcement, and you didn't suspect anything... haha, we fooled you good! :) I guess that's the weird thing about it... we don't want to feel like we're going around fooling the people we love, we just want to be more sure before we tell them, and if anything should go wrong, we want to be able to decide how to deal with it then, not now.

OK, back to sanding.

Keeping a secret

2008-06-22T17:14:00.003+01:00

The plan for yesterday was to meet in a local park for a big picnic, and some traditional-ish Swedish midsummer celebrations (albeit a day late - in Sweden we tend to celebrate the "Eve" rather than the "Day" - same go for Christmas, we exchange presents on the 24th). However, the weather in London was a bit flaky, so after we'd been away for the scan, we decided to go for plan B - meet in the pub instead.

It's not easy being in a pub and not drinking, without people asking questions. I'm sure there's one or two people guessing that there might be a baby on the way, but keeping it quiet. I tried to do the buying of drinks - tonic with ice and slice, looks like G&T, and they also had one non-alcoholic beer, which worked until someone looked at the bottle and said "why are you drinking that?". Londoners... everything seems to revolve around drinking, and unless you've got a car or bike parked outside, there must be something wrong with you if you're not drinking a pint or a glass of wine.

We had a great day though, started at 3pm, and the last guests turned up around 10pm. Two babies grabbed most of the attention until they left around 7 - our little nephew from NZ, and my friend with his one year old daughter and pregnant wife (they just realised a few weeks ago that she's pregnant with number two - didn't bother with contraceptives after the first one).

Today we've both been a bit tired, and have spent the day faffing around at home. I've washed the walls in the bedroom and sized (pasting them with a thinly mixed adhesive) in preparation for putting up lining paper tomorrow. I think I'll suggest that my wife leaves a little message on the wall "redecorated by 2008" and our email address or the name of the family web site. It would be kind of fun to get an message from a future owner in, say 20 years time, saying that they've found our little note. Yeah, I know, I'm easily amused.

I should probably have a shower and start making some dinner... I smell a bit, and feel like I'm covered in wallpaper adhesive.

He's got my nose!

2008-06-21T14:17:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow is my wife's birthday, and I decided to get a surprise ultrasound scan at a private clinic. Well, not *that* much of a surprise since I had to tell her beforehand, but, you know... I couldn't help myself, and when I realised that it's not as hideously expensive as I'd expected, I thought why not... We've now seen that there is actually a baby there, although it's very tiny - about 1mm, rather than the size of a baked bean. The doc believes that we're probably at around week 5, rather than the end of week 6 as we thought, which makes sense since she had very long cycles before. Even if it's just a tiny speck, it's good to have seen it and heard it confirmed by a professional. Apparently, one of the very first things you can see is a heartbeat, which just looks like a tiny flickering spot. We might do another scan at 9-10 weeks, for dating and just out of general insterest, before the first scan we'll get on the NHS - we'll see.

In case it's not obvious from the scan - the head is on the left, with eyes, ears and mouth clearly showing, and then you've got both arms... if you look carefully, you should be able to see the hands and count all fingers, then you've got the legs going out to the right, with tiny little feet. It's smiling and waving, and wearing a little t-shirt saying "My dad is the greatest dad on the planet".

Actually, the big dark blob is the pregnancy sac, and on the right side of it, by the tiny cross, is the little flicker, AKA heartbeat. Can't wait to see a bit more detail...

Nothing new, really

2008-06-19T21:45:00.002+01:00

Slept a lot in the morning, as my hayfever, or cold, or whatever it is, is making me feel really crap at the moment... after doing a bit of work in front of the 'puter, I finished sanding the walls in the main bedroom - inhaling sanding dust really does wonders for a sore throat and runny nose ;-) Not as bad as cycling down Park Lane yesterday though, with all those trees seeming to drop their pollen down on me just as I was cycling past. Just getting all that grit in my eyes would have itched even if I hadn't been slightly allergic. Maybe I should get some really daft looking goggles, since my daft looking sun glasses doesn't deflect enough stuff...

Tonight, as planned, we went to Garlic & Shots - I arrived a bit early, so had a beer at some bar opposite, with outside tables. Thought it seemed expensive when she said that it was £3.50 for less than half a pint, and even worse when I later looked at the receipt (I've got a bad habit of never checking my change) and realised that they'd added a not-so-optional service charge, and charged me £3.96. Nearly 4 quid for a glass of beer? And the brits still think that Sweden is expensive, sheesh!

Anyway, we had our meal at Garlic & Shots - great food as always! They really punch above their weight for food, the steaks are really good for the money. For the first time ever (I've been coming there occasionally since '99), I had a desert (the main courses are quite big, so I tend not to feel like desert), and it was quite good. Apparently the pork chops weren't that great though - poor little wife, who couldn't have their famous vampire steak (well, she could, but she would have had to order it well done). We continued with the trick of me drinking from both our glasses, and we probably got away with it. While I was waiting at the bar opposite, believing that I'd be able to see my wife and her friend as they arrived, they were apparently standing behind a van on the other side of the street, also waiting for G&S to open. Her friend had asked when we were planning to have kids, since everyone else is pregnant, but she managed to just talk about the others instead of answering the question. It feels kind of funny to be all secretive about it, but then, it's still so early, and it's probably better not to tell the world until we're more sure.

Now it's bed time... good night.

Back from the GP

2008-06-18T16:43:00.005+01:00

Wife to GP: "Hi, we were going to come in to see our test results... but, it seems we're pregnant."

I'd been hoping for this moment since the first time she had a late period, and now it's here. As we expected, we didn't find out much that we didn't know already, but it was really good to talk to someone, and be congratulated in person for the first time :)

We also got our latest test results - unsurprisingly, it shows that she's ovulating... well, it would have been difficult to get pregnant otherwise. We were also very pleased to see that my results were much better this time - still slightly below the ideal values, but nothing to suggest that we'll have any problems conceiving naturally when we start trying for sprog number two, in a few years time. It's quite likely that the first test result had been affected by a cold, having a few drinks too many (what? me?), having too hot showers, or a million other things that could have influence on sperm production.

The doc didn't see any problems with us moving part-way through the pregnancy - I guess it happens all the time. The next we'll hear from the NHS will be for the first scan, at 12-14 weeks, when they'll check heart beat, probability of downs, and possibly some other stuff. Tomorrow, we're going to Garlic & Shots, and I'll be secretly drinking her drinks again :)

Oh, and this afternoon, I went to a newly-ish opened Scandinavian shop to buy a tonne of herring for Saturday. Obviously I also got carried away and bought a few other yummy things, including a Gamle Ole, a nice and smelly Danish cheese. Yum. And it's pasteurized, so the pregnant one will be allowed some, too.

On our way...

2008-06-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

Just about to leave for the GP, and we're both kind of nervous... not that we're really expecting anything but a referral, but still..

First GP visit, this afternoon

2008-06-18T09:29:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, we were babysitting our little nephew, which went well... for about 15 minutes after the parents had left :D

He was newly fed when we arrived, and was really happy and laughing. My sister in law gave him a bath and then he was put to bed, just before they left to go out for a meal. After about 15 minutes, the little fella started crying, crying, crying and crying, at the top of his little lungs. We tried giving him some milk, which seemed to work for a while, but then he lost interest in that, and went back to the crying. He's also had a bit of a cough, and it was hard to tell if he was crying because of the cough, being left alone with us in an unfamiliar environment, or something else... there are so many things that can upset a little baby. I took him for a walk around the flat (they're staying with their former landlords - a really nice couple who they've become good friends with), since that's proved to calm him down before. For a while, it seemed to work... then he went really quiet for a second or two, and turned into a vomit fountain. It's amazing how much vomit can come out of such a small body, and in just a few seconds worth of puking, he managed to hit a leather chair, the coffee table, the floor, a rug, everything he was wearing (including his two blankets) and my shirt - pretty good if you ask me. I would estimate that his puking range is about 30-40cm, maybe not up to Olympic standards, but still pretty good, eh? ;-) I took him downstairs to clean him and see if I could find some new clothes, while my wife started cleaning up his mess upstairs. Trying to hold on to and console a crying vomit-covered baby, while looking for fresh clothes and towels, was surprisingly difficult. I can only imagine what it must be like for a stay-at-home mother with two little ones! I really do hope we'll be able to both stay at home until our little ones go to kindergarten.

At 4pm today, we've got our first GP appointment, where, rather than asking about our most recent tests, and whether or not she's ovulating, we'll be informing the doc that we're pregnant! We haven't really got a clue what's next, when we'll start going to antenatal classes, when she'll be going for what tests and scans, etc, so it'll be interesting to see what's going on. We'll also need to figure out what to do about doctors in Sweden, since we're planning to move there in the last quarter of this year.

Did I mention that we're moving? We've bought a house in Sweden (where I'm from - my wife is from NZ, in case I haven't mentioned that either), and will move as soon as we can get the flat here in London sold, and we don't want to have to move until after the baby is born, if it can be avoided. So, the timing of the growing bean is kind of as bad as it could be, but I'm so happy that I really couldn't care less :D We had considered it before starting to try to conceive, but the way I saw it, if did actually manage to get pregnant, that would be such great news, and we'll just work around it. In any case, if we started waiting for the perfect time, we'd probably be 40+ by the time we started, and I'd rather avoid the associated worries.

The Ravelry readers (for those who aren't in the know, Ravelry is a web based community for knitters) might have already seen this article in the Guardian, by a really bitter old music journalist (well I assume that's he is). I thought it was slightly funny, in an uneducated besides-the-point, not-understanding-what-it's-about, bitching-for-the-sake-of-bitching kind of way. OK, so I only skimmed it, but I don't understand what this guy's beef with knitting is. A lot of people, men and women, young and old, like to knit. So? Maybe he lives on a different planet, but I'm not sure what he's got his view of modern knitters from... the people I know who knit are people like my wife (a generally crafty software developer, without any piercings other than bog standard earrings, and with only one tiny tattoo on her tummy - none in her face), and others in friends and family. My mum used to both sew and knit a fair bit when I was a kid, and I've done a fair bit of sewing (used to make clothes that I should probably be embarrassed about when I was 16), but never had the patience for knitting. It's a great art, and it would be a shame if old crafts like that were lost just because we've got clever machines to do stuff for us.

Both my wife and I have worked in IT for 10+ years, but are really fed up with the whole office life, and feel that we'd really much rather do something more real. I'm really looking forward to having a wood workshop in the new house in Sweden, and I really want a big garage where I can work on my bikes (I've only got one, but I sincerely believe that I need more than that), and I'd love to get an old Mustang that I can fix up. Maybe I should go to Brighton and start a fight instead - not just sure against whom... I'm probably missing the point of the article, and I'd like to think that the journalist is laughing to himself and wondering why people don't understand that it's a joke, but I'm also worried that it might not be tongue-in-cheek.

As a side note, it's apparently also not uncommon for modern feminists to believe that when young girls like doing things like cooking, knitting, or other traditional "women's chores", they're undoing all those years of fight for equality. FFS, why can't people just be allowed to do what they're like? My wife likes to, among other things (crafting in general, photography, programming)) knit. She's not otherwise a girly girl in most senses, and she was quite happy to lend me a hand when changing brake/clutch fluid and engine oil in my bike the other week. I will treat our kids the same regardless of gender, and definitely won't be automatically buying a toy stove for a daughter and a model car for a son. At the same time, if we have a son who wants to do nothing but hang out with me in the garage, and a daughter who wants to do nothing than bake cookies, then that's their decision, and all we can do is to try to encourage them to take up broader interests. I'd definitely want any daughter to be able to do basic stuff like replacing a light switch, checking the oil on her car and replacing a blown tyre (if those things will still be relevant on modern cars - probably not, but you see what I mean). Any sons will also be well aware that they won't get far if they can't iron their own clothes, clean a toilet, cook a meal, and replace a missing button on their shirt. I'm not even sure if I got my point across, but I really need to get on with other things, so I'll stop writing now :)

Moving out

2008-06-17T08:04:00.005+01:00

On Friday, me and our assistant (a friend of my wife, who's been between jobs, was helping out with work on the flat last week) put a layer of basecoat on the bedroom ceiling - hoping that it will be more resistant to hairline cracks that way. Yesterday, I did the first (and hopefully only - it looks very white) layer of paint. Being a water based emulsion, and fairly fast drying, we'd thought that it would have time to air out and that we'd be OK to sleep in there, but as soon as the curtains were drawn, despite leaving the window open, paint fumes were very obvious. We thought about it for a short while, then decided to move out to the lounge straight away - better safe than sorry. We've got a sofa bed, and were planning to just take the mattress from the bed and move out as soon as we started some serious sanding of the walls anyway. It's a bit noisier in the lounge, since it faces on to a road with a fair bit of traffic, but I was still able to sleep OK.

So - the project for today is to clear up and move things around enough to be able to sleep in the living room, then start sanding the walls, ready to stick up lining paper and finish the job.

My lovely wife posted a link to the blog on Ravelry this morning before leaving work, so hello to any readers arriving from there :) She's been knitting a fair few socks and cardigans for our nephew and some of our friend's babies, so I'm sure I'll there'll be a big stash of freshly knitted baby gear here within a few months :)

We're still not sure (and haven't researched - I should do that) whether anchovies in oil are safe to eat without cooking. I still won't be able to make her my Caesar salad, since the dressing contains raw egg yolk, but still, not being able to eat anchovies would be bad. Yesterday, I put a jar of anchovies into our (not so) bolognaise, and discovered that it was actually quite yum.

It's really difficult not to tell people... yesterday, dad and his wife called, and I had to bite my tongue a few times. Tonight, we're babysitting our very cute little nephew (8 months old) - brother and sister in law are back in London (they moved home to NZ in December) for a few weeks, and we're more than happy to oblige any time they ask. Good to get a bit of baby practice, and if we make any mistakes, it's not our baby ;-)

Early education

2008-06-16T12:31:00.006+01:00

One of the great fears as a future parent is that your child will grow up to listen to really crap music... Since prevention is better than cure, we've just been to Cardiff to see Bruce Springsteen in concert, with The E Street Band.

We left on Friday evening, and it was great to have a weekend away, especially since our flat is a bit of a building site at the moment. We arrived late-ish on the Friday and decided to just watch a movie and have room service. Stupid hotel decorators - the TV was screwed to the desk, and so was a lamp - blocking the view of the TV! Why would you fix a lamp in front of the TV? To make it worse, the desk lamp was on the same light switches as the rest of the light, so it was either complete darkness, or a bright lamp in the upper left corner of the TV. Naturally, I started seeing if it could be unplugged, and it turned out that it even had some weird connection for the low-energy bulb, and I ended up breaking the bulb when trying to remove it. Oh well, at least the lamp was now slightly less annoying when it wasn't lit, and we could focus on the movie. There was quite a small choice of movies, and we'd seen all of the good ones, so we decided to watch National Treasure 2. OK, so it seems like a slightly shit movie, but I figured that surely Nicholas Cage wouldn't have agreed to be in it if was too bad. It was. Proper shit. Really not good at all. "Let's make an Indiana Jones rip-off with Nicholas Cage". They'd also somehow managed to trick Harvey Keitel and Helen Mirren to sign up, and I could really imagine how they will have rolled their eyes when reading the script. Since this blog isn't about movies, I won't go into details, just don't watch it - it's shit.

On Saturday morning, we got up and started strolling around Cardiff, went to see the Castle, where there was some sort of event going on (this year is the anniversary of the British armed forces), lots of militaries from infantry, navy, air force, and a field gun salute. Having watched the show for a bit, we did a tour of the Castle, which was quite interesting. It was then time for the first pregnancy related task of the day - the mother to be needed a bigger bra, since she's grown enough to be falling out of her old ones :) One cup size up fitted perfectly, but she wasn't sure how many she should buy, since she doesn't know what her body will be doing next.

We're seing plenty of pregnancy symptoms, which I guess is to be expected at this stage, and although I don't envy her when she's feeling sick, none of them seem to be extreme. She was surprised by how little energy she had on Saturday morning, feeling really tired after just a very short walk, and she opted out of climbing all the stairs of the keep at the Cardiff Castle.

I started reading "What to expect when you're expecting" on the way to the train on Friday, and we both continued reading during the weekend. There's so much stuff to take in, especially about eating right, which I'll need to take a big part in. I really feel for her, not being allowed to eat mouldy cheese, unpasteurised cheese, raw fish, and having to have her steaks well done, bloik! Poor little wife. At least we confirmed that it's perfectly fine to eat pickled herring, so she won't feel left out when we're celebrating her birthday this Saturday (she'd already sent out an email to friends to say that we're having herring - combined birthday / Swedish midsummer celebrations).

Oh, and the concert was good, but we both thought the sound was really poor. A lot of the time it was quite hard to distinguish the different instruments, and the feedback was really insane at times. Still enjoying the old songs though - I guess I'm feeling quite emotional at the moment - usually, The River tends to make me quite teary eyed, but on Saturday it seemed to happen with many of the songs from Born to Run and The River, and I kept having to wipe little tears from my eyes. Obviously, the bean hasn't developed ears yet, but I'd still like to think that we've done something to ensure that he or she grows up with a great taste in music, just like me. Whenever my wife leaves me alone with the kids (two of them, if life goes according to plan), I intend to educate them by playing the music that I like, but that she mistakenly thinks is utter crap :)

Yesterday morning, we'd planned to go down to the seafront, where there's a few museums and other bits and pieces, but she was feeling a bit sick after breakfast, so we decided to check how well the "pregnant wife" card works. A quick phone call later ("Hi, my wife is pregnant, and isn't feeling to well..."), and we had arranged a late checkout, and a girl from reception brought up a bottle of ginger ale from the bar (ginger beer is apparenltly good for upset tummies).

On the train home, I read a number that I hadn't read before. Twenty. Twenty is the percentage of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. I had no idea that it was that many, and I really hope that our little bean-sized foetus won't be one of them. It's probably good to be mentally prepared that it can happen, and knowing that you're not alone, but at the same time, I don't want to be worrying about it. I still can't wait for the 12 week scan and a confirmation that all is OK, or, the magic moment of birth, for that matter. I wish I was better at not worrying.

As usual, it's somehow gotten past lunchtime, and I haven't eaten yet. Had a quick look in the fridge, and although there's plenty in there, nothing looked inspiring for a quick lunch. I suppose I could make an omelette, or maybe just go to the local takeaway and have my usual ham & cheese toastie. It's hard to eat properly when you're working from home on your own, and I really need to get better at it.

And I've had my first comment on the blog, thank you Dora, it's good to get some feedback. Hope all goes well for you!

Wakey wakey, pregnant wife needs breakfast...

2008-06-13T07:30:00.004+01:00

Currently, my wife is doing a contract for one of the big banks, starting work at 8am on the other side of London. When I finished my last job, we decided that, rather than finding a contract straight away, I would stay at home and refurbish our flat to get it ready to sell, as well as do some work on this startup that we're both involved in. As it turned out, the startup has given me a lot of work, and the refurbishment of the flat has taken a back seat. We also had a friend of my wife staying with us while she was in between flats, which meant that we had very limited space for moving stuff around between rooms (which is what you have to do when doing up a flat that you actually live in). As of last weekend though, she has moved out of our spare room, and is now helping me with the work on the main bedroom - it's really great to have a second pair of hands, as well as someone to talk to, rather than chatting to the walls all day :)

As usual, I digress... since my lovely wife has to get up at silly o'clock every day and get to the other side of London, "we" agreed (well, it's only fair, actually) that I'll get up and make her breakfast: decaf (no more caffeine for Mrs Pregnant) + serial / bagel / toast, and sometimes, if she's lucky, a boiled egg. Today, when I appeared to be a little bit slow at waking up, she started saying "come on, wakey wakey, pregnant wife needs breakfast". Hehe, she's cute :)

I told her about the blog when she came home from work yesterday, and she liked the idea. I've realised that, apart from it just being nice to be able to "talk" about it, it will be a way for relatives to catch up once we've announced the news, and maybe a nice memory to have a diary of the pregnancy. And for you, our lovely little baked bean, who will one day be able to read this. Just remember what mummy and daddy said about wasting your time in front of computers, right? We'd much rather see that you're out in the real world, playing, falling off your bicycle or out of a tree, getting stung by nettles, and whatever else was part of the fun when I was a kid. Now go pick up the dishes ;-)

We still can't really believe that it's true... we're actually managed to make a baby, on our own... a real one. I know that most 16 year olds in this country have at least one baby, but still... it seems so grown up :)

Baked bean

2008-06-12T21:42:00.002+01:00

Apparently, she told me when she got home from work today, the baby is now the size of a baked bean (we estimate that we're in week 6 - assuming that she ovulated when we think she did).

My wife doesn't even like baked beans, but I do...

Pregnancy timeline, courtesy of the Beeb: Clicky

The day after the BFP

2008-06-12T09:47:00.004+01:00

As you've noticed, I'm sitting here writing post after post, rather than, as I should be, filling the walls and ceiling in the bedroom, and scraping paint off the skirting boards...

Well, I felt that if I was going to do one of those new fangled blog thingies (pah, I was blogging back in '97, before there was a stupid word for it, and we just called it an online diary, which is what most of them are anyway), then I kind of needed to catch up a but, since so much have happened already, and I've got so many thoughts going through my head.

Yesterday, one of the first things I did, since I couldn't tell anyone (and believe me, I wanted to tell *everyone*), was to sign on to a baby/trying to conceive site, and posted an anonymous message to tell part of my story. I had lots of responses to my post, and quite a few of the posters were excited a) to hear of a man who's obviously so excited about having a baby, and b) to hear a man's thoughts on the subject. Comments such as "Hope you keep us posted would be lovely to hear from you more often!" made me think that maybe I should start a blog.

One of the positive sides of trying to not tell people that we're pregnant, is that I get to drink more wine :-) Usually, when my glass is empty, and I start drinking from her glass, she gives me a cute little frown and a "harrumph" (she's not really angry - but feels it's her wifely duty to say "harrumph" and waggle her finger now and then). Yesterday, we went out for a meal with another couple, who just announced a few weeks back that they're expecting, and to not raise suspicion by suddenly not drinking, we both had wine glasses, and I discretely drank from both :) Who said that having a pregnant wife is all pain, eh?

I still can't believe it, and I'm still slightly worried about everything that could go wrong, but trying not to think about it. I'm sure that, come early February 2009, we'll have a healthy baby, which for now I'll refer to as code name bump, despite the fact that it's just a tiny glob of cells, and not even yet a bump.

We've got an appointment with the GP for next week, and my wife brought home "What to expect when you're expecting" yesterday. Maybe I'll get the Haynes manual, and put that in the bookshelf next to the service manual for my new bike...

BFP!

2008-06-12T09:41:00.004+01:00

This is what happened yesterday:

My wife's previous cycle was around 35 days, so when her period was late again this month, we tried to not get our hopes up too much, and decided to wait before doing a test. After a busy weekend (friends visiting, helping a friend move, and we're in the middle of redecorating our flat), we realised that she was on day 39, and it was probably about time to take a test. Since we'd already used a full pallet load of pregnancy test in the previous hopeful months ("surely, it can't be this late, and I felt a bit sick this morning, we must have conceived"), neither of us expected it to be a positive. She used a clearblue test in the morning, and came into the bedroom with tear in her eyes from joy, saying "we're pregnant!". I really couldn't believe it, it seemed so unreal! Pregnant? Baby? Us? Really? In your tummy? And it's ours? I was so taken aback that I didn't even consider that I might be dreaming (checking now - no, it's too long to be a dream, I'm sure I'm awake). I then noticed that there was no control line on the test, and since it says that you should discard either result if there's no control line, at least I lost a lot of my hope... She also admitted that she'd dropped the test stick into the bowl "a bit". It still didn't make much sense that it should have given a false positive, but we didn't trust it, so we decided that she would get another test and take it at work, and a few hours later I got a text saying "It's positive".

As I mentioned elsewhere:
"I'm so happy, but at the same time, I'm finding it really hard to believe that we've managed, and don't think it'll fully sink in until I see the first ultrasound, or maybe at birth.. or maybe when the ungateful little brat moves out of home and I wonder where all those years went :D"

For anyone who's not familiar with TTC speak... the world of Trying To Conceive, just like so many other areas, is completely full of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), ETLAs (Extended Three Letter Acronyms), etc. Actually, people accuse us who work in IT of speaking in TLAs, but women who are, or trying to get pregnant, are probably worse... Anyway, what I was going to say, is that BFP stands for Big Fat Positive, ie, the positive result of a HPT (Home Pregnancy Test). One of my favourite ones is "DH", which stands for "Dear/Darling Husband", or, depending on hormone levels and behaviour of said husband, "Damned Husband". From now, I'll probably stick to English...

Getting started - background info

2008-06-12T09:14:00.005+01:00

So, I decided to start a blog, partly to share my thoughts, and partly as a substitute for being able to start telling friends and family.

At least for now, this blog will be kept fairly anonymous - a few people know that we've been trying, but we haven't been talking about it, and we're not planning to tell anyone until after we've had the 12-week scan. If, by chance, you've stumbled upon this blog, and you know us - then please don't ask... just wait, and we'll publish the news officially after the scan :)

As a bit of background info about me and my wife - we got engaged after just 5 months (when you know, you just know) and got married last summer, after a year and a half together. We probably started talking about having kids within a few weeks of realising that we were a couple, and towards the end of last year (after I had suggested it more than a few times), we agreed that my wife would have her implanon (same hormone as in the pill, in a small stick implanted under your skin) removed, and that we'd start trying for a baby.

After a few months of not conceiving, I bought a home fertility test, which gave me a negative... I had for some reason always (since I was a kid) been slightly worried about this, partly because of a varicocele (enlarged veins going from the testes - it's debated whether or not it has any effect on fertility), and partly just common paranoia, so I wasn't really too surprised and since it was just a simple home test, knew that it wasn't definitive, and more intended as an indicator as to whether you should get checked by a doctor.

I booked an appointment with my GP straight away, and was scheduled for a full analysis. Two weeks, and the analysis comes back, showing that most of the metrics were slightly (and some of them quite a bit) below what's considered ideal for being able to conceive naturally. My GP told me that assuming that my wife is fertile, this would by no means indicate that we won't be able to conceive, and that while waiting for further test (on both of us), we should continue trying. Plus, sperm quality varies over time, so the result could have been affected by, eg, a cold, a "big night out" (GPs words), or a number of other things. I've had a second analysis, and my wife has taken a blood test to see if she's ovulating, but we haven't yet seen the results.

Quite early on in our relationship, we'd talked about having kids, what to do if we can't conceive naturally, etc, and it felt good to have at least thought and talked about it before starting. She knew about my worries, and I knew that she's been polycystic before, which can also make it more difficult. The GP did say that as long as she's ovulating, even if there's a problem with my sperm, we should have fairly good odds with insemination, and we shouldn't have to go down the IVF route. We'd also talked about adopting if IVF didn't work, so although we'd obviously love to be able to conceive naturally, we weren't getting too stressed about it.

Next post: BFP!