Well my tutor has just sent me her comments on my final essay and she’s posting it off to be second assessed!  I’ve been working hard putting together my final portfolio, which I’ve got to get copied, bound and sent off to a designated NCT BFC Tutor who’ll assess it and hopefully award me my license to practice by the end of Jan!!!  Then the university exam board is in February, so I need to get all my essays to them by the beginning of Jan and then I’ll get awarded my diploma (hopefully!) in April.  I’ve nearly done all the work I need to do and I can’t tell you how happy and sad I feel about it.

Mopsy has been feeding like a newborn at night lately, and it’s really tiring me out.  I’ve tried saying ‘no’ and offering other drinks etc. but it just leads to screaming, as does DH trying to settle her instead.  I’ve started to wonder whether it’s because I’m not feeding her enough in the day time.  It’s nothing to do with nourishment, as there’s hardly any milk there now - it’s solely to do with her normal emotional attachment to breastfeeding.  But, being pg and tired, I’ve been saying ‘no’ an awful lot in the day time, and only letting her feed for a few seconds etc.  So today I’ve been letting her feed whenever she wants and for however long she wants in the hope that she tops up enough on her breastfeeding during the day that she doesn’t need to spend so much time doing it at night!  However, the downside is the braxton hicks contractions!  They’re so strong now, particularly when she’s been feeding for a while, and they last for ages too.  And I’ve got another 9 weeks+ of them getting stronger as I get more pg!  I suppose it’ll be very good practice for my yoga breathing if they actually start to hurt rather than just be very uncomfortable things they are at the moment.

Had quite a stressful week all-in-all - to be expected, you’d think, what with working on my class plan and getting all the resources ready *and* trying to work out what we’re going to do about my Independent Midwife (IM).  But then factor in that on Thursday lunchtime, I was with the girls and my Mum (thank goodness!) and fell off a curb, badly hurting my foot and my knee.  I was at an open day for a Children’s Centre and the staff immediately called an ambulance!  It was agony, I grant you, and they thought I might have broken it, and bearing in mind how pg I am, they decided to ambulance me to A&E (no blue-lights though - boo!).  They decided it wasn’t broken but that I had injured a tendon or ligament or something (sorry, I forgot to listen at that point, I was so relieved I wouldn’t have to be in plaster!) and that I had to use it as much as possible after an initial 24hrs resting it in order for it to heal.  Fine, but then on Friday, although DH took parental leave from work ostensibly for the whole day, he had to go back in in the afternoon and I had to deal with the girls, a painful foot and a knee that is so bruised it’s agony to kneel on (or be bashed by a toddler!).  I also had to deal with a phone call from a midwife who alerted me to the fact that a fall, even if I don’t land on my bump, can easily jolt a pg enough to cause a small bleed and that that increases the need for this flipping Anti-D injection if one is Rhesus Negative.  So I had to work out, being as I had refused to have it prophylactically, how to get this injection asap - I think 72 hrs is the time limit.  I couldn’t drive as it’s my right foot I’ve hurt, and I didn’t have the car anyway.  My NHS MW was off-duty.  The Delivery Suite were very helpful on the phone and said that they’d try to get the on-call community midwife to come over with it, but she couldn’t be got hold of.  It was kind of the last straw - I’ve cried so many times over the last few days simply because of the girls bickering or something!  Eventually the on-call MW got the message and came by with the injection and relevant stuff for taking blood to test for antibodies.  She was very lovely and increased our resolve to decide on returning to the NHS for our peri-natal care - so that’s what we’re going to do.  Independent MWs are so expensive (good value for the care they give, but a lot of money all the same!), and this will be the third time I do this so I think that Mum, DH and I will have enough confidence to tell the MWs who turn up for the birth to leave me alone.  So I feel happy about our decision that way, my foot is healing well and my class is all planned and ready to do on Tuesday evening.  All in all, I’m a much happier person right now.  Now I have two letters to write:  one to my IM telling her we no longer want her services and one to the editor of Paedatric Nurse to tell them that they’re out of order having formula adverts in their publication!

I now feel much happier, for some reason, even though I haven’t done anything big or made any big decisions.  There are now THREE more IMs to choose from locally this time round, and they are very local, compared to my choice of three who all lived about an hour away last time! They all sound lovely but are more expensive.  I’ve emailed them, anyway, to see if they’ve got a space so at least I know my options and I can discuss things with DH, Mum and my Dad, who had kindly offered to pay for an IM this time.  Maybe now I can go to sleep knowing I’ve actually done something.

So I thought I’d get up and write them down to see if it helps clear my mind a bit.  There’s something not right this time round re. my midwife.  I posted the other day about how a couple of the things she said had bothered me.  She’s said something else now that’s bothered me and I just don’t feel ‘right’ about having her as my mw anymore.  I’ll be discussing this in great depth with DH and Mum today (can’t exactly wake them up to chat now - it’s 5.45am!), but I really needed to get my thoughts down.  I’m seriously considering going back to the NHS, or possibly hiring a different Independent Midwife as there are newer ones in my area now than there were when I was expecting Mopsy.  I can’t really believe I’m actually considering not hiring the one we had last time but, and I wish I could be more explicit, but I just can’t put my finger on it - I just don’t feel right.  My NHS midwife, on the other hand, feels much more right, bizarrely.  Although I know I wouldn’t necessarily get her at the birth, and the girls wouldn’t get to know her so well, maybe we could hire a doula instead who would fulfil that role.  I’m also thinking that, in one way, it would be easier for Mum, DH and the doula (if we had one) to tell an NHS mw to please not disturb me because a) they won’t know the ins and outs of how or why I tore or didn’t tear as the mw who turns up is unlikely to be the one I’ve been meeting through my pregnancy and even if it were her, our appointments wouldn’t have been long enough to go into that much detail about planning etc. and b) I’ll be less concerned about offending them, I think - almost like it would be ‘Hi, thanks for coming, now go and sit over there and we’ll let you know if we need you’ kind of thing!

As I write, I’m also looking up local doulas and other local Independent MWs on google.  It’s bizarre, we switched to an Independent MW last time because my NHS mw felt all wrong and it really bothered me and this time I’m feeling it the other way round - how important is it that the mum-to-be feels ‘right’ about how the birth is being planned?  Part of me thinks I’m just being fussy, but the other part thinks that it’s highly important that all of me, the subconscious and the conscious part, feels totally happy about things…am I just being fussy?  And how do you ’sack’ an Independent Midwife you’ve already hired once and who was wonderful that time without offending her? 

On top of all this I’ve got pretty anaemic - my surprisingly helpful and kind NHS mw got the blood results back (they go straight to my surgery even if an independent practitioner took them!), posted them to me (as she did last time - the first time she sent a lovely note reassuring me that she’d be there for me if necessary and that she thought my IM sounded lovely - clearly not feeling threatened by her at all!), and added a nice note saying she was concerned about my iron levels and had arranged for the GP to write a prescription for me which she’d included with the blood results.  I mean, how helpful!  How thoughtful!  Sadly, it’s for Ferrous Sulphate that makes me sick and constipated, so I’m going to have to speak to the GP to get another prescription anyway but the thought was there!  The thing is though, I don’t want to have to think about my iron as well as everything else I’ve got to think about at the moment. 

Mopsy’s just called me - I’ll have to stop now.  I wonder if my head will be clear enough to sleep now!

A generally very positive appointment.  Baby seems to be below average size, but Mopsy was exactly the same at that gestation and the mw wasn’t worried anyway.  Heard the HB - Flopsy and Mopsy absolutely enraptured.  The only thing that’s concerning me is how much the mw is making it clear she’d like me to start taking iron supplements now (got a v. v. low hB after having Mopsy and they thought I’d had a PE, I was so breathless).  I am going to take them anyway - I really want to avoid a repeat of last time round - but it’s not like her to push things (or maybe I just agreed with everything she was saying last time so didn’t notice!  She also seems very keen for me to have prophylactic anti-d, which is a different tune from the one she was playing when I was expecting Mopsy.  And then, despite last time I spoke to her seeming quite happy for me to go as unassisted as possible when it comes to birthing, this time she said ‘I think we’ll have to talk about this more later on’!!!  When I had Flopsy, I had NHS midwives, although I was at home in a birthing pool.  They (and my mum) noticed my body start to push, although I had no idea - I was in ‘labour land - and the mws stopped me so they could examine me - grr- broke my waters (they said it was by accident but who knows?) and told me I could carry on pushing if I wanted.  Of course I had now been well and truly brought back to reality and instead of letting my body follow it’s natural course, my fore-brain was again engaged and desperately excited about meeting my baby soon so I pushed with all my might.  She was born in only 5 minutes, and it didn’t hurt a bit.  I don’t think I’d have pushed so hard had I been still under the control of my hind-brain ie. in ‘labourland’ still.  Thanks to my enthusiastic pushing (in my opinion), I suffered a 3rd degree tear which necessitated me transferring into hospital to have it repaired under a spinal block and to stay overnight.  It was a minor irritation to me, however I only had Flopsy by that stage - going into hospital after having Mopsy was a much more complicated thing!  Anyway, back to Flopsy’s birth.  The tear healed perfectly and has caused me no trouble at all.  When I was expecting Mopsy, my Independent MW (the one I’ve got now) asked me to not push at all when it came to the second stage of labour.  Of course, there was no way I could be in ‘labourland’ and not push as I had to have all my wits about me to control my body so much.  It was the hardest and most painful thing I’ve ever done.  Ok, she was born in only 15 minutes, but it really, really, really hurt - compared to Flopsy not hurting at all!  I think it hurt so much because a) my fore-brain was engaged and b) she crowned for a whole contraction-gap which Flopsy never did.  I had a very small second degree tear so the not pushing may have helped.  But…I think that the ’solution’ is not to not push, but to not leave ‘labourland’ in the first place so I want my mw to leave me well alone and not talk to me at all.  I think that if I’m still in ‘labourland’ when it comes time to start birthing this baby, I won’t push hard, because I won’t be aware that that’s what’s happening, so I won’t tear badly.  I also feel that, as this may be our last baby, I want to experience a truly natural birth, but I’m concerned that my mw might keep putting pressure on me to leave ‘labourland’ at pushing time and concentrate on not pushing.  If she does, she’ll no doubt end up making sure my fore-brain is in control rather than my hind-brain, even if I decide to ignore her ‘don’t push’ instructions.  I’m feeling a tiny bit miserable about this - I don’t want to intentionally decide not to call her until it’s too late, but I’m hoping it doesn’t get to the point where it may be the only option I have if I want to not be disturbed.  Ho hum - I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that she doesn’t keep on about it and she starts to respect my wishes a bit, oh yes, and that I have the strength to stand my ground about it!

I’ve got such a lot I’ve got to get done over the next few weeks!

In less than two weeks time I’ve got my workshop: Before which I have to have devised a class plan and discussed it with my tutor (Ok, I’ve done the class plan, but I need to go over it and practice etc. and am awaiting my tutor’s comments, but I only managed that by putting the girls in front of the tv for a bit! Something I always said I’d never do!); and I have to have prepared a presentation to be assessed on at the workshop (for which I can find no guidelines about length or subject or what!). Oh yes, and I’ve got to send a form to my tutor for her to fill in about how ready I am for the workshop and then fill it in myself when I get it back before I go!

On the Saturday of the workshop, the antenatal teacher teaches the first of two full-day sessions on the antenatal course that I am to provide the bf session for. I had hoped to attend the first session so that the parents could meet me and so that I could ask them to write down on some postcards anything they particularly wanted to gain from the bf session. Being as I will be in London on that day, I’m going to have to compromise and meet only the mums at the ‘baby morning’ that the teacher is holding three days after my workshop. I’ll get the teacher to hand out the postcards to the parents at the first session so that the dads get them too, and ask her to get the mums to bring the postcards to the baby morning for me to collect. So that’s something else I’ve got to arrange before I go away.

Then, ten days after my workshop, I’ll be doing the bf session itself - aaarrrggghhh!!! So as soon as I get back from the workshop, I’ll have to start preparing all my materials and practicing with them so I feel confident using them and don’t look like a wally on the night! I need some fresh oranges; some straws; some kitchen towel; some paper plates; a knitted breast (don’t ask!); some dolls (we share those with the antenatal teacher though, so I’ll have to arrange how I’m going to get them from her - maybe I can pick them up at the baby morning!); loads and loads of cards with carefully prepared questions on them to guide a discussion; my tutor’s box of goodies (little props to demonstrate things to parents if they ask about them e.g. syringe; breast-pads; feeding cups; nipple shields and so on); some pieces of A3 paper with an agenda written on it; some packs made up for the parents with various info sheets in them; some feedback forms for the parents to fill in (as I understand it, a lot of bfcs don’t do feedback forms as it annoys the parents and is rarely accurate, but I have to do them for my assessment!).

After the session, I’ll have to do a write up of it asap so that I have got something concrete written down for me to base my essay on when I come to do that - which I’ll also have to get done asap.

I’m also hoping to get back my draft of the last essay I wrote so that I can finish that off this week and have it off my plate before the workshop, but I don’t know if that will happen - my tutor’s rushed off her feet too and even if she manages to get it back to me in good time, I’ll still have to find a spare day off of DH’s (ha ha!) to work on it, along with all the other stuff I’ve got to work on.

Then I’ve got one more essay to write and hand in. Once they’re all marked and assessed, I have to get them prepared to send, with *all* the assignments I’ve written, plus evidence of a few other things, off to Head Office to be checked and re-assessed so that I can be approved to register as a BFC, oh yes and a copy of everything I send to Head Office needs to be sent to Luton University so it can be ratified before my Diploma can be awarded. It takes about 6 weeks for an essay to be assessed and second assessed, so I’ll have to have my final essays handed in by the end of October at the latest if I’m to have any chance of preparing my portfolio for submission by the time the baby arrives. I don’t want to have to worry about doing it with a newborn baby as the deadline for submission is Jan 8th!!!

Oh yes, and along with all that I have to prepare for Christmas *and* the arrival of baby number 3. Still, although this may have been a very boring post for anyone reading, I have to say that writing it all down has been quite helpful to me! At least I have a sort of ‘timetable’ now for my BFC work - I guess I’ll work flat out for the next six weeks getting all my assignments done and handed in. Then I’ll have six weeks to spend getting ready for Christmas (can do the shopping online - or will it be too late by then? Beginning of November should be ok, shouldn’t it…?) and the baby (At least that will just mean spending a couple of hours going through Flopsy and Mopsy’s old clothes and buying a few new babygros, vests & nappies! Oh yes, and bottles, formula, a new cot, electric swing, dummies…only joking!) and then a week or so (maybe!) to rest before the baby comes! But I’ll probably be spending that week preparing my portfolio for submission. Thank goodness I’m starting yoga and will be able to go once a week from now on or I’d get no time to myself whatsoever! Note to self: Don’t forget to spend time with Flopsy and Mopsy (oh yes! And DH!) as well!

Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Update:  I’ve just found out I don’t have to have a presentation prepared before the workshop - it’s something we work on during the workshop.  So that means I should be able to get that essay handed in before I go away - hurrah!

Both my babies were born under water at home and it is such a wonderful way to birth I can’t imagine doing it any other way!  I can’t wait to do it again

Why do they say that nesting is an early suggestion that labour is about to start?  In all three of my pregnancies I have nested like mad for the whole of the second trimester.  We’ve just moved house to a really lovely place that suits all our purposes absolutely perfectly.  Bizarrely (for me), I have been seized by an overwhelming need to keep the place absolutely spotless.  I’ve been clearing up after myself and the girls as soon as we stop doing whatever is making the mess (instead of ending up with several days worth of toys and mess to tidy away when we have someone coming over); sweeping our lovely laminate floor twice a day (instead of vacuuming only when I can’t stand the bits sticking to my feet any longer!); washing up after every single meal (instead of leaving a days washing up for DH to do as he gets Mopsy to sleep in the sling in the evenings); putting away all the washing as soon as it’s dry (instead of once a fortnight gathering the energy to empty the huge Ikea bags of clean clothes we’ve managed to accumulate and which we’ve spent the last two weeks searching through for the clothes we’re going to wear that day as there are none in the drawers/wardrobe); cooking supper or bathing the girls before DH gets home so he has more time to play with them (instead of leaving both jobs for DH to do when he gets in from work!); the list is pretty much endless!  I keep telling myself that, as well as enabling us to live in a very pleasant environment most of the time, it also means less work as I have less to do when I do decide to clear up/wash up/whatever.  However, I am absolutely knackered by the end of each day and feel like I’ve been seriously overdoing it - aching bump, aching back, seriously in need of hot baths and warm beds.  The laziness I’ve been describing is a hang-over from my first trimester when I genuinely was too ill and tired to do anything at all - getting dressed in the mornings pretty much did me for the day and putting the girls in front of the tv. for an horrific amount of the day was the only way I could get through it - but it’s taken moving house to galvanise me to utilise my lovely second-trimester-energy-boost.  What I really need to be doing is making the most of it to get all my last assignments done, and prepare for Christmas early so that when the third-trimester-sluggishness hits me, I have very little I need to do.  Being a housewife extraordinaire sadly leaves little time for things like that though!

ps. Although I still feel a bit yucky digestion-wise (serious heartburn and a real post-meal ‘depression’), I am really enjoying this bit again - baby is kicking loads, and strong enough for DH to feel, although not strong enough for Flopsy to feel, sadly; I love my body when I’m pregnant too - I lose loads of weight so look slim everywhere but my tummy, which is lovely and rounded instead of flabby and minging!  Hurrah for second trimester highs!

Apologies for the pause in blogging lately.  It’s because I feel simply rubbish and I now remember why I said ‘never again’ when I was this pregnant with Mopsy.  I just don’t do pregnancy very well.  This weekend I also got mastitis which made me feel even worse and I really didn’t know if I was going to be able to get through the next few weeks - I didn’t know how much of the sickness and grottiness was down to the pregnancy and how much to the mastitis and had visions of everything getting worse and worse as time went on.  As it was, I now know most of it was due to the mastitis as, although I still feel horrid, I don’t feel so half-dead as I did!  I’m spending most of each day desperately looking forward to bedtime.  It’s so stupid as I know that the tiredness is my body telling me to slow down and rest but the only way I can cope with the sickness is by keeping busy and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to take my mind off it!  And I feel desperately guilty that the girls are not having a very devoted or patient mum at the moment - Flopsy has been delegated to the care of the television and Mopsy just gets a lot of “oh, not another dirty nappy!”, “Leave Flopsy alone!”; “Can’t you play on your own?” etc. - poor little thing.  Roll on the 2nd trimester and bags of energy (please, please can this pregnancy follow the same route as my last two?!).  On a lighter note, had the most surprisingly wonderful appointment with the NHS midwife today.  We’re going to find the money somehow for our independent midwife again, but we’ve decided to have a dating scan because…well we’ve weighed it all up and have decided we want to!  DH wants to see the baby at least once, and I want to hear that I’m weeks further on than I think I am :-P  Anyway, it’s a million times less complicated to get a scan directly through the NHS than it is to go to the independent midwife, who then goes to an NHS midwife, who then books the scan, blah blah blah.  Anyway, I’d expected this particular NHS midwife (new to me as we’ve moved surgeries since having Mopsy) to be horrid as she’d told a friend of mine that they’d get social services involved if she insisted on having a homebirth(!!!) but she was actually very lovely indeed.  She’d read up about Flopsy and Mopsy and mentioned them by name to me.  She asked me if I did or didn’t want to have any screening tests at all, and even if I wanted to refuse either or both of the scans.  No pressure either way.  She asked me what I had done as a job before having children.  I told her I was a nurse and she immediately respecting my knowledge and talked to me as a fellow health-care professional.  She asked me ’Do you still do that?” instead of “Do you still work?” which earns big brownie points from me as I hate being asked if I work…as if I spend all day lazing around doing nothing because I don’t get paid!!!  She said that she wouldn’t take it personally at all if I decided to book an independent midwife for the birth again, and said she wished that NHS midwives could offer the same devoted care.  She assured me that the NHS midwifery service would still be there if I ever needed it again.  I’m going to have a booking in appointment with her in a couple of weeks and have decided that I’ll stay NHS until the last couple of months of my pregnancy - my IM knows me already from when I had Mopsy and wouldn’t need to take over until then anyway.  Oh yes, and I came away with the most disgusting amount of leaflets etc. from various advertisers - what a hideous waste of paper :-(  And they give that to every single mum!

Right, I seem to have stopped moaning and started feeling a bit better after that post!  I’ll stop now and try to think of something more interesting to write next time!