As I hit the middle of the second trimester, I started to struggle with how to begin these posts. My pregnancy symptoms pretty much disappeared entirely, leaving me occasionally wondering if everything was alright but also absolutely loving the lack of sickness and nausea. Basically my pregnancy diaries at this point have just become “here are some things I did while I was 23 weeks pregnant”!
But on with the show! On Thursday evening, I had a meal out at Frankie & Benny’s with two friends, catching up and eating all the food. Again, my increased appetite has continued into this week so even though we ate dough balls and I had a full pizza to myself (double dough!), I still managed to eat more when I got home – eek!
This weekend, I had potential plans to go to London to visit Charley this weekend, but sadly we had to cancel as there was the potential of having a scan this weekend. The woman who does the scans at the place I’d had my private one had been told she needed to start maternity leave early, so they were rebooking for this weekend and next, but unfortunately she ended up having to take it pretty much immediately, and so the potential date we had in was cancelled. It’s a shame as we won’t get to see baby girl again now until she’s born unless we end up needing another NHS scan, but I completely understand the reasons behind it!
Instead, I spent Saturday cleaning – again!! Ben went to visit Frankie who’s currently over in Huddersfield – since I was supposed to be away that day – so I decided to spend the day organising everything. I don’t know what’s happened lately, some might say I’ve been “Hinched”, but I can only assume this is “nesting” since in fact, in our family, it’s Ben who’s into cleaning vloggers and blogs and not me – I’ve never been interested at all! I spent all morning on Saturday cleaning and scrubbing the downstairs of the house, sorting out the laundry, then tidying the other floors.
This meant the afternoon was left free for more fun activities, so I published this blog post then headed up to my new sewing room – since my old one is now a nursery-in-progress – and dusted off the sewing machine to make a baby nest! I used a couple of blog posts and templates I’d seen online and, despite needing to get my brain around some maths, had the nest pretty much complete before Ben arrived home around 5pm! You can read all about this here.
That evening, we were invited over to my uncle’s for a fireworks show and bonfire. This was a lovely evening with my family and cousins – Eva asked me “Is there REALLY a baby in there?!”, pointed at my stomach, then suggested the name “Sunshine” (which Ben has now taken to calling her!) – and the fireworks were wonderful. Much more cosy than going to a big local display too!
On Sunday, we got to EVEN MORE organising around the house. Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on! Ben’s sister had been over on Thursday evening to clear her stuff out of the garage – we’d been storing it for her since the beginning of summer as they were doing up the spare rooms in their house. This meant that all the stuff we’d shoved in around hers needed sorting now we could actually get to it. We got up early on Sunday and had 3 tip runs (mostly cardboard and other rubbish!) under our belts before 11am! We popped down to York to grab a couple of laundry baskets and bins (exciting stuff!), then I left Ben cleaning and tidying in there while I had a much-deserved bath!
When I was out of the bath, I took down the shelf in the nursery, touched up the paint on the wall, and delivered the shelf to Ben in the garage. We’ve now got a proper laundry “area” complete with laundry baskets and bins as organisation! We then headed back up to the nursery to put up some prints and to get the furniture shuffled around – more coming on this soon, but I’m excited with how it’s looking! There’s a sneak peek below but I have a whole post coming up about it soon.
Then finally, we headed downstairs for tea and a lot of inbox organisation for me – it’s something I’d been putting off for a while, but was a good thing to tick off my to-do list.
Monday meant back to the working week and I ended up helping out in our office Gardening Club. Fortunately I got away with sitting at the bench and planting bulbs into planters so I didn’t have to lean over the flowerbeds – win! Tuesday was a sad day though – I had a call from my family in the evening that the family cat, Hollie (who actually featured here), had been hit by a car. They live on a bad corner so it’s not something that hasn’t happened in our family before, but it’s always very sad news.
See more of my pregnancy diary posts here or check out the whole thing:
Wednesday marked the last day of 23 weeks pregnant and also a meeting with my dad and grandad at work, which was very strange! We’ve worked on their website for a few years now, but we were talking to them about some other services and meant I had to pitch my side of the industry to them!
This day I also got myself sorted with ordering a Christmas party outfit which was a weight off my mind. I know there’s still over a month to go, but this year, it’s a sparkly themed ball (although we don’t need ballgowns!) so I wanted to make sure I was properly themed but that I’ll also be comfortable throughout the night – I’ll be 29 weeks by then! I’m sure I’ll share more on the outfit soon – or at least hopefully, the final piece is still on the way – but I’ve gone a little different with separates this year and included some maternity basics as part of the outfit that can be reworn.
And finally, here’s one of my favourite maternity outfits from the week that’s – again! – not actually maternity! An oversized dress from GAP and a mustard cardigan tied at the waist to emphasise the bump is working very well for me right now:
