It’s getting harder to start each of these pregnancy diary posts nowadays – third trimester up until this point has been very much of a muchness of getting slowly but increasingly more uncomfortable and that slight background worry of how many days I have left at work!
33 weeks pregnant for me started with good TV: Death in Paradise was back on and we started watching Marie Kondo on Netflix. Death in Paradise is one we look forward to in the depths of January every year as the Caribbean sunshine, even if it is accompanied by murder, brings a bit of lighthearted fun to our dark evenings. It was a bit of an odd one this year though as I realised we will quite possibly have an extra person joining us to watch the end of the series!
And yes, I’m totally jumping on the Marie Kondo bandwagon – #sorrynotsorry. As I keep banging on about in these updates, I’ve already got the cleaning, nesting and organising bug thanks to pregnancy, so the series came just at the right time for me on Netflix. Now where can I buy more storage boxes?!
I’ve been very lucky with work letting me have a lot of freedom to work at home when I need to as I head towards the end of pregnancy, and Friday was one of these days. I’m reaching the point where it’s uncomfortable to sit in my office chair after a couple of days – so much so that I’m worried I’m bothering my colleagues with my constant shuffling! – and bouncing on my ball at home or on the sofa with a laptop is far more comfortable and makes me much more productive.
This day also marked a sad occasion – I had to remove my wedding ring, eek! My wedding ring is actually a size smaller than my engagement ring so I started to feel the strain on this one first. I often find my rings are too big when my hands are cold (the vast majority of the time) but are a little tight when I’m hot, and I’ve generally been a lot warmer than I usually am lately. It was only when I was fidgeting with it one day that I realised it wasn’t spinning on my finger and I struggled to get it past my knuckle – so off it came before it got stuck, which is (apparently, as I’m just discovering) a huge fear for me! Not to fear though, it’s now on a chain I’m wearing on my neck – along with the engagement ring that followed a few days later!
On Friday evening, I did a random Gumtree search in our area for a glider chair, and discovered someone in a local village had one for sale that they were willing to let go for £50. We’d gone back and forth on a chair for the nursery, starting with an IKEA Poang chair that we’ve owned for a few years but never found a proper place for. It turned out that this was too big for the room – it was just taking up too much space, so it’s been moved to the garage as the nursery was its last possible resort! I’d said we’d probably just leave getting a chair for the nursery until I actually needed one there for night time feeds – hopefully around 6-ish months – but this was an offer too good to refuse, so on Saturday, we picked up the chair. It’s in excellent condition, basically brand new – it looks unused – and should have been £170 brand new from Mothercare so we’re really pleased with it. Plus it’s SO comfortable. Yes, I do keep going in there just to sit in the chair to practice, what of it?
After we’d got the chair, we picked up some baby stuff at Aldi as their Baby Event had started, including our first set of reusable nappies. I was super excited to see Aldi would be stocking ones by Bambino Mio, the brand we’ve chosen to try to start with, so we picked up one of each design along with some biodegradable baby wipes, a changing mat, some bottles and a baby towel set – not terribly exciting purchases, but excellent timing from Aldi with their Baby Event this year!
When we got home, I set to work organising the nursery (again!), baby’s hospital bag and my hospital bag (again!), now that I’ve got pretty much everything we need for hospital – most importantly, snacks. I have a full pocket of snacks in a suitcase for hospital!
That evening, we went out for the surprise date a local pub, The Wild Swan at Minskip, with our friends Sarah and Beeley – you can read more about that trip here.
Sunday meant shopping day – again! We seem to have got into a bit of a habit of this lately, but we keep needing to get random baby things and house things and it’s easiest to go on weekends. Our priority this day was, randomly, home stuff such as reed diffusers and fake flowers – of course! We grabbed a couple of things in Next then headed to Debenhams where, incidentally, they currently have a 20% off code on homeware with MX94. We don’t have a huge selection of homeware stores around us, but Next, Debenhams and M&S are our fallback options every time. We also got paint to patch up the nursery at B&Q (it still doesn’t match properly, but I’m giving up!) and grabbed a couple of bits of baby clothes at Asda while we picked up a grocery collection for our main event later in the day. I would say they were all basics at George at Asda that we bought – including a pack of basic vests and some hats, but I also spotted the cutest dress with matching tights, whoops.
That afternoon was completely dedicated to that main event I just mentioned – batch cooking freezer meals! I have a whole post coming up on this soon, but we spent all afternoon and part of the evening cooking huge portions of chilli con carne, lasagne, puttanesca pasta sauce, borlotti minestrone soup and veggie burgers, plus some banana muffins, just because. While we did this, I completely emptied our freezer, relabelled everything, including the drawers, reorganised it and restocked it. We’re now ready for baby’s arrival with plenty of meals to keep us going for a while!
On Monday, the Boots order arrived so I finally had some maternity pads! This was something I was quite worried about – what if they didn’t come before I gave birth?! But luckily I’ve got lots now – I over-ordered just in case all the shops were out of stock again!
This evening, I started drinking raspberry leaf tea as apparently it helps prepare your cervix for labour. I can’t tell you if this is true or not yet, but studies do seem to show this, along with dates, does help for a quicker and easier labour, so we’ll see! I’m planning to start with the dates at 36 weeks.
And Tuesday – I wish I’d taken more advantage of Tuesday as it was my last day of feeling healthy! We went out for tea to another local pub this evening as they had another offer on with a burger and a drink for £9.95 – I took one picture with an aim to review this one, but completely forgot to take any others, whoops!
That night though, I woke up multiple times, each time feeling increasingly feverish, and by 3am, there was no chance I was falling back asleep. By morning, I felt entirely broken – and thus began my week…2 weeks…I’m still not quite better yet, of what we’ve now discovered was flu. Yep, just what I wanted at 34 weeks pregnant…but that’s the story for next week!
