In a follow-up to yesterday's pitiful post, I'm now starting to feel less and less guilty about forgetting my Bloke's birthday, as I think he is up to something...
I'm almost 100% sure that he is pretending to have told me stuff, then pretending I have forgotten, just to get him out of trouble when he has forgotten to tell me something (that's a lot of pretending and forgetting)...
For example, yesterday afternoon via email:
Him: Remember that I'm out bowling tonight with people from work...
Me: It's not called remembering if you never told me in the 1st place...
Him: I definitely told you...
Me: No you didn't...
Him: I did - maybe not that it was bowling but definitely that I was out...
Don't worry - there was no antagonism in this exchange. I'm quite happy to have an evening of eating stuff for dinner that my Bloke doesn't like and watching rubbish TV, plus not having the AC set at 'frost' level (I seem to be over the overheating meltdowns that plagued my early pregnancy).
But it bothers me that I have might have completely forgotten yet another thing... still thinking he's messing with my head....
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Tuesday 16 August 2011
Worst pregnancy brain (and worst wife) ever
- hearing the doorbell ring early (I was still asleep) & getting up in the morning to find a bottle of wine on the table (from my husband's driver) - then proceeding to ask my Bloke over email who woke me up ringing the bell and why is there a bottle of wine in the living room?
- scrolling past my phone calendar reminder of his birthday to check where I was meeting a new friend later that day...
- talking to him on the phone for 15 minutes and still not remembering...
I finally remembered at lunchtime and sent him a message.
In my defence, my Bloke doesn't like to celebrate his birthday - he thinks greeting cards are a waste of money and paper (after 10 years together he has gradually come round to getting me a card, most years). We have also been in the midst of apartment/hospital/furniture-hunting chaos and my brain was fully occupied with finding us somewhere to live.
OK, there's really no excuse - he knew he probably wasn't getting a gift (he doesn't mind about this usually) but might have expected a 'Happy Birthday' at some point... what can I say? I'm the worst wife ever :(
Sunday 14 August 2011
A week of firsts
As I mentioned in my last post, one of the 'firsts' for the week was getting offered a seat on the metro due to my bump (I am hoping it was the bump and not the general look of exhaustion on my face that prompted this act of charity)...
The exhaustion was due to me being on my way back from my first mother & baby fair which had been very handily arranged for my 2nd week in Korea, so I could start getting to grips with the baby stores and products available here and how much they all cost. The kind Korean people seemed to conspire to let me completely buck the system and jump the massive queue to get in the fair immediately and without paying... this wasn't intentional on my part - it just seemed that the people I asked at the gates didn't speak enough English to explain that I should join the scarily long registration queues and let me walk right in!
I went on a weekday to try and avoid the chaos that I'd heard about, but it was still pretty frantic in there - where did all these hugely pregnant women and mothers carrying babies and toddlers in slings get the energy to cover 2 football field-sized halls? Though, to be fair, I too felt a surge of energy from being there - maybe that's a little investigated side-effect of pregnancy hormones.... the ability to shop for baby-related goods for hours, yet barely have enough energy to get off the sofa to wash the dishes!
I ended up wandering round (for wandering, read pushing my way past thousands of pushchairs, baby bumps and sling-suspended youngsters) for about 4 hours. And my overall impression of the baby-product market in Korea?
Pretty much everything you could want and might find back home is available there (unlike in China) including organic baby clothes, cloth nappies and pushchairs & car seats galore.
Pretty much everything is scarily expensive compared to back home!
I already knew from China that this would probably be the case and had already planned to buy a pushchair in the UK on my next visit home and get my Bloke to bring it back here on his next trip - that seems to be the big ticket item that we could save most money on in this way. But the fair made me realise how much else there is to buy that I haven't even thought about yet and how little I know about where to get all this stuff! We're also going to have to bite the bullet over the cost because there's no way to bring back everything we need from the UK in one trip and shipping costs would probably make it pointless.
But, to make a start, I experienced another 'first' and bought my first item for baby. I discovered a couple of English guys on a stand and one of them was the CEO of a British sling company - it was so nice to have a chat with someone from home and, as a sling was high on my list of essentials for our newborn, I allowed myself to get talked into buying one. Slings and carriers are hugely popular here - I don't really know how much they're used back home, but I was amazed by how many parents use them here. I also had some fixed ideas about what I wanted and didn't want from talking to friends in China about theirs... the one I bought seemed to tick all the boxes and was only a bit more expensive here than in the UK, so I went for it.
I also bought some maternity clothes from a US company that had a stand there which was surprisingly affordable... I fell in love with a pair of maternity jeans (who knew that was possible!) and also with the reflection of myself in the changing room mirror wearing a 7 month baby bump cushion to try them on :)
Today will be another 'first' - my Bloke and I will take our first trip to department stores to check out baby products 'in the flesh' as opposed to my hours of online browsing. I am preparing myself for:
The exhaustion was due to me being on my way back from my first mother & baby fair which had been very handily arranged for my 2nd week in Korea, so I could start getting to grips with the baby stores and products available here and how much they all cost. The kind Korean people seemed to conspire to let me completely buck the system and jump the massive queue to get in the fair immediately and without paying... this wasn't intentional on my part - it just seemed that the people I asked at the gates didn't speak enough English to explain that I should join the scarily long registration queues and let me walk right in!
I went on a weekday to try and avoid the chaos that I'd heard about, but it was still pretty frantic in there - where did all these hugely pregnant women and mothers carrying babies and toddlers in slings get the energy to cover 2 football field-sized halls? Though, to be fair, I too felt a surge of energy from being there - maybe that's a little investigated side-effect of pregnancy hormones.... the ability to shop for baby-related goods for hours, yet barely have enough energy to get off the sofa to wash the dishes!
I ended up wandering round (for wandering, read pushing my way past thousands of pushchairs, baby bumps and sling-suspended youngsters) for about 4 hours. And my overall impression of the baby-product market in Korea?
Pretty much everything you could want and might find back home is available there (unlike in China) including organic baby clothes, cloth nappies and pushchairs & car seats galore.
Pretty much everything is scarily expensive compared to back home!
I already knew from China that this would probably be the case and had already planned to buy a pushchair in the UK on my next visit home and get my Bloke to bring it back here on his next trip - that seems to be the big ticket item that we could save most money on in this way. But the fair made me realise how much else there is to buy that I haven't even thought about yet and how little I know about where to get all this stuff! We're also going to have to bite the bullet over the cost because there's no way to bring back everything we need from the UK in one trip and shipping costs would probably make it pointless.
But, to make a start, I experienced another 'first' and bought my first item for baby. I discovered a couple of English guys on a stand and one of them was the CEO of a British sling company - it was so nice to have a chat with someone from home and, as a sling was high on my list of essentials for our newborn, I allowed myself to get talked into buying one. Slings and carriers are hugely popular here - I don't really know how much they're used back home, but I was amazed by how many parents use them here. I also had some fixed ideas about what I wanted and didn't want from talking to friends in China about theirs... the one I bought seemed to tick all the boxes and was only a bit more expensive here than in the UK, so I went for it.
I also bought some maternity clothes from a US company that had a stand there which was surprisingly affordable... I fell in love with a pair of maternity jeans (who knew that was possible!) and also with the reflection of myself in the changing room mirror wearing a 7 month baby bump cushion to try them on :)
Today will be another 'first' - my Bloke and I will take our first trip to department stores to check out baby products 'in the flesh' as opposed to my hours of online browsing. I am preparing myself for:
- having to stop my Bloke wandering off to other departments at every opportunity
- my Bloke passing out when he realises I haven't been exaggerating about how much everything costs
- my Bloke explaining to me (for the 10th time) how he doesn't see the cost-benefit rationale in paying hundreds of pounds for something that will only get used for a finite and fairly short amount of time
- possibly me experiencing another round of my newest pregnancy symptom - bursting into tears at the slightest provocation and then not being able to stop snivelling for about 2 hours
But I'll let you know which of these occurred another day!
Friday 12 August 2011
Where to begin? A new country, perhaps?!
It's been a while since my last post so I thought I'd better stop being so lazy and reassure a few of you who've been asking that I'm still here and all is fine :)
And 'here' is now South Korea! My Bloke and I have been here a couple of weeks and it's gone really quickly and, so far, really smoothly. The move seems to have helped me relax as far as this pregnancy goes - it seems to have been the new start that I needed, which is rather counter-intuitive when moving house (let alone country) is supposed to be one of the most stressful life events, along with bereavement and divorce. But then, I don't think fertility treatment has it's rightful place on that list yet, and to me an international move seems like childs-play compared to that!
So, this new state of calm, along with my increasingly large belly is helping me to accept that this pregnancy is real and (still hopefully, but in all likelihood) will end with a baby, our baby. Talking of my belly, it is getting more and more obvious that I'm pregnant rather than chubby, depending on what outfit I wear - I'm currently favouring maternity pants and tops that seem to hug my belly and make it more obvious... after waiting so long for this bump, I am milking it for all it's worth quite shamelessly :).
One 'first' this week (there were a few) was getting offered a seat on the metro for the first time. The people here are generally very polite and good about standing up to let older people, pregnant women and mothers carrying children sit down... this time, an older lady stopped a younger girl sitting in a vacant seat on a packed train to allow me to sit down - my saviour!
Because the only downside of the my current state of health is my ongoing back/hip problems. The pain that started at 12 weeks has continued and is really no better, plus I now have a line of hard lumps/nodules along the sides of my back and round to my hips. The whole thing is really slowing me down in my exploration of my new home - walking for 15 minutes leaves me sore and standing for 30 minutes leaves me feeling faint and in need of a lie down. I'm also still struggling with sleep because turning over is painful unless I lift my butt and try not to let my hips touch the bed. An assortment of pillows is helping, but is not ideal. I saw a physio before leaving China and he gave me some strengthening exercises and talked a lot about how the muscles compensate for any instability in the pelvis caused by ligament loosening/stretching, which I'm more prone to because I have hypermobile joints. But he also said there is no sign of instability in my joints at the moment... I never really felt that I got a solid diagnosis but I only saw him twice before moving, so figured I'd get a more definitive answer here... once I work out which kind of Doctor I need to see - a physio, chiropractor or acupuncturist?.... but that's a post for another day!
But, to end on a positive note, all is generally great. I gave in and bought a fetal doppler and enjoy listening to the little one's heartbeat every few days or so (I have managed to avoid obsession so far!). He seems to be wriggling around a lot so sometimes it's harder to find than others, but hopefully that means I might start to feel some of those wriggles and kicks soon :)
Thanks to those that were asking after me and sorry for my absence in commenting on your blogs... I will make more effort to keep up to date from now on (though there might be another lull when we move into our new home until I get internet connected and/or work out how to change my new phone into English and update from there!). xx
And 'here' is now South Korea! My Bloke and I have been here a couple of weeks and it's gone really quickly and, so far, really smoothly. The move seems to have helped me relax as far as this pregnancy goes - it seems to have been the new start that I needed, which is rather counter-intuitive when moving house (let alone country) is supposed to be one of the most stressful life events, along with bereavement and divorce. But then, I don't think fertility treatment has it's rightful place on that list yet, and to me an international move seems like childs-play compared to that!
So, this new state of calm, along with my increasingly large belly is helping me to accept that this pregnancy is real and (still hopefully, but in all likelihood) will end with a baby, our baby. Talking of my belly, it is getting more and more obvious that I'm pregnant rather than chubby, depending on what outfit I wear - I'm currently favouring maternity pants and tops that seem to hug my belly and make it more obvious... after waiting so long for this bump, I am milking it for all it's worth quite shamelessly :).
One 'first' this week (there were a few) was getting offered a seat on the metro for the first time. The people here are generally very polite and good about standing up to let older people, pregnant women and mothers carrying children sit down... this time, an older lady stopped a younger girl sitting in a vacant seat on a packed train to allow me to sit down - my saviour!
Because the only downside of the my current state of health is my ongoing back/hip problems. The pain that started at 12 weeks has continued and is really no better, plus I now have a line of hard lumps/nodules along the sides of my back and round to my hips. The whole thing is really slowing me down in my exploration of my new home - walking for 15 minutes leaves me sore and standing for 30 minutes leaves me feeling faint and in need of a lie down. I'm also still struggling with sleep because turning over is painful unless I lift my butt and try not to let my hips touch the bed. An assortment of pillows is helping, but is not ideal. I saw a physio before leaving China and he gave me some strengthening exercises and talked a lot about how the muscles compensate for any instability in the pelvis caused by ligament loosening/stretching, which I'm more prone to because I have hypermobile joints. But he also said there is no sign of instability in my joints at the moment... I never really felt that I got a solid diagnosis but I only saw him twice before moving, so figured I'd get a more definitive answer here... once I work out which kind of Doctor I need to see - a physio, chiropractor or acupuncturist?.... but that's a post for another day!
But, to end on a positive note, all is generally great. I gave in and bought a fetal doppler and enjoy listening to the little one's heartbeat every few days or so (I have managed to avoid obsession so far!). He seems to be wriggling around a lot so sometimes it's harder to find than others, but hopefully that means I might start to feel some of those wriggles and kicks soon :)
Thanks to those that were asking after me and sorry for my absence in commenting on your blogs... I will make more effort to keep up to date from now on (though there might be another lull when we move into our new home until I get internet connected and/or work out how to change my new phone into English and update from there!). xx
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