Julie's Boggle

Hurrah! After two weeks of waiting for the elusive quickening movements that it was likely I “would have trouble recognising” because it’s the first time around, I finally felt something this morning that definitely WAS a movement!

It felt rather curious, like being gently prodded with a slender finger, but from inside. It happened about 4 or 5 times and then subsided. And more bump-nudging from the outside (ok-ok, there was provocation to start with! ) didn’t make it start again.

Then later I felt some other movements – more like the feeling of “bubbles” or fluttering I’d been prepped for. And some quite strong pulses fairly close together that felt very much like a real pulse, as it might beat after doing some heavy lifting, but coming from lower bump.

So after several weeks, or months even, where I’ve been going for long stretches without any thoughts of pregnancy even crossing my mind, I’m now getting rather frequent reminders! It’s quite amazing.

Feels like the start of a whole new phase. Can’t wait till it’s strong enough to feel from the outside so Tom can feel it too.

Queen Charlotte’s, the maternity hospital that we’re booked into, has a programme of 4 ante-natal sessions which I’ve dutifully signed up for. The first one, which I went to last week, was just for women, preferably around the 18-week mark, and was titled “Taking Care of Yourself”.

Our trainer for the two-hour session was a pretty young physiotherapist called Emma.

After a general ice-breaker where she got us comparing pregnancy notes with our neighbours, she had a go at getting the session off on a positive note, by canvassing the room in general for “things that we’re enjoying about being pregnant.”

Mmm. Lots of heavy thinking there. Turns out the enjoyment factor wasn’t that high for most of us. We eventually came up with ‘seeing the first scan’, ‘feeling movements’ (that one was from someone who was further along than most of the class), ‘telling our mothers/family/friends’ and ‘getting some common ground with people we wouldn’t ordinarily relate to’. Not a huge amount in it really.

Then came the list of pregnancy-related discomforts, and suddenly there was something for everyone. And about 5 additional items that we came up with that weren’t on Emma’s list! Looking round at the hands raised for the various complaints, it was good to feel one was not alone.

Aside from revising some rather specific biology, the main theme for the evening was learning useful exercises and ways of doing day-to-day things in such a way that we wouldn’t damage ourselves.

It seems that the hormone relaxin, which goes into overdrive during pregnancy, gives everything in the body just that little bit too much stretchability.

So while you can be incredibly flexible, the message is more that you wouldn’t want to be because it will still hurt later. And you have to be specially careful not to let it happen unconsciously. And you have to be even more careful once you’ve got a great big bump to tote around!

So we learned best practices for sitting, sleeping, turning over, standing up etc. etc. along with a whole list of good exercises to practise, and bad exercises to avoid (no more sit-ups!). All very instructive really. And good fun to exchange notes afterwards with other “expectees” with similar due dates who live nearby.

Apologies to anyone who feels that we’re lingering a little too much on the kitchen topic of late, but it’s hard to focus on anything else with this all-important area of our home having been turned into a building site!

We did finally clear another significant milestone on Thursday though when the new worktops for the kitchen arrived.

Their delivery was actually the second part of a two-phase process, the first of which was the “templating”. (Which is a bit like cutting out a pattern if you’ve ever done clothes-making at home.) For this, the friendly guys from Polished Stone came over with a supply of hard-board and magic-markers, and cut out exact replicas of every surface we would need.

It was all done with great efficiency. They then handed me some granite samples for us to choose from and went off to await our decision.

After some thought, we picked the aptly named “Star Galaxy” option. Black with gold flecks. The variety of flecks we wanted in the granite had been a point of indecision beforehand (we both agreed plain black was too dull), but Star Galaxy won me over when I saw how well the gold bits picked up the warm tones from the wood and the tiles.

And then, a week later, came the big day when Jonathan and Tony returned with our hefty granite slabs…

Just like assembling a giant jigsaw, they slotted them all expertly into place.

(There had been a concern with the sink piece initially – they’d got back to us to say that it didn’t look like it could all be got out of one slab of stone. )

Option 1, a join, would not have looked as good but they had given us the other alternatives of a full refund on our deposit – i.e. start again with someone else, or paying out another £1000 to cut the whole lot from a bigger block of granite . We took the join. And were subsequently delighted to find that they had actually worked out a plan and managed to get that delicate piece all out of one. )

Once all the pieces were in, there were lots of minute adjustments of cupboard levels, then applications of joint material, silicon, and a protective layer of polish before they could finally step back and say it was all complete. Hurrah!

For anyone who wants to see more of the above photos and other details, they’re on the second page of our Kitchen makeover album.

I’ve been a bit slow with updating things lately – blame it on some chaotic weekends out, and a lovely weekend away – but I have managed to finish sorting the photos of the kitchen upgrade.

So for those of you who have an interest in our kitchen transformation, there’s a link to the album, on the right under Albums, or you can just click here.

Obviously we’ve still got a little way to go (about 2 weeks apparently), but any new pics will be added onto the end of the album as they arrive, so watch this link…