What’s In My Hospital Bag?

Man, I feel like I’ve totally dropped out of the blogging bubble again! Once my thesis was finally out of the way, I had all these great ideas for posts and content, but this pregnancy has really taken it out of me, especially with the horrible heatwave we’ve been experiencing! I’ve also become a bit of a night owl, which is frustrating because I’m then left exhausted during the day, and requiring constant naps to maintain my energy levels. I’m fed up and sore, and I’m counting the days until I get to hold my wee bundle of joy… pregnancy definitely seems to get harder the more times you do it!

 

Sunday saw us reach the full term 37 week mark, so I thought it was finally time to think about packing the hospital bag. I’ve seen a few other bloggers do similar posts, and I found them very helpful, so I thought I’d share what I’m planning to take to the hospital for those who are interested:

Why I’m Hating My Pregnancy…

I feel awful even typing that title, but despite all my best efforts, ignoring it doesn’t make it any less true…

Recurrent Miscarriage – The Answers We Didn’t Want To Hear…

(I feel this post needs a specific disclaimer. Please note that I am not an expert in medicine or genetics, the following is only intended to provide a brief description of my current condition and should not replace any advice given to you by a doctor.)

For those of you who have been reading my blog, you will be aware of the difficulties we’ve experienced while trying to grow our brood. October marks not only a year since we made the decision to add a third child to our family, but also the due date of our second pregnancy of the year, which ended in March. As today also marks the start of national baby loss awareness week, I thought I would share the results of our recent medical investigations, which were carried out while looking into the cause of our recurrent miscarriages…

From Hoping to Coping…

Last week, we were in a position of not knowing if our baby was alive or dead – a scan had shown a heartbeat, but further bleeding had convinced medical professionals that a miscarriage was imminent. How do you continue with everyday life when such a dark cloud is hanging over your head?

Schrödinger’s Baby

We’ve not had a lot of luck on the baby front recently, as you may have read if you follow my posts. Our desire to grow our family has been met with obstacle after obstacle, which seems to serve only to intensify our need to add a third child to our brood. The situation has been made even more difficult by the wave of pregnancies that seem to be crashing through both our personal and work lives, and I really wish I could be jumping up and down with people, sharing their excitement. I have been longing to add our own special announcement to the mix, but nerves always prevent feeling any level of joy after the multiple losses we have faced.
 

I wish my next words could be the happy announcement we were hoping for, but it seems that, once again, we have picked the short straw… We are pregnant again, but it looks like it may end in another miscarriage.

First Impressions of the 5:2 Diet

There are loads of diets out there these days, each promising fabulous results and the ability to fix you up with the perfect bikini body/little black dress figure/pre-pregnancy time warp! I’ve had problems with my body image since high school – first with thinking I was too fat at a size 10, then piling on the pounds after becoming a teen parent. As an undergraduate, I struggled with my size and ballooned to the ‘obese’ BMI range, unhappily plodding through my daily routine and getting out of breath at the slightest bit of exercise. After my second child came along, I tried out Slimming World and lost 3.5 stone, finally reaching the ‘healthy’ BMI range, but was unable to sustain this and quickly gained the weight again. Fed up once more, I decided to give the 5:2 a go!

Reducing Stress by Eating a Raisin…

For those of you who have been reading my blog, you will know that I suffer from depression. I recently talked about how I want to make 2016 ‘my year’, therefore learning to cope with my mental health problems will be one of my goals. My university run a course called ‘Mindfulness’, which aims to help reduce the levels of stress in our lives and allow us to better manage our anxieties – sounds like just the ticket for me!

5 Ways To Make 2016 My Year

I’ve been waiting for 2016 for what seems like ages, this should be the best and most exciting year of my life. I wanted to start the year with a bang, raring to go with all my wonderful ideas – my depression had other plans. I’ve only struggled with mental illness for just over a year, but it makes the simplest of tasks often seem impossible. When I heard about this recent blog hop linkup (see my last blog hop post for an example), I took it as an opportunity to remind myself what I have to look forward to this year…

 

My Greatest Gift this Holiday Season…

Christmas is over for another year. 2015 is almost at an end and - as is usual with the time of year - I’m in a rather reflective mood. I’ve been struggling with how to approach the subject of this post for some time, but I’ve seen a lot of bloggers posting about their recent Christmas gifts, so I thought I’d tell you about mine…

 

On the last postage day before Christmas, I received a letter with the news I had been hoping for – after 3 years, the results of my smear test were finally normal! This sounds like a pretty simple thing, but my life feels like it has been on hold for almost three years, since right after my son was born.