It was shiny and sleek and it saved my bacon many a morning when my otherwise feckless source of transport - the number 33 bus - would turn up late, early or not at all. Oh how I miss the number 48 and it's express counterpart. I used to have a choice of buses to come home on but now I must stand around for up to 20 minutes at a time waiting for the next overcrowded 33. On top of this ridiculous reduction in the availability of bus services in my area, coupled with the fact that the whole of Princes Street remains closed along with now the East and West Ends of town meaning I require an hour to travel the 4 miles to and from work, is the hugely aggravating fact that they have dared to raise the cost of the monthly pass!
This loss pains me so much more at present given that I'm not able to choose to walk to work (a feat which used to take just fifteen minutes more than my current bus journey) or to cycle, which used to take half an hour. Both options FREE! With the City Centre road closures you really would need to be confident dicing with death to get amid the buses on 2 wheels without crash bars.
MC doesn't feel my pain. He works about a mile from our house and he doesn't drive. He has never owned a car. I beg and plead to be allowed to buy four wheeled transport and he makes sensible noises about the price of petrol, insurance and road tax. I kick and scream and he points out that even if we had a car, I can't take it to my work and so I'd still have to pay the exorbitant rates for a Lothian Bus pass and put up with the miseries of the daily commute on the number 33. We'd be poorer. Even hormonal and irrational I have to see the logic in his arguments. I don't have to like it.
Everyone who commutes rants about public transport. It didn't used to get to me so much, honest, but I'm very frustrated at the moment by my general lack of mobility. I need the buses, depend on them because I can't just take off walking if I don't want to wait. I have now gained over a stone in this pregnancy. It's all within the healthy boundaries for someone my height who is after all about six months pregnant but added to the evil entity relaxin I've got some hypermobile joints that are misbehaving. The pelvic joint at the base of my spine that I'm not even going to try to spell is literally chewing up my tailbone and the surrounding ligaments. Nice. As is the fashionable brace belty thing that I have to strap my bones together with in order to walk anywhere.
The upshot of the post I guess is that I'm a cranky round pregnant waddler who thinks that Lothian Buses are pants and that they should bring back the (X)48 immediately or reduce my monthly pass accordingly - half the available buses should mean half the price right?!
My ups and downs have all largely come in pairs since my last post. At our twenty week scan appointment we were delighted to learn that we are having a girl. We got to spend a good 40 mins gazing adoringly at her little form while the sonographer tried to encourage her to stop being obstreperous and get her head up out of my pelvis so that she could measure it. Finally she tilted the table so my feet were above my head to have gravity help out but I ended up a little woozy on coming back to rights. I went to the doctor this week and he gave me Nasonex and eye drops to combat the hayfever that's been rattling my brain loose one sneeze at a time which was lovely but he also asked me with a perfectly straight face if they'd ruled out twins because in his opinion the bump is quite pronounced for just shy of 24 weeks. They really should keep obese balding middle aged male doctors away from hormonal teary women. Grateful as I am for the sneeze banishing solution I did not need it affirmed that in his professional opinion I look like a Weeble.
MC's been great. Not only did he tell me (post run in with the doctor who has never known a gym in his existence) that he thinks I look great (and hey, I can live with the lie so long as it's kindly meant!) but he's been busy in the nursery. We finally found a joiner and have a new, fifty-year-old-carpet-free, built in wardrobe. Our garden looks like the MDF rejects yard but we are finally able to crack on with feathering the nest in white emulsion. The fresh plaster is taking a couple of coats to cover up but it's looking so much more like someone might be able to live in that room again! Wall stickers have arrived and I will do a nursery progress post as soon as I can take pictures. MC has banned me from the wood painting because even though we have non-toxic non-gloss almost solvent free stuff it still smells pretty pongy. So, I'm going to be busy making some funky bright curtains to cover up the hanging sections and he's going to turn some boring MDF into something pretty.
The only other major goal of the weekend is to do slightly less than I did last weekend. I seem to perpetually suffer on a Monday the backlash from my weekends. To that end, I bid one and all (except the powers that be within Lothian Buses) a happy weekend as I take my twin-proportioned belly off to bed to dream of the bygone days of better public transport for the peoples of the Inch.
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Friday, 23 March 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Massive Fail
All those who know me, know that I have been somewhat under the weather for the last week. I cannot keep working on the assumption that everyone reading my blog knows me personally though as I am pretty sure I do not know anyone in Latvia, nor can I count amongst my friendships the twenty or so Russians and dozens of Americans that have been reading my nutty musings. Lets just hope no one is using it for English translation practice!
Where was I? Oh, yes. Being ill. Now I am a rubbish patient. I just don't have any patience with feeling keek, day time TV or Lemsip - YUCK! This time is no exception. I have a spot of bronchitis and although I don't consider myself asthmatic, or carry my inhaler around with me the way I probably should, any sort of chest infection leaves me wheezing and puffing away on the blue stuff. Nasty ass stuff, it gives me the shakes. So, I've been off work two days so far this week. I had to cancel plans to see my oldest friend and her babes on Saturday. I had to bump a friend I haven't seen in months who I was really looking forward to catching up with on Tuesday. I didn't make it to the pre-paid bendy stretchy class I was hoping to try out or aquanatal. I even cancelled my teeth scraping appointment at the dentist (OK, perhaps I'm not too sad about that one). Today... well, today was my most massive fail of the week so far.
I was pretty bored yesterday in between fetal-position-inducing coughing fits. The highlight of my day was my cheesy beans on toast. I grilled the cheese over the top and everything. I really wanted to go back to work today. I have a pile of work that I'd planned to get through this week and tonight MC and I had plans to go to Vittoria on the bridges for date night. It's the same restaurant we had our wedding meal at and my favourite eatery for Italian nosh (I have a favourite for every international cuisine across Edinburgh). And they were offering 50% off all bills before the 26th Jan. So, this morning I got up and I felt rough and sleepy but show me the pregnant person who does want to part company with the duvet of a cold winter morning. I didn't feel too horrible though. MC asked how I felt and I had to tell him I honestly didn't know. The coughing is weird in the morning. It starts off dry and tends to get worse throughout the day. I got dressed much to MC's disbelief and went to work. Well, I got on the bus.
Getting to the bus stop made my chest seize up pretty bad and I felt distinctly icky on the ride to work. I got off the bus in George Street and had only walked a block before I sounded like the drowning emphysemic chain smoking ball of infection I'd been on the same trip to work on Monday. The inhaler, which had been my saving grace on arrival at the office on Monday, was very helpfully lying on my bedside table. I crossed the road and got on a bus coming home. I called my boss. I explained my stupidity and that despite doing the hard part and getting within 50 feet of the office I would not actually be coming in today. She was really very understanding and hadn't actually thought that I'd be much better after only 2 days of antibiotics. Now as if this wasn't enough ridiculousness for a Thursday morning, I then did the unimaginable. I bubbbled on the bus most of the way home.
Other pregnant people had forewarned me about unforeseen bouts of outpouring, uncontrollable emotion but so far, I had not experienced any such public humiliation. Today though, my frustration took me way over the edge. I tried to rationalise why I felt the way I did and it boiled down to two things. Firstly, I have no patience for being unwell. We covered that already. Secondly though, I think I have a horror of being the unreliable pregnant person in the office. I like my job. I like that I'm responsible for my own little corner of grind and that for the most part, I'm left alone to get stuff done. It seriously irks me that since I got pregnant there hasn't been a single week where I've felt like I was functioning on all cylinders and being my dependable self. Work completely aside, I like to be able to depend on me in general - on my health, my ability to get out of bed in a timely fashion in the mornings and to go about my business.
It seems as though I might have to get a little less fiercely independent. I might have to lie down when I'm told to. I might have to get used to the fact that pregnant me is little more fragile and a little less dependable than my old self. In plain terms, she's a bit of a woose-arsed sickly numpty. I don't like it. That's what got me on the bus this morning and that's what caused this whole stupid mess. My pigheaded refusal to stay in bed bored (sorry, 'resting') but warm.
Rant over. I saw the sunrise this morning. It damn near fried my eyeballs as with any winter sun encounter in Scotland. It was nice. I might not be able to go to work today, or tomorrow, but I saw the sun. It's a rare beast in January, what with the going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. It's still hanging around up there in a cold blue sky. Does it make up in any way for almost getting to work and having a melt down on public transport?
Perhaps, but it doesn't take the edge off missing a trip to Vittoria's.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Being ill. Now I am a rubbish patient. I just don't have any patience with feeling keek, day time TV or Lemsip - YUCK! This time is no exception. I have a spot of bronchitis and although I don't consider myself asthmatic, or carry my inhaler around with me the way I probably should, any sort of chest infection leaves me wheezing and puffing away on the blue stuff. Nasty ass stuff, it gives me the shakes. So, I've been off work two days so far this week. I had to cancel plans to see my oldest friend and her babes on Saturday. I had to bump a friend I haven't seen in months who I was really looking forward to catching up with on Tuesday. I didn't make it to the pre-paid bendy stretchy class I was hoping to try out or aquanatal. I even cancelled my teeth scraping appointment at the dentist (OK, perhaps I'm not too sad about that one). Today... well, today was my most massive fail of the week so far.
I was pretty bored yesterday in between fetal-position-inducing coughing fits. The highlight of my day was my cheesy beans on toast. I grilled the cheese over the top and everything. I really wanted to go back to work today. I have a pile of work that I'd planned to get through this week and tonight MC and I had plans to go to Vittoria on the bridges for date night. It's the same restaurant we had our wedding meal at and my favourite eatery for Italian nosh (I have a favourite for every international cuisine across Edinburgh). And they were offering 50% off all bills before the 26th Jan. So, this morning I got up and I felt rough and sleepy but show me the pregnant person who does want to part company with the duvet of a cold winter morning. I didn't feel too horrible though. MC asked how I felt and I had to tell him I honestly didn't know. The coughing is weird in the morning. It starts off dry and tends to get worse throughout the day. I got dressed much to MC's disbelief and went to work. Well, I got on the bus.
Getting to the bus stop made my chest seize up pretty bad and I felt distinctly icky on the ride to work. I got off the bus in George Street and had only walked a block before I sounded like the drowning emphysemic chain smoking ball of infection I'd been on the same trip to work on Monday. The inhaler, which had been my saving grace on arrival at the office on Monday, was very helpfully lying on my bedside table. I crossed the road and got on a bus coming home. I called my boss. I explained my stupidity and that despite doing the hard part and getting within 50 feet of the office I would not actually be coming in today. She was really very understanding and hadn't actually thought that I'd be much better after only 2 days of antibiotics. Now as if this wasn't enough ridiculousness for a Thursday morning, I then did the unimaginable. I bubbbled on the bus most of the way home.
Other pregnant people had forewarned me about unforeseen bouts of outpouring, uncontrollable emotion but so far, I had not experienced any such public humiliation. Today though, my frustration took me way over the edge. I tried to rationalise why I felt the way I did and it boiled down to two things. Firstly, I have no patience for being unwell. We covered that already. Secondly though, I think I have a horror of being the unreliable pregnant person in the office. I like my job. I like that I'm responsible for my own little corner of grind and that for the most part, I'm left alone to get stuff done. It seriously irks me that since I got pregnant there hasn't been a single week where I've felt like I was functioning on all cylinders and being my dependable self. Work completely aside, I like to be able to depend on me in general - on my health, my ability to get out of bed in a timely fashion in the mornings and to go about my business.
It seems as though I might have to get a little less fiercely independent. I might have to lie down when I'm told to. I might have to get used to the fact that pregnant me is little more fragile and a little less dependable than my old self. In plain terms, she's a bit of a woose-arsed sickly numpty. I don't like it. That's what got me on the bus this morning and that's what caused this whole stupid mess. My pigheaded refusal to stay in bed bored (sorry, 'resting') but warm.
Rant over. I saw the sunrise this morning. It damn near fried my eyeballs as with any winter sun encounter in Scotland. It was nice. I might not be able to go to work today, or tomorrow, but I saw the sun. It's a rare beast in January, what with the going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. It's still hanging around up there in a cold blue sky. Does it make up in any way for almost getting to work and having a melt down on public transport?
Perhaps, but it doesn't take the edge off missing a trip to Vittoria's.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
A Rudolph Inspired Glow
I had my flu jab shortly after finding out I was pregnant. Now, I may be mistaken, but this manky thing I have is feeling distinctly like flu. Is that even possible? I hurt when I lie down so I get up, I hurt sitting up and so I go back to bed again. I must have sneezed fifty times in succession this morning and I've held down some rice cakes and noodles since Thursday lunch.
I don't want to write about how crap I feel. In fact, I was really hoping that I would write this week about how good I have been feeling. At the start of the week I was eating healthy, feeling totally human, wasn't so tired. It was all good. I wasn't quite there, but I had a sense that a 'glow' might actually be possible - I just didn't realise that within a few days it would be the end of my nose to my top lip glowing crimson. Pregnancy is just hilarious quite frankly. I spent seven to eight weeks with constant nausea and never once was I physically sick. Then a common cold has me losing my lunch. And let me tell you, being sick with no nausea is truly the strangest sensation in the world. I thought I was a hungry pregnant person before I got sick but now I'm positively ravenous! Speaking of, could really go a bacon roll. Hmm, bacon rolls.
Anyway, before I start salivating or go hunting for food in my unwashed grisly bear mode, I will tell you about a positive step this week. I went along to my first aquanatal class. After two months of relative inactivity as we sat tight and prayed my body would behave itself and stop having a strop over the appearance of a baby in my uterus, I was super keen to get back into exercising. The only activity I've seen since October has been the walk from my old office to the bus stop. For anyone who knows Edinburgh that hike is from the bottom end of Dundas Street to George Street. Not that I'd call it a workout when you're moving at the pace of a tortoise walking on eggshells.
Now, in my mind when I hear of aqua aerobics I picture OAPs at 10am on a Wednesday morning with their blue rinse 'dos' bobbing up and down to 'Sisters are doing it for themselves' or some other tune you'd only otherwise encounter on a Rosemary Connelly fitness DVD. Scary that I am acquainted with such things at my tender age, I know. However, it's not like I can mash the belly into a harness and go climbing so I thought I'd give it a shot. Let me tell you, this aqua fitness malarky is actually not quite as woose-tastic as it first sounds. I was particularly taken aback when the instructor shouted at us dozen or so out of breath belly laden people (and several bellies present there were within a week of their due to pop dates!) that it was 'Time to throw in the dumbbells!' What!!! Yes people, dumbbell shaped floatation devices that you force under the surface of the water and then manhandle in various directions under you. When we finally got a break I couldn't get my fingers to release from the damn handles. I had been squeezing with such force.
For all my horror at the necessary exertion though it was great to get some endorphins going. Even if I did eat and fall asleep pretty much immediately on getting home. It was an eye opener being around so many other pregnant ladies too. I couldn't help thinking 'man I'll never stretch that big, it's not possible'. I guess it probably is, but it's still mind boggling. I had high hopes of making it back to bendy stretchy this week but I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to get a place in a belly-friendly yoga class! How many pregnant people are there in Edinburgh at any one time? I am on several waiting lists but finally was able to get a place to trial a class at Palmerston Place on Monday straight after work.
In my current chip I may not make it for this Monday, which will be a shame. Even if I can get back to the office, I wouldn't risk making other pregnant people sick. But it's going to be OK. For one thing, MC has kindly run out and provided me with non-sandpaper tissues to appease my poor nose. For another, I know I'm on my way to a glowing phase and getting my fitness back will be a part of it.
In the meantime I'm going to hide under the duvet until my face gets the message that Christmas is over.
I don't want to write about how crap I feel. In fact, I was really hoping that I would write this week about how good I have been feeling. At the start of the week I was eating healthy, feeling totally human, wasn't so tired. It was all good. I wasn't quite there, but I had a sense that a 'glow' might actually be possible - I just didn't realise that within a few days it would be the end of my nose to my top lip glowing crimson. Pregnancy is just hilarious quite frankly. I spent seven to eight weeks with constant nausea and never once was I physically sick. Then a common cold has me losing my lunch. And let me tell you, being sick with no nausea is truly the strangest sensation in the world. I thought I was a hungry pregnant person before I got sick but now I'm positively ravenous! Speaking of, could really go a bacon roll. Hmm, bacon rolls.
Anyway, before I start salivating or go hunting for food in my unwashed grisly bear mode, I will tell you about a positive step this week. I went along to my first aquanatal class. After two months of relative inactivity as we sat tight and prayed my body would behave itself and stop having a strop over the appearance of a baby in my uterus, I was super keen to get back into exercising. The only activity I've seen since October has been the walk from my old office to the bus stop. For anyone who knows Edinburgh that hike is from the bottom end of Dundas Street to George Street. Not that I'd call it a workout when you're moving at the pace of a tortoise walking on eggshells.
Now, in my mind when I hear of aqua aerobics I picture OAPs at 10am on a Wednesday morning with their blue rinse 'dos' bobbing up and down to 'Sisters are doing it for themselves' or some other tune you'd only otherwise encounter on a Rosemary Connelly fitness DVD. Scary that I am acquainted with such things at my tender age, I know. However, it's not like I can mash the belly into a harness and go climbing so I thought I'd give it a shot. Let me tell you, this aqua fitness malarky is actually not quite as woose-tastic as it first sounds. I was particularly taken aback when the instructor shouted at us dozen or so out of breath belly laden people (and several bellies present there were within a week of their due to pop dates!) that it was 'Time to throw in the dumbbells!' What!!! Yes people, dumbbell shaped floatation devices that you force under the surface of the water and then manhandle in various directions under you. When we finally got a break I couldn't get my fingers to release from the damn handles. I had been squeezing with such force.
For all my horror at the necessary exertion though it was great to get some endorphins going. Even if I did eat and fall asleep pretty much immediately on getting home. It was an eye opener being around so many other pregnant ladies too. I couldn't help thinking 'man I'll never stretch that big, it's not possible'. I guess it probably is, but it's still mind boggling. I had high hopes of making it back to bendy stretchy this week but I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to get a place in a belly-friendly yoga class! How many pregnant people are there in Edinburgh at any one time? I am on several waiting lists but finally was able to get a place to trial a class at Palmerston Place on Monday straight after work.
In my current chip I may not make it for this Monday, which will be a shame. Even if I can get back to the office, I wouldn't risk making other pregnant people sick. But it's going to be OK. For one thing, MC has kindly run out and provided me with non-sandpaper tissues to appease my poor nose. For another, I know I'm on my way to a glowing phase and getting my fitness back will be a part of it.
In the meantime I'm going to hide under the duvet until my face gets the message that Christmas is over.
Sunday, 8 January 2012
13 Weeks Down
Asides from the back to work, it's been a great week. On Wednesday, MC and I had our first scheduled ultrasound appointment. How I wish it had been our first ultrasound. It was a happy and relaxing occasion. We both sat with goofy grins on our mugs while the sonographer chuckled about how our 'active' child was being somewhat obtuse and not staying in one place long enough to have its picture taken for measurements. Little hands on little arms went like the clappers to the point where I wondered if it might be born with drumsticks already in hand. The legs were largely a Road Runner-esque blur as it rolled round and round my insides. "I don't envy you when you can start to feel this one," laughed the sonographer. After a good twenty minutes or so, baby rolled head down and stopped moving for a short nap and the genial lady was able to take shots to take all the necessary measurements. Now, we'd been given dates based on the size of the fetus early in the pregnancy at 5 and then at 8 weeks. However, baby is now measuring on the long side so our official due date has been brought forward to 15th July. Today we are 13 weeks pregnant and according to the all-knowing Baby Centre, in our second trimester. I thought that was for next week but who am I to argue with the online baby centric bible? It certainly makes me feel better about the size of the belly!
I feel like I can finally breathe again. I'm sure very many pregnant ladies the world over would agree that those first 12 weeks don't feel like they are ever going to end. From week five a combination of bleeding and never ceasing nausea made things more than a little stressful. I remember my cousin telling me that all she could eat for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy was supernoodles. I shook my head and lectured her that babes needed healthy fats and vitamins and avocados etc. but let me tell you, never again. I will listen with immense sympathy to anyone who is trying to eat every meal completely repulsed by food. Reduced to pasta and cheese sandwiches for weeks on end (whilst feeling guilty about the complete lack of good nutrition for the munchkin the whole time), MC was my saviour. If it hadn't been for him cooking or doing stuff I would have eaten a lot less and stuff just wouldn't have got done.
I have to take a minute here to recommend Sea Bands. They didn't take the nausea away but they made it possible to eat a little more regularly and to eat a slightly better variety (of pasta and sandwiches). Usually when the going gets tough you make a cup of tea. It's a well known fact that tea rights all wrongs. Even this crutch was brutally ripped from my life.
It was difficult, through the bonkerdom of the last thirteen weeks, to see ahead to a place where I would be able to sit and nosh sardines and smoothies, but we're here now. After the turmoil of our early issues I refused to entertain baby things until the day of our scheduled scan. There were sticky moments though - like every time someone called or wrote to say that they'd 'picked something up' for the baby. Despite the midwife needing two goes again to get any blood out of me I practically skipped out of the hospital and off to pick up these cute little outfits that I'd seen in a sale. (Yes, I know the Mummy one is a bit girlie but I don't care. And anyway I have a feeling in my waters...)
MC and I have dealt with more stress in the last three months than I care to experience in the next three years. So, even though there are so many things that should now be truly freaking me out, I'm happy to just spend the next three months content to be cooking.
Looking forward to finding out what we're having by late February and to MC and I taking what will probably be our last holiday as a two person family (if we can ever decide where we're going).
Thirteen weeks of bonkerdom down, I wonder if it will be thirteen more before I can finally enjoy that cup of (decaf) tea...
I feel like I can finally breathe again. I'm sure very many pregnant ladies the world over would agree that those first 12 weeks don't feel like they are ever going to end. From week five a combination of bleeding and never ceasing nausea made things more than a little stressful. I remember my cousin telling me that all she could eat for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy was supernoodles. I shook my head and lectured her that babes needed healthy fats and vitamins and avocados etc. but let me tell you, never again. I will listen with immense sympathy to anyone who is trying to eat every meal completely repulsed by food. Reduced to pasta and cheese sandwiches for weeks on end (whilst feeling guilty about the complete lack of good nutrition for the munchkin the whole time), MC was my saviour. If it hadn't been for him cooking or doing stuff I would have eaten a lot less and stuff just wouldn't have got done.
I have to take a minute here to recommend Sea Bands. They didn't take the nausea away but they made it possible to eat a little more regularly and to eat a slightly better variety (of pasta and sandwiches). Usually when the going gets tough you make a cup of tea. It's a well known fact that tea rights all wrongs. Even this crutch was brutally ripped from my life.
It was difficult, through the bonkerdom of the last thirteen weeks, to see ahead to a place where I would be able to sit and nosh sardines and smoothies, but we're here now. After the turmoil of our early issues I refused to entertain baby things until the day of our scheduled scan. There were sticky moments though - like every time someone called or wrote to say that they'd 'picked something up' for the baby. Despite the midwife needing two goes again to get any blood out of me I practically skipped out of the hospital and off to pick up these cute little outfits that I'd seen in a sale. (Yes, I know the Mummy one is a bit girlie but I don't care. And anyway I have a feeling in my waters...)
Looking forward to finding out what we're having by late February and to MC and I taking what will probably be our last holiday as a two person family (if we can ever decide where we're going).
Thirteen weeks of bonkerdom down, I wonder if it will be thirteen more before I can finally enjoy that cup of (decaf) tea...
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