Posie’s Place

My little boy turned 1 last month!  The past year has flown by so quickly I can’t believe he’s a little boy already!

Things have been on the quiet side here again for a while with very good reason, we’ve been moving house. After our new arrival last year we decided that it was time we considered moving out of the city and into the countryside and so we began searching for a new home. We found our new place at the end of last year but had to give our notice to our last place so I feel as if this has all been a long time coming.

The move went pretty smoothly and now we’ve been in 3 weeks and I just LOVE our new place!! I’ve never lived in the countryside so for me this is all brand new! We have a farm at the end of the road and the forest on our doorstep.

I’m really looking forward to the summer and making the most of our new surroundings and getting back into growing some veg and herbs in our garden.

I was a little worried about changing Kanton and all of the administrative complications that entailed but so far everything has been pretty straight forward.
Our little boy is not so little and is 9 1/2 months old already! Soon the summer will be here and he’ll be walking (and chasing our cats!)

The house is almost organized so I’m hoping to try out some new recipes on my new cooker over the coming weeks.

Tschüss for now

Pamela

I’m at a complete loss to explain where the past 13 weeks have gone and how on earth they’ve past so quickly!

Matthew has grown to a whopping 7.3kg already and is 60cm tall. Parenthood is an absolute joy!

Over the past few weeks we’ve had lots of visitors all here to meet our little man and in a couple of weeks time my best friend Natalie and her mum will come over from Scotland for a long weekend.

A brief post to let you all know that our son Matthew James was born on Wednesday 9th May at 21.16.  He weighed in at 3.395kg and was 51cm long and is a little angel!!  Both of us are absolutely fine!

We arrived home yesterday and are now getting to know one another properly.  Things may be on the quiet side here depending on how Matthew gets on now he’s home.

Thank you to all of you who sent lovely messages and emails they were all greatfully received!

I know I have been really guilty of blog neglect lately and I’m very sorry.  Week 38 is here and I’m feeling pretty good although my legs and feet have started to swell and I have really sore hands in the morning.  So much for our little boy arriving early!  I think he’s changed his mind and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up coming after his due date of 11th May!

Things are all organized here for the baby arriving and our family support will be arriving soon, my two aunts arrive 4th June for 1 week and then my in-laws arrive 8th July for 10 days.

Two weeks ago the girls threw me a baby shower and it was fantastic! There was lots of tasty snacks, party games and towards the end of the afternoon I put on the Wii and there was a mini tennis tournament.   We has a really good laugh and our little boy got lots of lovely pressie, he’s an extremely lucky little lad already.

Got the docs on Wednesday afternoon so we’ll see what she has to say about my swelling (hopefully my BP is still ok) and whether she thinks baby will arrive soon or be late.  Tonight we’re off to visit two of the girls from the antenatal class who had their babies last week and coincidentally have ended up sharing a room in the hospital, one had a little boy called Connor and the other had the first baby girl we’ve heard of in ages and named her Sophie!

Just back from the doctors, I’ve been told to have total rest for the next two weeks since the baby’s head is now engaged and I’ve started to efface.  I’ve been off work since last week and I’ve been trying to rest but apparently I’ve not been doing a good enough job.

My doc says she’ll  be happier if baby will stay put for another two weeks but he’s perfectly healthy and is measuring about 2.6kg (5lb 11oz in old money) so if I do go into labour the hospital will not halt it but I too would prefer if he doesn’t come yet.  No baby profile pics today I’m afraid as it wasn’t possible to get a shot of him in profile today since his head is now so far down.

Other than really bad backache I’ve been keeping pretty well.  I get tired really easily these days and have had no motivation to come up with interesting new recipes so I apologize once again for the lack of posts here lately.

I’m really looking forward to next Saturday as it’s my baby shower, the girls are coming round for the afternoon and I’ve been warned that I’m not allowed to lift a finger!

We’re off to our penultimate antenatal class this evening. I’ve really enjoyed the classes all the couples in the class are very nice and hopefully we’ll all be able to keep in touch.

Have fun!

Pamela

I’m soooo delighted!!! We finished the nursery this afternoon!!

Stewart spent a long afternoon building the final piece of furniture and then it was my turn to vacuum, put all of the babys clothes into his wardrobe and add the finishing touches to the decorations..

We’re happy with how things have turned out and the room really does look like a nursery now! We’re planning on spending what remains of our Sunday night with our feet up watching a couple of episodes of Arrested Development.

With the majority of preparations complete for the babys arrival we should be able to start taking things easy over the next few weekends.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!!

Pamela

As I said in the update to my last baby post on Friday I have been diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.  Although my doctor said it’s not a severe case she said that it would be better for me to meet with a dietician to have a diet plan drawn up to keep things under control and to give me a more complete understanding of what GS meant for the rest of my pregnancy, my baby and my life after he is delivered (when hopefully my diabetes will disappear).

I’ll be happy to eat and do whatever it takes to make sure the next 14 weeks are safe for me and my baby and that he is delivered healthy.

All weekend I trawled the internet reading about diabetes and  diabetic diets.  I decided that the best thing I could do would be to keep a food diary until I saw the dietician, this would allow me to demonstrate what I eat and when I eat it.

Monday morning I got a call from the dietician and was given an appointment on Tuesday afternoon (they don’t keep you hanging around here in Switzerland).  Off I went with my little food diary thinking that I was doing pretty well and that I was quite knowledgable about diabetes.

I was wrong Continue Reading »

Just thought I’d post a quick update on the progress of Jr.

Baby was looking good yesterday when I had my latest check up, he was busy eating his fist and then sucking on his thumb. He had a major growth spurt since my last appointment 5 weeks ago and now weighs 780g.

I failed my glucose tolerance indicator test yesterday, due to this I will be spending all of Friday morning drinking sugary drinks and having my blood tested every hour for 3 hours. Just really hoping that I haven’t developed diabetes. I have put on a lot of weight in the past 5 weeks and really need to try and monitor it carefully over the next few months. No more desserts and chocolate for me! The problem is that I’m hungry ALL THE TIME…

Been having some strange sensations in my upper right abdomen, not quite pain but more tingling. My OBGYN thinks it could be due to adhesions from my gallbladder surgery from a few years ago causing this. I was just saying to a fellow blogger the other day that I hadn’t had any problems post gallbladder..

One things about living here in Switzerland is that you don’t just chuck stuff in the bin but all paper, cardboard, batteries, metal, packing material, clothes, shoes, household electrical items, wood, organic waste, old furniture and glass (I’m sure I’ve missed things out) MUST be recycled. This isn’t such a bad thing I think you’ll agree, it’s a bit of a hassle at times but cerainly makes you aware of how much waste you generate. We have certain days each month when paper/metal etc is collected but if you miss these then you can take things to the recycle park.

All last weekend we worked in the house gutting the cellar and loft and taking car loads to the recycle park. Since our car is small and the recycle park is only open for 4 hours on a Saturday morning and closed on a Sunday this will be how we are spending our next few weekends (weather permitting! At the moment there is about 5″ of snow outside).

Monday night we drove through to Germany and with the help of Derek we picked up the nursery furniture. Stewart can’t begin building anything yet as we have a sofa bed in the room which will hopefully get picked up by BaselStadt on Friday morning. Del is being a star and coming over tomorrow night to help Stewart get the sofa downstairs (5 flights of stairs!!) since it won’t fit in the lift.

Progress is definitely being made and we can really see things taking shape. We thought we may as well use this as a perfect opportunity to do all of the jobs that we kept putting off…

The new tumble drier arrived this morning and so I have spent the evening washing all of the babys clothes, as soon as the furniture is built I’ll be able to sort everything out and get it put away. We got a package from Isobel (my mother-in-law) she knitted the baby three more cardigans. They are absolutely gorgeous!! One of them even has little cat face buttons!! Really cute!!

I’ll update things on Friday hopefully with some good news from my glucose test, fingers crossed!

Pamela

UPDATE: Well Friday is here and I have just returned from the doctors. I’ve been diagosed with gestational diabetes. Next step is to see a dietician to try and get my blood sugar under control by modifying my diet, if that is possible then I wont have any need for insulin.

Have a great weekend folks!!

Pamela

As I said we really enjoyed our trip to Glasgow, as I posted before we were really quite worried that we wouldn’t reach Scotland for Christmas due to weather problems in London but thankfully by last Sunday all was well and our trip ran very smoothly. It was rather strange in fact as things turned out I had never seen Heathrow Airport so quiet.

After the festivities and the majority of the visiting was over it was time to get down to some nitty gritty shopping, since I don’t sleep late it was a perfect we took the opportunity to hit the shops and buy lots of clothes and things for the baby in the sales. During my last scan we found out that we’re having a boy so now we can really buy clothes and start to think of names. I know some people prefer to wait to find out but I’m really glad we know, I love being able to refer to the baby as him now instead of the baby or it after all he is a little person.

Before setting off for Glasgow I ordered some decorations for the nursery online and got them delivered to my grans house, the theme chosen for the room was Winnie the Pooh since it was unisex. I have some really nice stickers for the walls, a room thermometer, the changing mat, a little towel insert for the mat, a Tigger sleep suit, the light shade, a couple of pictures for the walls, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Eeore soft toys and a Piglet rattle. Katie wants to make us some curtains so I’d like to see if I can get matching material. We got a call from the shop in Germany where we ordered the nursery furniture to say that it is now ready to be collected so Stewart is planning on starting to clear the room this weekend. I really can’t wait to get everything in the room organized!!

I should also mention the wonderful little cardigans that my mother-in-law Isobel has knitted for the baby they are absolutely beautiful!! We brought three back with us and on the day before we left she went out and bought some blue wool to do a couple more. Isobel also knitted the most beautiful blanket which we will treasure. We certainly have a very lucky little boy on the way.

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