( Nearly) 37 weeks

The last few weeks have gone past in the blink of an eye. Even though I am at the point in my pregnancy where I feel uncomfortable most of the time.

Up until the past few days, Jellybean felt like she lived in my ribs. It was virtually impossible to ever feel comfortable. Towards the end of last week, Jellybean moved down. For the first time in my pregnancy, I actually had an appetite!

During my 36 week midwife appointment, my bump was measuring big yet again. I went for a growth scan the following day. Jellybean is absolutely fine. She isn’t measuring big and is actually spot on in terms of her weight.

New symptoms I am experiencing are waking up completely drenched in sweat. I feel like I have done a 45 minutes Bodycombat class! I have been having some intense pressure in my bump at times too. Last night, I woke up feeling nauseous and ended up throwing up. Dave is convinced I will go into labour before my due date.

Dave and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary last week. It was nice to spend some time together before Jellybean arrives. We went out for a Chinese which was delicious.

I will end the post with another photo of Walter. We got him a new harness. It looks super comfy and looks great on him

34 Weeks

We are less than 6 weeks until Jellybean’s due date. Part of me thinks it has flown by. Another part feels like it is dragging.

I saw a physio about my hands and hips. She was amazing. I do have carpal tunnel syndrome. I now wear splints on my hands at night when I am sleeping. It is nice to not be woken up in the night with sore wrists and pins and needles in my hands. I also have pelvic girdle pain. I have a support belt to wear under my bump during the day. This is helping alleviate my hip pain.

Jellybean has had a huge growth spurt. She is considered big at the moment. I am now seeing the midwife every two weeks as I am so close to my due date. She has said that if she is still measuring as big at my next appointment she will send me for a scan. I have been reassured that her growth might level out.

Walter has been diagnosed with dermatitis. We changed his food to grain free after noticing in between his toes were red and sore. We also bought some paw butter to help. Initially, this seemed to help. But it became clear that his skin wasn’t right. He was itchy loads and we noticed sore parts on his fur.

In the past, we have been fobbed off at the vets about Walter’s skin. Dave and I have both felt for awhile that he has a skin condition. We saw a new vet and he was amazing. He was extremely thorough and took some scrapings from different parts of Walter’s fur and skin.

For a week Walter was on a course of steroids, having a supplement in his food and two baths with a special shampoo. The difference has been amazing. His fur and skin look and feel so much better, he doesn’t scratch loads and he just seems happier.

Normally when we go the vets, Walter tries his best to escape and we end up carrying him in to the consultation room. He would shake as he was nervous and bury his head in us and refuse to acknowledge the vet. So when we went back yesterday so the vet, we were shocked that he willingly walked into the consultation room, wasn’t shaking and wasn’t burying his head in us. The vet was pleased with Walter. He wants us to continue with the supplement in the food each day and to bath him once a week with his shampoo for the next few weeks then reduce it to every other week, every month etc.

I haven’t shared any photos of Walter for awhile so I thought I would. He has his own instagram if you want to follow him – instagram.com/walterthesausagedog

Walter playing with his mate Harlow after a dachshund walk last week

Snuggles with Lola. She came over and settled on Walter like this.

27 Weeks

I am now 27 weeks pregnant. My pregnancy feels like it is flying by.

Last week, I didn't think Jellybean was moving as much. She just seemed a lot quieter than usual. I decided to phone up the hospital that I am giving birth at. They were amazing and said for me to come in so they could check everything was ok.

I ended up not telling anyone at the time and went the hospital on my own. I messaged Dom's Dad as I was due to pick him up for 10am and he said to collect him whenever I was ready.

Looking back, I have no idea why I didn't tell anyone in my family. I just calmly phoned the hospital, had a quick cry and drove myself to the hospital.

Jellybean was and is absolutely fine. They put a doppler on me and gave me a clicker. I was asked to press it whenever I felt Jellybean move. The midwife went and got me a drink and as soon as she left the room, Jellybean started moving! I was given tips on how to get Jellybean to move in future if I feel like she isn't moving as often.

So I did eventually tell Dave and my family that I had been to the hospital. Not surprisingly, I was told off by them all as they felt I shouldn't have gone on my own.

Since I have been into the hospital, Jellybean has been making up for having a brief quiet spell. She has been moving so much! I love feeling her move. It is one of the most incredible experiences.

I finally got round to doing yoga last night. I absolutely loved it. I have been continuing to do this pilates, zumba and bodycombat. I also continue to walk Walter each day. I really believe staying active will help me during labour and after Jellybean is born.

I have my 28 week midwife appointment next week. They will start measuring my bump. The week after we have our 4D scan. I can't wait to see Jellybean. I am doing a hypnobirthing course through the hospital which starts on Sunday. I have heard good things about it so hoping that will be beneficial when I am in labour.

Besides pregnancy, we really enjoyed having Lola here for two weeks (as did Walter). We managed two dog play sessions and loads of nice walks.

Still spending time with my family and friends regularly too. It is good to spend time with good people. Jellybean will be so lucky to have these fantastic people in her life.

Viability

Today marks 24 weeks pregnant which means from this point on, our little girl has a good chance of surviving if she were to be born. This made me smile immensely when it came up on Ovia, one of the pregnancy apps I use. 

For the most part, my morning sickness has gone. I have had the odd bout of it but nothing major. The recent hot weather has been horrible for me. I am finding it harder to get comfy in bed at night even with a pregnancy pillow. But it is so much worse when it is warm. As a result, my sleep has been terrible. I haven’t been the gym since Saturday and have needed to have naps on days when I am particularly tired. 

My bump is definitely more noticeable now. The past few weeks when I have had Dom, he has commented each week that my bump is bigger. 

Our little girl’s movements are becoming much more stronger. Dave, my mum, brother and best friend have all felt her which has been lovely. 

I had a recent spell of being super anxious about our baby. My biggest fear is something is wrong with her or will go wrong. I spoke to Dave and my Mum about it which helped a lot. It is nowhere near as bad now. 

We have booked a 4D scan for the end of August. We are going to where we went for the gender scan as they were brilliant. Plus, they had a great offer on and we couldn’t resist. We only have to wait another 6 weeks for it.

We have had so many lovely people giving us things for our baby. From clothes and books for her to maternity clothes for me. Our little girl is loved by so many already. 

Pregnancy aside, things are good. Spent lots of time with my family recently including a birthday meal for my Dad at the weekend. The times I have been able to go the gym I have thoroughly enjoyed it and kept up in classes. I am doing low impact moves/adaptations when needed. 

From tomorrow Walter’s BFF Lola is staying with us for just over 2 weeks. Dave and I are really looking forward to it. Walter enjoys having her here. Dave has some time off over the next few weeks which will be nice. 

Emotional Day

Yesterday was my lovely Grandad’s funeral. I broke down crying as soon as the cars came to pick us up from my Nan’s house. I then cried all the way to the crematorium and throughout the funeral. The service was lovely. My Dad did an amazing job as a pallbearer and reading a poem. I was so proud of him. During the eulogy, the vicar doing the service mentioned about how excited my Grandad was about becoming a Great Grandad. It was hard to hear that, knowing he will never meet the baby. 

Due to the baby being awkward during our initial 12 week scan last week, we were offered one yesterday evening at 6pm. Part of me felt guilty that we had the scan on the same day as my Grandad’s funeral. The scan went really well. The baby is looking healthy and well. The brain looks good as does the heart. We saw the baby trying to suck its thumb and it looked like it was waving at us! The baby appears to have long legs too. They must take after me! We have a private scan booked for 3 weeks tomorrow to find out the gender of the baby. We can’t wait. The baby is due on 8th November. 

This weekend Dave and I are having a dog filled weekend. We are looking after Walter’s bestie/girlfriend as my friend is on a course. We are going to go to doggy play tomorrow afternoon and on Sunday we are taking them on a dachshund walk. I think a chilled out weekend is just what I need with Dave and these two:

I didn’t sleep well last night even though I was exhausted. I woke up around 3am and struggled to get back to sleep. 

‘Just a dog’

For a number of reasons, I have had to stop working with Faith. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. In the back of my mind, since the incident that happened recently, I thought this was inevitable. For one thing, Faith’s mum is a heavy smoker. Dave and I had recently talked about when I became pregnant I would have to stop working with Faith because of this. 

For nearly a year, Walter came with me to Faith’s. I was told that he was more than welcome there. Faith’s family had got a kitten recently and I was told until the kitten and their dog had gotten totally used to each other that it would be best not to bring Walter. I totally understood this. I was under the impression that I would be able to bring Walter with me from the messages I received. 

I arranged for a friend to look after Walter while I worked. While trying to arrange this, messages were received saying a number of things that I perceived as hurtful. One being that Walter is ‘just a dog’ and I should be able to leave him for 5 hours for evenings four times each week. 

Things were said to me that couldn’t be unsaid. A lot of hurtful things.  As a result, I had to make a tough decision to stop working with Faith. It probably sounds like all I seem to do is quit when things are difficult. But, the past two years have taught me that I struggle to deal with conflict. I shouldn’t have to deal with conflict in a work setting on a regular basis. It has a negative impact on all other aspects of my life. 

It might seem silly that I have stopped working over ‘just a dog’. But Walter is far more than that to Dave and I. Before we decided to get Walter we read up a lot about dachshunds. They are prone to separation anxiety. That is not to say that Walter is never left and that I don’t go out. He is left when I go shopping and the gym. But 5 hours on his own? We didn’t get Walter to leave him for that long on his own.

Sometimes (such as at the moment) Walter is the only thing that makes me leave the house. I have only left the house the past three days because Walter has needed to go for a walk. He is my little buddy and keeps me going. He is always there no matter how low and anxious I am. 

So just a dog? No, he is a super dog to me. 

Honesty and Illness

I decided to let myself calm down before addressing the situation with Samantha. A week after she sent me the baby photo, she messaged me to ask if I was ok and if I had upset her. 

So you know what I did? I told her that I wasn’t ok and she had upset me. Previously, I would have reacted in an angry manner to a situation similar to this. But, I was honest without being hurtful or rude. This resulted in Samantha apologising and making an effort with me. 

I’m proud that I dealt with this situation in such a positive way. I saw Samantha yesterday and actually enjoyed spending time with her. 

Walter has been unwell. At first, Dave and I put it down to the heat that we had. But on the second day of his lethargy, not wanting to do anything but sleep we became more worried. Firstly, all he did was cuddle next to Dom when he came round on Wednesday. There was no excited Walter who couldn’t wait to greet Dom. Then on Thursday we had the same again when I brought Bella home from work with me (Faith has gone away with her family for a week so we are looking after her) Walter was the same; not bothered in the slightest about seeing Bella but with the worst runny poo we had ever seen. When the runny poo had blood in it we knew Walter needed to see a vet. 

At this point it was evening, so our vet was closed. We ended up going to see an emergency vet. It was a good job we went the vets when we did. Walter’s temperature was high and he was dehydrated. As he hadn’t been sick the vet didn’t feel Walter needed to stay in to be put on fluids. This was a huge relief. Walter was given an antibiotic injection and we were told he needed to see a vet again in the morning. 

Luckily, Walter’s temperature was down on Friday morning by the time Dave took him the vets. He is on antibiotics for the next few days and we have been told to give him food such as rice, chicken and scrambled eggs. 

Walter is back to his usual lovely, happy, playful self. He is thoroughly enjoying getting to have rice, chicken and scrambled eggs. So much so, he licks his food bowl clean!

My grandad is really unwell. He has had his first lot of chemotherapy and ended up having bad side effects to it. At the moment he is in hospital. They think he has a bleed in his stomach and he is really dehydrated. He is unable to keep food down so is on anti sickness medication via a drip. It’s hard to be positive about my grandad when he seems to be getting worse 😦

Dogfest, Arley Hall, 18.6.16

As a proud owner of a black and tan dachshund, my husband and I were more than happy to spend £28 on two tickets to Dogfest. What is dogfest you ask? It is exactly what it says – a festival for dogs. Set up by Noel Fitzpatrick, the guy known as the Supervet, it is a festival to celebrate all that is wonderful about dogs. 
We live a mere 30 minutes away from Arley Hall. We expected traffic due to the nature of the event. But we didn’t expect that it would take 3 hours to arrive at the event! Luckily, our dachshund Walter (named after Walter White from Breaking Bad) is so laidback. Apart from a few whines, he coped so well. It turns out that a steward directed us along with a load of other cars in the completely wrong direction! What followed was nothing short of chaos; complete standstill of traffic, cars making u-turns in narrow country roads and absolute no direction from staff from the event. 
We eventually arrived at the event at 12.30pm. We had missed the morning dog walk which annoyed my husband and I. We tried to get Walter to see a dog massager as they were offering a free assessment of your dog’s joints and muscles. But the queue didn’t move for a good 20 minutes. We went and got food and queued for ages. 
Walter loved meeting lots of dogs big and small; from Great Danes to fellow dachshunds. We got lots of lovely comments about him from loads of people. Staff at the stalls were friendly and happy to answer questions. We bought Walter some dog treats including some doggy brownie and scone. Being a little dog, we felt Walter would have been completely overtired if we had taken part in the 3pm Great Dog Walk. 


We are unsure if we would attend Dogfest again. The farce at the beginning of the day had us question a number of times whether or not to just go home. When we did arrive, we were unable to get anywhere near some stands we had planned to go to due to arriving much later than we anticipated. Although Walter really loved being round all the dogs, we could have had the same experience for him with our local dachshund group without the stress, expense and waste of time. 

I have set up an instagram account for Walter if any of you would like to follow it. Yes, I am one of those people who has an instagram account for their dog. But I take that many photos of it that it makes sense. 

Follow Walter @walterthesausagedog

It’s been awhile

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in so long. For the most part, things are good with me. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel like I am living rather than surviving. 

I have become good friends with a girl from the gym. We meet up before classes a few times a week to do some extra weights, pull ups and a run. I have spent time with her outside the gym. We have walked our dogs together, I’ve met her two little girls and she has cooked tea for Dave and I. We have a laugh togethe, she is easy to talk to and a genuinely nice person. Tomorrow we are meeting up for the day. The plan is to go shopping and for some food. I can remember quite clearly a time when I was unable to go into a shop, let alone into a busy city centre. I have opened up to her about my anxiety and depression. She is completely accepting of it and totally supportive. 

Faith (and I) took part in a big performance with guides. We got up on stage and did a dance with the rest of the guides. She recently made her promise. I was massively proud of her. She is doing a lot more for herself now too. 

Dom continues to have a close bond with Walter. He tells him repeatedly that he loves him and loves to cuddle him. Walter has made some new doggy friends in the form of Lola the king spaniel and Betsy the cockerpoo:

A few weeks ago, I went to my first gig in about 18 months. I went to see Daughtry with a friend. As silly as it may sound, I was really proud of myself. I put off seeing Halestorm last August as I felt that I wouldn’t be able to have a good time. Daughtry were fantastic and I didn’t experience any anxiety what so ever. 

Unfortunately my grandad is really unwell. It is quite possible that he has cancer. He has lost loads of weight and is so frail. He is currently in hospital until at least tomorrow after repeatedly throwing up and experiencing stomach pains. He has had a camera down his throat, a biopsy and a scan. We are now waiting on the results. At times, I have been finding it hard to deal with. I don’t live nearby and I feel guilty because of it. I chose to move away for work and at times like this I wish I hadn’t moved away.

Quiet weekend

For the first time in a long time, Dave and I are enjoying a quiet weekend. We took Walter for a walk in the woods near where we live yesterday. It was really nice being outside in the fresh air and sunshine. 

Last weekend’s dachshund walk went really well. Initially, Walter seemed overwhelmed. There must have been at least 20 other dachschunds. The walk we went on was lovely. At the end, Walter played with a handful of different dachshunds. It was lovely to see him so happy. 

   
    
    
    
    
 

The gym is still going well. I am really sore from it. It is a result of doing all the latest Les Mills Bodyattack, Bodypump and Bodycombat and another personal training session. The new Les Mills releases are fantastic. They are hard work but fun. There is a pull up and running challenge that my gym instructor friend has set. I am planning on starting them on Tuesday with a friend from the gym. 

I have a CBT appointment tomorrow which is the first for a few weeks. I am hoping to address the social anxiety that I frequently experience. Especially as my friend from the gym has invited us a few of us from the gym to hers next Saturday evening. I am already worried about it. 

I have a new post up on Defying Shadows. It is about 5 Ways to show someone with Asperger’s that you care. You can read it here.