Pregnant with a Peppercorn // 18 weeks pregnant

The pregnancy insomnia has been back this week, with a grand total of three hours sleep on Monday night. Luckily Busby also woke up a few times in the night, so I was able to leap out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to deal with her reading requests… She got back to sleep before I did!
This week Peppercorn is the size of a bell pepper, which is pretty big really! I’ve been feeling him move about lots, and fear that this baby may never sleep once he’s into the world, as seems to enjoy squirming about at all times of the day.

I’ve really been missing my Mama friend support network this week – I’m finding it very difficult being up North and knowing that everyone in Sussex is getting on with their lives normally, whereas I feel like we’re in limbo until the purchase of the house goes through.

I’ve also been looking into birthing options over in East Yorkshire, as we’ll be moving there when once we’ve bought the house. There doesn’t appear to be many options other than hospital birth or home birth. I would like the latter, but at the same time, I’d grown rather happy with the knowledge that there’s a Midwife Led Unit here in Pontefract, and had thought it a middle ground between my “really not wanting to give birth in hospital this time round”, and Nick’s worry about home births.

However, there does seem to be more for Mama’s in East Yorkshire, than West; I’ve already found a local pregnancy yoga class and there are lots of baby and toddler groups. Phew! I had images of me going slowly insane, sat in a rocking chair, with no friends, letting Busby paint my face with poster paints, and Peppercorn crawling on the floor, pretending to be a cat… Let’s just hope we can get this sale done and dusted in the next few weeks, so we can get settled before Peppercorn decides to join us. If we decide to have a third baby, I am resolutely not relocating towns/counties when pregnant! It would be lovely to have one pregnancy where I don’t have the stress of switching doctors/midwives, and where I don’t have to make new friends every time I give birth!
This week I’ve been craving blue cheese, which I know is a little bit naughty… I found some pasteurised local blue in the farm shop the other day, and with the NHS guidelines now saying you can have blue stilton, I figured I could have a small amount. It has been delicious. I’m also still on the red meat, and coincidentally my favourite meatballs have been on offer in the same farm shop, all of January. Hurrah! On Friday I spent the whole day craving a Lamb Tikka Masala, which we had for dinner that evening… it tasted so good! Sunday saw a random craving for Jelly Babies, which the local shop had (thankfully)!

In other news this week: I’ve found myself getting very emotional, which I’m partly putting down to exhaustion from the lack of sleep. I’m just feeling a bit lost and a bit useless. Also, the carpal tunnel in my wrists has been back during the night; I suffered from this a little when I was pregnant with Busby – it’s such a horrible sensation!

I stumbled across various “find out the gender” tests on Pinterest whilst looking for something else, and some of them are rather curious! I especially enjoyed this article on Babble, and have been thinking about trying out the baking soda test – have you ever tried any of these? Were they accurate? I had some fun playing with the Chinese Gender chart, and apparently we’re having a boy. The Mayan predictor says we’re having a boy too… I know it’s all silly and speculative (Nick is definitely rolling his eyes reading this), but it’s quite fun really! Not long until we find out – let’s hope Pontefract hospital aren’t one of these silly hospitals who won’t reveal the gender. If they are I’m putting my foot down, and we’re moving back to Sussex. Or we’ll get a private scan… the latter is probably cheaper.
Hannah