13 week bump

So here I am at 13 weeks. I definitely have a bump. It’s been showing for a little while now. It’s not supposed to be looking this big yet, but I think it’s because I lack any muscle strength at all in my stomach, so there is nothing there to hold it in. It surprises me every now and then, as if I’ve forgotten I’m growing a baby and suddenly, wow look, my belly is all rounded and out there. I’m still feeling tired. Still feeling sick and every now and then being sick. Still hoping things will improve soon.

Recently I’ve been enjoying eating peaches, clementines, rice pudding, toast and marmalade, scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, spaghetti bolognese and cod in cheesy sauce with mashed potato. My very bad cravings that I occasionally give in to are KFC salsa toasted twister wraps and diet coke. The coke part is very, very bad because I gave up caffeine 6 years ago. But now I think about diet coke all the time and I decided it’s okay to occasionally indulge.

Summer baby

So, I thought I was having a relapse of my ME and it turned out that I was pregnant instead. Which is wonderful, happy exciting news. Also terrifying, but I’m trying to ignore that part. I took a test the day after I arranged to have 3 months leave from work so I could work on improving my ME. Before that I had been feeling so unwell it just hadn’t occurred to me that my tiredness could be because I was pregnant, despite the fact that we were trying for a baby.

The past few months have been quite hard as pregnancy and ME have joined forces to make me feel absolutely appallingly ill. I’m exhausted, feeling sick, being sick*, getting heartburn, getting headaches, waking up every couple of hours in the night and peeing all the time. I’ve been promised that it will get better, and I hoping that will happen by the end of February (I’ll be 16 weeks then).

Yesterday we had the first scan. It was amazing seeing it and hearing it’s heartbeat for the first time. Definitely feels real now. I’m currently 12 weeks pregnant, and my due date is August 11th. So it’ll be a lovely summer baby, I can’t wait.

*I always thought morning sickness would be a special nicer kind of vomiting, but no, it’s just as horrible as every other kind of vomiting.

Taking a step back

My ME is so bad at the moment that I have only left the house once since I worked last Thursday. I only work 6 hours a week, but right now working those 2 afternoons is taking everything out of me. When I am in work, I am no way near well enough to do my job properly.

When I had my relapse in January I probably should have taken extended time off to rest and recover. But instead I stepped down from working 2 days a week to 2 afternoons a week and I have been struggling to keep working all year.

I have requested that work let me take 3 months unpaid leave so I can work on improving my health. If they do not give me permission, I will probably quit my job today.

It’s sad, but what else can I do?

A tale of two pairs of socks

Here are two pairs of socks, both very different from each other, but both lovely, warm and comfortable. Yesterday while taking breaks from all the boxes and packing I found the time to put the finishing touches on both pairs.

The first pair I call  ’Birmingham socks’ because I started knitting them when I went to Birmingham for the weekend back in August. I have been slowly knitting them since then and finally finished last weekend when I was in Birmingham again. The yarn I used was Zitron Trekking Sport and the pattern I used is called Naive Socks and can be found on Ravelry here.

The second pair I call ‘Warm feets’ because hopefully they are going to keep my feet very warm. The yarn I used is Stitch Nation Full o’ Sheep and was given to me by my friend Claudia last weekend, and as soon as I got home I started looking for something to knit. The pattern I finally settled on is called Canucks and can be found on Ravelry here.

Boxes

This bear and I are the same age, we’ve been together since I was born. Unfortunately for her (while the bear’s name changed often I think it was always a girl), she has been in a box for the past goodness knows how many years. This weekend has all been about packing. One lesson about living with ME that took me a while to learn is don’t leave everything to the last minute. The plan is to get everything packed this weekend so I can rest and got to work in the week and still have energy to move next weekend. Matt and I worked hard yesterday and carried on putting things into boxes today. There are so many boxes. We’ve already donated a car boot full of things to charity but I think I’m going to have to sort though everything again as I unpack and see if I can make myself part with more things. Even though we’ve only been in this flat for two and half years, we didn’t really unpack much from when we moved back in 2008 and we seemed to have forgotten about lots of things we had packed away. We have a fan heater! An amp? Some guns for one of the many consoles. A box of those things we had before DVDS. All my old art from college. A skipping rope. A whole box of cables, we must need them one day. Ooh look, I’m going to be distracted for a while as I look at all the cards we were given when we got married.

This is the only other toy I have kept from my childhood. It’s my Doofles bag. My sister and I had one each (her’s was blue) and you could put things in it and then hold the handle and make it walk along beside you. Which we did often, including down the aisle at church. It has big plastic shoes on it, it’s not a quiet walker.

We have a huge box labelled ‘Monkeys’. This is what is in it (there are a few non monkey creatures in there). Before we got married Matt used to collect monkeys. He’d buy interesting ones everywhere he went and friends and family would buy them for him too. This is less than half of his collection, the ones he couldn’t bear to part with. I think he may be ready to part with these too now, as they have lived in a box for the past 4 years. It feels a bit heartless just donating them to charity though, I need to know that they are going to good homes. Hopefully I’ll think of something.

Another Place

With a car comes freedom and adventures. Matt and I both took the day off work last Tuesday and decided to test that theory out. Matt took us on a 40 minute drive to Southport for fish and chips, and then to Crosby Beach to see Antony Gormley’s sculpture, Another Place. The sculpture consists of 100 life sized cast iron figures facing out to sea, spread over a 2 mile stretch of beach. It is quite impressive and beautiful. The figures stand there staring into the horizon as the tide covers and uncovers them. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed being able to escape to the sea for a few hours and still be home in time for tea.

And of course, no trip to the seaside is complete without an ice cream while you sit and watch the waves (or lack of, as the tide was way out while we were there).

Changes

You know when you make a vague plan for what you want to happen in your future, and then all of a sudden it’s happening and it’s actually a really big change? Yeah, that.

For a few years now I’ve wanted to move. We currently live in a flat. It’s a very nice flat and we are comfortable here, but there are a few things not quite right. The first problem is that I want an outdoor space. As someone who quite often ends up being unable to leave the house for several days I get really sick of being indoors. Especially in the summer, when all I really want to do is sit outside and read with a cup of tea when the weather is pleasant or an iced drink when it’s hot. I can’t do that at the moment. I could go out and sit in the car park, but it really isn’t the same thing. Another problem is that we have friends and family in the area, but we still live quite far out from them all, so it still feels like we don’t live near anyone. Which leads to another big problem in that we would like to get a car, but can’t afford to run one at the moment because we are paying for the convenience of our flat being next to the station. Which we are only doing because we don’t have a car and need to use the train to make short journeys to work and to see people and make long journeys to go visit my family and other far away friends.

So Matt and I decided we wanted to move to a house (with a little garden), closer to town and cheaper to rent and get a car. And now suddenly, all in the last week it looks like that is going to happen. I’m really excited, but am slowly realising that we will now go through the work and stress of packing, moving and unpacking. I want it all to have happened and us to have moved already.

I will end my post with this picture borrowed from google street view (so it is several years old), it’s the view in front of our new house. I love it.

Remember

I was supposed to be going to someone’s house for tea this evening but I’ve spent the day feeling like I was trying to swim through treacle and after getting dressed and ready to go out I realised that I’d just used up any remaining energy I had, so I decided to send Matt out on his own and stay home and rest. This left me home alone and needing to cook myself something for tea, on an evening when I had not planned a meal. Feeling sorry for myself I decided to indulge a little and make some nutella and banana French toast. I can now confirm that this is at first delicious, but by the end very sickly and sweet.

Things have been a bit weird lately. My grandmother died just over three weeks ago and last week I travelled down with my family to Essex for her funeral. It’s been an emotional and sleepless time. Although I hadn’t seen as much as I’d like of my Grandparents in recent years, they were a huge and important part of my childhood. I have a few of her things help me remember her, some jewellery and clothes, including a gorgeous leather jacket (she was a very glamorous and well dressed 80 year old) and the hat that I knitted for her birthday last year. I will miss her very much.

Seven years

It’s my wedding anniversary. Seven years ago today Matt and I got dressed up and said our vows in a little church in front of 100 or so family and friends. We then celebrated with eveyone in a marquee in a beautiful garden with food and cake and speeches and a bouncy castle. It was a happy day.

On Saturday we celebrated by going out into Liverpool and treated ourselves to a meal in our favourite fancy resturant. As always it was expensive but delicious. That is my seared tuna steak in teriyaki sauce in the picture above. So good.

Introducing Basil

Basil has been in my life for a few months now and we are very happy together. He lives on my windowsill and I have to remember to give him a drink every day, otherwise he starts looking a bit like this:

But then I give him a drink of water and by the next day he’s looking much happier and like this:

I admit that my care for him may be a bit selfish. Mostly I just want to pick his leaves and eat them like this: