MSE Pregnancy Club VII

MrsTinks

This is a continuation of the MSE Pregnancy Club VI, which was closed due to its length.

Thanks


Official MoneySavingExpert.com Insert:

What's it about?

Back in July 06 Bailey started this thread to help all pregnant MoneySavers and their partners save on anything pregnancy-related plus give each other moral support. It's been hugely popular and now has a long list of pregnant mothers-to-be. Now it's not just for those that are pregnant but also those trying to conceive and MoneySavers that have probably already given birth and yet are probably too tired to let everyone know.

What should you do?

As well as being a great source of tips, baby-related bargains spotted, mutual support and help MoneySavers here have also gradually built up a list, adding themselves to one of these categories (the last one, people are moved to for obvious reasons!):

• EDD (Estimated due date if you're pregnant)
• TTC (trying to conceive if you're not) we now have 2 seperate threads for people TTC - 'Trying for a Baby' and 'Trying for a baby (12+ M/not straightforward)'
• Birth List
• Probably given birth but too worn out to log on list

If you want to add yourself to the list follow these steps:

• Click on the link at the top of this page that says "Last" (it'll take you to the last page of the discussion)
• Scroll down until you find the message with the very latest copy of the list in (if you use one further up the discussion other peoples' changes after that will be lost)
• Copy that (highlight it and click control+c)
• Click reply at the bottom of the thread to open a screen where you can past it (click control+p)
• Add yourself to the list then click save
• And don't feel shy. Introduce yourself, say hello and ask a question if you need to.

Plus, if you're thinking of how to cut down on nappy costs remember to have a read of the Nappy MoneySaving article too and for later down the line if you need childcare first read the Childcare Vouchers article.

MrsTinks

please remember the following rules

PERSONAL DETAILS AND THE OFFERING OF ITEMS FOR SALE/TRADE/EXCHANGE/SWAP/GIFTS

Please refrain from requesting the exchange of personal details either on the forum, via PM or email; particularly for the purposes of selling/trading/exchanging/swapping or giving as gifts. This includes posting links to your ebay auctions, or other forms of advertising.

If someone appears to be selling items on the board it may be deleted by the board guides/forum team. The aim is to protect site users as however honourable the intention, your safety is paramount.

MEDICAL ADVICE

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: Sorry, giving or asking for medical advice is not permitted on this forum as it’s not what this site is about. While discussing medical insurance policies, cheaper ways to see consultants, cashback for alternative health treatments and how to get specific medication cheaper (legally) are all perfectly acceptable we ask you specifically not to discuss what to do in the event of certain medical problems (please see this rule on the Health Board). If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL]

MrsTinks

I think this is the latest list

EDD 2009
My Fathers Daughter - 2nd March 2009 :male:
happytails - 3rd March 2009
carrieparkinson - 4th March 2009
emlou2009 - 6th march 2009
new mum again - 10th March 2009
Redmel1621 - 12th March 2009 :male:
jenkellyxx - 12th March 2009
angelfairy - 13th March 2009 - Fri 13th it is so NOT happening on that day
CanadaBound - 14th March 2009
Snuffilin - 15th March 2009
Astroming - 15th March 2009
olliesmummy06 - 16th march 2009
bathbabe - 17th March 2009
crazyaboutsaving - 18th March 2009
Cookiesncream/cookie304 - 19th March 2009
JanineGr - 19th March 2009
taney - 19th March 2009
Choccie - 22th March 2009
mummy2mygirls - 23rd March 2009
angchris - 24th march 2009
candygirl's daughter - 26th March 2009
jakesmummy - 31st March 2009
bloomin freezing - 2nd April 2009
LittleMoo - 3rd April 2009
skellett - 4th April 2009
wendyf - 5th April 2009
slscarborough - 8th April 2009
Rachel83 - 8th April 2009
newmum1 – 9th April 2009
sparkle03 - 15th April 2009
xredwebx - 17th April 2009
sismith42- 19th April 2009
astonsmummy - 20th April 2009:male:
feelinggood - 20th April 2009:male:
cat4772 - 21st April 2009
emma-uk – 21st April 2009
cybermum- 26th April 2009
Ems2 - 29th April 2009
jo101 - 30th April 2009
freyaluck - 4th May 2009
Kathy72- 5th May 2009
Claire Jones - 6th May 2009
RiaAnn - 8th May 2009
panambi - 8th May 2009
shellsuit - 9th May 2009 - :male:
Linzi2301 - 10th May 2009 - :male:
Icklebeans - 13th May 2009. Twins!!!
MrsTine - 16th May 2009 :female:
Krystaltips - 17th May 2009
Candice56 - 18th May 2009
greent - 19th May 2009
ticklepenny – 22nd May 2009
code-a-holic - 22nd May 2009
Princess 81 - 23rd May 2009
Sallysau - 23rd May 2009
Lanz81 - 25th May 2009 :male:
Blottedcopybook - 28th May 2009
Doooford - 28th May 2009
Sami_Bee - 3rd June 2009
Stargirl12 - 4th June 2009
Niamhs mum - 10th June 2009
Honeypop - 11th June 2009
elaina79 - 11th June 2009
Searching_me - 12th June 2009:male:
Saverram_ 13th June 2009
Mookiandco - 19th June 2009:female:
Hedgehog28 - 19th June 2009
eljapo4 - 22nd June 2009
britonsarah - 24th June 2009
moneymaker - 25th June 2009
Jvic28 - 26th June 2009
pinkpig08 - 28th June 2009
mollythewestie - 29th June 2009
chalky_bertie's OH - 30th June 2009
maryjane01 - 01st July 2009
tarajayne- 2nd July 2009
Mrs Moc - 4th July 2009
angela6834 - 5th July 2009
chopsticks - 5th July 2009
Nicole136 - 8th July 2009
Alex1234 - 10th July 2009
LittlePickle - 10th July 2009
Lu T - 11th July 2009
tinkerbelluk - 12th July 2009
Helenpatmore - 13th July 2009
elle_gee - 19th July 2009
AlicePalice - 20th July 2009
niknaknoo1982 - 20th July 2009:male:
Skintchick - 20th July 2009
LouLee2008 - 22nd July 2009 :male:
catz747 - 23rd July 2009 - Twins!!
efrieze- 26th July 2009
SuzyWuzy - 2nd August 2009
SugarSpun - 2nd August 2009
fairydawn - 2nd August 2009
Newmoneysaver - 5th August 2009
Laurenoioi - 5th August 2009
Triggles - 5th August 2009
djdymond - 13th August 2009
6969annw - 14th August 2009
AylesburyGirl-16th August 2009
Shelvis - 20th August 2009
nessquic80 - 23rd August 2009
HypnoNu - 27th August 2009
Tiamai_d - 29th August 2009
zgaze - 3rd September 2009
Spinks - 3rd September 2009
Kate1 - 12th September 2009
Charlie23 - 12th September 2009
Jacksons mum - 14th September 2009
JAM1376 - 15th Septemeber 2009
mountainlioness - 16th September 2009
Fitzio - 17th September 2009
Workinmummy - 19th September 2009
happytum - 22nd September 2009
Glamazon - 24th September 2009
Stick2000 - 25th September 2009
jillie1974 - 26th September 2009
Nicki - 2nd October 2009
becky_sleaf - 5th October 2009
madwoman85 - 10th October
papa-roo - 15th October (dad-to-be)
vicstar - 17 October 2009
Cheapskate - 20 October 2009
Jennynoo - 21st October 2009
Helen81- 30th October 2009
money saving diva - 30th October 2009
Karen1907 - 3rd November 2009
Yorkshirechick - 5th November 2009
pookie5488 - 11th November

TTC LIST
Fishcake_random, durham_girl, likabu, Pooky, miss_pink, Boobylou, jiblets1, Uisge10, CHARLIE54,
Andrea78, AnnieM, Wondermum07, Melvis, Janec08, Helen79, Hayley11, Ruth.77, fattybooboo, Filmstar, jmf76, Natalie6999

BIRTH LIST
durham05 - 2nd March 2009 - Baby Girl - 8lb 10oz
Snuffilin - 2nd of March at 13.09 - Axel 7lb 11oz
Millies mum - 3rd March 2009 at 15.48 - Girl - Eloise Charlotte - 6lb 6oz
weezl74 - 5th March 2009 at 3.37pm - Jonathan Fergus William - 7lb 5oz
Jo-R - 6th March at 3.28pm - as yet unnamed


PROBABLY GIVEN BIRTH BUT TOO WORN OUT TO LOG ON LIST
Usually allow 2 weeks after EDD before transferring to this list...
voodoozoe - 23rd February 2009
Mikeboy - 28th February 2009

niknaknoo1982

Good luck MFD! Hello to everyone else! What have you all got planned for today? x

[Deleted User]

I put my baby heartbeat on daily motion if anyone wants a listen

http://www.dailymotion.com/mjhawkins/video/14516787

Which way round is it for the old wives tale of BPM being boy/girl? I counted 80 beats in 30 secs so am getting a 160bpm

Glamazon

Good morning fellow bumps

MFD - sending lots of easy labour vibes your way.

Mel - Happy Due Date

MrsT - thanks for the shiny new thread, forgot how 'official' you are!!!

So - T minus 90 mins til scan. I need to jump in the shower and then get ready to go.

Scan pics - we decided (well I decided) to just buy 2 pics and then scan them in. I thought about using helen's idea (I think) of taking a photo on my mobile and then transferring it to 'puter and taking it on USB to Boots or ASDA to get it printed properly. We don't have a flash printer with our digital camera.

Excited but getting nervous - trying to drink my 2 pints of liquid but I have MS today so very hard! OH didn't want to go to work today bless.

Nik - scan, then home to coo over my pics and then do some work from home.

Anyone seen Twilight the film? Very good and main character quite dishy especially when he's doing his vampire thang!!!

nessquic80

OH POOP, just wrote a long essay, went to post and sorry thread closed, how miffed am i !!
Morning everyone not much to say MW wont give me matb1 form till 20wks or HIPG till 25wks but did hear baby HB, which was good.
bring on the stawberries and pineapple oh and crossiants still!!!
got a bit of a lump now developing, and getting fidgetty, sleeping like anyones bussiness which is no good cus im usind tea and dinner breaks to sleep, went bed at 9.30 last nite till 6.30, suppose i best go get dressed or i might just lye on the bed for a bit while ds makes a mess of his room!!

weezl74

Hello ladies and bumps!



Love, hugs and labour vibes to MFD and Emlou :j:j:j


Here's my Labour story, as requested.



Edd -2 after having quite a restrained appetite, and almost no sugar at all for most of my pregnancy, DH watched surprised as I ate 5 pieces of flapjack after my evening meal. I was a bit oblivious to this, but he started to wonder if my body had begun to carb load ready for something big.

Edd -1 went for my 40 wk appt a day early. Had been feeling some lower back pains since 11 am, and the house suddenly felt intolerably unsorted and dirty. The pains were predictably about 25 mins apart.

Told myself it was probably nothing, loads of first timers go over dates, etc etc, but felt different somehow.

MW appt was really disappointing, it wasn’t my usual MW, and she measured me as if my pelvis started in a different place and didn’t palpate as low down my pelvis as I was used to. She then said I was 3/5ths, same as I had been the previous week! I had read that usually women were at least 2/5th for a few days before labour, so was really disappointed. Not because I wanted him to come sooner, I was happy to hang on, but more that I obviously wasn’t very skilful at reading my body since the MW clearly thought nowt was occurring.

The pains carried on and I got on with my day, got in a stress with my mum, who couldn’t understand why suddenly it was away with all the paint cans and we were making all the beds and cleaning like dervishes!

By 10.30pm I’d been getting these backaches every 15 mins for a while and they were feeling more intense, I couldn’t nap through them really and needed to shift my position.

Confessed to DH that I wasn’t vey confident in myself, but that I thought something was happening.

Went and got my ‘a few good men’ video, my all time favourite film. Put jack, demi and tom on pause every little while to have an on all fours moment, with DH pressing on the small of my back and then a trip to the loo after each one (sorry if TMI).

Intensity and frequency increased. By 5 in the morning the pains were between 8-10 mins apart, my labour tens was at it’s max setting and I would break into quite a sweat at the start of one. I felt quite panicked about my ability to cope, and worried about the water birth I’d hoped for because I’d tried a hot bath and found that the contractions in there without the Tens and DH were much harder to cope with. I kept saying to DH worriedly, ‘I’m going to have to go in for an epidural I know it, and I so wanted to do it all here!’.

So I rang the midwives. They said to wait til I was contracting at 1 in 5 or 1 in 3, and phone again, and to try a hot bath and to just get on with things (!). Was really gutted, but tried to carry on as we were.

Waited til the first contraction came 5 mins 40 secs after the last, and said to DH, ‘right, that counts, I’m not gonna mention the 40 secs!!!’.

Fortunately they said they’d send someone to examine me. I had said on the phone that I was feeling panicky and in need of some gas and air.

40 mins later Lynne, lovely Aussie midwife in her late 40s came. Alas she did not have the Gas!

She examined me, and I was so hoping to be quite effaced and far along after working at it all night!

Gutted again when she said I was 2cm. She also said If I’d have come in they’d have sent me home again. Got very despondant and confided in her that I feared I wouldn’t cope here at home and would need to go in.

I think that might’ve evoked the necessary pity cos she said she’d go collect some entonox. Got DH to work out how far it was for her to go and help me count down the minutes. I then took my mega vitamin booster as per that linkie I posted vit E, magnesium and esp calcium.

I had realised by this point that I needed some sort of time frame to the contractions to make them feel more manageable. I remembered Kristaltips sharing her great idea about counting through the contraction and began to do that.

Lynne chatted to us and I carried on flipping over onto all fours, using the tens booster button and counting and the gas and air and Dh pressing down hard on the small of my back until I was due my next examination at 9. I was 4 cm, well stretchy, so she was happy things were well established. Fortunately by this point we’d filled the pool!.

I contracted at 1:2 lasting for 90secs to 2 mins each pretty much from entering the water. Except for one 5 min lull. In the lull, the sunshine streamed through the window and I saw the jasmine in my garden. Jasmine is the name of one of my best friend’s second daughter. I thought to myself ‘Rach did this TWICE!’ and that gave me a bit more determination.

I drank half a cup of asda’s version of energy sports drink per hour sipped between contractions, stirred and shaken prior to labour to take the fizz out of it, as the mw at our ante-natal day said the drink should be still not fizzy, cos it can make you sick. And the fizzy stuff was half the price!

At 7cm dilated, Lynne said the contractions were doubling up, ie pretty much one on top of the other. This was pretty intense for me, and I asked if I could have some pethidine. She said that was ok but I’d need to come out of the water cos it might over sedate me. I said ok, but was worried about losing the soothingness of the water until the peth kicked in, she reassured me I’d still have the tens and the gas and air.

The next bit is the only bit I’d change in the way I was cared for. Lynne and her 2nd on call ros, who’d arrived to relieve her got me out of the pool, changed my t-shirt, and let DH restrap me to my tens. Only at that point did they look at my medical notes. They noticed that I’m down as having a history of anaphalactic reactions to an unknown foodstuff.

They were understandably worried that this might create an emergency situation if I was allergic to pethidine. Lynne was due to leave, to end her shift, but offered to stay on and overlap more with Ros, so that both of them could manage me together if it all went scary. This was great, and such an act of kindness, since she was heading home to hear how her daughter’s A level had gone that day.

The only downside was that they had all this chat with me out of the lovely hot water and no pethidine yet! So that was about 10 contractions which I didn’t feel very in control for.
Found the pethidine very good for calming me down, and less than an hour out of the pool, I started pushing. (I’m not quite sure what happened to my transition stage, I think I missed it!!!)

The midwives got me into classic lithotomy (stirrups) position to push, with them pushing on my feet to give me something to heave against. Became a bit grunty/shouty at this point and have vivid memories of Kath, lovely Glaswegian midwife shouting, ‘Listen to my voice hen, I need you to shut your mouth and push all that shouting energy down your body!’ They asked if I wanted to see his head start to come in the hand mirror, but the way I was coping was to say to myself, ‘I’m sure the head’s already out!’ so I just said ‘no’!

After only 37 mins of pushing (first timers usually between 45 mins and 2.5 hrs, so a very lucky Weezl!) he was out. DH later confessed that the pushing stage was his worst part, seeing the blood made him fear I’d haemorrhage and seeing a part of the cord near Fergus’ neck made him fear he might be oxygen starved. He was scared in case he lost us both. He very much wanted to ask the midwives about the cord he could see, but knew that I would hear, and panic, and so suppressed it for my sake. But we were both fine.

A couple of thoughts which might help anyone pondering a home birth…

Think through where you’ll labour if you have to move positions and lay down. (my downstairs futon will never be the same again!)

If getting out of a pool to have pethidine, refuse to leave the pool til they’re right there with a syringe pointed at your bum.

If you’re using anything that you want returned, make sure the midwives know. We used our shower curtain underneath me (our bathroom has a very high ceiling, and it was one we’d had to order online so it would drop down far enough into the bath) we thought as it was just plastic, anything would wash off it, so planned to reuse it. Once she had delivered the placenta onto it, the midwife then disposed of it along with all the clinical waste! So my visiting mum dad and brother have all been on baths only, which they all hate, they love showers!

Warn the neighbours. Think about which rooms you might labour in in total. (the birth room was out the back, not connected to anyone’s house, but even in the bit where we were watching a few good men in our bedroom, I was noisy enough that my neighbour bought the congratulations card 10 hours before he actually emerged!)

Sorry to be very detailed, but I know that’s the sort of thing that really helped me, so I wanted to offer it to you.

Very much love,

Weezl x

searching_me

do you think we talk too much :rotfl: x

nessquic80

Far to much......

shellsuit

Awwwwwww, I hope MFD gets on OK today!! I went in to be induced with Jack, my first but nothing happened (after 2 or 3 doses of the gel) so I had to wait till the next day before I gave birth!


Weezl, your new bundle is absolutely adorable!!! xxxx