PinknSparkly's Mortgage Wannabe savings dairy

savingwannabe

I think it's great news that you are expecting so much to look forward too. My goodness you have been busy visiting your aunty and your husbands family and working on your thesis too. You are doing so much make sure that you rest a bit.

Holy moly the stamp duty refund is marvellous. Fantastic news. Talk about a great start to the new year.

[Deleted User]

Congratulations on the baby,pinknsparkly. Great news also about the cheque. What a lovely start to a new year.

bln x

ginnyknit

Congratulations and hope all settles down soon.

pinknsparkly

Wow, I've not updated since 31st December! I thought I'd drop in to say hi, give a bit of an update and ask how you're all doing in this current, very very strange and unusual situation.

I submitted the corrections for my PhD thesis just over two months ago, and got the news that I've passed just under three weeks ago (feels an awfully lot longer ago than that, what with the world being turned completely upside down in the meantime!).

My morning all-blooming-day sickness had finally stopped about the same time I submitted, but has come back again this week, yeay!!

My husband and I are both fortunate enough to be able to work from home. We're operating a skeleton service at my workplace, and if I wasn't pregnant then I'd be on the rota to be in work too, but whilst we have enough well staff for me not to be needed, I am working from home. On the plus side, we've not killed each other yet (which is almost certainly down to the fact that we work in different rooms and barely see each other for the whole day except at lunchtime!), on the downside, I am very lonely and definitely struggling with the isolation of only being able to leave the house once a day for exercise and not having any human contact other than my husband. I really hope that those of you who live alone are doing ok at the moment. We've accepted that the work we were intending to do to the house before baby arrives won't now be able to happen (rewiring, replastering and adding insulation to a few of the rooms, plus potentially replumbing as the house has had nothing done to it in 30 years, and what was done 30 years ago was mostly DIY bodge jobs....). So we'll have the fun of doing all that super messy work with a small person in the house  Financially, we are in the incredibly fortunate position of being on full pay whilst working from home which is a huge blessing. 

We've been doing food drops to two family members who are self isolating/shielding for the past couple of weeks but one of them should be out of self isolation by tomorrow and the other (elderly relative) has been set up with regular deliveries of pre-prepared meals (they'd been getting Sainsburys deliveries for years but we were having to do top up shops for them as so little of the food that was ordered for them was actually arriving....).

All my antenatal classes and courses have obviously been cancelled, but some of them are hoping to run online versions so I'm keeping everything crossed that we won't be going into the labour process completely clueless and blind Just now need to hope that once this three week period is up, we are allowed to buy "non essential items" as we've not bought anything for baby yet because the plan was to get the work on the house done first! I've also been diagnosed with gestational diabetes which means I'm having to follow quite a low carb diet and test my blood sugars multiple times a day. With the work stress of coronavirus (I work in healthcare) and the inability to buy ANY of the foods I'd been relying on to keep my blood sugars stable, I'd been having really fluctuating blood sugars. The midwifery team are also under a huge amount of pressure so naturally don't have time to provide any assistance (I submit my blood readings to them via email on a weekly basis and had been getting feedback each week until the past two weeks). But for the past few days, I've taken my eating right back to basics, stopped worrying so much about trying to hit individual carb targets for each meal and concentrating on hitting the overall target for the day. I've essentially been eating meat, veg and dairy products, with enough fruit, root veg and seeds included keep my carb count high enough to hit my target. It certainly seems to be working so far, and is a way of eating that is inline with online UK guidance. So, fingers crossed, it continues to work!!

I'm afraid I've not updated my signature or my financial situation in quite some time, but I will come back to that and update it soon.

Stay safe and well everyone!

Skint_yet_Again

Hi Pink good to hear from you. Hope the morning sickness & gestational diabetes stay manageable & under control. Stay safe xx

savingwannabe

I completely agree with Skinty. I hope you are able to walk in the garden every day and well done on following a healthy diet. You are doing everything you can well done you. Stay strong we are pretty much isolating as much as possible on here I think. 

pinknsparkly

Thanks both. Glad to hear you're staying well SW - hope you're well too Skinty.

On Monday, for the first time all pregnancy, I managed to send the diabetes midwives a weeks worth of blood glucose readings that were all within what they should be so that's cheered me up significantly! I was due to have the whooping cough vaccine yesterday at my GP and have my 25 week checkup with a midwife tomorrow, but both appointments have been cancelled. I'm a bit nervous about not being monitored and being told not to ring the team unless it's emergency, without any real idea as to what an emergency is.... (Those sorts of things were due to be covered in my antenatal classes, but they've also been cancelled). So instead I'm concentrating on telling myself that women have been having babies for millennia, and I just have to trust that my body knows what it's doing (even if I haven't got a clue ) 

On a sadder note, my husband's grandad was finally discharged home on Friday last week from a hospital that had a large number of coronavirus patients in isolation rooms on his ward (he was in as he fell down the stairs and needed social care involvement to get him set up to be able to go home). He was taken back to hospital by ambulance Monday afternoon, where he passed away from coronavirus yesterday afternoon. Only his wife was allowed to say goodbye to him, and now she has to be in complete self isolation on her own for 2 weeks... We have no idea if there will even be able to be a funeral, or who will be able to go if they can have one. It feels like the world is going slightly mad 

Skint_yet_Again

Oh Pink so sorry to hear about your husband’s Grandad. 

I don’t know if this helps I came across it looking for something else. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-advice-for-safe-funerals-after-discussions-with-faith-leaders

savingwannabe

Thinking of you Pinky stay safe. 

pinknsparkly

Morning all, and thanks for the good wishes. The funeral is tomorrow and no-one is allowed to go. Unfortunately, they are also not able to stream the service for us to be able to view remotely. On the plus side, my husband's nan is now out of her two week isolation period after saying goodbye in the hospital and remains symptom-free so we're all INCREDIBLY relieved about that and keeping everything crossed that she's going to remain ok. 

How is everyone else finding isolation? I think my brain has finally given up fighting and accepted that this is the new normal for a while, I'm much less restless than I was a few weeks ago. I've also made a real effort to get my steps up to 10,000 per day (from a 40ish minute walk after work plus using a static bike we have in the house) for the past week and a bit which I think has helped too. Though baby is starting to get more active (was having a dance party last night and then woke me up doing backflips this morning) so my sleep is starting to suffer and in a small way I'm grateful to be working from home and so able to get up later than I would be if I was commuting. I'd still much prefer to be back at work though, but I'm working hard at finding the positives in the day!

Hope you're all staying healthy and happy!