Pregnancy Diary?

To start a pregnancy diary or to not start a pregnancy diary. That is the current question. I’d like to have something to look back on in months and years to come, but have a sneaking suspicion that it might be too cheesy and tacky.

I also have a slight obsession with stationery, pretty paper and notebooks, which makes it hard (nearly impossible) for me to use normal 99p notebooks from newsagents, so would like it to be special, but can’t find any pregnancy diaries online that I like. I could make my own but am too tired and can’t really be bothered.

At the moment I think all it would say is ‘Sunday 27th October – tired’, ‘Monday 28th October – tired and bloated’, ‘Tuesday 29th October – really tired, and scared of being a fat pregnant lady’. That wouldn’t make interesting reading so far. In fact it would probably make quite depressing reading, for the next 2 months!

I don’t really want to look back and read that I was feeling fat, bloated and tired for 2 months and remember it all vividly. If I was glowing and going on regular runs, feeling fun of energy, eating exactly the right stuff and not still in my pyjamas and dressing gown at 11am, then I probably would start a diary now. Perhaps a pregnancy diary would be better started at 12 weeks when there’s a pretty black and white pic to show the world. 

In other, more positive and exciting news, my baby’s heart starts beating this week! Now that will put a smile on my face even on the worst, more bloated, sleepy day 🙂

A bit of a shock…

So, got back from another country to find that…I’m PREGNANT!!

It’s all very exciting, it’s my first baby and I’ve never been through any of this before. One thing I can tell you for sure, it feels WEIRD!

Symptoms so far include;

 – extreme tiredness, hunger, and the weird shaky inside feeling you get when you’ve too much coffee!

We’d only been trying for a month, so it really was a bit of a shock to get preggers so quick, I thought it would take months, years even! Now it’s happening right this second.

I’m about 5 weeks, (that means the baby is only the size of an apple pip, but already has the beginnings of a spinal chord and arms and legs!) so still 2 months before I can really tell people, although we’ve told our parents and a few family members, and a couple of really close friends who can pray for us. It’s hard to be this patient. When I’ve known other people be pregnant, it hasn’t seemed to take very long for them to get a big tummy and have exciting stories about feeling kicks and buying cots and prams and cute baby clothes. For me, it feels like it will take forever! 

We’ve decided to stay in our one bedroom flat, and put a cot in the bedroom and co-sleep for a few months before we move. I think you just muddle through with whatever you’ve got, and we can’t wait to figure out what that means!!!

Here’s to the next 7months and 3weeks, please God teach me patience! 

Depression, anxiety, peace

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

It sounds simple, right? But we all know it’s hard to put into practise. 

I’ve been feeling depressed a lot recently, and also anxious! Everything but ‘at peace’. I have a messy past which is hard to forget even though I know it’s gone, and get hung up on every stupid thing I’ve said or done that I can’t take back. I get anxious about everything coming up, every hour of work, every future plan, what if it doesn’t happen, how will I feel then, what will I do? What if I do a rubbish job, when I’ve been given such brilliant opportunities this year? What if something happens to me, my family, my friends? What if , what if, what if?

How do I get past it and keep going, putting one foot in front of the other, getting out of bed everyday and forcing myself into the shower, replying to email after email, cooking meal after meal? Surprisingly, not just by living in the present. But also, by taking a deep breath and relying on this kind of quote instead; 

“You will be fine.

Just you wait and see.”

Now breathe a sigh of relief, relax, and keep going.