Rosie’s bubble

Welcome to our little family Daisy!!!

My Split-Ender arrived yesterday and I used it for the first time before lightening/colouring my hair. I figured if I got rid of any split ends first then my hair condition would be better and the dye would do less damage. And I was right! I’d recommend it to anyone - my split ends are gone, my hair feels lovely silky soft and smooth like it does when I leave the hairdressers, but it’s the same style and just as long as before! I’m converted!! I WILL have long hair!!

Now I just need to decide how I’m going to spend the money I’ve saved on having my hair done. A regular monthly professional massage perhaps….. I wish!

Ian recently booked me into a posh spa for a 2 hour full body pregnancy massage, and I have to say it was one of the most luxurious, pleasurable, relaxing experiences I’ve ever had. Now I understand why Christina Aguilera has a 24 hour on-call masseuse as part of her entourage, I bloody would too! Then for my baby shower my lovely friends got me a face and body aromatherapy massage. Mmmmm! I’m dying to use it but I’m going to wait until after I’ve had Daisy, when my body is a wreck and I’m tired and stressed and really need it!!

I read a book recently which had a chapter on the search for the perfect massage, and it concluded that the best sort is sports massage. It’s very intense apparently, but really works any knots you have and makes you walk inches taller by the time you leave! Totally different to the yummy relaxy type massage I’ve enjoyed so much so far, but I’d still like to try it out at some point. Life is all about experience, and I want to experience as much as I possibly can! Hence I have also put in a request with Ian to book me in for colonic irrigation for my next birthday pressie….

I’d also like to try reflexology. And acupuncture. And it’s about time I went on another buddhist retreat…

I am!

Or at least I’m trying to. But I’m naughty naughty naughty, and I blowdry and straighten my hair so relentlessly that I’m plagued by split ends! Then I have to go to the hairdresser where a so-called ‘trim’ takes off at least twice the teeny weeny lickle bit of growth I’ve achieved, plus costs a bomb. Sometimes it just feels so endless, like I’m never gonna get there! I sometimes think, if anything my hair may be getting progressively shorter…

Then totally by chance the other day I came across this thing called the Split-ender. Apparently it takes off your split ends without a trip to the hairdresser and without compromising the length of your hair! Wow! I checked out the reviews and they are good, so I bought one (they cost about the same as a haircut anyway so if it’s shit it’s no big loss… I’ll just sell it on Ebay or something!) You can buy them online at Amazon.

Hope this helps if any low maintenance chicks (well, compared to some…!) like me have been trying and failing to grow long flowing Rapunzel-like locks!

Xxx

I’m writing at silly o’clock in the morning again, being (as usual!) totally incapable of ignoring the huge rock-hard Daisy-bump, switching my brain off and going to sleep! Ah the joys of pregnancy…

Anyhoo, the thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the concept of a ‘yummy mummy’ and how on earth I’m going to become one. I’m not quite sure that I’ve ever been ‘yummy’ as such, even when I’ve been carefree and single with luxurious hours to spend gazing at myself in the mirror, preening and straightening my hair, trying on a dozen different outfits and experimenting with my makeup to create a perfect look… or at the very least cover up the bags under my eyes and disguise my flabby bits! So forgive me for asking, but how the hell am I going to achieve it when I’m covered in baby sick and so tired I look like the living dead!? If motherhood can even turn a stunner like Britney Spears into a frump of epic proportions, what chance do I have?

Pregnant Britney, before having babies turned her brain funny

Post-baby Britney. Something is wrong. It’s like, she fell asleep and then somebody blind dressed her. I’m convinced this will happen to me!

So, call me an airhead to be this bothered about it, but I reckon my best bet is to prepare as much as possible beforehand, so I don’t really have to think about it later on. In this dreamy bubble-world, I will awaken each morn, tumble out of bed, open my wardrobe and throw on a ready-made, ready-planned, gorgeously chic and fashionable outfit! I will then go out into the world with my equally stunning and well-turned out baby daughter and wow my friends and family with how well I’ve adapted and oh what a lovely young family we are! So in order to do this, I have undertaken the momentous task of clearing out, organising and re-stocking my clothes.

Because I don’t have a ton of cash to throw at the problem, I’m trying to work with what I already have in the hope that I will be a size 10 soon after the birth. I was actually a size 8 when I first got pregnant (yeah, I just had to get that in there!!) but hadn’t been that way for long, so all my clothes were still a size 10 and hung off me in what I thought was a rather sexy, slovenly Nicole Richie kinda way! Turns out it’s just aswell I kept all the size 10 stuff because I’ve put on a lot of weight on the “I’m pregnant and as long as I take my vitamins I can eat whatever the fuck I like and not feel bad about it” diet, which has consisted primarily of takeaways, chocolate hobnobs, vinegar, milkshakes, salami, prawns, and an ocean of fruit smoothies. Varied and confused, a lot like my life in general really!

(I actually suspect I may be a size 12 after the birth but for now I’m in denial. I’d be happy with a size 10, I don’t need to be an 8 even if most of my friends are, because I think, I hope, that motherhood has its own special womanly allure which overrides the need to be beautifully slim. Or if not, then at least maybe society judges mums slightly less harshly than it does the rest of the female population? Oh god I just really don’t want to be fat!!)

So I’ve been working my way through my wardrobe getting rid of anything I think is too slutty or cheap-looking for a yummy mummy. And trying to make sense of the bizarre mix of clothing I have bought over the past couple of years, 50% of which is rather lovely, and none of which seems to go together. I’ve tenuously strung together a few outfits (oh look that’s beige… and that top has brown in it… they MUST look ok together!) ready for my new life as a yummy mummy.

I must admit I’ve also bought a couple of dresses. I figured they’re minimum effort cos you just chuck em over your head and hey presto you’re good to go (add a pair of tights and a cardie in winter unless you want everyone you know commenting “ooooh, you must be freezing!” - why does that phrase always sound like an accusation of sluttery?) Asos.com is always good for dresses, and I found a couple of shops on Ebay (you know I love it!) that import some really cute designs from Japan, and are so cheap they should be criminal… no, really, they should be, there’s no way they can make it at that price without cutting corners somewhere… but if I ignore my conscience it might eventually give up on me… seriously conscience I’m a lost cause you might as well just leave me alone… please??

Ah that’s better! Yeah, so look what I bought!

Beautifully floaty sleeves… yum!

This pinafore dress will look fab in autumn with tights and a cardie, plus it unbuttons so it is perfect for getting my boobs out… I mean for breastfeeding purposes of course!

The perfect way to pinch a buddha-belly into a waist. Really, it’s not cheating!

Oh come on, it’s sooooo cute! Obviously the naf red belty-thing and necklace have to go.

Xxxx

Today the smoking ban comes into force. I’m actually quite pleased – the trend towards smokers being demonized is going to be extremely useful in stopping me from taking up smoking again after Daisy is born.

Initially I only gave up for the sake of the baby. I enjoyed smoking and happily puffed my way through many a guilt-free 20 pack to myself drunken nights out. And let’s not deny how damn sexy and cool smoking looks! But the idea of poisoning the sweet defenseless little ‘shrimp’ (as we called baby Daisy for the first few months of my pregnancy – well, that’s what they look like!) was unbearable. I gave up so that I wouldn’t have to feel guilty, and because I could no longer enjoy a cigarette because with every drag images flashed through my mind of Daisy being born all sickly, and I didn’t fancy increasing the chances of sleepless nights worrying about her health. I suppose it could be seen as purely selfish, but I simply had to give up in order to feel like I was a reasonably OK person!

Giving up changed me. I couldn’t bear to be too near smokers, because it made me so irritable. Why the fuck should I go through the torture of giving up, I thought, only to be poisoned (and have my baby poisoned) through passive smoking! In fact, I might as well just not have bothered giving up, because here I am, stressed out and uptight, partie to every single one of the negative effects of smoking, but with none of the fun!

But I persevered until I could sit in a room with smokers without going in a huff, because so many of my friends and family smoke. And because I have sweetly compromised and not made a fuss during my pregnancy, I now feel in a strong position to lay down the rules for when Daisy arrives in person. I have had everyone agree that our house will be smoke-free (except the attic right at the top of the house, where my mum is allowed to smoke with the door shut and the window open) and I’m personally going to police the new system with a sharp tongue, a tone of hysteria and an artillery of facts and statistics on smoking around babies!

So like I say, if society has suddenly decided that cigarettes are pure evil, and all smokers should ostracized, who am I to complain? It suits my purposes completely.

I am not blind, objectively, to the fact that smokers should have the same rights as everyone else, and that while denouncing cigarettes the government rather conveniently creams million in tax from their sales. Nor am I completely ignorant that this is another step closer to the nanny state. But it’s bloody perfect for me! I’ll save so much money by not taking up smoking again! I can go have Sunday Dinner in the pub without needing to find a babysitter! It could mean my loved ones live longer and are richer!

Fickle and selfish though I may be in my own reasons for supporting the ban, I also believe the ‘bigger’ reasons (you know the ones… cost to the NHS… expense to individuals… bad breath… bad skin… death) are faultless. So stop moaning, it’s for your own good!

I’m sooooo tired! I just want to sleep…

I’ve tried everything.

A hot milky drink.

Reading a book.

Having a bath.

I even tried a self hypnosis CD for insomnia…

It just made me feel a bit wierd and neurotic…

Just aswell I downloaded it for free…

Ian really likes it.

He won’t go to sleep without it now!

Don’t mind me if I have a bit of a moan…

My bump is too big! It stops me sleeping! It gets in the way! It gives me unbearable heartburn- the other night I woke up choking on my own stomach acid! My boobs hurt! I get horrendous cramp in my legs - I wake up shrieking and poor Ian thinks I’m going into labour! Also I get those Braxton Hicks contractions and they HURT! To think that labour is going to be ten times worse terrifies me! I have to go for a wee so many times during the night! And Daisy always wants to have a rave in my womb at 4am!

O.K. I’m glad that’s out my system.

I love you little baby Daisy…

Can’t wait to meet you!

Night night

(And good morning! It’s 8am! Told you I had insomnia!)

XxX

If there’s one thing I’ve really noticed while pregnant, it’s that everyone, but everyone, has an opinion on how you should go about things. It’s amazing the strong reactions and opinions that all things baby-related bring up in women! No sooner do you announce you’re pregnant than the advice starts rolling in…

The first issue I was hit with was nappies. A friend at work advised me “get the re-usable ones, they’re so much cheaper!” and initially I was into the idea. After all, who wouldn’t want lovely soft fluffy natural cotton next to their ickle baba’s delicate skin? Also I often feel guilty where the environment is concerned, and wasn’t sure that I could sleep at night knowing I was permanently piling up the landfill sites with yucky disposables.

And yet I couldn’t wipe the mental image of myself surrounded by re-usable nappies, hanging off every available surface, every door and radiator, a stinking bucket of nappysan and shit at my feet and a screaming baby in my arms!

So I looked into it online and discovered a few things that helped make up my mind. Firstly, although re-useable nappies are much cheaper in the long run, there’s a significant cost initially to get the show on the road. I reckon I’d rather have my money drip away slowly and quietly week by week than watch a huge big chunk of it just, well, disappear! Secondly, research suggests that their impact on the environment is no worse than the evil landfill-clogging disposable kind, on account of all the electricity it takes to wash and tumble-dry them. I’m deeply suspicious of this so-called research (we’ll always be able to get energy from renewable sources like the sun and wind, but when we’ve run out of landfill space, that’s it. Before long we’ll be building houses on nappies…nice!) But anyway by then it didn’t matter because I’d made my third and final discovery…

Eco-disposables! Yes ladies, a disposable nappy that decomposes after a few weeks in landfill. And you can buy them from your local Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s. They can work out slightly more expensive, but they’re fab for your environmental conscience - so now I can take the easy option without feeling like a moral black hole. Why doesn’t everyone use these little miracles? In fact, screw democracy, screw freedom of choice: I say the government should pass a law that all disposables sold in the U.K. must be the decomposable kind! No seriously, I mean that. I may well start a campaign.

Whatever decisions you make, there will always be people who disagree and disapprove. My work friend still insists that re-usable nappies are “no more work” and “so easy to use”. I have only one answer to that. No. They. Fucking. Aren’t.

See what I mean? I now get really worked up and defensive about my choices. Being pumped full of hormones to the point of hysteria doesn’t help! But actually, I think this strong emotional reaction is quite widespread. When buying some baby clothes recently the cashier asked me if I wanted the hangers. “Oh, no ta”, I laughed, “I don’t think I’ll be ironing and hanging things up- life’s too short!” “Well I must’ve been doing it wrong all this time then!” she snapped, scowling, and deliberately ‘forgot’ my discount. I felt bad that I’d so badly offended this woman with what I thought was a friendly, throwaway comment, but it’s symptomatic of the whole subject matter really.

Nappies and ironing aren’t the only area for potential conflict. What you eat, whether you drink/smoke during pregnancy, how old you are when you get pregnant, what you buy for your baby, whether you use pain relief during labour, whether you breast/bottle feed your baby. This is only a small selection of landmine subjects on which you are judged and which everyone, but everyone, seems to think they know best.

So what is my point? The only thing that’s really important is that you do what’s right FOR YOU. And try not to judge others for their choices, they have their reasons. If you have the organizational skills, time, energy and inclination to do re-useable nappies, fantastic! You can feel happy in the knowledge that you’re saving yourself a pretty penny. But if like me you tend towards chaos, have neither a tidy house nor a tidy mind, and like to spend the spare time you do have on the sweet things in life (a long hot bath, cuddling your baby, a massage from your other half, seeing friends, doing your hair/makeup, watching Eastenders in bed, etc etc) then don’t beat yourself up about it.

Nobody says life’s got to be hard, so enjoy yourself!

I never thought this could happen to me… but I’ve become obsessed with fucking buggies! I’ve been living and breathing buggies for the past few weeks. When I’m asleep, it feels like I haven’t slept at all because I’ve been weighing up the pros and cons of various buggies IN MY DREAMS. Is no part of my life sacred from this madness??

So initially a couple of months ago I bought an all-terrain 3 wheeler Graco travel system off eBay on the cheap. When it arrived I decided it was completely impractical, and couldn’t imagine what had possessed me to buy it. Neither me nor my partner Ian drive so the car seat part is useless, and anyway you can’t keep your baby in it for long (no more than 2 hours) cos it makes the baby all squished up in a funny position that’s bad for its breathing (so say the health professionals). Secondly, the buggy itself is so damn long you’d be knocking over old grannies with the front wheel. Also it’s heavy, doesn’t fold small, and has gigantic big tyres and wheels that frankly would be better suited to a small tractor! So in the end we agreed we’d keep it as a spare for the grandparents, who are more likely to take the baby out in the car, and also more likely to be using the buggy for all that cross country dog-walking muddy icky type stuff.

In the meantime, my buggy obsession was worsening. Being on maternity leave and having just a BIT TOO MUCH spare time on my hands meant I was spiralling into one-track-mindedness. Going through the buggy selection process for the second time was so much harder because I knew I just couldn’t afford to get it wrong again. So I did my research, checked the websites, descriptions, prices, reviews, and asked for advice from every poor bugger that knew me… including those who don’t have or even want babies… most just turned the bloody question around, like “well which one do YOU like?” as though I had any idea!

I went from thinking ‘nothing but the best for my baba’, ‘no expense spared’ and ‘I gotta be a super-trendy mum’ , lookng at the Bugaboo’s and Quinny’s, to thinking ‘I really want a holiday this year’ and ‘babies don’t give a fuck’ while looking at the cheapo ones in Toys R Us. I took to blatantly stopping, pointing and staring at mum’s in the street, wondering if I could see myself using the buggy they had (”or does it make them look pretentious/chavvy/boring/middle-aged?”) while an embarrassed Ian acted like he’d just seen something REALLY INTERESTING in the sky!

Eventually… eventually… I had it down to a shortlist, based on the following criteria: It had to have the lie-flat position as reccommended by health professionals. It had to be able to face towards me to begin with as this helps the baby’s development (so say the health professionals) and forms stronger bonds. It had to be foldable as a pushchair, sturdy but light and easy to manouvre.

So today I bought my buggy. It’s the Silver Cross 3D Pramette, which ticks all my boxes and turns from a pram into a pushchair after the initial few months - “like a transformer!” Ian says. It was his favourite too so I get to feel like I’ve been really inclusive and democratic by going for the one he liked! We ordered it in the “Jetsport colourway”, that’s BLACK to me and you, cos I reckon black defies fashion and I didn’t want a colour scheme that people would think was out of date by next year, like the Pliko in “Afternoon Tea” which is utterly gorgeous, stylish and desirable, but will be soooo 2007 by 2008!

So here is a pic of my yummy buggy, and let us never talk of buggies again!

Love Rosie