But I don’t feel very well tonight so I am just making a very quick list of the things that have happened since I blogged last and fingers crossed I will get back tomorrow to talk about them in more detail. In no particular order at the moment but they will be when I have done the real post tomorrow.
Hospital appointment: Doppler Clinic (6th July)
This was the follow up appointment from last week, they asked me to come back but never really said why I had to come back. It was only after they had done the scan that they told us it was because the previous one had been slightly higher than it should have been. They had a bit of trouble getting his heartbeat because he is so low down, right now they don’t have any plans for us to be seen in that clinic again. I wasn’t able to manage to do a urine sample for them so the bottle ended up coming home with us for Mark to take into work. I can’t really remember what else happened (see this is exactly why I should blog more often lol).
Hospital appointment: Anaesthetics clinic (7th July)
I never ended up keeping the appointment I was feeling really ill. Mark telephoned them and was able to make another appointment for next week at 12:30.
Lukas’s Sports Day (8th July)
I was still feeling too ill to go out, so I ended up missing it but Mark went with him. Unfortunately the batteries hadn’t had long enough to charge fully so I ended up with no photos at all. Mark did take some videos (which I haven’t got around to looking at yet) so we at least have some record of the day. I might be able to grab a few still shots from those to scrap. Mark said Lukas had a great time and luckily for them the rain held off so they were able to get all of their events done. I find it slightly ironic that they cancelled the first date because of the heat yet this replacement date was absolutely freezing Lukas ended up wearing his coat for nearly the whole time he was outside.
Hospital phoned (10th July)
Mark has been using my mobile phone since his got broken (the screen doesn’t work), so I am stuck with my old handset. The problem with that is that it doesn’t get great signal in the house. When it started ringing with an unknown number I couldn’t even answer it. I missed the first call, they rang back again I tried to answer it but couldn’t hear anything. I think it took 6 attempts all together before I was able to answer the call and that was because I went into the garden and sat on the trampoline. It ended up being the hospital saying I had a severe urine infection. They wanted me to go up to the hospital and collect a prescription for antibiotics, but Mark was at work. We were able to arrange for him to go first thing on Saturday morning. It took a while for them to grasp that I was allergic to the antibiotics they had prescribed. Not that it really ended up mattering because when Mark went up on the Saturday morning it was one mess up after another, where he had been told to go wasn’t open, where he was sent instead didn’t have it and he ended up coming home with a completely different prescription than what they had said they prescribed. If your wondering no they don’t seem to have helped with anything at all.
Lukas’s School Fete (11th July)
After Mark got home from picking up the prescription from the hospital and collecting the tablets from the chemist we headed out to the school fete. It was a lot of fun even if the weather was a bit crappy. We had to wait for a really heavy shower to pass before we could leave, and it rained a few times while we were there but nothing too major to ruin our fun. There are photos from that but not as many as I would have liked because of the weather. I haven’t gotten around to really looking at those yet either. I don’t really feel like writing a full recap of the day but Lukas’s favourite bits were playing some of the games, riding the pony, visiting the book fair, eating the BBQ food and having his face painted as Spiderman. He was a little bit disappointed that there were no animals this year and no cake decorating (the thing he had been looking forward to most). The whole fete seemed like it had been put together at the last minute this year, there wasn’t much of a turn out and we thought the previous ones were a lot better but it was still a lot of fun. I guess the weather put a lot of people off going and the fact that we never got a letter home about it until the day before didn’t really help either. One of the things they were doing this year that they haven’t done before was selling plants. As we were leaving we noticed the sunflowers had been reduced to clear them, Lukas wanted to buy one and the lady selling them offered us both of the ones she had left for 20p each (they had been £1 each when we first got there and had been reduced to 50p each). So we ended up with 2 sunflower plants. They don’t exactly look much like sunflowers they actually look a bit sad and droopy at the moment and we really need to go and buy some sticks for them. As we were leaving the school we saw Jade, Keisha, Daniel and Maiya on their way home from the park. It was quite nice to walk along with them and catch up a little. They were full of questions about the baby and really shocked that I hadn’t had him yet. Maiya has changed so much I hardly recognised her and Daniel was full of chatter about going to nursery now. I really miss seeing them but I was feeling so ill I didn’t really feel like chatting. By the time we got home I was feeling really ill and having a lot of new pain across my stomach. Mark ended up taking the day off work because we were worried something was happening with the baby. The pain was really bad for a few hours but unfortunately it ended up being nothing more than a false alarm. He changed his mind and decided that he preferred to stay put for a bit longer. I did manage to pack him a bag ready though for when he does make his appearance. I have been meaning to do it for a while. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit depressed that it had turned into nothing.
Hospital appointment: Pre-term labour clinic (13th July)
Today was supposed to be Lukas’s school picnic but he couldn’t go because I had a hospital appointment and there wasn’t anyone to pick him up from school. This is the clinic we usually go to where I see my consultant. We had the usual urine tests, swabs, blood pressure and questions before going for another scan. That’s when they spotted a slight problem, little man’s growth is trailing off a little. Up until now he has been measuring exactly to their dates (with a due date of the 27th August). Now he’s measuring small for them, by about 3 weeks. They said he was about a 31 week size now. No-one seemed sure if he had grown at all since the last growth scan 4 weeks ago so they want to keep an eye on that. The midwife who had done the scan seemed quite concerned about it and said that they would be wanting to see me weekly from now on, but it’s not really anything new to us since it’s what happened with Leo, the only difference is this one has stayed put longer than he did and he’s a bit bigger. From the size on the scan they are estimating him at about 3.5lb in weight, Leo was 2lb 120z. When we finally got to see the consultant we were more than slightly surprised that she doesn’t want to see us for 2 weeks, especially since she said my blood pressure is high and we already know that the swelling everywhere is a lot worse than it was with Leo. I can’t even get my wedding ring (which is 2 sizes too big anyway) onto my little finger, Mark’s wedding ring is 7 or 8 sizes bigger than mine and I can just about keep his on my finger. I have a pair of croc style shoes that I ordered a while back and was annoyed when they arrived and they were way too big. I could barely keep them on now I end up with perfect imprints of them if I wear them. It’s also quite depressing that at my booking appointment I was 22.2kg lighter than I am now. Usually I lose so much weight when I am pregnant that I end up either about the same as when I started or weighing less than I did to start with. The consultant wanted me to double the dose of Iron and Folic Acid I am on and carry on taking the low dose aspirin. She’s decided that if fidget hasn’t made an appearance by himself they will induce me at 38 weeks. That’s 4 weeks away from now and I am not exactly thrilled about the idea of having to feel this ill for that much longer. All I can do though is hope that he gets a move on soon and does something. I am starting to get worried about Lukas’s birthday which is 2 weeks Monday, the one good thing is that with this plan in place it means that he definitely won’t be born on Leo’s birthday which is 3 days before the due date the hospital gave us. I really don’t think I would have been able to handle that. I am so ready for this to all be over I have even resorted to begging and pleading with the baby to please hurry up, Lukas prefers to be more direct and frequently orders him to “get out fidget”, or “hurry up fidget”. I guess all of us are right at the end of our patience with him.
Nan’s hospital appointment: Follow up from the operation on her leg (14th July)
I don’t know if you remember that Nan went into hospital for some day surgery on her leg a while back. I would link you up to where I wrote about it but for some reason the search bar on my blog is missing again. According to the settings it should be showing but for some reason it isn’t and I can’t be bothered to fiddle around with all of that today sorry. Anyway getting back to the point, she had some surgery on her legs and they removed veins (I remember that much since I never went with her I am not entirely sure what else they did). She thought this was supposed to help with the circulation issues and pain she has in her legs. When she went for the follow up appointment they told her that they had done the procedure because she was at high risk for ulcers on her legs and this should help prevent that. It’s nothing to do with pain at all, so she was quite upset that no-one had explained it to her properly. She feels as if she went through a lot of pain and discomfort for nothing and to be honest she is more than a little depressed about it all. I can see why she is upset especially with the issues involving the after care she received, the doctor did apologise for those but they weren’t really anything to do with him. The original plan was to do the second leg at a later date but I don’t think she wants to do that anymore.
Hospital appointment: Anaesthetics clinic (14th July)
If your wondering we went to the hospital with Nan for her appointment and then sat around waiting for mine which was 3 hours later. It’s not exactly cheap to get a taxi to and from the hospital so it would have been really silly to pay that twice in one day. It also solved the other problem of Nan not wanting to go to her appointment by herself. We sat in the waiting room while she went and spoke to the doctor and we left her looking through a magazine with a coffee in the waiting area while I went for my appointment then got a taxi home together. Luckily we had nothing else that needed to be done that day and we didn’t mind doing some shopping at the hospital and then sitting around for a while. The anaesthetist we saw was really nice, we sat and had a long chat about why I was referred to them, he asked lots of questions and gave us some leaflets about pain relief options. He seemed to be a bit surprised when he actually saw me, kept looking at the letter the doctor had sent him and then looking at me. I think from the way high BMI was stressed he was expecting me to be a lot bigger than I am weight wise. Quite a few things I said to him like how the 2 general anaesthetics I have had previously didn’t work and how quick the other two had been born freaked him out a little. He seemed slightly concerned that no-one has ever really sorted out why I have the seizures or arranged for an epi-pen because of the latex allergy but there’s not really much he can do about either of those except note down his concerns over it in my notes. The appointment took a lot longer than we were expecting, he also had to leave a few times to answer his pager. I did think it was quite funny when he said it was lovely meeting you but I hope I don’t have to again. He meant it in a nice way that he hoped we didn’t run into any problems where he was needed but it kind of came out wrong.
Making treats for Lukas’s class (14th July)
Since I have been feeling so ill lately and I was fast running out of time we decided not to make special treats for Lukas’s class this year. I still wanted to send in some sweets for them for the end of the year and I wanted to make a little more effort than just sending in a bag of sweets for him to give out. I picked up some coloured food bags that came with stickers and spent the entire evening sat on the floor filling them, folding them and stacking them. We decided to go with a bag of Milky Way Magic Stars and 2 bags of Haribo in each one. Lukas was supposed to be helping me but changed his mind at the last minute. Let’s just say it must have been very amusing to watch me trying to get up after sitting still for so long lol. I was really stiff and sore which Lukas then decided to make worse by sticking stickers all over me, they had latex in the glue and I ended up having some bright red marks that looked like burns everywhere he had stuck them. Since he couldn’t remember the names of his teachers we decided to go with a box of chocolates to share for them all. Nan is even more mental than I am she insisted on buying 3 different boxes of chocolates (well actually we bought 6 boxes because they were on offer 2 boxes for £6, we just got 3 different varieties). She then emptied out the contents of the 3 boxes into a lovely silver gift box she lined with tissue and then tied the whole thing with ribbon. It worked out costing about £10 which sounds expensive but was a lot cheaper than buying boxes of chocolates and a card would have been for all of the people who help him at school, I wasn’t even sure how many teachers and support people he has at school. I just wrote out a blank card for them all saying thank you for all the help this year, I really appreciate it, love Lukas. It worked out quite well since his class party was the next day I knew all of the teachers would be there and I thought the kids might like taking there little treat bags home from the party. The only thing was I had to get up in the morning to take Lukas to school since I didn’t really trust Mark to get everything there in one piece or remember to bring the drawer I had used to store the sweets home at the end of the day. Then I went to pick Lukas up in the afternoon because it makes me happy to see all of the little ones coming out talking about Lukas giving them sweets. The only annoying thing was I forgot to take any photos of them before I sent them to school, I had meant to do it when I finished but because it was late and I hadn’t gotten around to bathing Lukas I decided to leave it until the morning and then forgot lol.
Lukas’s end of term party (15th July)
We only found out Lukas was having a party on the Wednesday, neither Mark nor Lukas seemed to know whether we were supposed to send food or drink in for it. I asked Mark to go to Tesco on the way home from work and buy some sausage rolls to send in. Last time Lukas had a party at school I sent sausage rolls and cocktail sausages and his teacher was extremely grateful especially since every other mummy had sent fairy cakes or chocolate biscuits lol. His teacher was really glad we had sent them in but also said it wasn’t necessary, she had thrown a party for them because she wanted to and had bought all the food and drink out of her own money. Apparently Lukas had a great time, he said the sausage rolls were a big hit lol, when he came out of his classroom he was busy munching on a doughnut and trying to carry all of his school stuff. The part that made me laugh was the LSA asking me if it was alright for Lukas to have a doughnut, I was laughing because he was already eating it and I can’t see the point in asking after you have given it to him. I am not one of these parents who is bothered about him eating anything he wants, he knows what he likes and what he doesn’t and to be honest he’s usually not a huge fan of much sweet stuff, but if I had minded it was a bit late asking me after he had eaten half of it wasn’t it lol. It’s not as if you were ever going to get that doughnut back once you had given it to him. I was slightly surprised he ate the doughnut since he doesn’t usually touch jam, he only likes ring doughnuts preferably with icing sugar not the granulated stuff it’s a texture thing he doesn’t like the feel of it on his hands. But I guess his weird rules for food are different when he’s at school because he sees his friends doing it and wants to do it too.
Decorating the bathroom (15th and 16th July)
They were finally supposed to be coming back to finish off the bathroom with the new paint and covering the wooden floor but things didn’t exactly go to plan. For a start Nan had to argue with them to even get them to agree to redecorate, they had completely wrecked the paint that was in there when they redid the tiles around the bath. There was plaster wiped everywhere and also since the new bathroom stuff isn’t as wide as the old stuff great big chunks of bare brown plaster showing everywhere. Then they would only agree to repaint the bathroom magnolia which Nan had a mental about, she did finally get them to agree on painting it blue with white gloss work. They also weren’t going to do the floor we had tiles down before now we have bare unsealed wood not exactly a great idea for a bathroom. When the guy turned up he said he didn’t have the flooring as it wasn’t in stock. He did offer to lay laminate flooring which is supposed to be really slippery, again not a great idea for a bathroom so we are stuck with the wooden floor for now, he’s supposed to be ordering the tiles or lino I can’t remember which and then coming back to lay it once it arrives. He only ended up doing one coat of blue paint on the walls and one coat of gloss on the door. For some reason he thought that it would be a good idea to gloss over the lock on the door, so we now have a very stuff bathroom door lock that I can’t lock lol. When Nan came up to look at it before he left she managed to stumble at the top of the stairs and put out her hand to stop herself falling right onto the wet gloss paint. I am not exactly thrilled about the mess he has left behind there are paint smears on the wooden floor as well as paint splashes in the new bath but Nan keeps going on about what a good job he has done. I think that just proves my point about how bad her eyes have gotten. The bathroom is chaotic since there have been no shelves or any of the other wooden stuff put back up, it’s getting slightly frustrating not having a toilet roll holder on the wall and having to bring all of the shampoo, bubble bath etc in and out every time we want to use it. So with the exception of the floor and making the bathroom more normal with the addition of all the bathroom stuff after we drill new holes for everything since they filled them when they painted the bathroom is finally done. The tiles aren’t straight, the floorboards underneath the bath haven’t been replaced, they sealed on the side of the bath so you can’t see they didn’t change the floorboards this also means that if it leaks there again they won’t be able to get to the pipes under the bath to fix it, the toilet frequently blocks and doesn’t exactly flush right all the time we also have a suspicion it leaks slightly sometimes, the hot tap on the sink rotates when you try and turn it on, the cold tap on the sink drips constantly, they took the shower out and haven’t replaced it so we now have to manage without one, they broke the towel rack when they took it down and never bothered to fill out an expenses form to replace that or anything else they damaged, they threw out the wooden toilet seat that we had put on, they took the shower curtain pole down and I don’t think it will go back up, they have bent the carpet gripper and lost the screws so we need a new one of those too, the paint can’t be wiped clean because of only having one coat of paint on the walls but at least they are gone now. It’s crazy isn’t it that it’s taken this long to have such a crappy job done, that only needed doing in the first place because of their incompetence. The first problem with the bathroom was that the flush wasn’t working properly, they came to fix it and made it worse. Then we had the second issue where Nan broke the part in the toilet while trying to flush it they bodged that up instead of replacing it. Then the toilet flooded into the downstairs bathroom and they said it was one thing that it turned out not to be, then they said it was something else before finally admitting that it was the waste pipe under the bath that had cracked, that they hadn’t repaired because they couldn’t get the side panel off the bath to fix it. Remember all the hassle we had with the downstairs toilet after it leaked? The arguments it caused because they wouldn’t come and redecorate and then Nan insisted on wallpaper in there and they did a real cock up of a job, well the bathroom needed to be ripped out because the damp had warped the floor. I just checked the leak in the bathroom was March last year, and you wonder why I am so frustrated lol.
Wear Pink To School (16th July)
Before I explain anything else about it you might want to look at these two newspaper articles here and here and a copy of the letter we got home from the school about this.
Most of you will have heard the sad news of the death of Jake Spicer - one of the bravest children I have ever met. When he was being treated for cancer he still came into school - even after terrible chemotherapy treatments - he even took part in the Christmas production. We feel honoured to have known such an inspirational and courageous human being. Our thoughts are with his friends and family. Jake's family have asked everyone going to the funeral - not all our school can go to church of course - but in his honour we are asking that every child and member of staff wears something pink. We are also collecting money to be given to the charity that Jake himself raised over £15000 for - one to help others of course! If you would like to make a contribution, please send it into school in an envelope marked Jake.
Before Lukas was born I used to work with that little boys mum, she was one of my bosses at work. I had left before he was diagnosed with cancer, but I remember when he was since he was local it was all over the papers and he went to the school where Lukas goes now. You may wonder why I thought this should be mentioned on my blog, well you need to understand one little thing, there is nothing Lukas hates more than the colour pink. I even bought him a pink T-shirt that I used to threaten to make him wear whenever he was naughty because I knew it was guaranteed to make him behave every single time. On our last trip to Chessington they had a T-shirt for his favourite ride, Bubbleworks on sale. I thought that since it was Bubbleworks he would overcome his hatred of the fact that it was bright pink. The morning he went to school he had the biggest meltdown I have ever seen. It started over the pink top because he didn’t want to wear it, he moved on to hysterical crying because he was scared that he was going to die too, he’s always been a little bit strange when it comes to people dying, it’s not really all that surprising after what happened with Leo that death would freak him out a little bit. But this wasn’t even anything I had ever seen from him before. Mark ended up having to drag him to school kicking, screaming and crying. It broke my heart to make him go there was a huge part of me who was tempted to just say let him stay home today but I knew that I couldn’t do that. I went with Mark to pick him up because I was worried about how he had been all day, he couldn’t stop talking about how the whole school had been outside in the playground to see the funeral procession go past. He was full of questions and a little confused by it all. He’s never seen a real coffin before, Leo’s was a teeny little white box and when he went to Yvonne’s funeral the coffin was under a covering, and at Lorraine and Mark’s Mum’s funerals everything was slightly different because they were being cremated. I also think since the school was talking about it he thought it was going to be a small coffin I don’t think he realised that Jake was 15. When we got home we thought he would be eager to take the pink T-shirt off but he surprised us by point blank refusing, I'm not entirely sure I understand his change of heart on it. I assume it’s because he saw everyone else at school wearing pink and wanted to be the same. I guess it’s just one of those things that is not hugely important but I wanted to get down to make sure I never forget about. I also thought you might like to see a photo of him in it lol. Here are two for you to see, they were both taken after he had been crying but before his meltdown.
Lukas’s last day of school (17th July)
I was supposed to be taking him for his last day of school, it’s a bit of a tradition we have. It means I get to see him all excited over breaking up and it also means I get to take the last day of school photos and make sure that his teacher gets her gift. This year I was feeling too ill to do any of those things, he went to school with his teachers gift but it didn’t have a card with it or a photo in the frame because I hadn’t gotten around to doing either. There were no last day of school photos and both me and Lukas were more than a little disappointed over it. He also took in some chocolate cakes for his friends since his birthday is over the school holidays. Even though I was still feeling really ill I made myself go and collect him from school since it’s the last chance to make sure everything that needs to come home from school does come home. He came out with a folder full of drawings, projects and other stuff he had done over the year, a whole box of cakes left over, dragging his book bag, PE Kit, coat and lunch bag. I have no idea if his teacher liked her little gift since knowing Mark and Lukas they never told her it was from him, I would be willing to bet money that they either handed it to her without saying anything or just put it on her desk. It was a little frame and a memo/picture holder saying number 1 teacher on it. I figured she wouldn’t be overwhelmed with teacher stuff just yet since this was her 1st year. Lukas was thrilled to be on summer holidays, I was a lot less thrilled to find out when he goes back to school next year he will have an entirely new school uniform. I have to buy him proper trousers (not exactly an easy task, he has been wearing tracksuit bottoms for the last year or two), button down shirts (he can’t do buttons because of the problems with his hands), proper shoes (no trainers allowed) and he has to have a school sweatshirt and tie that can’t be picked up until the 1st of September! I fail to see why they want to change the uniform and personally think it’s a stupid idea to make little kids wear ties to school. I am of the opinion that school uniform is a good thing as long as it’s flexible, I can’t see why it matters if he wears trainers, tracksuit bottoms and polo shirts to school or why I have to buy a school branded top that costs £12.50 and a tie that costs £4.50 (well you get the first one free when you buy the jumper but it’s not the point). Lukas has always had school jumpers, but a lot of kids in his class only ever wore the plain unbranded navy blue ones I don’t think it’s fair that their parents are having to buy clothes that are more expensive. His uniform is going to be expensive because of his size, and I have to get someone we know to alter the trousers length because it’s impossible to buy them big enough in the waist but also short enough in the leg. For now I am choosing to forget about the school uniform as I have enough other stuff to stress over for now. Once the baby is born then I will start stressing over finding and buying it all ready for September 2nd.
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