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Today is exactly 3 months until Little Lara is due. 3 months was how long she had been inside the bump before we told people. Going by my memory that didn’t seem like a very long time at all. This all means, that I will soon be a Dad! Woohoo!
Little Lara is really moving now, and she is kicking her Mom a lot. This morning, we were at my parents house, and I had my hands resting on the bump, and she was kicking so hard, it was almost as though she was trying to kick her way out of there. Strangely enough, she got very shy when my Mum (Nana) tried to feel the kicking. Maybe Nana helps calm her down, or maybe she was just playing hide and seek?
MY cousin and his girlfriend came down from Manchester this weekend, and they are due to have a little girl in just 6 weeks, so she is a little bit bigger than Lara, but it was good for them to get together and discuss how pregnancy is treating them both. It was so strange to be at a family meal, and have 2 expectant mothers – it was a new experience for us all, and a very good one too!
My uncle, who cannot wait to be a Grandad, got us the most amazing outfit for Little Lara. It is the cutest thing, and so smart. I think we’ve decided that this outfit will be her going home outfit, because it’s so small and so cute. It’s a set of trousers, a top, a jacket and a little hat to keep her head warm. I love it!
Little Lara has got so many clothes now, not just that we have got her, but everyone is so generous. I’ve accepted now that the presents I get from now on, will be baby related, but that’s ok – I like it!
We really need to start getting the rest of the stuff together, and stop buying clothes, because apparently babies need a lot more than just clothes. We have a list set up with Mothercare, so if anyone wants to know what to get our little girl, check it out here.
For my birthday, Lara got me a Flip video camera, so that I can easily capture videos of our little girl once she is born, it’s perfect because it’s nice and small and easy to use, and I can upload videos straight to the internet, so everyone can see them quickly and easily. I’ve been practicing with it, by getting Lara to do her own personal update for you all to see. Here she is in all her bumpy glory!
My YouTube channel is here, so keep checking it, as I may not link to all the videos we put up, from the blog.
First off, here is a picture update of the bump, this picture doesn’t really show quite how big the bump has got, but here it is anyway:
Lara saw her doctor this week, for a general check up of all things ‘Little Lara’ related, and her doctor couldn’t believe how big she was. Not because the baby is big, but just that the bump was so big compared to the size of Lara. The doctor also said that all Lara’s levels etc were normal and that everything was average and boring – which is good!
Little Lara also got her first pair of shoes, bought for her by our friend Becca, who is ridiculously excited about us having a baby, and that it is a girl, she says she is going to go shoe crazy, so Little Lara should be fine on the shoe front. They shoes are so cute, as you will see from the picture below – Little Lara is spoilt already!
We will be taking Little Lara on her first holiday this week, we are going camping down in the New Forest with our friends Tom and Becca (crazy shoe lady Becca). I cannot wait, as this will be my first break from work since I started my job, and will probably be our last time away before the baby is born. We’re only going away for the weekend, but I’m sure that will be long enough, I can’t imagine sleeping in a tent on a blow up bed with a big bump will be that comfortable for Lara, but we shall see.
A quick update on the kicking, she is really going for it now – Lara feels her kicking or moving about most of the time now, and little Lara has even decided she wants to kick for Daddy now, at last. It is just an incredible feeling, and if it wasn’t frowned upon, I would recommend you all find the closest pregnant lady and feel her bump and wait for the kick – it’s just amazing.
We both cannot wait to meet our little girl now, we already feel like we know her, and we haven’t even met her yet. I try to talk and sing to her as much as I can, so that she’ll get used to my voice and can recognise me from when she is born. Lara even had a dream about her this week, and she said that she was absolutely beautiful – well obviously she is, have you seen her Dad?!
…it’s a little baby girl!
I will be the father to a gorgeous little girl, my very own little girl! How awesome and exciting is that?! Here are a few pictures of my little girl:
Isn’t she stunning?!
So, we had the scan this week (Thursday) and my Mum and Dad came along with us, but unfortunately the hospital have a policy that will only allow 2 extra people in to the scan, which meant that only one of my parents could come in. My Mum let my Dad come in with us, as she had already been to the first scan, and she wanted to let my Dad meet ‘Little Lara’ too (we have a name for her, but aren’t going to be telling anyone, so my Dad his christened her Little Lara for now). It was absolutely incredible! The detail you can see on the scan is just amazing, the above pictures really do not do it justice. You could see her eye’s, her skull, her spine, her heart, her stomach and bladder, her little legs and arms, her feet and we even saw her rubbing her little face at one point. I’m pretty sure I fell in love there and then!
Dad was trying his hardest to hold back tears for the duration of the scan, but wasn’t very successful. I’ve got a funny feeling our little girl will be able to wrap grumps around her finger when she’s old enough too. He’s just a big softy really!
As well as being told that we were to be having a little girl, they also told us that she was completely average, which was the best news we could have received. She has everything she should have and in all the right places and is average size, which is exactly what we want.
She’s really been kicking and moving away in her Mums stomach this week, Lara keeps sending me messages or emails telling me what she’s up too. IT’s great. In fact we went to the theatre last night to see Ghost Stories, which has a lot of loud noises and screaming audience members, and apparently she was kicking a lot during that, but who blames her, she was probably wondering what on earth was going on!
We’ve ordered ‘Little Lara’s’ cot this week, it should be arriving next weekend, and people have already started buying her lots of clothes, I think she is going to be a very spoiled little baby! We’ve set up a gift list here, so that people can get her the stuff that she needs and we don’t get duplicates etc.
So 60% of people were right, when guessing that we were going to be having a girl, so well done. I’ve updated the poll now, so please vote again, when will Lara give birth to Little Lara?
As you may have guessed from the images above, we had the first scan last week (Tuesday to be exact). My Mum came with us to share the experience, and what an experience it was!
I always thought the first scan would be a pretty cool experience, but it is truly amazing, if you haven’t been through it, it is very difficult to explain just how amazing it is. As soon as I saw the little thing I just wanted him/her to pop out there and then so I could meet him/her properly. It might have been a bit messy and probably not the safest thing for the baby, so I kept that quiet and didn’t suggest it. But seeing its little head, its little legs crossed (it seemed like a pretty chilled out baby) its arms giving us a wave (turns out the baby likes the camera, no idea where he/she gets that from?!) it just all became so real.
It genuinely gets more real with everything we do, we buy the pram, it gets more real, we see a bigger bump, it gets more real, Lara gets very random cravings, it gets more real. But this really, really made it all seem very real, and I just cannot wait to get this little guy/gal out in to the world and get to know him or her. Hurry up 181 days, I want to be a Dad!
I wondered how I would react to the scan, would this be my moment when I jump up and down and scream and shout about how excited I am? Will I get extremely scared when I realise that I’m going to be a Dad? Or worst of all, will I not even be able to make out my baby and feel like the worst Dad ever? Well I reacted by doing the first thing, although I did most of it inside my head, because apparently Hospitals don’t like mad people running and jumping around telling everyone they are going to be a Dad, but that’s what I was doing in my head. I was just so excited. I also got at least a few tears in my eyes, and was literally speechless. I wanted to get as close to the screen as I possibly could, so that I could take in of much as him/her as I could. I just didn’t want it to end. I could have watched that little thing all day. Lara might not have been too happy with that as she had a pretty full bladder and was already struggling.
They also test for the likelihood of your baby having downs syndrome at the first scan, they measure the width of the neck and take blood samples from the Mum (so Lara in our case). They told us that if the baby was high risk, we would get a call within a couple of days, but if it was low risk, we would just be sent a letter. Things like this really scare me, so I had a couple of sleepless nights waiting for the news, but luckily for us, we got a letter through a couple of days a go to say the baby is low risk, and has a 1 in 22,000 chance of having downs syndrome.
So that was the scan, and to be honest, that outweighs everything else that happened last week, but to keep you all up to date, we went baby shopping on Monday with my parents (my Dad really enjoyed this, he really loves going shopping), and we got some baby clothes and accessories, we also got the baby its pram, it’s one of those 3-in-1 prams, that seems to come with everything you could possibly need, until the baby is 1 years old and you have to pay more money to buy even more stuff for them.
Lara’s started to get cravings now, and they seem to be mainly for random American food, so American family, you could be getting a lot of requests over the next 6 months to send over some random food items. I just hope Lara doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night and expect me to track down the nearest store selling Kool Aid or some other random american item.
Our baby will have its first big decision to make next Saturday, as England play USA in the world cup, and he/she needs to decide which country it’s going to side with. It’s a big decision, but not a difficult one, if it wants to back the winner he goes with Dad, if not he can go and lose with Mum/Mom.
Another week another roller coaster! it’s something I’m used to now though, and I’m starting to work how to deal with it, you don’t. I just let my wife rant if she needs too, about anything from noisy birds to annoying commuters. Sometimes I try to reason with her to try and help… this doesn’t help.
My wifes brother is over from the US at the moment, and so my wife is off work and really enjoying spending time with her brother.
She is still suffering from a bad back at times, but I guess things like this will become more common as the next 6 months pass.
We told two of our best friends the news last night, and I really don’t know why I was worried. They were both so happy and excited for us, we had tears and everything. I’m quite liking thus whole telling people thing, it gets more real and exciting the more people who know.
We’re going over to my parents for dinner tomorrow, and my cousins, auntie and grandparents are going to be there. we’re going to be telling them all tomorrow, and I cannot wait! This will also allow my Mum to text all her friends and announce the news, she has really stuggled keeping quiet about having a grandchild. She’s been pleading for weeks for us to tell people earlier than planned, and I think she might be more excited about tomorrow than us!
That was one of the longest weeks I’ve had in a long time. I don’t think having the 4 day weekend helped, but the pregnancy definitely hit home for me this week. It’s been a week of extreme mixed emotions, I’ve been excited, scared, confused, happy and everything in between. For my wife and I, this week has really brought the pregnancy home, mainly because she is now starting to show a lot more symptoms, instead of just that blue faded cross from last week.
My wife has really struggled this week, her cervix has dropped really low, and is extremely uncomfortable for her, and very scary too. It’s so difficult being the bloke at this point because you just don’t know how to help. You can read as many books and Internet pages as you want, but absolutely nothing can prepare you for this. How can you reassure someone about something you have no clue about. I searched and searched for as much information about the feelings my wife was having, and everything comes back so mixed. It was all positive, nothing made me worry at all, but the problems she is having seem to come at different times for different women in a whole mix of severity. So then you try and reassure her with this information, but the information just isn’t very helpful to this poor woman who is lying on the sofa scared her insides are going to drop out.
My Mum has been a huge help this week, as she works at a doctors surgery, she has been able to speak to doctors and try to get as much information as she can, to help my wife feel better. She is also an extremely reassuring person, and has helped my wife to focus and work out the best way to tackle the problems she is suffering. I have no idea how my Dad felt about having to listen to conversations about his daughter-in-laws cervix while he is trying to watch a film. I don’t think it was quite what he had planned for his Monday night, but I have a feeling he may have to get used to such conversations.
As well as the problem with the cervix, my wife has been extremely tired this week, and has been napping when and where she can. So I find myself relegated to the spare room, while she takes over the sofa for a well deserved break. I’m happy to take this relegation, as I’m not the one carrying and nurturing our little fetus.
I’ve found myself getting even more protective of my wife this week, it’s really strange. I don’t want her to do anything, I’m even scared of her going off to work. I know this is crazy, but the stat of 1 in 5 pregnancy’s in the first 12 weeks miscarrying, scares the hell out of me, and I want to make sure I can do anything in my power to make sure we aren’t one of the people that have to suffer than unimaginable pain. The trouble is, I am virtually powerless. Other than supporting and allowing my wife to rest, I feel pretty much helpless. It’s not a nice feeling to have, because I want to be as involved as I can be, but I know that my role is very much from the outside, compared to the role my wife has. That said, seeing the changes she is going through, I do not envy her at all. I’m so proud of the way she is coping with all of this, because it must be so scary for her to know that she has a little fetus/baby/thing growing inside her. She’s being amazing, as I knew she would be.
On a more selfish note, this week I have found myself day dreaming a lot, not just about what the baby will be like, and what sort of parents we’ll be. But just about my past, and the things that I won’t be able to do again, things that will never be the same. Not in a sad way, because I’ve had a fantastic life so far, and done amazing things. But it’s difficult not to look back and think ‘That was awesome, I’d love to do that again’ but knowing that you never will. Even things like popping to the pub with friends for a few drinks. Won’t be doing that again. But then at the same time, I know I will do all those things again, at some stage. Things will just be different, and I’m ready for them to be different. If I can have my own family, I would give up almost anything for that.
When we went over to my Mum and Dads at the weekend, I was sitting in the lounge, in the house that I grew up in, and I think that’s when it really hit me. It’s amazing, I’m going to be a Dad! Not that long ago I was the child playing in this house, in this garden, and soon it will be my child doing that, and no doubt with some of the toys I played with too! I then noticed a picture hanging above the fireplace, it was a picture of my Mum and Dad, me and my wife and my brother and his girlfriend. It was taken on a holiday a couple of years ago in France, an amazing holiday, and it made me all excited, because soon I knew those family pictures, would include a little baby, my little baby. I could picture every one of us in that photo being the one holding him too, and I just couldn’t wait to meet my little baby, and for him/her to meet his/her family.
I know it’s a very long adventure, but this last week has been pretty intense, and I really feel the adventure is starting to begin now. WOW!
I'm a Dad! 
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