Back with a Bump!

In more than one sense!

Sandy and I are back in Loughborough and very quickly finding that there is as much to be getting on with as ever! Today isn't a bank holiday in England, which feels odd to us, so we dealt with it by getting Sandy to take an extra day's annual leave (one of the perks of the new job is more plentiful supply of days that can be taken for such things!) One good thing about this is that Sandy got to come with me to the midwife (there is one of the bumps I was talking about) and he could hear the heartbeat of the baby. I've got to do this a few times but normally while Sandy is at work, so he has only heard it once before. The baby was not very co-operative today though, every time the doppler probe came near me it just bumped it out the way! The midwife persevered though and we got to hear our little one. Tomorrow I will be 37 weeks pregnant which is considered "full term" so assuming we make it to midnight tonight, there is no risk the baby can be born premature any more!!

We had a few shopping things we wanted to do today too, we bought a couple of things for the baby, just in case it does show up soon (which I would like, I am not very comfortable!) so (s)he has another sleep suit/bag thing and a changing mat to put in the change bag, to save other people's floors if we are out visiting anyone! Something else we bought was a Bible for the baby, this Bible is "from" Auntie Maimie. Auntie Maimie was so important to me growing up, she answered anything I needed her to about God or the Bible, so we knew she would want to make sure we bought a Bible that was from her, even though she passed away before she could have met our little one. We decided not to get a fancy presentation Bible or even one that is the "whole" of the Bible. Instead we have bought The Beginner's Bible full of stories that can be read at bedtime or with our child as (s)he gets older. There are lots of colourful pictures to look at for when the baby is still young but stories with enough depth that this Bible will see us well and truly through the toddling stage and even into early primary school. We thought Auntie Maimie would like the Bible to be something that got used, not just something that sits on a shelf, we won't worry ourselves too much if a page gets torn, all that will do is prove it is getting looked at!

Another thing we bought today is a tumble drier, we did lots of shopping around and decided on one and this is what the bulk of the money we were left by Auntie Maimie is buying us. I just feel with a baby due in January that trying to dry all the extra washing (bearing in mind we are doing "real" nappies) is just infeasible so we have settled on one and gone for it. Hopefully it will be here soon, it seems to be in a few sales just now so is fairly universally out of stock in any shop we could find it! Our main concern is that I will go into labour while waiting for it to be delivered!

Lots of people have been asking us about the house back in Aberdeen. We are fairly sure we have a tenant lined up but all we know about the date that they will be moving in is that it will be in "early January" but it is good to know that it is all being sorted for us (that is what we are paying them money for after all). That said, we will feel even happier still when someone has taken up the lease and finally moves in! In other great news, our finances are sorting themselves out as we begin to be able to claim back all sorts of bits of money from people (like extra council tax we have been paying and extra money on our old electricity direct debit), we should be even more sorted in that in the next wee while, we would have phoned up more people today but it is still a bank holiday in Scotland after all!

Tomorrow sees Sandy go back to work and me have a hospital appointment in Leicester (we don't actually know what for, best guess is that it is because I have asthma!) and tomorrow night we start our NCT antenatal classes! (Busy day) We might go the cinema on Thursday for the "last" time and so all in all, we are back to the grind with a bit of bump as we fit everything in.

We had a great Christmas and got to see lots of our favourite people, although missed out on some that we would have loved to see, maybe we will see you when we come back next? Sandy has a blog post planned about some of our antics over Christmas in the North East, so I will leave all that to him and for now I will be you adieu :-)