Baby Jett Does London

A post in pictures.

These 2 were due 4 days apart and ended up with birthdays 3 days apart...and Jett discovered his hands in London...we think he's teething as his hands are ALWAYS in his mouth now.

Babies with their mamas!

It was bloody cold in London!

 To prove to Baby Jett that he was in fact in London when he was 3 months old =)

Baby Jett in his first pub. 

Having his first shandy ;-) 

First ride on the Tube.

And the best thing to come out of London...we've finally figured out how to get baby to sleep on his own.  He looks like he's passed out drunk doesn't he?

We're coming home today.  One more 10 hour flight and we will have successfully completed our first international trip with a baby!  Who says having children means you have to change how you live?

The Traveling Preggo

I hate flying while pregnant.

DESPISE flying while pregnant.

It is a little slice of hell.

Mind you, this is mostly because I have irrational fears of going into preterm labor on the plane...but nevertheless...still hate it.

And yet...I keep doing it.

No matter how many times I say I'M DONE, I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE ELSE WHILE I'M PREGNANT, somehow I get roped in (ok, willingly plan) to go somewhere else a little bit further along in this pregnancy.

Remember back at 17 weeks when I gave you this little list of all the different instances of flying messing with my cervical mucus?  And it led to the No Good Horrible Very Bad Day?  Well, after that I was convinced I would never fly while pregnant EVER AGAIN.  I was done.  I was staying close to my midwives for the rest of my pregnancy.

Well...that didn't last very long.

At 23 weeks I flew the hour and a half home to Oregon.  No problems other than I couldn't NOT pee for that hour and a half and those tiny planes have the smallest bathrooms EVER.  It was torture waiting for the chatty stewardess to hurry up and serve drinks with her giant aisle clogging tray so that I could rush to the bathroom half an hour into the flight.

Then at 29 weeks I decided to accept the offer of a baby shower thrown in my honor in NYC and hopped on a plane again.

In a nutshell, it was completely fine, but I hated every moment of it.

It starts with the airport.  It seems that they have started putting those full body X-ray machines in ALL major airports these days and since I'm not convinced those are safe for pregnancy I have to get a pat down.

Great...I love getting felt up at the airport.

Kuddos to JFK airport on the way home, they had the old school scanners (which are fine, they're not X-rays) available for children and preggos and I didn't have to get a pat down at JFK.

Why can't all airports do this?  They all still have the scanners set up for their own personnel to go through, why can't the preggo ladies go through rather than get a pat down?

Anyway, after getting felt up at the airport, the flight itself wasn't HORRIBLE as I was in first class (purchased with air miles!) and the flight attendant gave me a HUGE bottle of water without me having to ask for it.  But because of said bottle of water I was up to pee A LOT, at least once an hour, so every time I would get comfy and settle back down to watch my movie I would then need to get up and pee again...and REPEAT.

Other than that I really have nothing to complain about.  I wasn't uncomfortable, except for always needing to pee, the Braxton Hicks stayed at a minimum, just a few the whole flight, no swelling, and since I was in first class obviously the seats were pretty comfortable.

But I still hated it.

And wouldn't you know it...I'm still not done.

In 3 weeks...at 34 weeks pregnant I'm doing it again.

I'm going back home to Oregon one last time before we have this kiddo for another baby shower being thrown for me.

No first class, just a tiny little plane with a tiny little seat and a tiny little bathroom...I hope I fit.

Anyone else hate flying as much as I do during pregnancy?

Or have you all kept your feet firmly planted on the ground?

Bumpdate - 17 weeks

I would like to tell you that this 2nd trimester is so easy, but this week has been rough for me as the incident two nights ago was not the only traumatic incident I've had this week.

Earlier in the week I had some sort of back spasm?/sciatic nerve issue?  In all honesty we (meaning my midwives and myself) have no idea what happened but it went something like this.  I got up, felt fine but then half an hour into my day I started having these waves of shooting pain in the lower left side of my back.  It was the waves that made me nervous, reminded me of the waves of contractions in my miscarriage (all panic attacks can be traced back to the miscarriage it seems!).  And as I sat through waves and waves with my hand on my uterus to determine if it was just my back or my back AND uterus I finally decided it was back exclusive.  Since my uterus was staying out of it my midwife said she wasn't worried, to rest and call a chiropractor if it didn't go away in a day or so because sciatic nerve pain can be a real problem with pregnant women and she suspected this may be the case.  Luckily after a day laying on a heating pad on the couch, where the waves would return every time I got up to use the toilet, it all went away.  I've had nothing, not even a tiny bit of pain in that same spot since.

Nevertheless it was another unsettling day though nowhere near as unsettling as 2 nights ago.  But you better believe there was cervix checking going on then too!  My cervix and I are getting to be such close friends lately.

So, bumpdate...

How far along: 17 weeks

Weight Gain: +2 this week!  I am up 7 lbs.  After the bump disappeared for a bit at 16 weeks it's made it's comeback, it is now around ALL day not just at night.

Maternity Clothes:  No.  Me and maternity clothes are not friends...except my leggings and my newest addition TIGHTS.  Love maternity leggings and tights.

What's up with my body: The headaches are back.  Most days at one point or another I have a headache.  They are rarely bad enough to need a Tylenol but it's nice to know I can take it as a last resort if it gets bad.  I'm also having a lot of what I assume is gas pains lately, my uterus feels like it's pressing on EVERYTHING in there, so peeing and gas are at an ALL TIME HIGH.  Please PLEASE uterus lift UP already!

Movement:  Sadly, no.

Gender:  Back to girl.  It's the bump, when the bump is out it's just so high I can't help but think girl!  I promise I'm not purposely going back and forth every week, it's just turning out that way that I'm literally going from one to the other from one week to the next.

What I'm looking forward to: Anatomy Scan in 1 week!  I'm just so excited that we COULD find out the sex even though we're not going to.  It's a milestone in pregnancy, making it far enough to find out the sex!

Bumpdate:  I'm in NYC, this piccie will have to suffice.

Look, I'm wearing jeans...just for you guys ;-)

And a quick note about flying while pregnant.  I've decided my gobs of CM were travel related, here's why:

I have 4 examples of traveling getting things "moving" down there.  Pressure changes?

First example, last September, the baby had died 3.5 weeks ago when we flew to NYC, so the flight obviously did not CAUSE the miscarriage but when we landed I started spotting.  The flight travel seems to have moved things along and helped the bleeding to start.

Second example, my miscarriage bleeding was nothing more than very light bleeding when we left NYC, tiny clots and very infrequent.  As soon as we touched down in SF I passed my first HUGE clot (sorry gross!) in the SFO airport.

Third example, 4 weeks after my miscarriage we flew to London.  Again as soon as we touched down I started my first period post miscarriage in the Heathrow airport.  But I spotted for 3 weeks after this and my acupuncturist things my period wasn't QUITE ready to start but the flying started it anyway.

Fourth example, moments after landing here in NYC on Tuesday, gobs of thick CM.  That have now completely disappeared.

I have flown TONS over the last 3 or 4 years and I have never noticed travel affected my menstrual cycle in any way before this BUT I was on the pill forever and then after that my menstrual cycles were completely wonky anyway and then just stopped.  Oh how I wish the magic of flight travel would have started my periods back then!  I flew often in those 90 and 100 day cycles with nothing!  So, for me this is exclusively a pregnant or recently not pregnant phenomenon.

MY TIP, if you're pregnant and flying don't be surprised if your CM changes dramatically from the travel!

Adios SF!

I'm out for a week, if you need me I will be here:

source

Where I will be enjoying some much needed girl time.

Finding cute dresses.

Trying to figure out why I ever left.

And very little else.

I'll try to bumpdate tomorrow but other than that posting will be light.

Everyone enjoy your week!

Liverpool

I just realized that I got halfway through telling you about my UK trip...and then I just stopped.

That's because I get bored writing about trips and I also get bored reading about other people's trips.  

Sorry, but it's true!  Thus I assume that no one REALLY wants to read about my trips, but just in case they do...

Here's Liverpool.

In pictures.

Because who wants to read about it when you can look at pictures?

 A Cathedral

 The Caverns District...otherwise known as Beatletasticlandia.

Where the Beatles used to play before they were famous, used to be a music venue, now it's a cafe.

 Does this need an explanation?  If it does...it's Penny Lane.

And then, just for shits and giggles, we drove back to London and stopped in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's hometown.

 This is where Shakespeare is buried.

And this is a teeny tiny door to the church where Shakespeare is buried.

Yeah, titillating...I know.

Getting My Tudor On

I love all things Tudor.

Seriously.

Tudor England is my favorite time period in history.

Not only because of all the castles and kings and princesses and fairy tale shit.

But because real life history is so much more interesting than fairy tales sometimes.

Henry VIII married for love 4 times out of the 6 times that he was married. And those same 4 marriages were to English women. Kind of unheard of in times where royal marriages were all about political alliances and thus kings almost always married foreign princesses.

And even though he chopped off 2 out of those 4's heads, it is still SO ROMANTIC that he married them for love and not because it was beneficial to England.

So, in honor of my love for all things Tudor and most especially my love for Henry's ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn we stopped off at some Tudor castles as we drove around the countryside.

First up:

Hever Castle - Anne Boleyn's childhood home.

Obnoxiously we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, BUMMER! But I must say, if you ever just happen to be in Kent, stop off at Hever Castle, it was well worth the 15 pounds and has an awesome maze/labyrinth out in the garden as well as just being uber cool to be in the same place as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII once were.

Drawbridge over the moat into the castle and that's as far as we were allowed to photograph =(

Next up is Hampton Court Palace.

Henry's lavish 2nd palace he used as a residence after Whitehall.

My initial impression was...underwhelming.

I think I was expecting it to look like Versailles...and it didn't.

Much less extravagant, much smaller, just not as lavish as I was expecting.

That being said, it was still unbelievable and I'm so happy we took the time to visit.

Please disregard the craptastic nature of these photos as I stupidly left my camera in the car and was left with just the iphone to document the awesomeness of Hampton Court.

Much to my chagrin there was scaffolding everywhere, so this is the only bit of the outside I managed to capture that didn't have scaffolding covering it.

In this craptastic photo we have an H and an A entwined. After Henry had Anne beheaded he ordered these all to be removed but somehow one was missed. What? You can't see it? That's because it's an iphone photo...you'll have to just trust me that somewhere in that darkness is an H and A entwined.

Very famous portrait of Henry VIII.

The other wing of the palace that was designed for William and Mary, thus not Tudor and much more modern and...ornate if you will.

A fantastic photo of ourselves.

Verdict: Hever and Hampton Court Palace both get a big thumbs up from me!

Conwy Castle

I love castles.

I find it sad that America missed out on the whole castle building era of history.

There's something romantic and awe-inspiring about them...even though their original purpose was as a military stronghold I prefer to think of them as romantic fairy tale residences. Not accurate but who cares?

My castle experience is limited. I have seen a few in Ireland and...well that's it, that's all I got. Though I have to mention I did stay one night at the fantabulous Ashford Castle in Ireland. Beautiful 13th century castle once owned by the infamous Guinness family.

Anyway, on to Britain.

Most impressive on my list was Wales, did you know that Wales has like millions of castles in various states of decomp? I did not.

But they do, they have like over a hundred still standing today...IMPRESSIVE.

We tried to stop by several but for one reason or another ie. raining, not open, etc. we really only had a chance to tour one properly.

But holy hell, I think we picked the best one.

Conwy castle, built by Edward I in the 13th century. The exterior of the castle is almost completely preserved as well as the walled city surrounding the remarkable castle. You can still walk to the top of any of the 8 towers of the castle as well as walk along the wall that protected this ancient city.

SO AMAZING THAT THIS THING IS STILL STANDING!

Stairs up to the wall walk. Taking a little stroll along the wall that guards the city. This wood is OLD, I felt like I was going to fall through it.

Small doors!

Wall walk.

This would have been the great hall, fireplace is at the end and a floor is missing which would have been just below the fireplace, where all the holes are along the wall would have been wood beams to support a floor.

Some of the wall that surrounds the city.

Prison Tower! So creepy, they just threw people down here and left them there...there's no way out.

This is Edward I's quarters, he would of had a gorgeous view!

Rest of the castle from the King's quarters.

Close up of fireplace.

A small bit of the town. Such a cute little place, it's like time stood still here!

Oldest house in Conwy, built circa 1300 and still standing!

LOVED visiting this castle. If you're ever in Wales make sure you visit Conwy or some of their other remarkable castles!

Wales

For some reason that I have yet to understand the Welsh get a bad rap from the English.

They get made fun of, all in good fun of course, but are generally thought to be a bit backwards by the rest of the people in the UK.

I only know 3 Welsh so my experience is limited, but they are all lovely people...I don't get it.

But regardless of one's views on it's people I think most will agree that Wales has some of the most beautiful countryside in the whole of the United Kingdom.

I had never been to Wales before and since we were driving SO close to it to get from Bath to Liverpool we thought why the hell not dive over to the west and drive up through Wales.

So we did.

We started in Bath, drove north through the Brecon Beacons, stopped for one night in the middle of nowhere and the next day drove through Snowdonia before hitting up Liverpool.

My thoughts on Wales:

Beautiful, breathtaking scenery...but I wouldn't want to live there...and I wouldn't purposely make a trip to the UK just to see Wales.

What does everyone else who's visited Wales think of it?

And in other news I started my period 2 weeks ago which was good news but now I am STILL spotting.

Longest. Period. Ever.