Thanks Merry!
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My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Baroness Kris the Subversive of Waterless St Mildred Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
or if we’re going for the full name
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My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Exalted Highness Duchess Kristy the Carnivorous of Buzzing St Helens Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
Frankly, I prefer the subversive one…
I just rang the hospital to ask for my blood results. 10.6!!! Yippee, my levels are actually going up! 11 and above is classed as normal for pg women.
How relieved am I? 
Shall go do a happy dance and have a cup of tea to celebrate. Seeing as how I’ve cut my tea down to practically nothing as it inhibits iron absorption. Ok, maybe not the happy dance (look a bit stupid with crutches) but the cup of tea for definite.
By 10am this morning, I’d managed to consume my RDA for iron. Checking the nutritional information on Weetabix, apparently two biscuits with milk gives me 4.5mg of iron - so I had three. Then I had some Rock’s lemon squash for vit C (organic, don’tcha know) followed by a good glug of Floradix, which gave me another 7mg. So, technically, that’s almost the 14mg I need per day.
And what with the spinach and broccoli I’ve got planned to go with tonights dinner, plus the spatone supplement that I’ll take once James has bought me some more today, I’ll probably have had twice the RDA. And this is nothing out of the ordinary.
So why the hell am I still so anaemic? *sigh*
Have decided I’m going to demand an elective on Tuesday when I see the consultant. Shall do a passworded post later in which I shall marshall all my arguments, so folks can pick holes in them
And belly ache. I’ve been having braxton hicks all day, and they’re uncomfortable now. Chances of me actually going into labour are slim to none, as I seem to overcook all my babies, but it would be sod’s law if the little bugger decided to make his entrance in the next 24 hours.
Mom’s just gone home after spending the last five nights with us, tomorrow is James’ Granny’s funeral and I think the neighbours are away. 
Plus James has a delivery to do about 45 minutes away in Nottinghamshire in the morning, before the funeral and before he gets the babysitter.
Hmm - now we’ve decided it’s just wind. 
There’s always something, isn’t there? Went to see the midwife and got a stern talking to about my iron levels.
Well, excuse me, but I’m doing all I can. I’m on a double dose of Spatone iron supplements, eating greens and have cut my tea consumption down to two cups a day. I’m also taking the Floradix liquid if I remember, although as the m/w did admit, your body can only absorb so much. (I can’t take the ferrus sulphide wotsit tablets as they do horrid things to my internal workings and besides, they never stay down for long - they’re better than any emetic)
Tonight we’re having fried lamb’s liver for tea with mashed spuds, roast root veg and lots of greens. And yes, I know you’re not supposed to eat liver when you’re pg now, but I spent half an hour researching it and it stems back to a study in the US in which 1 in 57 women taking Vit A supplements during conception and the first trimester had babies with birth defects. But that also means that 56 out of 57 didn’t have birth defects. And the Vit A was being taken in supplement form, not from food. And I’m in the final three weeks of gestation, so everything is pretty much formed and not likely to be affected by a bit of liver. Plus, liver can give me over 10mg of iron per serving, compared with everything else that provides about 2 to 3. So I’m having liver. And I love the stuff. So there. 
And I’ll probably have it tomorrow too. Along with the wholegrain bread (that I have toasted each morning), the leafy greens (which we had with avocado at lunchtime), the pulses (in refried form, with lunchtimes leafy greens)… how much more iron can I eat?
The midwife did threaten me with an iron transfusion if it got much lower (last count was 9.8, which was taken on 12th Dec). Having researched iron transfusions, I’ll have a low molecular weight iron dextran complex thank you and not the iron sucrose which can do unpleasant things and is very painful. Plus, in the study I read, 18 lots of the iron sucrose were needed (painful IV injections with risk of tissue damage) versus only one of the iron dextran, with much less trauma. Might run that one past the consultant when I see him on 2nd Jan.
Along with a suggestion that he get this baby out sooner rather than later so I can get on with enjoying my kids, instead of sitting on the sidelines yelling at them. Hell, I’d even agree to an early induction if he decides to use my low iron as a reason not to give me an elective. I have been having some pretty solid braxton hicks today, though, so I live in hope that bump will make his own way out into the wide world, and that my iron isn’t low enough to risk a heart attack in the process.
Sometimes, you can google too much.
Well, the lovely lady who gave us such a giggle with the temp tattoo on her bump has had the most delicious baby. Huge congratulations to her and her hubby - and it’s made me even more aware of just how much I want this bump to hatch asap!!
Am feeling very uncomfortable and sorry for myself, my crutches are driving me insane and I can hardly summon up the wherewithal to do a thing as it’s too bloody painful to consider doing anything except sit on my fat cushion on a dining chair and stare at the laptop. Have gone back to seriously considering demanding an elective section when I see the consultant on the 2nd Jan. How am I supposed to function like this? I can’t stand long enough to cook anything, and the crutches are a liability when I’m trying to lift pans of hot stuff; if the Piglet needs attention on the toilet, it takes me forever to get upstairs to the poor girl; and the other two are coming dangerously close to being shut in a padded room, as they are making the most of knowing I can’t chase them down. Mom goes home tomorrow, and James is back at work too, so I’m back to being on my own with three riotous small ones.
There has been a large influx of Polly Pocket and such over the last day or so though, so I’m hoping that between the tiny little bits and the Leapster pad that they should be able to entertain themselves to a reasonable extent. I got two very nice books for xmas, so I should be able to stay out of mischief too. 21st Century Smallholder (thanks Andrea and Stuart!) and Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest (thanks Mike and Linda!) - it’s that time of year when garden planning starts in earnest. At least it’s something to take my mind of this 2 stone beachball I’ve got stuffed up my tshirt.
… are still here. It’s a Sunday morning, which also happens to be Christmas Eve, and they turned up at quarter to nine.
And they’re working. I’m so stunned I barely know where to start! They’ve finished the roof, plasterboarded the room out and are now skimming over the plasterboard. It’s a dry, watertight room, and I’m not quite able to take it all in. He did say he was going to have Mon, Tues and Wed off, but they’d be back on Thursday if that was ok.
Fine by me - after all, if you can’t take a few days off over Christmas, when can you? And seeing as how they’ve been here every day since Tuesday, I can’t begrudge them a few days of festive cheer, can I?
So I’m off to make some mince pies - or rather, Mom is going to help me make the pastry and then I can sit at the table and do the rolling out and assembling. I love home made mince pies.
I have builders.
Yes, honestly. That’s not a misprint. Outside, in the junk yard between the house and the garage, there are a pair of builders who are doing things with bricks and sand and cement and wooden joists and there’s another builder out in his van between here and Hull who’s fetching the big sheets of poly-carb to roof the gap with. And they were here yesterday ALL DAY, and he even turned up the day before in the afternoon to assess the job, just like he said he would. I didn’t want to mention it before hand, in case I jinxed it.
The fact he’s two months late is completely forgiven, as from the sound of it, he’s had the same kind of hellish year as a few people I know. I don’t care he’s late. He’s here. And he’s working. In spite of an inch of solid hoar frost over everything (garage roof looks like a skating rink) they’re working.
I think I’m going to go make them another cup of tea. As I’m generous like that.
Odd this nesting lark, isn’t it? Here I am, scooching round on crutches, and I get the urge to clean the living room. And I don’t just mean run the vac round and hoof all the papers and books into a gap in the corner. I mean, duster and polish and attack the glass doors, fire surround, tv and cabinet, bookshelves… and then, of course, get terribly sidetracked. Not reading the damn things, but sorting them out! I desperately need another bookshelf (I have three of these in the living room, and want another to go next to the cabinet in the old dining room), so to prove my point to James, I’ve taken all the stacks of books off the tops of the rows of books and made a new pile of ‘books that need a new home’. And then dusted and polished the shelves before resorting the rows. It actually looks tidy in there. And the big stack of books, mags and papers that lurked on the corner table has gone - I found a nearly new man-size box of tissues under all that! Slightly flat, but still perfectly useable.
And I’ve cleared off the dining table so we can all actually sit and eat at it without the threat of a paper avalanche. I really don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m obviously being taken over by some kind of alien force (albeit a small-ish one).
Now if only that Force was strong enough to compel me to clear off the side unit in the kitchen…
