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quick change

Have been seeing these little Quick Change Trousers by Anna Maria Horner online for quite a while and having bought her book months ago it has done nothing but gather dust. Not that it doesn't look good. It does, just..... tricky. I am so not used to pulling out a pattern, tracing it, cutting the pattern out, pinning it to fabric and then cutting out the fabric all before actually sewing! Phew. My sewing projects are more like this. Or this. Where I have an idea, think of what fabric I have on hand and then as quick as can be I make it.



These trousers had as much preparation beforehand as was spent sewing. I found the first pair really hard going for this reason. And at one point I had to just sit and stare at the instructions for about ten minutes..... just lost. And then I made a pair. And they look good! They are very sweet and I LOVE how every seam and thread and snip is all hidden away. It's like you really do make two pairs of trousers almost and by magic they turn into one reversible pair.



Oh, and all of the fabric here in these two pairs are made from old shirts of my dh's, old PJ legs of my dh's and one scrap of left over apple green print from a long ago project. Cost was nil. I really like that about a sewing project. For sure I would have loved to splurge on the delicious flannel range from one of Anna Marie Horner's collections, but that would have defeated the frugality of the whole thing (which felt important to me for some reason today). I like making things from what I have on hand.



I have no idea if I will make anything else from her book. Possibly this was the easiest project in there (so unlikely). But it is still a lovely book to look at... and after the first pair of trousers I went to bed vowing not make another. Then first thing the next day I was back at my machine like an addict making another. The second pair was whipped up in about an hour because it was all still in my head. So who knows, maybe I'll feel inspired again. I made the 3-6 months size. Although with a cloth nappy on I'd say they may not stretch to 6 months. They look a lot more like 4 months max to me.





Bump update: I am getting bigger by the day, hour and minute. I had my ferritin levels checked and they were at 5. This is seriously low (norms are 20-160). So I am taking even more iron stuff than I mentioned previously. And amazingly after only 2-3 days feel really good. My energy is high (er) and I just feeling like doing things again, and I can walk the dog and garden and hang out laundry without feeling like I need to sleep for four hours after each activity. So I'd say the supplements are kicking in already. It has made me feel more optimistic than I was which is a nice booster. I was seriously feeling terribly glum last week. Onwards and outwards though.

This was last week (are semi naked pictures suitable for a blog? I just don't know...) and I am sure I am at least another two inches bigger now.... with a huge baby head stuck under my ribs.....

tired

I had other things to write about. Really I did. And then this foggy tiredness has settled on me. and I forget what they were. I am finding it hard to lift one foot in front of the other this week. Even when I sleep for hours and hours and hours I wake up yawning. My Hb is 8.4. So low. And my blood pressure is low. I am in that so-tired place of not knowing what to do to help myself. I can't quite think straight because it requires effort. I had to call dh home yesterday at lunchtime. I couldn't even talk I was so tired, I just said 'I think you'd better come home'. Usually I ask this sort of thing in a hysteria-rising kind of way when the kids/dog.house are driving me mad but this was in a confused dead sort of voice so he kind of rushed back lickety-split (and that takes him an hour at best). I have some good advice on what to take, and I placed some orders online last night kneeling up in bed trying to get my breech baby to turn. So far I have found:



Spa Tone - two sachets a day (tick)
Floradix - liquid version, ran out but the suggestion is I take 3 caps a day of 30ml's per shot so 90mls' in all (tick)
Chlorofresh (Natures Way) - a liquid chlorophyll that my midwife-y friend in the US gives to her clients (on the way)
Mega Food Blood Builder - iron tonic/herbal formula from the US (on the way)



Also I need to cut out the little bits of goat dairy and the gluten free grains (rice) that have slipped back into my diet this pregnancy since they hinder iron absorption. I love goat butter. Really, truly. Maybe it doesn't like me quite so much tho. All I have right now until these iron goodies arrive is the Spa Tone unless I go out this afternoon and get the floradix. My dh keeps on making me lots of nettle and raspberry leaf teas/infusions. He made me a beef, vegetable and spinach stir fry last night and then he went shopping and bought all the foods on the iron building list suggested on some website he looked at (bless his heart as my grandmother would say). I think I must have some sort of absorption issues though. It seems crazy to be this low. Another friend in the know suggested parasites. As in I may have them, and they sometimes hinder absorption of minerals. But a parasite cleanse is off limits while pregnant or breastfeeding so at tops I can take digestive enzymes to help. But my goodness the cost of all of this! I said that to my dh last night, feeling nervous of ordering yet something else and he just shrugged, he didn't care at all, he just wants me not to be so tired.





I cried about a million times this week. Over ridiculous things. Like Esme opening up this huge map on the floor and then I had to bend down to fold it away later and it was SUCH an EFFORT. See? Just silly. But it made me cry. It's not he bending down, since my body feels super flexible and good this time; the SPD I thought was coming back vanished after a couple of sessions of acupuncture (weak kidneys and bladder he said and strangely once they were strengthened my SPD went away, he didn't even need to do any cranial stuff which I thought he would to realign me). I can sit cross legged and actually walk and drive and go up and down stairs. If you have ever had SPD in pregnancy you will know the joy these little things can bring - and the agony when you can't do them.




But yeah, it's the things one has to do that cannot not be done (like that map which everyone kept walking over was just going to rip if I didn't pick it up - then later I thought, well so what - do we even use that map? But it was too late to muddle over those things, I'd already folded it and cried over the effort it took to summon effort and do it, tiny thing that it was). I also keep crying because the baby is breech. I am 32/33 weeks and know it's early yet a nagging feeling tells me to act and get this baby turned around. I have a shortish torso I think and this baby feel pretty big (to my in-experienced hands) already. My midwife is happy and truly tells me not to worry yet, perhaps it's the tiredness creeping in and making me lack good judgement or reason on this (not my strong points anyway). Still I am trying everything on the Spinning Babies website, it can't hurt. I talk to my baby in my head/mind/body asking him/her to move around and wondering why they are this way, and I get this calm buzzy feeling from the baby - like it's happy the way it is.



I have never had such a wriggly baby though, whole limbs protrude outwards and we all gasp, because it looks like it might pop through my very taut stretched tight drum-belly. I think it *is* trying to move, just not managing it.... quite yet. When I visualise this birth I get flashes of myself on my hands and knees and the baby's head emerging, so I feel ultimately that it will all be ok. Trust as a concept is a hard thing to, um, put your trust in. If that makes sense. Or it can be, when you feel tired and low. But satisfying when you do.



I have done lots of reading this week, since all I feel like doing is lying down. I read Bertie Plays The Blues, the latest A.M. Smith instalment of Scotland Street, a quick fun read which brightened me up a bit. Then I read Before I sleep, by SJ someone, only I spoiled it for myself by skipping to the end and checking to see what would happen, even though I had partly guessed, I am not good with suspense. I also read Ina May Gaskin's new book; Birth Matters. I thought it may be a re-hash of Spiritual Midwifery, but no it was not at all. I enjoyed it very much, interspersed as it was with recent birth stories from The Farm. Then, Naomi Thingy's book, What Mothers Do, I have been meaning to read for ages and finally it came in the post so I was able. And glad. One of those books you nod your head at a lot. I am now reading four books at once; 50 shades of Grey that I was just curious over the hype (pretty decent so far) Lullabies for Little Criminals, an old fave that has sat too long un-re-read, a Micheal Odent book, Birth Reborn lent by my midwife and also another Ina May book - Guide to Childbirth also from midwife. Latter two are photo heavy which I find kinda delight-filled.



Nothing like seeing a woman in ecstasy over giving birth to make you want to skip these last couple of weeks and get ready to do it all yourself again. Although I have to say ecstasy was never a word I would have associated with the three births prior to this one.



Talking to my dh recently on this up-coming birth I was making a list of things I'd like to have on hand, like coconut water and juice ice lollies, jar of my favourite honey..... and I said, I just want you to kiss me often, that would be good as your role. And it really would. The best parts of previous labours, for me have been when my dh and I were left totally alone. I let go better that way, even with the loveliest of midwives on hand.

Random recent phone photos of recent daily-life included.