Hi All.

I've been having some really bad problems with the blog so I've moved service providers. This means we've got a new address to get to the blog. You can now find it at:
AdamsonBaby.Blogspot.com

I'll explain more at the new blog.
Cheers.
nick.

Hi All.



Firstly an apology. My intention was to write a blog post last Wednesday
evening after the first antenatal class and then another one again after
Fridays midwife checkup but life ran away with me and I've only just had a
couple of seconds to sit down and write the posts that I wanted to. So sorry
this post is going to cover both events.



First antenatal class.

The first antenatal class was last Wednesday, (the 4th). The Class is held
at the birthing centre we're hoping to be using in September. As the lovely
NHS have been trying to save money people attending the class come from 3
different areas, some from Cardiff, Some from our area up in Blackwood and
some from Newport altogether there was about 25 couples there.



In the first week we found out about the signs to look out for when going in
to labour, when we need to phone the hospital, the types of births provided
at that particular birthing centre. As we're under a midwife lead team we
were also told which pain relief's they can provide and the sort of
situations that could occur that would refer us to consultant lead care. 50
people in the class did seem a bit to much and I think if there were less
people then the class would have been a bit more interactive but as it was
we did seem to spend a lot of time listening.



I'll try to summarise the information.

Signs to look out for when going in to labour

Waters can burst either write at the beginning of labour before contractions
start or pretty much just as the final part of labour. They don't tend to go
somewhere in the middle.

Contractions can happen before you're in labour but you're not in proper
labour until they are regular, normally starting about half an hour between
contractions.

It looks like these are the main signs to look out for. There was quite a
bit of information about what's going on inside the body but I'm not a
medical person so I'm not going to try to repeat them here.



When we need to phone the hospital

We need to phone the hospital once getting regular contractions however far
apart, but the advice we're probably going to here is that until the
contractions are 7 or 8 minutes apart we should try to stay at home moving
around and making sure we're ready to go.

Once the contractions are 5 to 7 minutes apart we should then phone again
and head in to the birthing centre.



The types of births provided at that particular birthing centre

The CBC, where we're hoping to have the baby, are very flexible, They have
got the most fantastic birthing pool which Gem liked the look of, There were
a couple of different types of beds she could use or there were massive walk
in showers which can also be used as water around you is a very good relaxed
and being relaxed can reduce the amount of pain felt.



The sort of pain relief's they can provide

As we're under midwife lead care the types of pain relief provided is
limited. As the midwifes are not anaesthetists they can't do spinal or
epidural but can do pretty much everything else. There was the next step
down using a drug called pefidin which Jan, Gems mum, said was fantastic
but you couldn't use this and go in the birthing pool and it can have an
effect on the baby and CBC will provide it but won't recommend it because of
the side effects on the baby. And there is gas and air which can be used in
the birthing pool and is what CBC recommends. I've also been told by Danni,
our minister, that I should have a go on the gas and air as its great stuff.
Anyone seen that Only Fools and Horses episode where Del keeps taking it?



At the moment Gems sort of thinking towards the birthing pool and gas and
air.



The sort of situations that could occur that would refer us to consultant
lead care.

As there are know consultants at the birthing centre CBC seem to be really
careful and made it clear during the class that you could only be under
midwife lead care if your pregnancy was normal. If the babies breach,
overdue and gets induced, less than 37 weeks in to the pregnancy, to big, to
small or there looked like there were going to be complications then you
would be referred to a consultant lead care team at one of the bigger
hospitals.



Generally the class was really good but it was just a bit hard as there were
so many people there.



This week is going to be on the birth it's self, what to expect and what
actually happens. The week after is about baby care, feeding and that sort
of thing. I'll try to blog Wednesday night about the class when I can
remember more of it.



Friday we went to see the midwife for the week 28 checkup. Both Baby and Mum
had a clean bill of health and they took a load of blood samples which we
get the results of on Tuesday. This is just routine.



That's it for now.

I know I've said this a couple of times but I will keep trying to keep the
Blog up-to-date.

Take care.

Nick.

It's a very good question you know. There are quite a few similarities
between us.

He's got a wife called Sarah and one of my best friends which came to Gem
and mine wedding is called Sarah.

He's Scottish and I love Scottish short bread and Aberdeen Angus beef
burgers.

And a fact that isn't that well known is that under the description in the
Disability discrimination act he is visually impaired as he's blind in 1
eye. To read documents he has to have them in large print. What I love most
is that he doesn't make a big deal about it and just gets on with his job.
That's how I hope I come across.



And have you ever seen him and me in the same room?



Well I'll let you in to a secret. I'm not actually Gordon Brown and right at
this time I don't want to be as we've just seen on the news that the
terrorism threat in the UK has just been up to the highest level possible.



Now it's often said that you shouldn't talk about politics and religion but
I'm not much in to keeping rules.



I actually have quite high hopes for Gordon. I haven't ever voted for labour
but I've got a good impression of him so far. He actually seems to be pretty
thoughtful.



One of my major gripes about politics and particularly the Blair government
is that they were all say and didn't actually seem to get anything good
achieved. That they would over-react to situations and although Blair was
pretty good in front of a camera there was to much focus on spin and not
enough on actions. I have high hopes that Gordon is going to be more
substance focus and less in your face.



Now I know he reads this blog so my challenge to him is that he can prove
that politics isn't just away of giving jobs to people that wouldn't be able
to get them in other industries.



Let's put it this way, He can't be any worse than the excuse the Americans
have for a president and hopefully a Brown Government won't be such of a lap
dog to the Americans that the Blair government was.



Write, Well that's enough on politics, in baby news The little one is trying
to kick her way out of Gem and we can now see hands and feet, elbows and
knees making lumps which is just fantastic.



My next post will probably be on Wednesday now after the antenatal classes.
That's unless I feel like getting on another soap box.

Take care.

Nick.

Hi All.

Sorry it's been ages since I've written a blog entry but to be honest not a
lot has been going on.



Yesterday was 6 months in to the pregnancy which seems hard to believe. How
did we celebrate? Well, Gem did the ironing and I cut the grass. No stop
action in our house!



While I was pushing the mower round I was thinking about my previous blog
entries and I realised that if you read the blog with out really knowing me
you'd maybe get the impression that I'm not excited about the baby.



As we get closer to the end of September I'm getting more and more excited.
It sounds weird and I'm sure these words are going to haunt me in the next
year but I'm actually looking forward to the challenges. I'm looking forward
to the having to get up in the night and getting to give the little one a
cuddle. I'm looking forward to the labour. I simply can't imagine the sort
of feelings that we're both going to have once we're holding our baby for
the first time. To think that moment is only 3 months away is just amazing.



That's it for now.



I'm encouraging Gem to post messages to this blog. It'd be really
interesting to read her thoughts written down now in the future if that
makes sense. If she does post from her email address then it will come up as
Gemma Adamson on the blog post.



Take care.

Nick.

Hi all.



Well gem and I have had a couple of pretty eventful days.

Firstly yesterday the plasterer was in doing the nursery. When we got home
it all looked good but as we were sitting down for tea last night there was
an almighty crash from upstairs.



About 90% of the new plaster on the sealing had fallen off of the aertex
which it was covering. The plasterer has been really good though. He came
around late last night to have a look and they've been in again today and
have cleared up all the mess and redone it. It seems to be holding just fine
this time!



Over the last couple of days Gem has also been getting a little worried as
she Hasn't felt the little one move as much as she was last week. We decided
last night that if we were still worried that we would contact the birthing
centre to get some advice.

Well tonight once we got home from work we were still worried so Gem gave
them a call.



They said it was probably nothing to worry about but if we wanted to go in
and they'd listen to the heart beet and do a bit of a checkup.



This was the first time we've actually been to the birthing centre where we're
actually going to have the baby. It's really nice and all the staff we met
were friendly and helpful. The baby's fine and mum and baby are both doing
well.



We took the time to ask a couple of questions we had and also they gave us a
look round the centre. There's a huge birthing pool which Gem liked the look
of as she's said a couple of times that she'd like a water birth.



The rooms where you stay after the birth are nice. I can stay overnight and
there's tea and coffee making facilities in each room as well as an on sweet
loo and shower.



More proof that I've got know idea about what happens after the birth as I
was under the impression that for the first couple of nights the Baby stays
in like the baby ward and Gem and I can go and see her. That's not actually
the case. In each of the rooms there's a cot so the baby sleeps with us from
day 1.



We've both got a really good feeling about the centre and staff and it's
stopped some of my worries I was having.



Write that's it for tonight.

Keep the fantastic comments coming. I read every one of them.



Take care.

Nick.

Hi All.

Well from that wordy title you can safely assume I'm in quite a
contemplative mood to night. It happens to me when I've been decorating,
stripping walls and generally getting pretty grubby. Today Gems Mum and Dad
and grandparents have been over and we've been working on the nursery. I'll
post a picture of it in it's current state if I get a chance but basically
we've been stripping around 40 year old wall paper and getting it ready for
the plasterer who's in on Monday. Once that's done we can actually start the
good work of turning a grotty bedroom in to a lovely nursery.



Anyway:

Gem keeps saying this year is turning in to the longest year of her life and
that it all seems to be going really slowly. For me, I'm completely the
opposite, it doesn't seem like a couple of weeks since we found out we were
expecting but yet it's been 5 months. Here comes the scary part. Considering
that there's only 14 weeks to go that seems not long at all. 3 and a half
months isn't bad. 102 days isn't bad, but 14 weeks seems pretty soon.



The question I keep asking my self is will we be ready?

As long as nothing goes wrong then I think the house and all the physical
stuff for the baby should be ready but am I psychologically ready for this
little one to come and turn our lives up side down?



I can't remember if I've blogged about this but we had sort of decided that
we'd probably wait 18 months to 2 years after we got married before we start
a family. Back in December Gem spoke to me about it again and my thoughts
were something along the lines of I'm two young to be a dad, I'm not
responsible enough, I've only just stopped staying out late at night when I
was a student. Well as it happens we didn't even make it 8 months after the
wedding until we found out. In terms of a lot of these thoughts I've had to
wake up and smell the coffee as it were and take a look at my thoughts and
feelings. I think a lot of this all stems down from the responsibility
thing.



I truly don't understand these blokes who go out and get a girl pregnant and
don't seem to care. The responsibility that we have for raising children is
just phenomenal. In my view, and this is just my opinion, but it's the
parents responsibility to make sure children grow up with respect, an
understanding of what's write and wrong and a drive to improve themselves
and be the best person they can be. How do you teach a child this sort of
thing!



Maybe I'm over thinking this far too much. But I want the best for our
little one. I want her to achieve what ever she sets her mind at and that
she has the best upbringing possible. At the end I want me and Gem to be in
our granny flat drinking supper out of a straw and having to use a motorised
scooter to go to the loo but be able to say that, through the false teeth,
we did a good job as parents.

(Blind bloke on a granny-raiser, what's not frightening about that!)



Not sure where this post is going now and it's certainly not what I thought
I was going to be writing about tonight when I started but it looks like
senility has already started and my minds wandering.



That's it for now before I go off on any other tangents.

Take care.

Nick.

Hi all.

 

Well we’re now in to week 24 which means a visit to the Midwifes. It was a really good visit and Gem and Bump seem to be doing fine.

 

The last time we went to see our midwife, back in week 16, we weren’t really impressed. It seemed like we were on a conveyor belt and she just wanted to get us in and out as quickly as she could. Gem and I agreed that if she wasn’t any better this time that we’d contact the midwife team we’re under and request a new one as we didn’t have much confidence in this one. I was reading somewhere that because the midwifes so important up to the birth and the 3 or so months after that if you weren’t confident in her you should see if you can get her changed.

 

Thankfully yesterday she was so much better. We went with a list of 5 questions and if we didn’t get good answers to all of them then we’d have to see. She was really nice this time and answered the majority of our questions with out us needing to ask. She also found the little ones hart beet really easily. Gem said that when we could hear the heart beet that I just grinned. I’ve not heard it since week 9.

 

The questions we had were:

1. Should gem be on any food supplements? Gems one of those weird vedgy types so Georgina, the midwife, said it would probably be a good idea.
2. Would we be able to visit the birthing centre before the birth so we could find out what it was like and to be able to talk to the team there? The answer was yes but also links in with question 3.
3. What did we have to do about antenatal classes? Before we got the chance to ask this one Georgina asked us if we’d been booked in for classes. We’d not heard a thing which surprised Georgina. It looks like we’d been booked in to the wrong hospital which means we’d not been sent the info. There are 3 hospitals which have a baby unit in our area. Royal Gwent in Newport, Abagaveny, (just love the welsh spellings), and the Caerphilly Birthing Centre, (CBC). We wanted to go to the CBC as it’s the closest but it was down on our paperwork as the Gwent. We’ve had it changed now and Georgina said that we should phone the CBC to sort out about antenatal classes. Once I got back from the midwifes check I Phoned them and we’re booked in for lessons at the centre from the 4^th of July. I’ll be blogging about each of the lessons once we’ve been. We’re hoping that as the lessons are at the CBC that part of them will be a look round the unit.
4. What happens next in terms of scans and appointments? Next is another appointment with Georgina in week 28 for another checkup. When we go to that we’ll have already done one class.
5. Could Gem have some paperwork for work? Which we got easily.

 

So in all a really good visit.

 

That’s it for now as I’m writing this from Gems parents in Barry.

Take care.

Nick

 

Hi Everyone.

As I posted a week or so ago we were a bit worried about Charlie my guide
dog.



Well the blood tests came back and it looks like he has got a thyroid
problem. He's on a course of pills for 6 weeks to see if that brings it
under control. If it does then he'll be on the medication for the rest of
his life but at leased we now know what's going on.



Next week Katy from Guide dogs for the blind is coming to give me and
Charlie a driving test, or what's properly called a home-care visit. I think
she'll also be doing a retirement assessment on him. In March he turned 9
which is late middle age in dog years and I think Katy and I will come up
with how long Charlie has left to work, I have a feeling he'll retire about
this time next year.



The question that this leaves me with is what I do when he can't work any
more. It looks like Charlie will be going back to my parents to live out his
old age which will be nice as I'll still get to see him.



I have 2 options, Train for a new working dog or go back to using a white
cane. I've not used a light sabre, (AKA white cane) properly for about 8
years.



The reason I'm not sure what to do is because of the little one coming.
Having the responsibility of a young dog and young baby at the same time
seems like asking for trouble and it's yet another thing to be organised
about if we want to go anywhere. There is also the matter of going away to
be trained. When I went away to get trained with Charlie I was at the centre
for a month and for the first 2 weeks you weren't really meant to have
visitors. I'm not sure if this is still the case but if it is then I'm not
sure that's fare on Gem leaving her with the little one for a month. Even if
I can train from home then I'll still need to take about 5 weeks off work
which is my annual leave for the entire year. I maybe able to sort something
out with work and I'd look in to seeing if we'd be able to get some
financial support from Access to Work but I just don't know.



On the other side of the argument I don't want to lose any of my
independence that Charlie gives me and if I do go back to using the light
sabre then is that fair on Gem in terms of maybe not having the independence
that I currently have.



So as a trial I did a week with out Charlie last week. Before the week I
thought I was going to hate it and it would help me make my mind up about
getting the next dog. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going
to be. At work there wasn't really a lot of difference but walking home was
quite different. I'd forgotten just how much more you need to concentrate
when working with the light sabre in comparison with Charlie. I walked home
twice and the first walk was ok however the second wasn't great. There was
cars parked on the pavement, when I'm with Charlie I don't even need to
think about it, with the stick it was more of a problem and it sounds stupid
but I actually found it really hard to find the house. Gem and I live in a
mid-terrace and there are not many guides or hints to tell you which one is
our gate.



But as the week wasn't as hard as I thought it was its left me more confused
then I was at the beginning of the week.



I'll probably be talking through a lot of this stuff with Katy on Tuesday to
see if we can't come up with some answers.



The other consideration is that I need to decide what I'm going to do fairly
quickly as If I'm going to go for a new dog I need to let guide dogs know so
that they can start the matching process.



I just don't know!



Write well that's enough for now.

Take care all.

Nick.

I suppose that one of the main questions that Gem and I get asked is about
baby names. Strangely enough for quite some time Gem and I have had a couple
of names in our mind. We always thought that our first girl would probably
be called Amy Louise. However since we actually got pregnant we've had a
couple of changes of mind. We've thought Emily, Amy and Blodwhin. Well maybe
not blodwhin, but we think we've settled on Chloe Mai. Mai being the Welsh
version of May and it's pronounced as May.



So what do you think? Any other suggestions?



Although at the moment we're thinking Chloe this could all change when she
comes along.

My mum says that although her pregnancy with me I was going to be a Richard
and when I actually came along she said he's not a Richard, more of a
Nicholas. And according to Jan, Gems mum, Gemma was going to be a Craig!



So there we go, this is where we're thinking at the moment.

Write I'm off to probably write another post.

Take care.

Nick.

Hi All.



For the last 17 or 18 weeks, since we've known about the baby, I've been
waiting for Gem to start having cravings. It's got to be said I don't know
much about pregnancy and babies but cravings was something I did know about.



Back in week 9 or so Gem seemed to be having some sort of weird cravings for
baths. Her record was 5 in an 18 hour time slot but I'm not sure baths
really count as cravings.



Now we're in to week 22, I think we've now both identified what Gems current
craving is. All week last week she kept saying she fancied coco pops but we
didn't have any. Now we're back home she seems to be having about 2 or 3
bowls a day. We're already on to half way down packet number 2.



The bumps getting quite big now, I think it's great, Gem says she looks fat
but she doesn't. I think it's only men that can really see how beautiful the
bump is, it doesn't look chubby. It's the wrong sort of shape for fat and is
quite solid.



One thing Gem isn't enjoying much is the fact that she has to sleep on her
side. We've been reading and it says that you shouldn't really sleep on your
back as it can restrict blood to the baby. But generally everything's going
great at the moment in terms of the baby front.



The house is still a bit of hard work as we've still got the fellows in
doing the bathroom. Tomorrow the tilers are in for the last time to finish
off the flooring and then it's just up for us to paint with the help of my
parent's in-law and for the electrician to come in and finish off running
the cable from the bathroom to the main electric box to run the spars for
the bath on. It'll be fantastic when it's all done it's just incredibly hard
to keep clean at the moment.



Anyway, enough for now.

Take care.

Nick.