11 months old

N is beautiful, adorable and fun with a gorgeous smile. She has two smiles actually. Her wide open-mouthed smile showing off her four teeth, and her closed-mouth smirk (my personal favourite). She loves to cuddle! She will do it on request and will reach out unexpectedly on a regular basis. She is practising standing, and we count quickly for her to encourage her. We've counted to 160 so far! She's started to confidently cruise around the furniture and she has even taken her first step unaided. We go to Bounce and Rhyme at the library most weeks where we sing nursery rhymes and we go to play group once a week now too. N is starting to interact with other children which is fascinating to watch. She's not at all shy and will bound in to play with others. We still go to Turtle Tots for swimming lessons on Sunday mornings and it's so good to see N progressing. She's very confident and I can feel her wanting to pull away from me and swim on her own. She also spends one afternoon a week with my mum. This gives me a break to catch up on things and Granny LOVES her time with N so much. Sadly, N had conjunctivitis again and a run of colds and she had a few days of miserable teething which hasn't yet resulted in any more teeth. This illness and unhappiness meant a period of time when her sleep was really disrupted. It was even harder than usual to get her to bed at night and she was waking every few hours. Her sleeping is erratic at the best of times but this particularly tough period meant that I really didn't have any time to myself in the evenings and I was going to bed even more anxious than usual about what the night ahead was going to bring. D was sleeping on the sofa so that he could get a good nights sleep which is really important as he drives a lot for work, but I felt very lonely. I've also been thinking about the return to work and went into work for a couple of half days to 'keep in touch'. This brought my anxieties about the return to work to the front of my mind and the time in the office meant that I lost the time that I usually have to myself when my mum has N. D was extremely busy with work and I found it tough to keep on top of things. I was feeling pretty low for a while and felt like I was giving myself to others 100% of the time. An old stress related dermatitis came back on my eyelids. I hadn't had it since I was going through IVF. I went to the doctor to get some cream for it and she said that it was probably good that the stress was coming out physically rather than in other ways but that it probably means that I'm bottling things up, which is absolutely right. The babies in our NCT group have starting having their first birthdays! I've felt very emotional about it at times. The first year, almost over already. My maternity leave has officially come to an end now. Thankfully I have a good chunk of annual leave to take before I go back and at least I start getting paid again now! N is clearly understanding some words now. In particular, no and cuddle. She loves apple slices at the moment. She will sit for ages chomping away on them. She loves flicking through the pages of her books. Well, any books. And she loves stealing my slippers off my feet! Her absolute favourite place to sleep is on daddy's chest. She is an absolute joy to spend my days with.

Stress...

I've been feeling a bit stressed this last week. There seems to be a lot going on and time seems to be fast running out. Work is extremely busy - lots of balls in the air. I only have one more week left and then a week to handover to the person covering my post. D and I are making plans for his birthday in December. It's a big birthday but we're trying to keep it fairly low key as we know we'll be busy with the baby, but even still there is quite a bit to plan. There are still things to do to get ready for the baby - I'm very conscious that our hospital bags still aren't completely ready. If the baby decides to come early I want to feel (almost) as prepared as I would be otherwise. And my head is full of information from the antenatal classes and the books that I've been reading. My diary for October while I'm on maternity leave is fast filling up with friends birthday parties, colleagues leaving dos and last minute lunches with friends. And I have a long list of stuff to do while I'm off work before the baby comes. Just generally feeling a bit overwhelmed... I need to chill out, not worry about getting absolutely everything done and turn down invites if I need to.

4 weeks on...

... so I stopped using the thermometer, had more sex, the ovulation tests have failed to show a positive result this month, and I'm starting to get pre-menstrual symptoms again...my other half wants to see the doc, it's still been less than a year and I don't want to think about it anymore than necessary. I'm concerned that getting the doc involved will stress us out more... I dunno...