Me and Mine – July 2016

Time, please slow down. I am not ready for it to be August and I’m not ready for us to be another month closer to our baby being here (that’s not to say I’m not excited for him / her to arrive, but I’m just SO unprepared)!

We’ve made the best of July with the things we’ve had thrown at us. Things have been difficult with Alfie for a couple of reasons – at the end of June, he started stopping himself from going to the toilet for anything other than a wee. We had taken him to the doctors at the end of June and he was prescribed movicol, but he was still going 4+ days without going, so at the start of July, we took him back to the doctors and were told to up the dosage from 1 to 4 sachets of movicol. It was a really tough couple of weeks until we got him back in to the habit of going again. He became very clingy and he was like a lost little boy. Usually Alfie is a bundle of energy from getting up to going to bed and he’s very boisterous, he never sits still and is always on the go. Those couple of weeks he was ill were so upsetting. He was suffering from griping pains, which would prevent him from playing and he just wanted to lie on the couch and wanted to be carried a lot (easier said than done when I’m rocking a baby bump). He looked so sad and there were times where he could feel himself needing to go and would be crying cos he didn’t want to go. For a couple of days, he even started to hold his wee’s in because he’d become so fearful, which resulted in a couple of accidents. Something which hasn’t happened since we first start to toilet train him.

Although it was hard and Alfie only had a mild case of constipation, I really feel like we bonded over that time. He’s a daddy’s boy through and through but for those couple of weeks, he did cuddle me a lot more and show me a lot more affection than normal. I really enjoyed the extra cuddles, but I would have happily have sacrificed them just to get my bouncing bundle of energy back. It caused a lot of stress for both me and Michael and there were a lot of tears from both myself and Alfie.

I’m so pleased to say that he’s now over the worst and he’s not been on his movicol for a couple of weeks now. This is actually purely by accident that we stopped giving it to him, because no sooner had he got over the issue of his constipation, than Michael noticed a rash on Alfie’s legs. I won’t go into it all here, because I have written about it, which you can read here, but the short version is that he’s got a virus called Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) which is basically a disease involving inflammation of small blood vessels. The inflammation causes blood vessels in the skin, intestines, kidneys, and joints to start leaking. It also caused him to be sick and get aching joints. Thankfully, he seems to have come out of the other side of it now, but he’s still under the care of the community nurses for the next six months as they need to keep an eye on him to make sure that his kidney’s don’t start to leak too much protein. The rash on his legs did get quite bad before it got better, but it’s now more or less gone. However, we’ve been made aware that it can come and go, so the next time he gets poorly, he could end up with the rash again. I’m grateful that it wasn’t more serious and we spotted it when we did.

One thing I’ve loved about this month, is I finally completed my first  upcycling project. After an accident involving Alfie, a bottle of hot pink nail polish and my sideboard, I transformed it from a natural coloured wood, to a gorgeous grey colour. I actually prefer it much more painted. I found it really therapeutic painting the unit and I really enjoyed it.  It’s really given me the bug to upcycle lots of other bits we have, but it’s just finding the time. Hopefully before the baby comes, I’ll have everything done.

We did manage to get a lovely couple of hours at my sister in law’s caravan last weekend and it would have been the perfect chance for our family photo but Alfie was far too interested in playing with his cousins and running around. Even when I asked for a photo at the beach he ran away! Sometimes, there is just no amount of bribery that will persuade him to have his photo taken with us. With that in mind, I think I really need to be more prepared and make sure that whenever we go out, I’ve got my camera and tripod so if and when Alfie is in a good mood, I can hopefully snap some photos rather than keep leaving it to the last minute and us having lots of pictures in our garden, front room or Alfie’s bedroom before bed on the last day of the month!

I can’t believe that I’ve only got 3 more family photos to take of just the 3 of us! I’m due at the end of October, but I’m convinced that the baby won’t make an appearance until November!

I’ve been saying it for weeks, but I really do feel so unprepared this time around and I just can’t seem to get my head around the fact that we’re soon going to have another little baby. I’m quite nervous to see how Alfie is going to be as he gets jealous when his Daddy plays with his cousins, but then on the other hand, Alfie told me the other day totally unprompted that he loves the baby to the moon and space and Bridlington and back! I get so emotional when I think of my babies meeting for the first time.

So that’s been us in July. Here’s hoping August will bring nicer weather, less illness and lots of jobs ticked off the to-do list!