Maternity leave: Day two

The big sort out continues; today I sorted through all our old receipts, some dating as far back as 2005.  I can't help but think "why on earth did I keep this receipt for a white t shirt from tescos that I bought in 2006 for £3.00"?  Hubby sorted through a massive pile of paper including lots of bank statements, credit card bills and the like.  Both of us are terrible at organising our paper work. We both always wish we were better at being organised with our things, not hoarding, keeping things in order, the right place for the right thing, but we are fighting a losing battle against our genes.  Both sets of parents are terrible hoarders and organisers, it is quite literally in our DNA to be chaotic with our things.  We are also finding it very difficult to get rid of stuff, if we are not asking ourselves "will I need it in the future for some obscure reason"  I am thinking "but I could make it into something".  But those days must end because we have a baby coming and it needs room!  So not only have I now an extensive list of books for sale on Amazon, but also a pile of shoes, bags and clothes waiting to go to charity shops.  It is quite cathartic in a way, but also frightening.

In other news I went into town today to buy some nursing bras, I am now a shocking size 34 J!!  Which is the largest size I can get, so I am really hoping they are not going to get any bigger when the milk comes. I am finding some of the physical changes of pregnancy quite distressing and am beginning to wonder if I will every feel good about my body again.

Also bought some washable nappies from Boots.  We are planning on getting more second hand but are feeling the urge to make sure we have everything ready for baby sooner rather than later, so a pack with 3 wraps and 12 liners should keep us going for a while if baby decides to come a little earlier than expected.

Last night I ordered a Tens machine for hire to help with discomfort during labour not sure if it will do any good but I figure anything is worth a try.

Maternity leave: Day one

On Friday I had my last day at school for some time.  It was possibly the most incredible anti-climax of my life.  I thought it would feel so wonderful and such a relief, but of course to everyone else at school it was just another normal day so there was very little in the way of celebration. It is a strange feeling really; to be off work for something other than a half term or holiday, the true reason for not being at work hasn't really sunk in yet.  

So how has the first day been?  Well pretty good really, I got up late and came downstairs to find a silly surprise left by my husband:

The cuddly lion we bought for baby all snuggled up in our new moses basket!

I spent the day tidying and sorting, trying to get the baby's room ready and doing general housework, everything takes a v.e.r.y long time because I am so slow!  

When my hubby got home, he had another surprise for me:

Oooh yes! A box of doughnuts!  

Buying a pushchair on a budget

During the Christmas holidays the hubby and I decided it might be time to start looking for a pushchair for our impending bundle of joy. You might think this would be fairly easy task, but with so many options out there and a tight budget we were extremely confused.
We spent literally hours trawling the internet trying to find the right pushchair for us. I thought I would share the process with you in the hope that it helps you find the right pushchair for you.

First we thought about what we needed from a pushchair, this helped eliminate many many pushchairs from the market. Three of the key things we decided we wanted were:

An all terrain pushchair because we like going for long walks,
A travel system so that we could use the same frame for a car seat, pram and pushchair which would save us both space in the house, and money,
Both forward and rear facing seat options.

By picking out the key things we needed from our pushchair we could limit our search and save a lot of time. Knowing what we wanted helped us to navigate around other websites because we could enter specific things into their searches such as "all terrain" and "rear facing seat option".

Next we logged onto the "Which" website and looked at all their ratings for the sort of pushchairs we were looking for. The pushchair that had everything we wanted and came up the best in the ratings was the ICandy Apple Jogger. Strangley, it was impossible to find an online proce for this pushchair so we went to John Lewis for a quote. Shockingly for everything we needed we would have to fork out over £800 which was way over our budget. However we did not lose hope, we began looking for a second hand option by searching on Ebay, Gumtree and Preloved. We found two pushchairs that were local to us, one was brand new (including the car seat), but in a limited edition fabric which meant the owner was asking for £600, which we felt was too much, the other was also the limited edition fabric, but was a couple of years old. We went to look at it and were happy, it was in very good nic, the only wear was on the tyres. So we parted with £300 for the exact pushchair we wanted that would have cost over £1000 new (due to the limited edition fabric). This pushchair didn't have a car seat so we looked online for the cheapest place to get the carseat that would fit with this pushchair, also checked it out on the "Which" website to make sure it had a good safety rating, and went for the Maxi-cosi Cabriofix from Mothercare for £100. So all in all we saved a lot of money and got a very nice pushchair. We could have got a brand new pushchair for this £400, but it wouldn't have been everything we wanted and needed, I think that making the compromise of buying second hand was a really good choice for us and one I would recommend for others.

Here is our pushchair: