36 Weeks & Happy New Year

I'm now 36+3 weeks which in theory means we could have less than 4 weeks to go. The baby is the size of a honeydew melon (or a crenshaw melon, whatever that is).

Bump is still growing although I still keep getting told I don't look that big. When I went to get my eyebrows threaded on Christmas Eve the women thought I was only about 5 months. I only managed a couple of photos this month, a quick one on my iPhone on Christmas Day at 35 weeks and then an actual photo last night at 36+2 but I think you can see I definitely look a lot bigger than last month.

There has been lots of progress in the baby's room; the cot and car seat were delivered and we painted stripes on the wall. We went to Ikea before Christmas, as we had £10 off vouchers to use, and bought a chest of drawers and a chair then we returned last week with another voucher to buy an expedit shelving unit. Everything has now been made up and put into place in the room. We still need to order some art for the walls and maybe some wall shelves but we have everything essential we wanted to start with.

Ive started to collect everything we will need for me and the baby in hospital including baby vests, babygrows, nappies, cotton wool, muslin squares, nighties, slippers and a dressing gown and once everything else arrives ill get the bags packed. We've also got the changing mat we wanted, a foam bath support for our normal bath, moses basket & cot sheets, a swaddle and a baby monitor which we got with some vouchers we received for Christmas.

I'm still feeling good although sleeping is getting more difficult with quite a few toilet breaks needed during the night and all the moving around he is doing! I don't see the midwife again until Monday when I will see what I'm measuring and what position he is in. We completed our course of NCT antenatal classes before Christmas and we found them really useful and are looking forward to meeting up with everyone again once we have all had our babies.

We celebrated Christmas a week early with my parents by having dinner at Norton House then we swapped presents before they left to go to Perth, Australia to see my sister. We then spent Christmas staying at Grahams parents where we spent a lovely Christmas Day followed by Boxing Day at my aunts. We were very spoiled by everyone and received lots of money which we are hoping to use to buy a new camera before the baby arrives as well as some clothes, chocolates and champagne which I can enjoy after the baby arrives! On the 27th we celebrated Graham's Nana's 90th birthday then we spent a lovely night at Norton House on the 29th where I also treated myself to a pregnancy massage with some of my birthday money. Our new year was fairly quiet for a change and was spent at my aunts followed by dinner at Grahams aunts on the 1st and the rest of the evening at my cousins.

We both went back to work today but for me I'm now on countdown to my maternity leave starting. My last day is on the 20th of January which means only 12 working days left which I'm sure will fly by! In the next week or so we need to get all of the baby clothes washed and once we've taken down the Christmas tree we also need to get the pram built up at my parents.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with news of my niece's arrival from Oz!