By this time I'd also got to know my community midwife quite well, her name was Gail, and she never failed to make me smile each time I saw her. On one occasion I explained to her that I was concerned about taking time off work to come to my midwife appointments, she said to me that if my employer wouldn't allow me time off, then she would phone them herself... and that they didn't call her the friendly bulldog for no reason! Get on the wrong side of her and.... snap! I never saw her snap, and she never nagged me about eating healthy or keeping mobile, I think the only person she 'nagged' was Andy!
I started to really look forward to my midwife appointments, not only because Gail would regale some stories about other pregnant women and the things she'd dealt with in the past, but it would also be the time I'd get to hear my little baby's heart beat. The first time I heard it, guess what?... I cried! But it was great to hear that little sound (which sounded very much like a train!), It was that little reassurance that everything was OK.
During the second trimester was the time when Andy and I started the nursery, painting and decorating, buying new carpets. At this point we didn't know whether we were having a girl or a boy, but it didn't matter! We painted the room yellow and I found a gorgeous little farm yard border to match. It was perfect!
I spent some time painting canvases to go in babies room, and luckily we knew some people who had just had babies and grown out of certain things, so we had a fair few 'hand-me-downs' and we were able to buy our gorgeous cot and mattress fairly cheap.At this stage we weren't the only ones to start buying, my mum started to go a little bit mad (not that it wasn't a good thing) but she would visit the car boot sale every week and come back with something new for our baby! She found cribs, and clothes, bouncers and toys! By the time I reached the third trimester we had pretty much everything we needed.... including the buggy!
Towards the end of the second trimester (21 weeks) we went for our 2nd scan, we took our mothers with us and we all sat in the little examination room around a couple of little monitors watching our little 'peanut' wriggle around the screen, although this time it wasn't quite so small now and you could make out arms and legs, we could see a head and spine, and most importantly the little heart beat. Our sonographer asked if we wanted to know the gender of our baby, which we did... she then asked 'Any ideas what you might be having?' Andy and I had been convinced that we were having a boy since I found out I was pregnant, our mothers however thought we were going to have a girl.... we were right, a boy it was! They say a mothers intuition is always right! It was also about this time that I started to feel our baby move, like butterflies in my tummy, an amazing feeling. I would sit on the sofa and call Andy over to try and feel the movement but without any luck, our babies little flutterings at this stage were meant only for me.
At about 24 weeks, we visited our friend Jeni in Cornwall, and decided that we would both go for a 4d scan (she and I were both due around the same time and as it went we were only about a week apart!) I thought that our normal scans were exciting, but when we went for the 4d ones we just couldn't believe it, we could actually have a sneak preview of what our little man would look like, his tiny hands and feet, his little button nose. He was just so perfect in every way. 'Is it odd to love someone so much, when you've never even met them?'
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