Preparations going well!

Over the last few weeks we seem to have progressed in leaps and bounds
in preparing for Bubble's arrival. It really started the weekend that
Mum and Dad came and helped us move the furniture. Since then, we've
collected stuff from Stuart and Rach (baby bath, moses basket etc)
been and bought some extra chests of drawers that we needed (and
managed to avoid too much "Ikea tax" in the process), had a serious
look at pushchairs and car seats (although Dave won't commit any
deposits to it yet!), and got some tester pots of paint for the
nursery walls.

I'm starting to think more seriously about the birth. Can I have a
water pool at home anywhere - is there room, and can I have it
upstairs? What other pain relief options do I want? Just the last
week, I've been thinking that it's going to come early - not mega
early, but for whatever reason I'm not convinced I'm going to go to
term. Maybe that's part of the instigator for me trying to get things
sorted. The midwife doesn't seem to want to talk about it yet. I'm
sure she's said before that at about 27 weeks they like to come and
look at the house to check out parking, room size etc, but then last
time I saw her, she said it could wait until the new year and "not to
worry". I'm not worrying, it's just that by then I'll be 30 weeks plus
and that doesn't seem to me to allow much time.

I sent off a deposit for a NCT antenatal class, and have had an email
back to say, basically, that they're full, and are trying to fit me in
somewhere. I'm still going to the yoga class, which is good as we have
lots of discussion at the end over herbal tea and chocolate biscuits.
We're also booked into an active birth workshop with the yoga teacher
in January, which will no doubt be good. The midwife seems to think
that I should automatically get sent details of their classes, but
didn't seem too convinced. So what do I do? Just go with the flow, and
wait and see if NCT can come up with something? Ring up and hassle
them, or the midwives?

Talking of NCT, we went to a nearly new sale this morning. It's was
chaos with hoards of people queueing up. Still, we got a few bit of
basic clothing and a few small toys, a nice butterfly floor mat and a
mobile. I was hoping there might have been a puchchair or something,
but it's seems those had gone by the time we got in (and we were there
before they opened the doors!)

Bubble's been far more active over the past few days - to the point
where sometimes it's making me feel a bit sick (it's like a churning
in my stomach, and although I know it's a nice thing really, sometimes
it doesn't feel that way! At least it's not keeping me awake at night
- yet! Dave's really feeling it now as well, which he's happy about -
I think he felt a bit left out before, not really knowing what was
happening and not feeling entirely part of it, but now there's
something physical it makes it more real.