Nursery Decor

While looking for nursery furniture I was blown away by the options & styles. Then I found the most amazing company called Teddy One and I fell in love. They create the most beautiful handcrafted, custom-made nursery furniture. In such a disposable world, these furniture pieces are made to last and grow with your baby with the quality being second to none. The chic and simple colour pallet means thats these furniture pieces sit well in any home, they are classic and traditional yes, however they sit perfectly in our modern home too.

Hypnobirthing Class - Gigi & Pickle

Saturday was the first of two intense hypnobirthing course days I've signed up to. I wrote a blog post a while ago on what hypnobirhting actually was, so if your lost already CLICK HERE. If your know what I'm talking about please continue....

How do I know if I'm in labour ?

Crazy question you may be thinking, but its the first question I asked my midwife at my 38 week appointment today...but every women's experience in the latent phase (early labour) can differ greatly, so its hard to tell someone exactly what to expect. Some women only realise they're in labour after this early stage, however changes that take place in pre-labour and early labour may cause tell-tale signs and symptoms that labour is imminent.

Bump Shoot

I finally got round to doing a quick two hour bump shoot...and I'm so glad my friends made me do it. Because modelling is my job, shooting outside of work is never looked at as a fun thing to do. However, this was a so worth doing, and I actually loved shooting bump and being able to artistically direct the shoot so it was very much my style. I shot with a very good friend of mine Hanna Hillier, click on her name to check out her website, she is AMAZING. To be fair she's a beauty/fashion photographer so I love her very much for doing these shots for me !

If anyone isn't sure whether to do a bump shoot or not, I would strongly suggest doing it, because as my good friend said, once the bumps gone, its not coming back so having them as a memento is really cool. Obviously you don't have to go full nudey rudey if you don't want to, I just wanted some beautiful classic pregnancy pictures as well as some more edgier ones. Also, you don't have to shoot full nude, I was wearing a thong and just photoshopped it out ! I also didn't fork out for hair and makeup, I wanted to look like ME, so I just went with my hair pretty natural and my everyday makeup...of course if you want to go all out, go for it, its a good excuse for a pamper morning!!

Here is a sneak peak of some of my favourite shots...

Birth centre or Home birth

Ok, so over the last few weeks I've been having a slight dilemma. Where to give birth...

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Hello month 9 ... wow! What can I say. This has been the most beautiful, empowering and intense experience of my life. Everyday, from the day I found out, my body has not ceased to amaze me, and no doubt this will continue until, during and after birth.

Little Wrigglers

Does your babies really have a movement pattern in the third trimester ? Well isn't this the million dollar question. From 28 weeks your midwife will tell you to get to know your little ones movements and get checked out for any reduced movements or change in the pattern. Now quite honestly this is easier said than done!! My bubba has a very loose pattern in terms of what times s/he is most active, however what I have noticed is that when I'm active s/he is still-ish and when I'm sat still & peacefully s/he will start wriggling around. As well as this, when I eat or drink thats more than likely to start the movements off again.

34 Weeks

Well wow, 34 weeks down, 6 to go. I haven't written a weekly update every week for the fear of boring you all since this final stretch is all about nesting and getting everything ready for baby, which I must say I really only started this week !!

Hospital Bag Essentials

With my due date creeping up on me quickly, I thought it was about time to speak about what to pack in your hospital bag. Now since I can only go off what I've researched online I thought I'd reach out once again to my squad of new mums & find out what their top 5+ hospital bag essentials were... these aren't all the standard must haves, but any extra things they thought were worth taking !!

Peanut

Hi ladies, so I thought I'd share the great experience I've had with the app PEANUT. The easiest way to describe this app, is tinder for mums-to-be and mums. Living in the city and being one of the first of my group of friends to have a baby I was looking for ways to meet like minded women who shared similar interests and were also pregnant or had just had a baby. Lots of women go to NCT classes to purely meet women in their area who are expecting, however I couldn't justify spending £300+ just to meet other mums-to-be. So after a little research I found the app peanut. So you basically make a profile, enter you neighbourhood, your kids ages/ or weeks into pregnancy, 3 things that best describe you, photos (if you want) and a short bio. Then you basically swipe through other women's profiles and either pass or wave. If you both wave at each other it will bring up a chat so you can start a convo and meet up if you get along.

Baby Shower

On Sunday I had my baby shower, and it was everything I wanted it to be ... I was lucky enough to have it planned for me so I just had to turn up and enjoy! I really am so blessed and lucky, baby got completely spoilt by my beautiful friends and family.

Group B Strep Test

It came to my attention a few weeks ago about a test that is not available on the NHS and rarely mentioned or spoken about by midwifes or healthcare providers. This is the Group B Strep test. I delve a little further into what is it, why its worth doing, and how you can test yourself for a mere £35.

Breech Baby

At my last scan at 20 weeks, baby was still breech. This basically means head up, butt down. This isn't the right birthing position for a natural birth, so basically baby needed to move head down. Usually babies do this all on their own around 30 weeks, however the last time the midwife checked, my bubba was head down but not in my pelvis, meaning baby can still still turn back. Obviously, s/he is on the right track but I wanted to do some research into how I can help bubba move down into my pelvis because if bubba wasn't in the right position by 34 weeks, you have to start thinking about other birthing options, i.e. c section. I really don't want this, so the googling and asking around started. As well as this, my bubba is back-to-back, in the posterior position, this isn't ideal for labour either and can mean labour is longer and more painful. This can be due to the shape/size of your pelvis & how you move and sit when relaxing. Although, babies can change position right up to and during labour, I still want to help as much as I can.

Hay fever & Allergies During Pregnancy

Hello summer, I've been waiting for you. What I haven't been looking forward to is my insane hay fever allergies, as I cannot take my usual anti-hystemine pills. Now if anyone else reading this suffers from hay fever you will know what I mean when I say it can quite easily ruin a nice day out without something to treat it.

Now I've tried a few things that have really helped so I thought I'd share...

Maternity Modelling

So unlike normal women, my maternity leave has been completely backwards lol. I stopped working around Jan, so I was 4 months pregnant and I've just started again, at 7 months. Now, this is pretty strange I know, but because of my career as a model it was pretty impossible to work with what I call an 'in-between' bump. I was too big for normal shoots and too small for maternity wear. However, at 30 weeks I was finally big enough to start shooting maternity wear.

Old Wives Tales VS Science

One thing I've noticed during pregnancy is that everyone has a million things to tell you in regards to what you should and shouldn't do... well what should you listen to ? I've searched the web for some old wives tales, from the slightly weird to the downright wacky and confirmed if they're true or not.

Hello third trimester

Woooaahhh, so last week I entered into the third and final trimester. How exciting! Around this time 'braxton hicks' usually start, I've definitely had a few. These are basically your body practising contractions, eeeeekkkk . My entire belly goes rock solid, I can't say they are unpleasant, but you definitely know when your having one!  As well as these , I've started to notice a pattern in bubbas movements, its really important that you pay attention and notice if this pattern changes or movements reduce. Im quite laid back, but my midwife always drills it into me, if anything changes in the movements, go into the clinic and get baby monitored. Around 29 weeks, I noticed that the movements weren't as 'jabby' as they usually are, so I just popped into my local antenatal clinic and they monitored baby for 15 mis to check everything was fine. As I thought, everything was fine, in fact the baby was moving so much the midwife has to keep moving the monitor lol. However, because bubba had changed positions it meant that the movements and kicks felt duller than usual. This can happen, but don't just assume, always go to check & put your mind at ease :)

Babymoon

As you can see I’ve taken some time out of blogging while I was away on our babymoon. Now I’m back, and ready to chat about my time away and any tips I have for travelling pregnant!

26 & 27 Weeks

So I forgot to write an update at 26 weeks, ops sorry, so I'm combining the last two weeks into one post. I'm still feeling amazing, I literally can't stress enough how a positive outlook on pregnancy has helped me. Learning to love every stretch and pain and trusting that my body is doing exactly what it needs to be to grow this baby. My hormones have seemed to level out over the past two weeks as well, so thats a relief for me (and my husband lol).

Birth Without Fear & Anxiety

During pregnancy audio books have been my go to! I struggle to fully concentrate on reading a book, but with an audio book I can actually fully concentrate. Anyway, I've gone a bit off topic there, but basically one of the books I'm listening too at the moment is called Mindful Hypno Birthing by Sophie Fletcher. After writing a post on Hypno Birthing last month I decided to give it a go and before booking into any classes I thought I'd would listen to this book to see what I thought.

"Giving birth should be your greatest achievement in life, not your greatest fear"