Hi D Ho! Week 19 pregnancy update is here already and baby is now the size of mango (or an heirloom tomatoe if you’ve been paying attention to too many US based baby websites like us 🙂 ). Babies kicking up a storm these days and certainly making their presence known.

This week marked a big step for us as parents – we left our little man for the first time with someone who wasn’t a grandparent – shock horror. Ethans’ Godmother Martina kindly offered to let herself be dragged around our house by a toddler for a few hours while we headed to a gentle birth VBAC class. We were devastated delighted to hear that little man wasn’t one bit upset that we had left and instead had a great time with his new servant at his beck and call!

So off we headed on a stormy Sunday evening in the ultimate marriage test – could we survive an hour long drive in bad weather, getting lost along the way and still arrive not too late and still speaking to each other? Well luckily for us we made it just 5 minutes late and still married 🙂 Once we arrived we met two other couples at the Gentle Birth workshop also hoping for a VBAC (natural birth after a caesarian). In typical Irish fashion the men lined  up on one side of the room and the women on the other so a good laugh was had when Bairbre the class instructor asked the men to introduce themselves first and explain how they ended up at a VBAC workshop which broke the ice well and got us off to a good start.

From here the class went really well – it was great to be surrounded by like minded people all hoping for a different birth experience from their last. A lot of the Gentle Birth principles are based around empowering couples with the information they need to make informed decisions – something which really appeals to the engineer in me. Going though the facts and figures really helps to both prepare and reassure me that we are on the right track with our birth plans this time round. Oddly enough having had one prevous caesarian we have a higher chance of having a natural birth second time round than that of a first time mum!

At the end of the class we did a 5 minute little mindfulness exercise.This was really relaxing and calming – especially combined with the wind howling outside. Mindfulness seems to be one of the big buzz words of the moment but Im interested in learning a bit more. Ive downloaded the headspace app which runs a nice mindfulness program – 10 minutes for 10 days – Trying to find the time to fit in anything extra when you have a toddler running around is pretty difficult so Im hoping that 10 minutes a day will be manageable. Today is day one and I actually managed to complete it so I’ll let you know how it went at the end of the 10 days. I’d love to hear if any of you have any experience of mindfulness or good apps or recommendations for practicing it.

So thats my little pregnancy update for this week, chat you later xxx