Janathon day six: red faced and sweaty

06/01/201406/01/20145 Comments

As Ginge was off today, I took advantage and went to the gym for the first time in, ooooh, ages. This sentence makes it sounds like I was full of enthusiasm and raced down there like a gazelle on roller skates. What actually happened was I tried to hide behind Mini-Ginge’s needs until Ginge senior gave me a very hard stare.

I was dreading going because:

I haven’t been for ages – it’s going to hurt

I can only use three bits of equipment – this is rubbish

My baggy running top is no longer baggy

And probably a whole host of other reasons that I don’t even realise.

You know what? It wasn’t half bad. As a warm up I walked on the treadmill ramping up the incline ever so often (thus satisfying my need to press buttons while I’m on it), 15 minutes of random hills on the bike and then 20 on the elliptical trainer doing 2:1 run/walk intervals. I finished up satisfyingly red faced and sweaty before offsetting the minuscule number of calories I burned by having churros for dinner (lunch).

I didn’t get round to doing my Physio exercises yesterday, which is a challenge to the ‘all or nothing’ approach that my brain tends to take.

Physio (at the time of writing) 4/6

Life with a tiny dictator

17/12/201311 Comments

Well that was left as a bit of a cliffhanger wasn’t it? Five days until due date and then no word for nine weeks… First of all you can rest assured that I’m not some kind of medical miracle and I haven’t gone nine weeks overdue. I was grumpy enough at five days over and would more than likely have killed someone by now if I was still full of baby.

To cut a long story short and avoid going into too much detail (when you’re pregnant, the simple question “how are you?” elicits a Pavlovian response to hand over a pot of wee and start discussing your, as the daytime telly adverts put it, ‘intimate area’), I had a little ‘encouragement’ from the midwife on Friday morning and labour started that afternoon. I did however, remain in denial about this (convinced that my contractions were Braxton Hicks) until the evening when Ginge pretty much gave me an ultimatum to ring the midwives or else. Eventually I did ring the midwives and (after a warm bath, some paracetamol and a TENS machine) was admitted an hour later.

The birth itself didn’t exactly go according to plan, but I assume that very few people’s plans end up with a set of forceps being wielded by a gentleman that your mum would later refer to as “Doctor Big Hands”… Personally I was well away on the gas and air, so it all flew by for me and it was poor Ginge and my mum who suffered (their hands are still recovering from the Incredible Hulk-like squeezes I gave them).

So from that initial phone call at 7.30pm on Friday, via a birthing pool, a blue-lit ambulance up the M6 (at the slightest hint of risk they transfer from the midwife-led unit to the delivery suite at another hospital), a midwife who broke half the the room, Dr Big Hands, another more fabulous less cack-handed midwife and her student, and Ginge cutting the cord, at 8.34 on Saturday 12th October we became very proud parents to a 6lb 11oz baby boy.

Hal (or as he will be referred to on here, Mini Ginge) is a lovely little chap who is very laid back as long as the milky buffet isn’t too far away. However, although he is only tiny, he completely rules the roost (and quite rightly so).

One of the reasons for my lack of posts is that I was planning to write about his arrival and then at week six, document my triumphant return to running. Unfortunately at week 6 I was being advised by both my GP and my physio that high-impact exercise shouldn’t feature in my life for at least 3-6 months. I shall explain more about this when I have decided how much information is too much information…

Breast cancer awareness month – TLC and The Great Pink Bake Off

15/09/20132 Comments

It’s fair to say that I’ve been thinking about boobs this week. Specifically my own and their soon to be new role as a mobile buffet. Monday was the first day of my maternity leave and I marked it by attending a midwife-led breast feeding workshop. This involved six of us (plus one very uncomfortable dad and a gran who wasn’t expecting audience participation) nervously clutching large baby dolls to our bosoms whilst trying hard not to be the one who dropped our baby on the floor. All in all it was a very positive and informative session, with the over arching message seeming to be “try it, persevere, if it doesn’t work out for you, that’s fine and we won’t judge you”.

Personally, it’s what I want to try doing because (a) as a concept it seems to have worked out ok for the mammals over the past millions of years and (b) it’s free and at the end of the day I’m a bit of a cheapskate.

Anyway. Hopefully next month even more women will be thinking about their breasts because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s range of pink products can be found all over the high street and it’s an opportunity to remind women to give themselves a little TLC.

Most cases of breast cancer are found by women noticing unusual changes, taking the initiative and visiting their doctor. The earlier breast cancer is found, the better the chance of beating it – so you can see how important it is to make regular checks.

Being breast aware simply means knowing what your breasts look and feel like normally, being on the lookout for any unusual changes and getting them checked out by your doctor.

It’s as simple as TLC…

TOUCH your breasts. Can you feel anything unusual?

LOOK for changes. Is there any change in shape or texture?

CHECK anything unusual with your doctor.

No one knows your body better than you and everyone will have their own way of touching and looking for changes – there’s no special technique and you don’t need any training.

For more information on how to Touch Look Check and changes to check for, visit breakthrough.org.uk/tlc.

If you text SIGNS to 70500, Breakthrough will send you a credit sized TLC guide that not only includes the key signs and symptoms of breast cancer, it also includes information about what to do if you notice anything unusual.

This year, Breakthrough are also inviting people to put on their pinnies and join in the Great Pink Bake Off on October 18th (or any day in October, cake should never be constrained to just one day) by baking for friends, families and colleagues. So if you’ve been inspired by the Great British Bake Off on the telly, now’s the chance to show off your skills for an excellent cause (and have a look at this blog for an excellent round up of each episode).

Ante-natal yoga class (part two)

09/09/2013Leave a comment

Well the pie is now eaten (not entirely by me I hasten to add, it has brought joy to a lot of people) so I can carry on about my ante-natal yoga.

The first week didn’t put me off and the second class was a lot less stressful. I knew where I had to go, how to navigate the car park’s one way system and how to use the secret code to get into the room. I knew where I liked to put my mat, that I’m still happy using one cushion and that none of it was as scary as I had imagined a week before. It was also bank holiday Monday, which meant that we were a small but perfectly formed class of three. One woman due about the same time as me and another who was 39 weeks*, keen to have a go at positions that might get things moving…

The majority of the session was spent squeaking about the wooden floor on our gym balls. Whilst I have owned a gym ball in the past, it soon became one of those forgotten good intentions of home exercise plans and was relegated to the back of the cupboard (well it lived at my mum’s house…). I’d bought one the week before and have found that at times it’s comfier than the sofa (although there may be health and safety issues with me doing my knitting whilst perched on it).

This class was a chance to have a go at some of the suggested birth positions that had been revealed to us in our comically hand-drawn ante-natal class worksheets. We lunged, rolled, bounced and swivelled our hips on the balls, all the while accompanied by a nagging sense that we were a collective of large round women sitting on space hoppers. The class rounded off with some breathing exercises. Now, there is an expectation that your ante-natal classes will cover breathing (and some of the posh non-NHS ones probably do, but I haven’t been to them) but what we had was the very pragmatic midwife telling us that, looking around she could see none of us had turned blue, so clearly we all had got the hang of breathing before we got there. When the big day comes, our midwife will talk us through exactly how they want us to huff and puff at each stage.

The breathing we covered at yoga was more to do with staying as relaxed as possible and breathing through contractions when you’re still at home (having had your paracetamol and a warm bath…) waiting for the green light to present yourself at the hospital (if that’s where you’re going). I was reassured that our teacher referred to ujjayi breathing as being “a bit like Darth Vader” because that’s what my usual teacher says, and that this offset all the talk of focussing on the sound of the sea or a child’s gentle breath (I need you to read those in a soft, calm Relaxation Voice that rises…and falls…with pauses………that don’t quite match…. the punctuation…of the sentence).

Despite my self-confessed rubbishness at relaxation and breathing exercises, I did find that the concept of ‘mountain breathing’ caught my attention (probably because it is short and practical). We had to visualise ourselves as being 7cm dilated (cue nervous laughter from everyone in the room) and having contractions about a minute apart. As the imaginary contraction started we breathed in and out through the nose, then in through the nose and out through the mouth as the contraction built, before it hit its peak and we breathed in and out through the mouth. We then descended the mountain in the opposite direction before returning to our normal breath and refocussing our thoughts (which apparently should be calmer and stiller than “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…”).

So ante-natal yoga. Does it give me the same satisfaction and physical challenge as my normal classes? Not in the slightest. Does it cover stuff that’s relevant to rapidly approaching due date (four weeks today. Gulp)? Of course it does, that’s what its there for. Do I wish I’d gone a bit earlier? Kind of. I’m glad I kept up my usual yoga routine as it gave me a sense of confidence and normality (and appealed to my sense of sheer bloody mindedness), but I’m glad that my hand was forced into going to the pregnancy stuff too. There are people a lot earlier in their pregnancies who go to the class and they’ll have chance to perfect all these techniques and possibly have a lot more tricks up their sleeve. Having said that, the class is 4.15 on a Monday afternoon and is 25 miles away from where I work. I know I’m entitled to take time out to attend these things, but I would have felt guilty skipping out of work any earlier than a few weeks ago.

Today is the first day of my maternity leave and of course the class is cancelled. Instead, I have a breast feeding workshop, which I suspect will leave me pining for pigeon pose.

*39 week lady was still at the class the week after, for her sake I hope that she won’t be there next week…

My adventures in pie making

02/09/201302/09/20133 Comments

This was supposed to be the second half of my post about ante-natal yoga, but who can think about cobbler’s pose and mountain breathing when there is pie in the fridge?

I have been threatening to make a pork pie for about three years now, it’s one of those long-term projects that exist in a completely abstract form, moving from one annual To Do list to the next year’s until I either ignore it completely or am forced into action. It had dawned on me that if I wanted to spend most of a weekend making a single pie, it was better to do it now while I can still attempt to make things that are more complex than toast and Cup A Soup.

I had also made the mistake of telling Ginge, who very kindly placed an order of pig parts at our local butcher so there was no turning back.

So on Saturday morning, I trekked off to the butcher and collected a large carrier bag of pork neck, pork belly, streaky bacon, pork bones and two pig’s trotters (I was trusting a Nigel Slater recipe for this epic). The bones and trotters went into the stock pot…

Mmmmm, gelatinous feet…

While the bacon, belly and neck were chopped and minced. Nigel advocates hand chopping 1.5kg of meat into 5mm pieces (but concedes that giving half a quick whizz in the food processor is ok) – I opted for hand chopping half and feeding the rest through the coarsest setting of our hand mincer (for mincing by hand, not mincing hands. As a rule).

Mince to the left of me, chopped bits to the right

The stock bubbled away for an hour or so while I fettled with meat and cracked on with the pastry. This is the first time that I’ve made a hot water crust and was slightly fearful of the whole process. It was made easier by the fact that I was lining a cake tin with it, rather than trying to hand raise a proper crust around a mould. It was also made easier my the fact that it was a strangely enjoyable experience, a bit like messing with warm playdoh.

In recent weeks I have embraced lard as an ingredient. This is probably not a good thing.

Tin, meat. Meat, tin.

And then on with the lid before going into the oven for longer than I realised (which had the bonus of giving me enough time to clear up AND have a bit of a nap). It emerged shiny and golden, but I still had to wait for the lovely stock to be properly cooled before I could funnel it in. I was a bit concerned about leakage and knowing that the pie was full, but again I needn’t have worried – you know it’s full because you can’t fit any more in….

The pie stayed in the safety of its cake tin for some overnight chilling and until Ginge got home from work (delivering it from the tin was a two-person job), before we could release the first slice.

My first pork pie.

I am unfeasibly proud of this venture, but am now faced with the issue of what to do with a pie that’s as big as my head.

Travelling Hopefully

cos where's the fun in arriving?

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