Percy's firsts

In the last 2 weeks there have been a lot of firsts for Percy Jones.  Two weeks ago he attended his first comedy gig. it was really nice to be out with our comedy crew again. They were excited to see the baby and he got quite a few mentions in the gig like "clap your hands stamp your feet whoop and cheer .... but whatever you do don't wake the baby!"

Then last weekend he attended his first wedding. Here's my favourite wedding photo of Dan putting Percy on the table to check his nappy. Mikes's face is the best!

Percy had a bit of time on the dance floor, he was bobbing his head along to the music and we were like "aww he's dancing that's so cute" it turns out he had bronchiolitis and head bopping is a symptom. I feel like a bad parent.  So that was his next first his first illness he's pretty much better now.

Percy has just started smiling and a week ago or so we managed to get the first photograph of his smile.

He's pretty adorable, but if this is making you feel broody just scroll back to my last blog to look at a changing mat covered in poo.

It's not a first but I had my second night out without him last week, and by night out I mean going to Becci's house with a few other people to make crafts. I used to be an art student who had exhibitions now I'm a mum who makes crafts. I'm not sure how I feel about this. But anyway I fed Percy just before leaving and then I had 3 hours before he would need feeding again, you can drink alcohol with breast feeding as long as you time it right and don't have too much, (1 unit takes 90 mins to get out of your system) so I'd worked it all out so I could have my favourite drink mulled wine but I totally forgot that normal rules still apply i.e. drinking and driving. Whoops! luckily I hadn't had too much.

The final of Percy's firsts that I will mention today is Percy's first competition win. Percy won a best christmas jumper competition at church. It was a lucky win coz I didn't know the competition was happening but he happened to be wearing a christmas penguin outfit which was a gift from his aunty Beth and uncle Nick. Jack who was the judge made the point that the prize was chocolate so Percy couldn't win, but I made the equally valid point that he could get it through the breast milk, and he won!

The winning outfit

I've not made christmas cards this year, but I have painted this cartoon as a little joke for my mum friends. Merry Christmas ignore the cows.

The Ginger Bet (update)

18 months ago I came up with a ginger bet which was: who can have the most ginger children by 2028.

Originally only there were only 3 contenders: me and Dan, katie and Mike, and Joe who was then single and not ginger (but has a ginger mum.) when I wrote about this bet on my blog several other people wanted to join the ginger bet and you can read about all the contenders here

Well there have been a few updates which I'm sure you will all be egar to hear. My mum is still officially winning with two ginger children as neither of us have started going grey yet.

We have had a baby who looks like he will probably be ginger it's a bit to early to say but there's definitely a tinge of the ginge. and he looks very like me as a baby so the odds are looking good for team Jones.

Percy looking a bit ginger

what we hope for

Steph and Nick were in 2nd place with baby Ben was looking pretty ginger but BIG NEWS he's gone blond they've had another baby and she is very dark haired. They're a beautiful family but that's not going to help them win. They would like 2 more children so they can at best only draw. Unless they have surprise ginger triplets or whatever.

The Pitchers family 

Two of the non-gingers with ginger mum's (Hazel and Joe) have got together with non-gingers, reducing they're chances of winning by a lot, and one ginger (Lydia) has also got together with a non- ginger. Not that any of these couple will necessarily go on to have children with their current partners but it's a possibility.

Katie and Mike currently remain childless, and Helen (who doesn't even have any recessive ginger but claimed she fancied gingers) has got together with a non-ginger. I'm really happy for you Helen and I think Graham is a lovely guy, but that's not going to win the bet is it. In fact I would say you are currently loosing.

Hope you all feel informed I guess I'll do another update in 2 years or so. Best of luck everyone! x

Dear women in Asda

Dear Women in Asda,
Thanks for you interest in my baby, yes he is cute and you may well feel broody when you see his little face looking like this;

but don't decide you want more children without first having two hours of sleep in a night, getting someone to nipple tweak you for half an hour and then looking at this:

That is all.



Disclaimer: I was having doubts about whether to post this coz it is a bit gross but Joe Fred persuaded me to so blame him.

Great Grandparents

Baby Percy is lucky to have 4 grandparents and 4 great grandparents (all on Dan's side.)  Yesterday we met the english ones and next friday we will be meeting the french ones.

Here are 4 generations of Jones men.

 and this is Great Grandma.....

........and this is her uncle is called Percival.

Percival was born in Liverpool and died in 1916 aged 20 in world war one. He has no direct descendants. That is who we named Percy after.

As well as these things

We picked the middle name Samuel because of the bible character. I've always had a soft spot for boys named sam because in the bible Samuel is a cool character and his mother is called Hannah. After we had named, him I remembered that Dan once told me that at school when he was 12 he had to write a letter to his son and he decided to name his imaginary son Samuel. So that was kind of funny.

It's been a tough week this last week Percy has something wrong with his digestive system, the enzymes (whatever they are) can't digest milk properly so he is very unsettled and isn't pooing normally. We just got some drops from the doctor yesterday so hopefully that will help his sleep and ours.

We've been so sleep deprived that we have both been able to fall asleep mid sentence, which is quite an achievement seeing as I normally take an hour to get to sleep. We've also both had the experience of waking up holding the duvet thinking it was Percy and then wondering where he disappeared to.

This week I went to an event put on by the housing project that we're hopefully getting a house from. This led to the awkward situation where I found myself with Percy in a room full of important people like MPs and stuff giving speeches. He started crying and people started looking at me because it was being televised. I couldn't leave because to get all my stuff together would make him cry more, so I had to breast feed him to keep him quiet. Lukerly I'd just finished when they called me on stage to show off the cute tiny baby. We ended up being on North West Tonight for a few seconds. Percy's second t.v appearance.

This is my favourite photo from this week.

One Born Every Minute

I've survived another week of motherhood hooray! that's 2 weeks down only the rest of my life to go. I think I need L plates for the pram, I keep forgetting I'm not a bike and turning right from the centre of roads and stuff. I also had a long battle with my mum and a car seat. Me and my mum started off on the same side, but after about 20 minutes, I was pointing out that in palestine you just hold new born babies and if a baby is able to stand up you put them in the back, the more children the better, if they are tightly squashed there's less chance of them falling over. On my gap year we once got 36 children in a 12 seater mini bus. Anyway eventually with the use of a bull dog clip we managed to drive to Sefton park and go for a little walk.

You may or may not have heard that we are going to be on the TV show 'one born every minute.'  It's kind of funny how we ended up in that position given that Dan was so against it. When I was in the earlier stages of pregnancy I made him watch an episode and he said "we are never going on that program." and I replied "of course not they film it in Bristol no one is going to make us go on it." Then we found out that they were going to film at Liverpool women's at the time we were there, we got two letters asking us if we wanted to be involved which we ignored. Then we went for a hospital tour and some of the film crew were saying how if you're on the program you can have a say in the edit so you can make sure they don't show more than you're comfortable with, and I was a bit tempted.

It's a difficult thing, my extrovert desire to be on T.V verses the natural desire not to show people my bits/ let people see me making cow nosies. Dan was still against it and I wasn't going to try and pursuade him otherwise but I did think it would be fun if we had a little background role like we just walked past, or you could hear my scream when they were filming someone else.

So I went to be induced and half way through that at 3am someone from the one born team came to chat to us about what happens if we were in a background shot, and I said I'd quite like to be in a background shot, and she thought I was saying we'd like to be in the program properly, and chatted to us a bit about it. Then Dan had a bit of a change of heart and she gave us some time to decide if we wanted to be in it, I left the decision making up to Dan and he eventually came to the conclusion that it might be a nice opportunity so we said yes. (although I could still choose to pull out if the footage is really embarrassing)

So when my waters broke I got taken into the delivery suite that had cameras in the celling and we had to wear radio mics. Then on tuesday we got interviewed at our house but we had to pretend it was before. So they did a close up of our faces so that you couldn't see my lack of bump and we had to say things like "if it's a boy..." and "I think I'll be ok with labour because I've dislocated my arm before" etc

They didn't really know when it would be on TV but they guessed the summer.

P.s Quote of the week from Dan who had just mastered wearing the wrap "I could be an african woman" apart from your gender and race and probably many other things yes you could.

The First Week

What an incredible week of highs and lows this has been! There have been times of great physical pain and exhaustion, and times of overwhelming highs as I look at our beautiful son.

Here are some opinions on parenthood that I had last week compared to this week:

Last week:
I wouldn't let my child sleep on me at night because then they'd never want to sleep in their own cot.

This week:
ARGHHH I don't care about the future as long as I can make it through tonight.

Last week:
I'm going to breast feed because I love a bargain and I'm quite lazy and boobs are just right there.

This week:
Yes breast feeding is free if you don't value your time at all, If you paid yourself minimum wage every time you breast feed it would be a proper income. Also if you want to know what it feels like ask someone to continually nipple tweak you for half an hour.

Last week:
Oh no I have forgotten to buy pyjamas for the baby.

This week:
What even defines day and night?

The lack of sleep has lead to some crazy delirium as demonstrated in this video where I nearly wet myself.

It's been a bad week for Lola the rabbit, her cuddle time has been very reduced and she got in a fight with a cat.

The cat attack sent Dan into a parental rage and he has vowed to punch the cat if ever he sees it.  I pointed out that a cat does have the right to roam free and maybe we shouldn't let our rabbit out in the yard, but Dan's protective anger continues, he actually congratulated the rabbit on the fact that the blood on her foot was the cat's blood, we think. I hate to think what would happen to anyone who picked on Percy.

It would be wrong of me to end the blog without more photos of Percy.  Here he is with his girlfriend Elodie, Steph and Nick's new baby born one day after Percy.

Hey Elodie....

Did you know I'm a rap star?

I think I'm falling for you (mainly coz I can't keep my head up)

Let me suckle on your arm.

Elodie: I wonder if he's husband material?

Birth

HE'S HERE! and he's a he. On 22nd October at 1.30pm Percy Samuel Jones arrived into "the outside" weighing slightly over 8lbs.

I know mother's have the like biased hormonal thing which makes them think their own children are beautiful, but he is lovely right? (if you don't agree it's probably best not to say.)

So birth....that was less beautiful. Here's a photo of me not looking my best but I wanted to include it because it's what the face of a real life woman is like after birth.

Compare and contrast with this one that was taken after a makeover when I was 21.

 It should be like a warning to all men on the pull (if you can't cope with a woman looking like this then stop trying to pull her)

Anyways back to birth... In my last blog I wrote how I was imagining birth to be the pain of when I dislocated my elbow with the endurance of cycling 70 miles through mud. So how did it compare? Lots of people say you forget the pain when the baby is born, well I haven't forgotten it yet!

It was horrendous. I don't want to scare you if you're pregnant though. I think I had a worse than average experience. I spoke to my friend Steph today who gave birth the day after me and the only pain relief she had was paracetamol!

Warning skip this paragraph if you don't want to know the gory details.

So for me once I got onto the delivery suite after about 14 hours of having contractions on the induction rooms, I was shown how to use gas and air but I did it wrong and it had no effect on me. Then everything started happening really fast. The baby's heart beat was dropping, the midwife called in another midwife, who called in a doctor who called in another doctor.  I started pushing even though they told me not to because I wasn't ready yet and it would hurt.  But you can't control that, no one in their right mind would push when they've been told not to but I just couldn't help it. They had to cut me, and use the suction thing on the baby's head to get it out. Then they put the baby on me while they stitched me up.

People say 'once they put the baby on you the pain is gone and you're just so relived and in love with the baby that you forget everything' That was not the case for me, I was still lying with my feet in stirrups being stitched up, just in less horrendous pain.   But I do remember in the middle of that looking down at the baby and saying "who is it?" Then I moved the umbilical cord stump and said "it's Percy!" (which was our chosen boy's name.)

I would say the love for him came a bit more gradually over the next 24 hours.  But it's safe to say that we are now both completely besotted with him.

The only final thing to say for today is that Dan was an absolute legend and I have a overwhelming fresh new love for him too.

Baby News!

I've not had the baby....but our big news is I'm going to be induced at 38 weeks which is in 10 days time!!

Here is why:

So I've had itchy skin particularly at nights for a week or two, I ignored it because I though it might be an insect based thing, I did have a few insect bites and there are some annoying little fruit flies in our house sometimes. Then eventually I googled "itchy skin during pregnancy" and found out that it was most likely to be a hormonal thing but there's a chance it could be a liver problem.

So then I phoned the hospital to speak to a midwife who called me in for some blood tests. The next day they asked me to come in again because I did have the liver problem (Obstetric Cholestasis.) It's only a problem while I'm still pregnant, but if someone with this condition is left till 40 weeks or more then their risk of having a still birth is higher. So they will induce me at 38 weeks to reduce that risk.

It's not a big risk at all so no one worry, we're not really worried we're just excited to be meeting baby Jones soon. My induction is 21st oct at 8pm so their most likely birthday will be 22nd October.

I've been wondering what birth will be like and as I've never given birth I'm trying to think of the nearest I've come to it in terms of pain, endurance and medical professionals looking at my privates. So this is what I've come up with:

The most physical pain I've ever experienced was when I was 16 and this happened:

Yeah ...if a random guy in Tescos car park asks you to unicycle don't unicycle forward while looking backwards to check he's watching. It's arrogant (and dangerous.)

The biggest endurance test I've done was day 2 of our 61 day trip to the middle east. We cycled 70 miles from cheshire to Birmingham in the rain on roads like this:

It took 11 hours and I cried after 50 miles.


My tyres and feet looked like this:

Also like almost every female over 25 I've had a smear test, not pleasant but no big deal really. Surprisingly enough I didn't take a photo of this occasion.

So anyway if giving birth is like cycling 70 miles in the rain with a dislocated elbow while having a smear test, I'm all prepared.

The Wedding of Jo and Elisha

On Saturday my little sister got married! It was a fantastic day probably the best wedding I've ever been to other than my own. In fact last night I started comparing different elements of their wedding objectively with my own wedding (I know that's a terrible thing to do).  When it started to look like they may actually win this comparison I stopped comparing (because comparing weddings in a terrible thing to do!)

Jo looked absolutely beautiful, and as you can see we were more than a little excited!

There were 7 bridesmaids, 8 if you count bumpy the littlest bridesmaid/ pageboy.  When walking down the aisle Bumpy led the way closely followed by the rest of me, and then the other bridesmaids all in pairs.  I'd asked Dan to take photos as we entered he decided to take a video, but forgot to take the lens cap off.  Elisha (who is also called Dan by some people) looked very pleased to see his bride walking in.

After the service I got to see some of my extended family and some good friends including Bex who is due in 2 weeks!

Then after a long discussion about who should go in what car it was on to the lovely reception venue.

The speeches were great apart from when Dad accidentally raised a toast to the Mr and Dr Jones.  I think he was concentrating so much on pointing out his daughter was a Dr that he forgot the surname. (Which is Hastings.)  The meal was followed by dancing and a photo both ran by my sister in law Rebekah.  I can't wait to see the photos from that...  I'm on almost all of them, sorry other people.

Love the macarena it's the only time I'm not the worst dancer on the dance floor.

We returned to Liverpool very tired at lunch time on Sunday to greet poor little Lola the rabbit, the only one who didn't enjoy the wedding. Unfortunately I had forgotten that Rachel who I had asked to feed our rabbit didn't have a key to our house. Luckily we had purposefully left the cage unlocked so she had access to our garden and Rachel was able to go round our neighbour's house and throw a few rabbity treats over the wall. We spoiled her when we got in and hopefully she has forgiven us now.

Last night ended with some unexpected maths problems while we lay in bed with a hot chocolate. I was asking Dan about when they say 'you're 10cm dilated' -what is that? It must be the diameter right? So what is the circumference? That's when we both had to think back to some year 8 maths. Dan thought the formula was Pi R Squared (sorry there's no pi key) this came out as 78cm which I was sure sounded too big. I then got a roll of masking tape some ribbon and a ruler and worked out that the diameter of the masking tape was 9cm while the circumference was 28cm. That's 9 x 3! What number is roughly three?! Pi! therefore we have discovered (a long time after someone else) that to find the circumference you times the diameter by pi. That other formula (Pi R Squared) is the area.

So how exciting! when the midwife tells me 'you're 10cm dilated time to push' I won't have to worry about the circumference because I'll know that it's 31.45 assuming my cervix is a perfect circle which I'm sure it's not.

Oh the joyous things we would never do if we had a TV.

Top 10 Pregnancy Comments

Today I am 35 weeks which you think would mean we had a 'special hug' 35 weeks ago actually it doesn't, because of the silly way they count it, it's more like 33 weeks since that happened. Anyway that's enough about our special hug life. Check out the bump.

I'm going to dedicate this blog to all the people who have commented on my pregnancy: friends and strangers but especially the funny commenters which are mainly the kids from the school I work in.
I find it funny when strangers feel the need to comment, fair enough if they ask when is it due or whatever that's just being friendly. But there was a man is Aldi who said 'you're big' (ironically he was about 20 stone) and there was a lady on the till in Asda who insisted I shouldn't be carrying my shopping which was only something like a loaf of bread and some jam. What do you actually expect me to do? Are you offering to carry my shopping home for me? If not don't comment. (I didn't say that though)

Most adult comments are normally variations on either...'oh look at your bump' 'when are you due?' 'do you know what it is?' or 'I think you're having a boy/ girl because xyz'

People have been very lovely and helpful and it really is nice that people are taking an interest and stuff so I don't want this to come across as negative, but because I get asked the same questions a lot I am tempted to give stupid answers. Like 'how long have you got left?'.... 'oh hopefully another 50 years at least...probably longer than you.' Or my favourite variation on 'Do you know what it is?' was 'What sex are you having?' Soooo hard not to say a position, but I just managed to politely say 'we're having a surprise'

Kids comments have been much less predictable here's the top 10 hilarious kid comments:

10) Why are you having a baby? (I wasn't sure whether to answer that from a biological or psychological perspective)

9) Are there 2 babies in there or 3?

8) The baby might not know you're an artist. (I'm not sure why this was such a concern)

7)  If it's a boy you should call it Steven Gerrard.

6) Do you actually want a baby? Do you know that babies grow into kids?

5) You don't have a TV?!! You'll have to get one before the baby arrives or your  baby will be soooo bored!

4) If it's a girl throw it in the bin!

3) Do you know you need a man to make a baby?
yes, I am married
Well we've never seen your husband!

2)When you have a baby either you have to show all your rude bits or have it cut out of you. Which one are you going to do?

1) What's that in there? (pointing to my belly)
a baby
oh I thought it was a ball
Have you never seen a woman with a baby in her belly before?
My Dad has a big belly.

The Middle Sister

A week today my sister Jo is getting married. This means I must share a childhood picture of us:

Aww.... from the days where I was the tallest sibling (and I had a horrible fringe, If my baby is a girl I will actively discourage her from fringes.)

One of the best things about Jo is that on first impressions she comes across as very normal, very mature and responsible maybe even a little bit dull...but she's actually crazy! She has done a lot of crazy things like skydiving and zorbing, she is an accomplished unicycler, tightrope walker, gymnast and trampolinist. We wrote a little book for Jo at her hen night that we all signed with nice memories and stuff... for some reason the main thing I could remember  was this time we were really bored on a family walk and decided to repeatedly touch an electric fence. Good times. Mum and Dad were despairing a little, but we wouldn't even have that family walk memory right now if it wasn't for touching the fence.

Since we've always had a bit of an interest in circus, this became the theme for the hen night.

Back in the day...

The hen night....

I'm pretty proud of my costume... I didn't want to be a pregnant clown so when Dan suggested big top (after elephant) I thought that would work well. My costume was mainly made from a laundry basket and a lamp shade. I felt a great sense of freedom wearing a costume that no one would recognise me in. for example I would never creep out an innocent man working on his laptop in my home town in normal dress...

Nor would I dance with Jo in front of a bit of and audience.

Happy hen night Jo, can't wait to be the fattest bridesmaid at your wedding!

Hopefully you'll look a bit better than you did at the end of your hen do. x

Babies

Everyone loves babies especially in digital form when you can just admire their cuteness without them disturbing your sleep. Here's our properly adorable nephew Reuben with his Daddy (the husband of Dan's sister)

All babies are cute but some are cuter than others and he deffo comes into the 'cuter' category.

At church on sunday I was asked quite publicly "How was your shower? I saw the photos" I quickly added " my BABY shower? yeah it was great" You can never be too careful in church, that's how rumours start.

So I had my baby shower this week which was brilliant. Everyone put so much effort into making it a lovely day, I felt very spoilt. Our baby is super spoilt he or she now owns 7 hats! Lets hope they're a hat person.

We played lots of games at the baby shower including Cat's game 'stick the Jewish hat on the the baby' (a reference to a bit of my stand up) and Katie's game try and guess what Han and Dan's baby will look like.....

It's a pretty disturbing game.

A lot of people are very keen to guess the name, at the baby shower I gave out very cryptic name clues:

So if you want to join in the guessing game, we have chosen 4 names: a boys first name and middle name and a girls first name and middle name. So 4 of these clues relate to these 4 chosen names but there are also 2 red herrings. I'm not going to say if you're right though so it really is a pointless game.

This weekend ie the rest of the day is my sister's Hen party. I can't reveal much now or I might ruin the surprises but lets just say my costume is pretty immense, and took me 2 days to make. Photos to follow.

P.s this is my last bit of stand up before motherhood which I performed on Wednesday.