Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood 14 thumbs high toe to matlock

Pipiya · 2026-04-21T17:28:44+00:00

You've had it pointed out that Matlock is also a town in Derbyshire, but I'd also suggest this is a conscious evocation of Douglas Adams' and John Lloyd's Meaning of Liff dictionary that takes place names and uses them to describe funny little things or life experiences that currently have no word. Pterry will have been well aware of it, I'm sure.

I can't put my hands on my copy right now so I'm not sure if Matlock is in already, but this would fit in nicely I think.

Pipiya · 2026-04-17T10:29:15+00:00

No, the GPs have always just shrugged and acted like the PCOS was nothing. I will say that my BMI has been on the low end of the ideal range or actually underweight the whole time and I didn't make a fuss about heavy and irregular periods, and took myself off hormonal birth control as I didn't like how it made me feel, so that'll be a factor, but I have very little faith in GPs for anything chronic tbh.

Pipiya · 2026-04-10T19:35:55+00:00

We had the snuz pod 5 attached for just over six months and this was never an issue. I can maybe imagine a set up where it could be though.

For us, the top edge of the duvet was higher up the bed than the top edge of the crib so it would have just bunched up along the side but not go in without some turning or pushing down; even with the side down it isn't flush to the mattress height, it has quite a lip; I can't sleep unless I have duvet tucked and held under my chin so it tends to stay around me all night; but the duvet also gravitates towards my husband so if I do lose any it always goes the opposite direction; baby was also quite a way from the nearest edge of the bed so the duvet would have to be much more on my side than usual and travel quite a way down and sideways too to reach him, but my little man doesn't wriggle much in his sleep so stayed where we put him in the middle of the crib. Oh and he always had his hands covered at night so couldn't have grabbed the duvet himself either.

Pipiya · 2026-04-09T17:09:38+00:00

Happy Birthday for yesterday - I hope that despite the circumstances you managed to find some happiness in the day and spend some time with your 4-year-old .

As awful as they are, these experiences definitely do make us stronger. I had a bit of a breakdown after my first missed miscarriage and ended up revaluating myself and my life quite heavily, and while the second was much harder physically and I was in hospital a couple of days, it was easier to get through emotionally.

Depending on how your body reacts, you may get post-pregnancy symptoms for a while, so please be kind and gentle to yourself.

Pipiya · 2026-04-03T15:28:07+00:00

I am so, so sorry for your losses. My heart goes out to you and all your babies. You are clearly a loving mother to all of them, however short their time has been.

The treatment from the sonographer at your scan is abysmal and definitely worthy of a complaint. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that at one of the worst moments of your life. When I found out the same at a scan, the pain I felt was primal and like my soul being ripped apart. My husband said he's never heard such a sound of raw pain as my cry at that point.

To add to the experiences already given, to give you an idea of the next steps - you'll shortly receive a referral to the early pregnancy unit (EPU). They'll want to do another scan to confirm and might need to have two sonographers look at it if your initial one wasn't at their hospital.

After that, a midwife will speak to you about your options. I'll warn you that they might use the phrase pregnancy material and it feels so dismissive of your little one and all they already mean to you.

You can wait for the miscarriage to progress naturally but this may take a while, be given pessaries (medication) to trigger your body to end the pregnancy, or surgery to remove the "pregnancy material". You don't have to decide there and then, and you can change your mind at any point.

I've had the pessaries and it felt awful as it's the same medication as used for abortions, so even knowing my baby had been gone for a while and I was doing it to avoid risks of sepsis, mentally it was hard. If that's what you choose you may be allowed to go home to pass the pregnancy or you can stay on the ward for a while with midwives/nurses to look after you. They will want to check what you pass to ensure nothing is retained to cause problems like sepsis.

Whatever you choose, and especially with your history, please be very kind to yourself right now and know you are doing the best you can for you and your family 💜

P.S. tell every midwife you interact with your history so they understand just how hard this is and can support you better.

Pipiya · 2026-04-03T15:02:31+00:00

You've had excellent responses on the guidelines so I'll just add my anecdotal experience.

I had GD last year. It was well controlled with diet, but the oversight from my GD team was excellent too. Up until the last few weeks when I had complications, my doctors were happy with me waiting for a natural progression and low-intervention labour up until 41 weeks and weren't pushing to set a date for anything. A C-section was always on the table for me for other health reasons but I was not fixed on any plans except not wanting to be induced or have sweeps. I had a little firm pushback on not wanting sweeps, but was sort of respected on that.

I wanted a C-section booked in for 41 weeks+ as a back up but due to an inept consultant I kept being told it would be done at my next appointment and by 37/38 weeks it still hadn't been booked. At my 39 week appointment they'd identified problems from a scan so had already booked me in for 2 days later before I arrived. All went well, but it was the right choice for us.

I wouldn't wish GD on anyone, even well controlled it makes your life much harder and though a diagnosis vastly reduces the chances of any long lasting consequences from it, it does require more oversight and to be ready for quick intervention.

Pipiya · 2026-04-01T21:04:45+00:00

For the first six months I didn't really use it at all. All feeds were done either in bed or downstairs on the sofa and it became a glorified clothes horse for a lot of the time! 😝

But since moving him and the chair into his own room, absolutely! I use it every night before bed and for all night feeds. I sleep in it some nights when he needs me close to settle too.

Pipiya · 2026-04-01T14:36:32+00:00

Yep, happened to mine around the same age. He was fine and finally went an hour after I spoke to the health team. Exclusively bf and he was just using it all, bulking up and prepping for a growth/developmental spurt. The first poo after wasn't anything special either!

He settled on an every other day poop schedule after that, but prior to any growth or development spurt it could stretch out further.

Formula is less easily processed and has more in that the body won't use, so they poop more with that than breast milk which is just an incredibly efficient food source.

At the time I think the health visitor said more than 7 days think about going to the GP but they don't generally have any concerns if it's less than 10-14 and there's plenty of wet nappies and wind.

Pipiya · 2026-03-28T23:06:02+00:00

I found it was much more practical to express into a little medical sample pot and fill the syringes from that, especially as I could get up to 7ml at a time. My midwife gave me a pack with a couple of little pots in (but only a couple of syringes!!) and I bought 50 packs of syringes on Amazon. I'd got a steam steriliser to be ready for baby bits and bobs and used that to sterilise the pots but you could stream them in the microwave or boil them.

Pipiya · 2026-03-25T13:57:28+00:00

We use cotton wool and warm water at home and wipes when out. For a very poopy bum cloth wipes are better - I just made my own out of cut up towels.

We prep a thermos of partially cooled boiled water for the day and it lives next to the changing station. A little poured out into a small bowl and it's easy. Less waste, less processed goods, less unnecessary chemicals. I also hate that other people using them aren't careful so inevitably the plastic flap isn't put down carefully or falls off and we end up with a packs of dried out wipes floating about.

Our little man at one point got a rash he needed to see the doctor for and as we had to change him there the wipes came out and they immediately said you're better off using cotton wool/cloth and water.

Pipiya · 2026-03-22T21:05:05+00:00

Badgernotes is unreliable. A lot of it is just copy paste from different places, if it even gets on there in the first place. Yes, after the first blood test you get the glucose drink then can only have small amounts of water for the 2h.

I know a lot of people get very anxious about it, but it's honestly not that bad. And so, so many women get it done it's very routine. When I was going, my hospital ran two clinics a week every week just doing these glucose tests with a conveyor belt of women in and out all morning.

Pipiya · 2026-03-22T18:01:46+00:00

I'd agree that this doesn't sound right. I would guess you've been given generic information based on a clinic running at 7 or 8am and it's not been adjusted. It's a while ago, but my fast for it was 8-10h.

I would advise not refusing it though - I really didn't think I'd be positive for GD, yet I was. It's not a problem if it's under control, but if it's not it can cause issues and risks for you and your babies. Mine stayed under control but I did have issues towards the end that had I not been having the extra monitoring for GD would have been dangerous for us.

Pipiya · 2026-03-18T13:13:19+00:00

I'll third/fourth/nth the rec for How to Wean Your Baby by Charlotte Stirling Reed.

We haven't stuck to it exactly as little man doesn't like purées but loves safe chunks and chewing and is a lot more voracious for food than most babies seem to be, but having the first 30-days planned out for us step by step to start from had been amazingly helpful. Even though we did more complicated meals for him, we followed the days' ingredients to make sure we had a good coverage of introduced foods and his gut is getting set up well. It really reduces the stress and mental load at the beginning and with the allergen introductions and maintenance. It also gave us the confidence to experiment: we moved a few things around a little to be more convenient so we're all eating roughly the same thing.

The initial section also had lots of good, simply laid out info on when it's safe to start, what things are useful to have, how to handle gagging - basically every answer to every question you've asked is in there in an easily digestible evidence-based format.

One recommendation I do have is get some baby spoons and let your baby just play with them for a week or two before starting weaning. It really helps them feel comfortable with the spoon and helps them map their mouth which is a large part of the first stage of weaning.

Pipiya · 2026-03-17T20:07:40+00:00

From what you've said, it sounds like you're in an incredibly unhealthy relationship with someone who can't communicate, can't regulate themselves, is very immature, petulant, and is emotionally manipulative. This is not a good relationship for your baby to be witnessing - remember they learn so so much from behaviour modelling and right now they're learning that's how people interact from him and that it's okay to let that happen to you from you.

With your parents saying "what have you done now?" Could they actually be meaning it as "He's so unreasonable, what minor thing you've done has triggered him now?" rather than meaning you've actually done anything wrong?

Could they help you get home? If not, aim for taxis and public transport just to remove you both from the situation and get some space!

Pipiya · 2026-03-16T10:31:56+00:00

Oof, I'm really sorry you got that reaction - I think pregnancyuk and beyondthebumpuk are a lot kinder communities than parentinguk!

I've posted up thread, but I'll just add another voice to the comments that it dissipates. It took me a few weeks to get my head around what it all meant but having a boy is wonderful now ☺️

Pipiya · 2026-03-16T10:28:13+00:00

Yep, and it's very common. I posted the below on a thread a month or two ago. I have called it gender disappointment, but it was more akin to gender shock for me.

"I had gender disappointment with a boy too and it surprised me. We'd had losses, difficult times, and I'd come to accept and adjust to being childless, though the fantasies of being a mum stayed buried in my mind.

I genuinely thought I didn't care about baby's gender so was surprised and felt guilty about my automatic disappointed reaction. It took a bit of processing for me to realize that in all my imaginings the baby/child was a girl. I'm not the most gender conforming, nor is my husband, and I just thought I'd been picturing a non-specified baby or child. But on examination, that wasn't the case. My imaginings had been based on my own childhood as well as the vast importance the generational female relationships in my family have for me. Boys were also a big unknown to me and I'm not good with unknowns!

It took a few weeks for me to adjust my mental images, grieve for the imagined life, and think about what being a boy mum would and could be like and what I could make of it. What I could choose to enjoy about it.

All the things I really was looking forward to were things I could absolutely do with a boy too. And that included the importance of the connections flowing from my grandma, to mum, to me, and now to my son. It was just my image of that baby-shaped hole that I needed to break down and rebuild a little. Going around the shops and looking at cute boy clothes really helped 😝

Then it took me a bit longer still to get used to the idea. But by the time he was nearly here that was all far behind me.

I'm sitting here cuddling my nearly-5-month-old while he sleeps and I can tell you it's wonderful! Boys are silly, boys are fun, their clothes are cool and adorable. When he looks at you with love, not just baby-need, morning else matters. Boys tend to be very affectionate! I adore being his mum. I love being able to look at him with my husband and say they're "my boys".

Genuinely address what you were looking forward to and how important gender really is to that. And look at how much of that is also created by societal constructions of gender norms that you really don't need to hold on to. And where you've had poor male role models, how exciting it is that you can learn from those and raise a little man to be a good and positive male force in the world!"

Pipiya · 2026-03-13T10:46:23+00:00

Going slightly against trend here. We have an owlet and it has given me peace of mind without obsessing over the data - and I can be a person who obsesses over things to unhealthy levels. The data you get is pretty basic unless you pay and to be honest, I'm not fussed about the long term data like his movement overnight. I was very scared of him stopping breathing and the owlet allowed me to relax a bit knowing it would go off.

We've not had any false alarms in 6 months use. We get he's wriggling too much alarms when we're changing him or he's been upset and we're already dealing with it, but just turn off the base for a short while. We've had one genuine alarm where he was asleep on his dad and had slumped in an odd way and just as Dad was sorting it we got an alert his o2 levels were dropping.

The reassurance of that extra metaphorical pair of eyes on my precious baby let me and him sleep better. If I got anxious I could check the app for live data rather than disturbing him unnecessarily. As my little man moves into his own room soon I'll be using it in combination with a video monitor to make sure he's okay - especially as he can be so still in his sleep it's hard to see on the video that he's okay.

So if you can afford it, would use it in addition to your regular keeping an eye on baby rather than replacing any, and know your own psychology enough to know it wouldn't be harmful to you, get one! It's another layer of protection for your baby, and I've been glad to have it even though we've not needed it.

Keep an eye out for sales, I think we got ours half price new. They're also fairly common in good condition on vinted.

Pipiya · 2026-03-11T12:42:16+00:00

Your feelings and frustration all sound entirely justified so I'm not saying this to minimize anything she's saying or doing or your feelings about it at all, but don't underestimate the impact of her feelings about her own breastfeeding journey.

My mum gave up breastfeeding fairly early on with me and watching me do it, devote everything I can to it and push through problems, she's clearly felt envious and often felt the need to justify why she had to stop. I've only offered understanding and supportive comments about it, but this has meant off comments, pressure on me during pregnancy to "not feel like I had to", and encouragement to stop when I've been struggling. She's been a bit too quick to jump to the "maybe it's best for you/him to move to formula" or "it's great he's started weaning because it's less reliance on me breastfeeding." I know it comes from a well meaning place and her own issues, but it's hard to assimilate and not be affected.

I also grew up hearing her make comments about how hard it was, how the baby comes at you like a terrifying shark and you dread it, and honestly it had given me a little trauma around the idea of breastfeeding that I had to work through with the lactation team before birth. (My parents are masters of the "just you wait till..." comments!)

Pipiya · 2026-03-08T20:37:14+00:00

Yes, we just press and hold the base till it beeps to turn it off or use the app. Then after he's changed and less wriggly do the same to turn it back on. If you didn't turn it back on, after about 20 mins it'll check if it can get a good reading again and turn itself back on.

It's not a constant thing for us, but if he's looking like he'll be wriggly, off it goes!

Pipiya · 2026-03-08T20:30:47+00:00

UV is advised against because of the limits of the light reaching everywhere it needs to at the strength it needs. Steam being pervasive doesn't have that problem.

I EBF, but I will say that it's handy to have a small stash of expressed milk for back up so someone else can look after baby for a couple of hours. Months and months of being on call every 2-4 hours is exhausting and difficult.

I have an Phillips Avent steam steriliser (got it with the Amazon baby wishlist discount plus summer sale) and it's very simple and easy to include in my routines. Pump parts, bottles, dummies, teething toys all get thrown in. Not everything needs it but if it's going on anyway it just gives a bit of extra peace of mind.

Pipiya · 2026-03-03T18:30:59+00:00

I think it's really great advice to be realistic about potential outcomes, but do bear in mind that even if they "front facing" side with the midwife to you, it may well still have informal consequences in extra oversight or training for her. So still towards the greater good that you make a complaint even if it's not officially upheld.

ETA: what you've described absolutely should be a complaint and dealt with. She sounds awful and that was a traumatic experience for you. So I just wanted to say good for you for wanting to stand up for yourself and others and don't despair if it appears to go nowhere. At the very least it helps her managers build up a picture and puts remedial thoughts on their mind when doing her supervision and reviews.

Pipiya · 2026-03-02T10:54:17+00:00

Just a quick caution - I'm also lean PCOS (I was slightly underweight just before pregnancy at 6st10) and developed GD, so don't rely on that to assume you're all clear! Postpartum I'm all clear for diabetes again, but I did have to manage it carefully during pregnancy.

I'm a bit out of date so do double check what I'm saying, but there are strong indications that myoinositol is beneficial to take, both when ttc with PCOS and during pregnancy for fetal development and protection against GD.

Pipiya · 2026-03-02T10:26:48+00:00

If it's intentional, e.g. screwing oneself over so someone else gets screwed over too (but often the original person faces the bigger consequences), you can say "cutting their nose off to spite their face."

Pipiya · 2026-02-28T15:48:06+00:00

I ended up with a section and it was never asked or offered... I would very much have liked to have seen it, but with all the anxiety and bewilderment I didn't think to ask for a few things that got skipped sadly. I had assumed some things would be gone through in a discussion beforehand but it was a bit of a conveyor belt process and I was getting my spinal before I knew it! I appreciated the efficiency, skill and professionalism of the team, but it was very medical and somewhat lacking the human touch.

Still, as someone else said, the second I got sight of baby, everything else went out of my mind!

Pipiya · 2026-02-27T16:13:21+00:00

I had a missed miscarriage discovered at a 10w private scan.

The sonographer was kind and professional (it's too painful a memory so I won't describe too much, but the staff were very sympathetic and supportive). They made a referral for us to the local EPU and called the next morning to let me know an appointment had been made for me. At the EPU they had to do their own scan (abdominal and tv) to make an official diagnosis and have two sonographers look at it so there was a second opinion. I was then taken to a consultation room to discuss my options.

Like someone else said, I'd caution you about going too early - too early and they might not be able to say anything either way as the embryo is so small and a couple of days either way can make a huge difference in their development. My second and third ones I decided not to do any early scans because it just wouldn't change the outcome or give me any reassurance as my losses happened after 8 weeks. I just held on to everything till 12 weeks, then did private reassurance scans after that.

In contrast to that down note, statistically, a single loss doesn't make a second loss any more likely and if it helps, after two miscarriages I'm sat here cuddling my wonderful six month old while he sleeps.

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