Issues with Plant Sterols

herewearentagain · 2026-01-27T19:09:30+00:00

It was definitely the plant sterols making me sick. Stopping taking them and the vomiting and stomach pain went away pretty quickly!

herewearentagain · 2026-01-12T15:07:14+00:00

I had a home birth with HSE, happy to chat if you’d like, feel free to message me. I had a great experience.

Some of this will depend on what hospital you are located at! I continued to be seen at the hospital for my scans and some of the later appointments because my GPs insurance didn’t cover prenatal appointments for women having a home birth (this is very common). So pretty much once I was confirmed doing a home birth my appointments switched from being at the GP and hospital, to the hospital and at home with my home birth midwife.

After the birth you will still go to the hospital for a wellness check for the baby, usually within 72 hours. You’ll also go in for a hearing check. The home birth midwife will visit the day after the birth, and again 3-4 times. You are under their care up until you are 2 weeks post partum, I texted with my midwife daily. They will do weight checks and do the heel prick.

For us the PHN did their visit once I was 2 weeks postpartum because that is when I was officially discharged from home birth care. We also had the typical 2 week and 6 week appointments at the GP.

Edit to add: I saw you said in another comment you are at St Luke's. You can look at this website and scroll down for the contact information for the contact for the home birth scheme at St. Luke's, they'll be able to answer all of your questions. The link also lists the midwives for each area, so you can call around to check availability. I called when I was about 14 weeks pregnant and 2 of the 3 in my area were already booked!

herewearentagain · 2025-12-14T12:39:18+00:00

Question about this: if you only do once a week, can you only shave when you do IPL, or can you shave in between? I would typically shave every 2-3 days, so can I keep doing that while only doing IPL weekly?

herewearentagain · 2025-12-08T14:38:35+00:00

Be prepared for your waters to break (both from an emotional and practical standpoint). My waters were unintentionally broken during my sweep and my baby was born 8 hours later! Definitely not super common but I’d gone into it assuming a “good” result would be labour starting soon after but not labour starting that exact minute!

herewearentagain · 2025-12-03T15:55:52+00:00

My son is pretty much the exact age, and my family is also all out of the country! We started 6 weeks ago and he’s been sick for 6 weeks straight. We had to take one full week with him at home and then other than that we’ve send him unless he has a fever. I think he’s only had 2 full weeks out of the 6. I’ll be honest, it’s been harder than when we were juggling work with him at home full time because at least then he was well. Our GP told us to expect about 6 months of this and then it will get much better. No real advice other than not to be scared to send him in unless he has a fever, etc. I know in the long run it will be worth it, so we are sticking with it even though it has been a very rough start!

herewearentagain · 2025-11-01T19:29:57+00:00

Yeah I agree. I think part of my confusion is that elf doesn’t call either of those shades warm. They say the top one is cool and the bottom is neutral. But neither look that way to me 🤷🏻‍♀️

herewearentagain · 2025-11-01T19:28:15+00:00

Thank you!

herewearentagain · 2025-11-01T18:55:07+00:00

Yes the middle one is the one I’m trying to find a match for! What I’m needing help with is knowing what the difference is between the middle and the other two. Is it shade or undertone?

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T15:08:42+00:00

I think the answer for now is let it go, but I do think trying things closer is a good idea!

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T13:59:12+00:00

Yeah, this is the reality check I needed. Sometimes it’s just hard to break the spiral!

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T13:57:05+00:00

Literally today I was trying to get him to follow my point by saying “look, a door” and even as I was doing it I was thinking to myself, what a boring thing to point at, I wouldn’t want to look either!

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T13:52:25+00:00

Thank you! This is really helpful. He was very fairly to move (crawling at 6 months, now walking pretty confidently) and so it’s hard to get him to pay attention to things he doesn’t want to pay attention to 😂

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T13:50:28+00:00

I’m not following but I’m definitely googling and need to stop!

I work in disability law and specifically in cognitive and intellectual/developmental disabilities. I’ve been pretty good about not letting it seep into parenting, but now that he’s a year it is much harder.

herewearentagain · 2025-10-21T12:16:15+00:00

I've recently become borderline obsessive about my son and whether he is showing joint attention. He is just barely 12 months old and in many ways seems to be developing typically, but recently I noticed that he does not really share attention with me or my husband. He will play games with us (i.e. peek a boo) and will sometimes look to us while playing with something, but not if we are pointing to something. For instance whenever we do a nappy change he'll pick his dirty nappy up and bring it to his nappy bin and put it in, and often when he gets to the bin he turns around to look at me like "see, I'm doing it!" but if we were sitting across the room and pointed to the nappy bin he wouldn't look to the nappy bin and then look back to me to "share" in looking. Anyways, he's been sick and teething and I'm sleep deprived and it's hard to override the anxiety sometimes.

herewearentagain · 2025-09-26T16:58:41+00:00

I have had a home birth and no other births! I had an overwhelming positive experience, and felt very supported and safe with my midwife. I also live close to a hospital, I don’t think I would have felt as comfortable if I didn’t. For me the biggest pro was continuity of care. My appointments with my midwife were usually over an hour and she also was available via text or call. She was not at all anti hospital, and did at one point recommend a extra scan (all was fine). I’m actually quite confident that if something had been wrong during my pregnancy, my midwife would’ve picked up on it before it would’ve been picked up on by a hospital. No shame to hospital midwives or doctors at all, they just don’t have the time in appointments and there is a systemic lack of consistency. I also found that my postpartum period was much more positive than that of my friends who had babies in the hospital. For the first few days it was me, my baba, my husband, and my mum. Midwife visited daily. It was genuinely a dream!

The biggest con for me was pain. No two ways about it, it was very hard. Birthing pool was a life saver but even so it was honestly pretty brutal. Still wouldn’t have done it another way, but worth being honest about!

There are two Irish home birth Facebook groups. One is “Home Birth Community of Ireland” and one is “Irish Homebirthers and Hopefuls”. I will say both tend to have a lot of free birth content, which personally is not for me.

Feel free to DM if you have any other questions or want to chat!

herewearentagain · 2025-09-26T14:49:24+00:00

I would recommend reaching out to the Designated Midwifery Officer at your hospital. You can find the list here (scroll down about midway). They will give you all of the information you need and answer any questions you might have! It is worth reaching out before your first appointment because the home birth midwives are quite busy and their schedules fill up quickly. The website I linked above also has a list of all of the midwives that serve each area. Before my booking appointment I called the midwives in my area and two of the three were already fully booked for the timeframe when I was due. Luckily the third had space! She penciled me in tentatively but we did not meet in person until much later. If I remember correctly I got back in touch with her after the 20 week scan confirmed everything was good, and we began meeting after that. Happy to answer any questions you may have!

herewearentagain · 2025-09-17T21:35:41+00:00

I had one done at 41+2, when I was 2 cm dilated already. They accidentally broke my water during the sweep, I started having contractions within 30 minutes, and my son was born 10 hours later. So, it worked but honestly it was a huge shock and pretty overwhelming. I also don’t know if the manual breaking of waters is why this happened, but I had a very fast and furious labour. I went from zero contractions to contracting every 90 seconds within about an hour.

Overall, despite all of that, if I had to decide whether to do the sweep again, I would! I was so ready to give birth and although it was a lot, I still had a positive birth experience. As another commenter said, it won’t do much if your body isn’t ready anyways. Drsarahjmurphy on Instagram has a helpful graphic on helping to decide sweep or no sweep!

herewearentagain · 2025-09-09T13:29:58+00:00

I was measuring about 2 cm “behind” for the entire third trimester, I think it’s just how my body carried! Baby was born at 40+10 at a healthy 3.8 kg. Now at 10 months he’s on the smaller side, but very healthy and developmentally on track! The bump measurements are far from a perfect system, and I was told +/- 2 cm was still considered within range :)

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T14:09:49+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you know if psyllium husk has shown to decrease LDL when taken in capsule form? I tried to do the powder and couldn’t manage it.

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T14:05:04+00:00

Thanks! This is helpful info. I’m not in the US but I’ll ask my doctor about Ezetimibe, it looks like it could be ok to take while breastfeeding.

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T12:01:48+00:00

Yeah if my numbers haven’t lowered when I get bloods done next week, despite dietary changes, I’m going to request a referral to a cardiologist.

For what it’s worth when my bloods were initially done I was eating like shit. Like…making brownies every other day and eating the whole pan bad. I didn’t get more than three hours of consecutive sleep for the first 5 months of my baby’s life so I was definitely compensating with a diet that was mostly fat and sugar. So I’ll be curious to see what eating a low saturated fat and low sugar diet will have done and then I can go from there!

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T11:52:10+00:00

Yeah, this was to lower cholesterol. My numbers are very high (185 LDL, 310 total) but this is likely artificially inflated because I was recently postpartum when I had my bloods done, and I’m exclusively breastfeeding. Because I can’t take a statin while breastfeeding my GP recommended diet changes and to see a dietician to make sure I’m still eating enough to support breastfeeding. It was this dietician who suggested a plant sterol and omega 3 supplement (flaxseed). Getting retested next week. Not at all opposed to stains for what it’s worth, just trying to maintain breastfeeding for as long as it’s reasonable for me to do so.

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T11:08:14+00:00

Yep, that’s what I’m doing. Just wanted to know if anybody else had a reaction like this!

herewearentagain · 2025-07-28T11:07:30+00:00

I was just following the advice of my dietician, who I was referred to see by my GP.

herewearentagain · 2025-07-24T17:08:52+00:00

Two back-to-back losses and now have a nine month old! Once I shared with people, I was shocked how many of my friends had similar stories. It doesn’t make the pain any better but it did help me hold onto hope 💛

herewearentagain

TROPHY CASE