Rosie photo overload, although I meant to talk about something else...

I'm so sorry I didn't update after the last entry where I wondered if we had conceived!!! I can't believe I forgot to update! Of course you know that means I got my period, otherwise I would have been back here the very next day! ;) Thank you for the comments and messages, and I am just sorry it has taken me this long to update.

Rosie-Bo is now 7 months old - she turned 7 months last week. She is beginning to vaguely crawl backwards, and can scoot forwards a little if she is desperate for a toy that's almost within reach. She is vigorously fascinated (!!) about all things on floor level, and most things at table or sofa level too. She loves soft toys, especially Nathan's beloved Monkey - he delights in her squeals of excitement and limbs flapping away eagerly when he dances Monkey in front of her. No other soft toy has the same effect, and she just beams if he puts Monkey into her arms for her to hold for a minute. He takes Monkey right back if she starts trying to chew on his ears though! ;) She seems really fond of teddies and soft toys, so we'll have to try to find her a good "lovey" of her own.

She is finally starting to show interest in food! She was interested at 6 months, but when it came to actually putting food in her mouth, nope. She has her own little booster seat with a tray on it, and sits up to the table with all of us, in that. She eagerly looks round the table at everyone talking and eating, like she's been longing for this for months, bless her! We have given her cooked carrot slices - she was not impressed. Also banana - not thrilled. That was her first food, like all the others have had, but at 6.5 months, instead of on the day she turned 6 months. Here she is at her new booster chair, and a couple to illustrate her reaction to the banana - the happy face was the moment she had just dropped it on the floor, lol! :D

Then another time she had a roast potato and LOVED it! She ate most of the inside of it, and chewed on the tough outer part for ages. I didn't realise it, because it hasn't happened this early with any of my other babies, but she was cutting her first tooth! She got her first tooth at 6 months and almost 4 weeks, and then her second tooth (both bottom middles) a few days later at 7 months. My youngest to get a first tooth was Matthew (and Elijah, actually) at 7.5 months, so she's the earliest now! :)

Anyway, so potato = success! :) She has eaten roast potato since then too. Also the next time we had a roast chicken, I handed her some of the leg meat, and she was chewing and sucking on strips and fistfuls of that for the whole meal, lol! She ate quite a lot of it, which I was surprised to see. I really only expect them to go for tastes at this early stage - breastmilk is enough until 12 months, so I'm not aiming at filling up with food or anything. She also likes cucumber and if I cut them in sticks with one side "skin", she gnaws out all the soft part and "rounds off" the ends. :D Those are all the foods she's tried so far.

I have no idea what she weighs or measures. She hasn't been weighed in months and months, I can't even remember when! Her next baby check is probably around 8 or 9 months, so I should be getting an appointment through for that soon-ish, I guess. She is so roly-poly and chubby still! I will post a few photos that I took last week. She is YUMMY! :) I think I didn't post the ones I took of her a month ago yet, at 6 months, so I'll post those first, and THEN the delicious roly-poly ones! ;)

 

The day she turned 6 months old:

 

A family outing on a hot afternoon, trying to keep her out of the sunshine. She had some milky, we had some snuggles and chatted a bit, and then Elijah came and talked to her and made her giggle. She LOVES all of her siblings and lights up when she sees them! :)

Cute little outfit with a matching girly hairband at 6 months and 1 week! I am still loving having daughters SO MUCH!!! (love my boys fiercely too, just to say!)

Here are the roly-poly photos taken the day she turned 7 months old! :)

Love her so much!!! :D

Well, I actually didn't come here to talk so much about Rosie, as other things! Only I got side-tracked and accidentally posted a bunch of photos of my yummy girl instead! ;)

I have had a kidney stone - the second one I've ever had - bizarrely 5 years to the exact week since my last one! It started mid-July, and THANKFULLY never got as torturous as the last one. The GP was fairly useless (except for the prescribing of a lot of medication), and refused to send me for diagnostics, like X-ray or scan to actually see if there was a stone, and where it might be. I had the same symptoms as my last one started with - intermittent bladder pain and it hurt to wee pretty badly. I thought UTI last time, but apparently it's a typical symptom of a kidney stone, along with the others. So I ignored it, and it was only a few days later when I began getting sharp twinges in the soft part of my side that suddenly (horrifyingly!) I realised that I recognised them as a mild form of the same exact pain as when I had had a kidney stone. I needed to be ambulanced to hospital for pain relief last time, it got SO bad, but it has just been very bothersome sharpness this time. Also my kidney has become really achy and painful, I guess because it has backed up somewhat because of the stone blocking the way. Last time my kidney was completely obstructed for 3 weeks and urine had broken through all around it, yeurgh! It was indescribably painful, but this time much less so.

Anyway, I was super anxious, obviously. I kept going back to see the doctor and asking for an X-ray, but they wouldn't let me unless I was in more significant pain, and sent me home to drink plenty, take the pain meds and wait for it to pass. So I've been doing that, and I still haven't passed it! BUT the pain has been significantly less bothersome for the past week, at least. My kidney no longer aches at all. I read that once the stone gets really low, near the bladder, it seems to cause the least symptoms and the kidney isn't obstructed so badly, even though it's the most narrow part of the ureter (weird!), and it can sit there for some time before passing. I still have pain in my side on and off, and it still hurts to wee intermittently, sometimes a lot, so... I had blood in my urine a couple of times, which was the give-away for me that it was a stone, along with the other symptoms. 98% of stones cause blood in the urine, even just microscopically. Last time the bleeding was horrible, but this time less severe, which I'm grateful for!

ANYWAY, it seems like a crazy time for a pregnancy, but...

It's not like it was planned or anything. I feel a bit daft now, thinking of an unpassed stone and the fact that I can't get an X-ray if I might be pregnant. But we were just being... husband and wife, and since hitting my 40s, there has been a major shift towards... being husband and wife, um, more. NO IDEA where that has come from, but there we go. No missing the "fertile window" or anything, lol! Kidney stone be darned! ;)

So here I am at 8DPO after possibly conceiving last cycle, which lead to a longer-than-usual luteal phase of 7 days last time. The same thing happened at that cycle (the same number of months PP) after Elijah, leading to the same 7 day LP, and then the following cycle I conceived Lydia.

I have been super over-heated (like a radiating oven - Neil has noticed it just giving me a hug) since 4DPO. My temps are higher than last cycle in my LP, and they have been mostly flat except for a couple of spikes, which is another promising sign. I haven't felt much of anything in the first few days - not pregnant or otherwise. The last few days I have been INSANELY irritable, and Neil has been telling me I'm pregnant, especially with the radiating heat. He stroked my cheeks and said they were weirdly soft (my unique sign over all these pregnancies!) at 5DPO!!! Very early for that - it's really only from 8DPO that this usually happens for me.

I haven't had any of my usual pregnant "bad cramps" yet, although I have felt pretty crampy today, on and off. I do have my "pregnant" CM, and also the occasional unpleasant fluttery heart palpitations that I only get when I'm pregnant - happening right this second actually. I have been having vivid dreams most nights, which is very pregnant of me, and one of them was about Neil having had a child with someone else, a little girl about 3 years old with blonde hair. She was with us in our home though - very odd dream! The next morning (I think this was 7DPO, yesterday), I came downstairs to find the older children already up and busy, and literally the first thing Nathan (8) said to me was, "Mummy, if we DO have another baby, I don't think we should call it Charlie. It just doesn't go with our family names." I nearly stopped breathing!!! They never mention things like that, but on the other hand someone ALWAYS does (it's SO uncanny) when I'm in very early pregnancy, when they can't possibly know yet! So there's that. :)

And there's this, despite only being 8DPO:

I know it's SUPER faint, but it's there, isn't it?

If it's true... IF... (I just can't believe it!!!)... then this is the earliest I've got pregnant after a previous baby, I think. The baby would be due April 20th (FINALLY my April baby that I've always wanted, if you remember back when I was blogging about trying for a 3rd baby?!), when Rosalie would be 15 months old - my smallest age gap yet! Yikes.

It's way too surreal right now, and maybe it'll all be gone again tomorrow, so for now I am just going to go to bed (it's late) - I am crazy tired today, pregnant tired, if I'm honest, and I will temp and test again in the morning. I totally expected my temp to drop right down this morning, but when it didn't I thought I might as well take a test (at 8DPO, hahaha!) because I'm Crazy-Obsesso Woman after all! :D

Will definitely keep you posted! :)