Flitters and flutters... and quite big kicks

The baby's movements have crept up on me quite suddenly. I thought I was feeling little flutters...kind of like someone accidentally brushing your arm with something very soft... from about 13 weeks. But I had to concentrate hard to feel them. And in retrospect, it may have been all in my head. Then, about 10 days ago there were some flitter flutters, a bit stronger than what I'd thought I'd felt before. It happened every so often, but I still wasn't sure...

Towards Christmas day, they were getting stronger and stronger, and every so often there was a little tap from the inside. Like a baby bird trying to tap out of its egg shell. And then there was the goldfish movement. These were like a goldfish turning circles in my tummmy, round and round and round... And felt a little unpleasant... Nice, obviously because it's the baby, but... Still a bit weird. Over Christmas weekend, the baby got quite excited and started properly booting me every now and then. Turns out the baby likes snow, sledging and hanging out in grandma/grandpa's house watching TV. Sometimes making me jump with surprise when thoughts of baby had momentarily dropped out of my mind. Maybe 4-5 times a day, there would be a small football match in my lower abdomen, interspersed by little bubbly flutters of position changing and wriggling.

So yesterday I was getting on with my revision for finals (urgh) and the kicking continued. Every now and then, I'd put a hand down to see if I could feel the kicks from outside... but no... still too soft. But last night, lying in bed, I had another feel and I could definitely feel them. I got Nick to come and feel and he definitely felt them. He'd tell me when the baby kicked, and he was right every time... So exciting! I've been able to feel the baby for a while and have been getting used to it - but this was really exciting for both of us... Partly cause it's a bit more real for Nick now, but also because our wee baby was actually having some kind of impact on the outside world, and partly cause I was a bit worried it was all in my head... Yay for kicks!

Bubbles...

It's all about bubble baths. I can't get enough of them. It's getting ridiculous. My lovely husband comes home from work and knows where to find me without even shouting around the house...



Pre-pregnancy I restricted myself to a maximum of one a week to save on hot water for climate change/energy bill reasons. But now... I can't keep myself out of the bathtub.

It's amazing. There actually may not be anything better than a proper good soak with some decent bubble bath. Since I've been pregnant my body hurts all over most of the time, enough to make me cry some days. The only thing that made this any better has been the bath.

I now fantasise about bubble bathing products day and night. Got an awesome bottle of bubble bath from my mum for my birthday at the end of October which has long gone... Boo - it's smelled great and was really soft. Had to nip out and buy a bottle of cheap bubbles to keep me going last weekend - not so lovely, but good bubble volumes. And I'm actually ridiculously excited about getting to Lush on Monday to buy some bathtime treats.

Another weird pregnancy thing is that my skin has started to hurt, get really dry and peel. This hasn't been something I've ever experienced before, but apparently it's quite common in pregnancy. Trying to fend it off with some good body lotion. And there's the fear of the dreaded stretch marks... Arhg. I have some cocoa butter which I'm using fairly religiously in the vain hope it might work. Any tips welcome!

So suggestions for body creams/butters/lotions and bubble baths/salts/bombs very very welcome. And if Santa wants to put one or two wee treats in my stocking...

Baby Belly - 13 weeks and 6 days

Last week I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself side on in the mirror in a public bathroom... Wow. There was curvature. Interesting.

A week later (now 13 weeks and 6 days), and there are definitely certain things I can't wear anymore. There have certainly been some bemused colleagues pointing in my direction... My wonderful mother turned up this week and helped me find some ace maternity jeans and work trousers.

Still not sure I definitely look pregnant, and worried that I'm just looking a bit fat. Unless you know me particularly well and that I normally have a flat tum and have lost 5.5kg since getting pregnant!

Otherwise, this week has been pretty good. Have only puked a couple of times, which is another gradual improvement. ALthough the vomiting does seem to be getting more forceful when it does happen. Was actually sick in my mum's car this week! Good work. Still really really fussy about my food and prefer things that have no flavour at all... Still getting very dizzy, especially first thing in the morning. Have nearly fainted a few times when standing up for a while, and my consultant now forces me to sit down during bedside teaching. This is embarrassing, but necessary. Guess my blood pressure's going down.

So what's the bub up to? Well apparently, it's now 8cm long. Makes lots of funny faces and if you prod my tummy it does a sucking reflex cause it thinks it's time to breastfeed.

We found out the sex of the baby last Friday and I'll be writing a new post on this soon... Also coming soon, more on our plans for a home birth - all very exciting!

Shooting Your Own Roots

So... Here's the wee roots of my own that I've been busy shooting over the past 13 weeks.

It's the oldest cliché, but pregnancy is actually the most amazing miracle. It's such a wonderful idea. God could have planned a number of other, simpler, more straightforward way of replacing the population... Babies could be left in cabbage patches or be delivered by storks. People could just pop up fully grown, magically appearing from nowhere, able to care for themselves, resilient, independent.

But instead, they grow inside other people?!

What a privilege to get to grow a little person inside yourself. To watch it grow and develop, stretch your skin, start to move around... and then to help if out into the world, where you will need to care for and protect it if it's to survive beyond day one.

What a magical way of creating new life. You couldn't think up this kind of fairy story if you tried.

Boaz

It isn't all about food. I do other things. Today I was sitting at my kitchen table, minding my own business. I was eating bran flakes (improved with flaked almonds and linseeds) and drinking a cup of herbal tea. I was perusing jobs in Scotland that I might like to apply for someday.

The phone rang. It was the hosting coordinator for a local organisation called The Boaz Trust. They try to find hosts for destitute asylum seekers; to keep them off the streets and offer the care and attention that our ruthless government can't seem to afford them.

Nick and I have been talking about using our newly acquired spare room to host someone who needs a roof over their head for some time. We met with the hosting coordinator from Boaz, who explained what was involved - as much or as little as we liked really. You can offer to host someone for months at a time, weeks at a time or on an emergency short-term basis until some more permanent accomodation can be provided for them. Who are these people and why do they need hosted? The answer to this question is best explained by Boaz themselves:

Two out of every three asylum seekers, who flee persecution in their home countries due to civil war or for political or ethnic reasons, are refused sanctuary in the UK by the Home Office. Unable to prove their stories, they are forced onto the streets with no means of support and no right to work.

They are told to go back to their home countries, yet some cannot get the necessary travel documents, or there is simply no safe route back to their country due to conflicts or political turmoil. Many more fear persecution, torture, or even death if they return to the countries they fled from, preferring to live a life of destitution in the UK.

Furthermore, cuts in legal aid have led to many solicitors giving up immigration work meaning that some asylum seekers are unrepresented at their hearings and many struggle to make appeals and fresh claims with no support.

The Independent Asylum Commission estimates that there are 284,500 refused asylum seekers nationwide. Manchester was one of the top three dispersal towns for asylum seekers entering the country in 2007, and many remain once their asylum claims are turned down. Indeed, several thousand refused asylum seekers are known to live in the city.

Many have nowhere to go and have no choice but to sleep rough on the streets. With no national insurance number they cannot even access government funded homeless hostels. These people become like “living ghosts”, hidden from society with no means of survival. Physical and mental illness are common, particularly for those with a history of torture and abuse.

This sounded like a problem we wanted to help solve. Our spare room is a real blessing to us, allowing us to have guests to stay more comfortably than in our old flat (one bedroom and a kitchen/lounge!), but we don't have guests every weekend and it's empty pretty much every weekday. We wanted to give ourselves the summer to settle into our new house, but told Boaz we'd be available to host on an emergency basis from the end of August.

So later today we are receiving our first guest - a lady from the Congo. I'm not sure how things will work out - will we eat together? Will she speak any English? Will she understand my French? Will she be comfortable in our home? Will it be weird having a random stranger living with us? I'm excited about finding out the answers to these questions. A lot of people have told me they couldn't cope with hosting asylum seekers like this. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm naive, but I just believe that if I have the means to help someone out, I have a moral duty to do so. I'll let you know how it goes.

Pear and Almond Tart for Esther

I have spent a lovely weekend catching up with an old friend. I haven't seen Esther for nearly two years, but she is one of those friends with whom you can pick up where you left off within minutes and be laughing together, weeding the garden together, rolling pastry, chopping tomatoes, drinking beer...



Food was a feature of the weekend. We both love great local, organic produce; especially since our Est's a Cumbrian farm girl. We ate pumpkin with deep-fried polenta and sage, pasta with tomato and basil sauce and a pear and almond tart. As promised to Esther, here is the recipe for the pear and almond tart - not one for which I can claim credit. This goes to Thomasina Miers and is from her great book, 'Cook' which was a birthday present from two other great friends. I love the taste of pears with lemon and bay leaves - an unexpectedly fabulous combo. We left out the blackberries cause it was 'too much'. I saved the syrup from the poaching process; Esther thinks it would be great over ice cream. I've been making variations on this tart all summer; it's especially good with plums soaked in brandy. It tends to be a bit runny if you serve it straight out of the oven and i find it benefits from sitting, cooling and solidifying for a while.

Pear and Almond Tart

Pastry
250g plain flour
25g icing sugar or caster sugar
125g butter
2 egg yolks

For the Frangipane:
175g ground almonds
175g sugar
175g butter
1 egg plus 1 yolk

For the pears:
200g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
1 bay leaf
grated zest of 1 lemon
5 pears, peeled, cored and quartered.
1 punnet of blackberries (optional)
dash of brandy (optional)

Whizz the pastry ingredients in a food processor, then add enough water, bit by bit, until the dough just comes together into a ball. Turn out onto a clean surface and bring together, wrapping the dough in clingfilm. Pat down in a flat circular shape and leave in the fridge to rest for 30 mins. Roll out to fit a 24cm pie dish (Esther says: nice and thin!) Bake blind in a preheated oven 180C/350F/Gas4 and leave to cool.

Place the almonds, butter and sugar into a food processor and whizz briefly. Then add the egg. Combine and set the frangipane mixture aside.

Bring 200ml of water to the boil in a saucepan and add the sugar. Simmer until the sugar has dissolved, then add the vanilla pod, bay leaf and lemon zest. Add the pears and poach for 10 minutes (roughly! mine took a lot longer than this), then drain and slice thinly. Do what you wish with the poaching liquid, but it's not required from here on in.

Spread the frangipane over the base of the pastry case and arrange the pears on top in overlapping fans. Sprinkle with blackberries (if using) and a dash of brandy. Bake for 25-30 minutes until puffed up, golden and beautiful.

Norwegian Tofu Salad

Whilst I was gathering my thoughts for a blog post on my epic bus journey and reflecting on sustainable transport, I invented myself a tofu salad. There is nothing Norwegian about this salad in any way. Other than the fact that the recipe was requested by my friend Matt, who lives in Norway. Not even he's Norwegian. But there we go. Things aren't always what they seem.

Leftover wholegrain rice is the best to make this recipe with - basmati just won't cut it. I used a really nutty organic wholegrain that is almost like pearl barley in texture, and it worked really well.

Norwegian Tofu Salad

Serves 2

Marinade:
100g Tofu, the squidgy uncooked kind (I'm guessing at the quantity cause my scales are broken, so feel free to adjust this if it doesn't look like enough).
3 tablespoons Sesame oil
1 tablespoon Soya sauce
1 cm Fresh ginger root cut into matchsticks or grated
2 cloves Garlic
2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder

Small portion of wholegrain rice, cooked.

Salad leaves such as rocket, lettuce, celery leaves.
6 radishes
Half a cucumber
3 spring onions

Lime juice
Linseeds or sesame seeds (optional)


Cut the tofu into 1/2cm cubed pieces, place into a shallow dish and add all the other ingredients. Leave to marinade, turning occasionally, for as long as you can (at least 30 mins).



After this time, place the tofu and marinade in a medium-sized pan over a medium heat. Let it fry until nice and brown. Add the rice and turn it over in the mixture so that it gets a good coating of oil (sesame oil is really good for you!). Set aside while you make the rest of the salad.





Wash the leaves, tear them up and pile on one side of a plate. Slice the radishes and spring onions really thinly. Cut the cucumber into thin matchsticks. Arrange them on top of the leaves. My salad came with some nice vegetable flowers that I decorated with. Fun. Squeeze some lime juice over the top; it cuts through the sesame oil really nicely.

Now pile the rice and tofu mixture on the other half of the plate.
I threw some linseeds over the whole plate for added health benefit. Sesame seeds would work nicely too.

Eat. Goes nicely with some Chinese beer.