We are home from an okay week at Center Parcs and a wonderful weekend on the Isle of Wight at the very luxurious West Bay Club.

Arriving home I have realised that my bump has definitely grown and we are only 7 and a half weeks from D-Day!!!!

And I thought that this pregnancy would not go fast, now it seems to be zooming past and I feel like we still have so much to do!

It is also a generally busy time for us. David is busy with work, we have lots of family events to look forward to and Easter is not far away.

This weekend David and I are having a night away without the squidgers. My beautiful best friend is having the babies over night and we are going to her house for a quiet night alone and our last lazy morning for what I am sure is going to be a very very long time!

Matilda Bump seems to be very active at the moment.

According to my NCT email at 32 weeks pregnant, Baby is about 40.5cm long and weighs about 1.6kg. Over the next four weeks she will put on about a kilogram of weight as she lays down the body fat to regulate her body temperature when she’s born. Her skin is smooth and her arms and legs are getting ‘chubby’.

I cannot get used to the idea of having a chubby baby. I told the lovely couples we met on our antenatal retreat this weekend that Esther and William looked like very athletic old men when they were born and for the first few weeks of their life. Their skin was transparent so you could see every muscle and sinew and they looked like super toned miniature adults.

Baby Athlete

Cuddling a chubby baby will be very strange indeed.

When Esther and William were 32+3 they were 5 weeks old. William weighed 4lbs and Esther 3lbs 5oz. I wonder how much Matilda Bump weighs right now?

My NCT email says that as Matilda Bump puts on more weight I will find myself putting on weight too, by roughly 1lb a week. I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea how much I weigh or how much I have gained during the pregnancy. Perhaps I should have kept a better record? The reason that so much weight is gained in these final weeks is that I will need to consume more calories to share the energy and nutrients with Matilda May. I am going to be writing a series of posts over the coming week about healthy eating and exercise during pregnancy. I have had some great advice this past weekend from midwife Nikki Khan and physiotherapist Jo Hillier. I cannot wait to share it with you.

I am definitely feeling heavier now and also more tired. My 28 week blood tests came back showing that I am anaemic and so I am now taking iron supplements as well as Osteocare which was recommended to me by one of the lovely ladies on our antenatal weekend. I know that I need to be taking more calcium as my pregnancies have been so close together and because I breastfed the twins for so long and am desperate to breastfeed for a whole year again.

As part of the antenatal retreat I had an Espa prenatal treatment and I am planning to treat myself to another one in a few weeks time. It was so wonderfully relaxing and gave me some quiet time to focus on just me and the baby. It was heaven! (Watch out for a full review coming soon!)

Today I treated myself to my going to and coming home from hospital outfit from Vertbaudet. I am going to be wearing an orange floral dress to the hospital that converts into a skirt for coming home. What a great idea! Coming home I will add this white nursing tshirt which looks to be very flattering. I chose to order from Vertbaudet as at the moment they have a special offer code (3800) which gives you £15 off your order and a free baby changing bag which is just too gorgeous to pass up.

For my hospital bag I have a Pink Lining Twins bag (review coming soon!) and so this will be a bag of Matilda Bump’s very own.

Midwife Nikki Khan suggests having two very different bags for yourself and for the baby so that your partner or midwife can easily distinguish between the two after the birth. I think this is a great idea and over the coming weeks I will be talking about packing each of these bags ready for birth as well as packing a toddler bag for Esther and William in case I have to be away over night. There is so much to think about and blog about and do!!!