One down, many more to go

We took a long weekend and went up to the Hunter Valley to celebrate our first anniversary. In some ways it's hard to believe that it has only been a year since the wedding, in other ways it seems like forever (in a good way).
We stayed at Cedar Creek Cottages which are on Stonehurst Vineyard. We'd stayed there before almost 4 years ago just before Christmas and had a wonderful time. This time we experienced a completely different season as they've just had some bad flooding in this area. Unfortunately their cellar door and winery had been affected by the floods and the bridge over the river on their property had been washed away. They'd also lost our booking as they were busy drying papers all over their house. This didn't matter as there was an available cottage but to get there we had to cross over the neighbour's bridge, a very scary old iron bridge with just 2 tracks for the tyres and then drive across the bottom of the vineyard on a dirt track.

We had a great time reading, watching dvds, taking baths and vegging in front of the fire. We did also leave the cottage at some point and ate at some great restaurants, bought stinky cheeses and walked in the Hunter Valley Gardens. We didn't do any wine tasting as Luke didn't want to do it by himself so we feel we'll have to make another trip at some point to take advantage of the great vineyards up there. We did buy a few bottles of Stonehurst wine; mostly late harvest semillion, as they were having a 50% off storm sale because the bottle labels were damages by the flood.

We did wonder if we were going to be trapped there as it rained all night before we were leaving and that track across the vineyard turned into mud. We were going sideways at some point but we made it out safely and back to Sydney. The photo is of that morning looking across the vineyard from the verandah of our cottage and down over the river with the layer of mist.
Loki was very indignant when we picked him up and scolded us all the way home and since has been incredibly clingy, he's currently perched precariously on the edge of the keyboard tray and on top of my belly snuggling as close as possible.

In pregnancy news I've started feeling small kicks particularly last thing at night but becoming more frequent. It's the most amazing feeling and I can't wait until Luke can feel them too.

baby belly

Well as you can see I definitely have a belly now and in fact I can't wear any of my old trousers, I've had to move into maternity pants. Luckily I've found a pair of comfy jeans at Pumpkin Patch. We had our 18 week scan this Thursday and everything is fine. My placenta is lying in front so that explains why I haven't felt any movement yet. You can see how squished up he/she is with the leg and foot top left.

a new yogi

It's been a while since I last posted and I've been feeling better and better. I struggled with hyperemesis up until 13 weeks. The last weeks of it were terrible, I spent them in bed barely able to move without throwing up, eating very little and watching bad daytime tv. Then all of a sudden I got better and slowly I've regained my health and energy. I had 1 relapse that lasted a day at 14 weeks but nothing for the past few weeks (fingers crossed).
I am suffering bad heartburn on and off and sciatica, both which are side effects of pregnancy and darn uncomfortable but nothing compared to the debilitating effects of nausea.

I haven't feel the baby move yet but hopefully it should be soon, I can't wait for those first few flutters. I have my 18-20 week ultrasound this week which should be exciting.
I went to my first prenatal yoga class 0n Saturday, it was an interesting 2 hours. Not an awful lot of yoga actually happened but it was a good experience. The teacher is a nurse, theatre nurse, midwife, parent educator and international yoga teacher as well as quite eccentric with a broad Scottish accent. She interrogated everyone as to whether they had placenta previa or any other conditions before leading us in some yogic breathing and meditation. We progressed into a few gentle Hatha yoga moves and then all lay on our mats for relaxation. I've done quite a bit of Iyengar yoga previously so it was weird for this all to have such a strong pregnancy/labour/birth focus but appropriate and worthwhile. I won't be able to attend the next two classes but I look forward to going back when I can.