My little lady

All about Evangeline 

Evie’s going to be 12 weeks on Thursday, Thursday 29th October 2016. She’ll be 3 months on the 7th October, 3 months!? Its crazy to think my teeny tiny little newborn is going to be 3 months old. It baffles me just how quickly time has flown by, I mean I know I say it on pretty much every other Instagram post and in every other blog post too haha, but I just cannot get over how quickly these weeks are flying by – it feels although I’ll blink and she’ll be 1! 

She’s such a happy, loving, cheeky, inquisitive little lady; brightening up the day of everyone she meets – such a social butterfly, always showing of her beautiful smile. It amazes me how such a tiny little girl can light up the room and melt everyone’s heart. ♡ 

She had her jabs a couple of weeks ago, well more than a couple... almost 4 weeks ago, and she has them again at the beginning of October. I hate every moment, I know it’s good for her, helping her to build up immunities to all of those horrible illnesses, but it breaks my heart. In actual fact, I think I cried more than Evangeline when she was having them being completely honest- I could’ve slapped the nurse that done her jabs haha, I’m sure some of you can relate. 

So she’s completely out grown her newborn clothing - although saying that now is a bit late as she outgrew it weeks ago haha... and some of her 0-3 is a bit snug, she’s actually been able to fit into and wear some 3-6 items this week and the last few weeks, so other than the items she’s worn (as they have already been washed) we’re in the process of washing all of her 3-6 clothing; which is taking forever, she has more clothes than Zachary and I combined lol. 

She’s starting teething now, so we’ve bought her several teething rings – she only likes one that we purchased at boots by Nuby, I believe the one we've got is called the teething keys or something haaha. Other than that one, she doesn't want anything, although in saying that she’d much rather chomp on her fist over any teething ring… 

So we’ve recently started attending a ‘baby play group’ there are some lovely other mummies that also attended; everyone’s so friendly and welcoming. Its nice, I lost pretty much all of my friends during pregnancy some of them I’m pretty chuffed about having absolutely nothing to do with being completely honest, they bought nothing but negativity to our friendship – so its nice to be able to go and meet other mummies, and Evie can socialise with all the other babies. But anyway back to Evie, the first time we attended the group she was asleep the whole time haha; this will probably be a recurring situation as it falls at the same time as her afternoon nap haha – 1 till 2:30pm.

Talking about naps lets talk about her routines, so we’re pretty much set in a solid routine now; I know some people don’t agree with having a routine at 3 months, but actually it works really well for Evie, Zachary and I- and we’ve had this routine since around 3 weeks. So I guess I’ll start from evening to morning...it’s easier to explain haha! 8:30 pm she has a feed, usually a bath and placed into her pjs; then she has a cuddle and falls asleep, around 12-2am she will wake for a feed 90% the time its around 2, she’ll feed, we’ll change her nappy and then put her back down to sleep, she doesn’t normally wake until 5:30am – she has another feed, nappy change, cuddle before falling back to sleep at approximately 6-6:30 am. She’ll wake between 7-8am, a nap around 10:30am after a feed, she'll nap at around 1pm to 2pm, 4pm till 5pm and then the routine continues, filled with nappy changes, feeds and lots of playing and cuddles...so it’s fairly “solid” but don’t get me wrong, it depends on the day really...what we’ve done and how much she slept during the night. Obviously I haven’t gone to in depth into her or our routine, but if you’d like me to do a post going over that – let me know. 

So everyday she’s becoming more alert, she's into so many different things; she loves laying or sitting (on our laps) in front of the telly – she loves the lights and colours that are on the screen. She loves her baby sling or carrier, she LOVES having cuddles, and playing under her activity mat. She adores bath time and splashing around – our little water baby. One thing she defiantly doesn’t enjoy is the forever dreaded ‘tummy time’ and boy does she let us know haha. 

Becoming a mummy has honestly been the most amazing and rewarding experience of my entire life. Watching our little lady blossom and grow – its the best feeling in the world.
I know this was a brief update or chatty kind of post, but I thought I’d round it up, or I’d be typing all afternoon...I hope you enjoyed reading this post – I’ll be doing more ‘update’ kind of uploads in the future; and I’ll speak to you lovely people in my next post. ♡

Chit-chats and changes.

A new appearance:

My beautiful little princess. <3

Hello you beautiful bunch, I hope your all doing well! I’m uploading one of my favourite, most enjoyable post’s that I write, my typical chit-chat, nattering, rambling on about everything that crosses my mind kind of post. 
Being honest I don’t really have that much to talk about; I guess the main reason I sat down to type this post is to discuss the new or revamped appearance of my blog. I suppose I could start by saying that the main reason I changed my blog is due to wanting a more elegant, mature, simple design- I felt my previous design didn’t match the what I intend to achieve with my blog or didn’t match the content I upload, you no...sounds odd, but I know what I mean haha. So not only have I changed the pink, girly, floral theme to a simple grey, white and black design – I’ve also changed my blog title or name, rather than being “my life” which being completely honest, I was never particularly happy with; its now “Our journey as a family of three” for me, this name is more than suited to the content I upload, as since the beginning, since starting my blog; I’ve always written about my life, relationship, family, pregnancy and since her arrival about our beautiful baby girl, our journey as a family of three just suits and works with the whole “feel” of my blog. 

Being completely honest, I haven’t really known what to post on here; I mean there’s several thing’s I’d love to talk about...toxic friendships – a ‘friend’ that was possibly the most unpleasant, malicious, dishonest, repulsive human being I’ve ever met; whom I absolutely hate or loathe to be polite; but honestly it’s not worth the time of day, the whole subject infuriates me and plus I don’t like posting negative things on my blog – so I’ll probably leave that post out haha.. but anyway moving on...on a more positive note I'd like to upload some posts about being a new mum, all about Evangeline, family life, budgeting, travelling, my tips and tricks, my interior and DIY ideas...you name it; I have loooaadddsss (felt the need to extend for effect haha) of ideas of posts that I will be uploading on my blog. So hopefully I’ll be starting to work, finish and upload them in the near future – so keep your eyes peeled! ♡ 

So, what have I been up to recently...not much really, just day to day activities and mummy things; cuddling with my little princess, cooking, feeding, shopping, cleaning all the usual –  I know it’s probably incredibly boring to read, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. ♡ 
Myself, Evie and Zachary have been venturing out on walks every weekend, mainly for fresh air; but also because I’m wanting to budge a bit of weight, although that hasn’t really been discussed haha but I’d like to loose maybe a stone or so...I’ve lost all the weight that I gained during my pregnancy, but I’d like to loose a little more, just to make myself 100% more healthy and back in shape! 

On another note we’re entering probably the most expensive but fun and exciting part of the year for me (other than buying stuff for Evangeline or maternity clothing hehe) my nephews birthday, mums birthday, then mine – not that I buy myself anything haha, dads birthday, my sisters birthday, Zachary’s birthday and of course Christmas. It’s also coming up to a year since I found out that I was pregnant, it’s shot by so fast. I’m even more excited this year, more excited than I’ve ever been in my life – it’s Evangeline’s first Halloween, firework night and Christmas; and the first year that we celebrate as a family of three. ♡ 
I guess I should probably consider wrapping this post up, or it’ll only go on for a decade or 2 haha. Thanks for taking your time out to read this post, and I’ll speak to you in my next. 

Q&A

My Instagram Q&A:

I posted on instagram that I would be doing a Q&A styled blog post; I asked you beautiful people to ask me whatever questions you had and that I’d answer them on here. So I’ve taken all the questions, written them exactly how they were asked and tried to answer them the best I can. ♡ 

How old were you when you got pregnant? 

I was 19, almost 20.

Who and how did you come up with Evangeline’s name? 

Both Zachary and I loved the name Evie for a little girl and decided this would be the name we chose for our baby, however we both wanted something more unique, long and unusual and for Evie to be almost like a ‘nickname’ if you will...so we both sat down and agreed on the name Evangeline – although it was in actual fact Zachary who popped the name into our heads. :)

What is your biggest fear? 

I would say my biggest fear is fear of the ‘unknown’, not knowing what will happen in the next 5 years, next week; or any point in the future. I suppose it’s a relatively unordinary fear, but maybe some of you can relate. Other than that, a more ‘normal’ fear is probably any creepy crawly! 

What mummy or daddy buy have you made that Evie doesn’t/didn’t like? 

Around 1 week after Evangeline was born Zachary went out and purchased the ‘next to you’ cot, I believe that is what it was called...either way it attached to the side of the bed, to enable me (as she sleeps my side) to see her during the night, it also made it easier due to my csection and moving...but she hated it – she didn’t sleep in it, she prefers to be enclosed and it was huge in comparison to her – so we ended up returning to her mosses basket.  

Do you want more children? If so when and how many? 

Yes, both myself and Zachary would love more children – obviously this depends on my whether my issues with fertility worsen; but fingers crossed they don’t!! But we’d love to have 1 more baby in a few years time. ♡ 

What is your favorite season? 

I would have to say that I love all seasons except spring...for those of you wondering why I don’t particularly like spring; it’s mainly because I have really bad hayfever during spring but not throughout the rest of the year...strange right? Haha. 

What apps do you use to edit your instagram pictures? 

I use 3 apps – repix, add watermark and square ready. 

What is your favorite thing about being a mummy? 

Honestly everything, watching Evangeline grow, seeing her smile, helping her to learn new things, her cheeky little personality, having a family of my own. Just everything that is involved in being a mummy. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. ♡♡ 

Where was yours and Zachary’s first date? 

Our first date and the first time we met was at a bowling alley where we had a few games – I was awful, I’m rubbish at bowling, then we went for a meal, we were accompanied by some acquaintances. So our first proper date on our own consisted of the cinema and then we went out for a meal after the film.  

What is your no.1 clothing accessory for Evie? 

Definitely a hair bow or hair wrap. 

What makes you smile? 

This is a tricky question to answer without rambling on haha. I would have to say being a mummy, cuddling Evie, anything to do with Evie really, spending time with Zachary and spending time with my family. 

What is your favorite clothing brand for yourself and then for Evie? 

My favourite clothing...to be honest I don’t really have one for myself, I’ll shop anywhere; if I see an item I like (obviously depending on the price) I’ll buy it, it doesn’t bother me what brand is on the label as long as I like it haha. There are many brands I love buying clothes from for Evangeline, ted baker, mothercare – especially little bird, h&m and many different Instagram clothing pages; where there pretty much all one of a kind. Again as long as it’s good quality, comfortable and I like it I’ll buy it. 

Why did you change your pram? 

I mentioned this briefly in a blog post we now have the ‘Mamas&papas urbo 2’ we had the ‘mothercare orb’ before but had to replace it due to it being a bit of a tight squeeze into our new cars boot haha. 

1 negative about where you live? 

We have very loud neighbours, who love to argue at 3 in the morning and play there music extremely loud; we’ve had to tell them to be quite and turn the music down on so many occasions. That’s tge one negative...#notfun 

Who was at your daughters birth?  

Both my mum and Zachary were at the hospital with me, my mum came to support myself and Zachary, mainly me as I’m a bit of a nervous wreck in hospitals so I wanted my mum there haha. I had a caesarean so Zachary was with me throughout the whole procedure and was there when Evie was welcomed into the world. ♡♡ 

What is your favourite flower? 

My favourite flower by all means has to be a sunflower or a Rose. But to be honest I like all flowers, apart from lavender- I’m allergic.  

If you could live anywhere in the world where would you live? 

I would live in the UK, boring I no...but I don’t think I could see myself living anywhere other than the UK haha. I’d probably have a holiday homes in the Caribbean or America. 

What do you want to do as a career in the future? 

I’d really love to be a midwife, I hope to go to university in the next 5 years to start training. :) 

What is your dream holiday destination? 

I don’t really have one, probably somewhere hot, but somewhere that you don’t have to be on an aeroplane for ages – I’m petrified of flying, I hate it haha. 

I hope that you enjoyed reading my answers just as much as I enjoyed answering them. If you missed out on asking me a question I’ll be doing more in the future so be sure to follow my instagram- dons__steph to be notified when I do another.

I hope you have a lovely day, and I’ll talk to you in my next post. 

My pregnancy journey:

Looking back:

As I’m going rather in depth into my pregnancy journey this will probably be quite a long post, I wanted to point out that this post is to enable me to be able to look back at my pregnancy experience, so I will be including every event that took place; negative and positive, but for the most part it will be about the positive event’s of my pregnancy. ♡ 

Wednesday 6th July 2016, 39 week’s exactly; this was my last full day of pregnancy with Evangeline- it was the day before my caesarean, the day before we welcomed our beautiful baby girl into the world. 

It’s such an amazing thing pregnancy, the fact your body is carrying, protecting and growing a tiny human; a tiny little person made up of yours and your partners DNA. 

I found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks, I remember as clear as day taking a pregnancy test and sitting waiting for the results. Seeing those 2 pink faint lines appearing was honestly amazing, so overwhelming, but so amazing. 

The beginning of my pregnancy was fairly scary – due to having problems with my fallopian tubes and being high risk I was ordered by my gynaecologist to head straight to the hospital for scans and blood tests, if I ever discovered I was pregnant. I recall sitting in the waiting room anxiously waiting to be called in to have all required tests carried out; we then had to wait a few days for the results- which was terrifying. But after many days of patiently waiting we finally received the results and thankfully everything looked perfect and our teeny tiny baby was thriving and growing just how she should be. 

The beginning of my pregnancy was actually really quite easy, fortunately I was one of the lucky ones and didn’t experience any morning sickness or all day sickness and would just feel a bit nauseous at times; which is great because I hate being sick. I really do feel for people who have morning sickness, or just sickness in general – it must be awful. ☆ 

Throughout my pregnancy I barely gained any weight either, I gained in total around 1 stone 6oz which to some people isn’t a lot, as some women gain 2, 3, 4 + stone; I was definitely all baby – and for those of you that will say “obviously you wasn’t eating enough if you didn’t gain a lot of weight.” I was consuming the perfect amount suited to me and Evie and the recommended calorie intake throughout my pregnancy. Another thing I guess that is food related, is I didn’t really experience any cravings. I mean I had 1 or 2 in my entire pregnancy and they were pure orange juice, sausage roles and quavers – not the most exciting things haha. But not to many, or nothing to strange; for example my nan liked to suck coal or sniff wellingtons...thankfully mine were pretty ordinary haha. 

I had actually a very smooth pregnancy, I mean don’t get me wrong it was far from perfect. I had a few problems throughout my pregnancy- several hospital visits, appointments and numerous different tests on a regular basis, but as smooth and as perfect as it could be for me. So I was very lucky. 

So talking a bit about the problems or the negative side before the positives that occurred during my pregnancy. Somewhere between the 8th and 10th week of my pregnancy I had a bleed and ended up in A&E, obviously I was thinking of the worse possible out come; but after several tests it reviled that everything looked fabulous, luickly! ♡ So quite a bit further into my pregnancy unfortunately the same thing happened between the 30th - 32nd week of my pregnancy – I had another bleed which ended up with me being checked into hospital being monitored for several hours, being visited by different doctors, different tests being carried out to ensure that baby was ok – which luckily she was! Oh, and to check that I was okay too; but Evie was my priority! Either way, luckily we both received  a clean bill of health and were aloud to go home. 

Being completely honest, I spent had hospital visits on a regular basis, I was being monitored probably every other week or so- I know people are going to think “god, she’s a tad over cautious.” But I’ll explain why, it was all in relation to Evie’s movements...in the womb she would move actually quite a bit (I loved feeling her wriggling around in my tummy – such an amazing feeling) her average kick count was around 18+ movements a day; this included kicks, rolls, pokes all the things I was told to monitor by my midwife. However at times Evangeline would have extreme decreases in her movements, going from 18 to 5 or sometimes none at all – so under the recommendations of my midwife I’d head to the hospital to be monitored ensuring that she was ok – better to be safe than sorry! Towards the end of my pregnancy Evangeline’s movement’s rapidly decreased and 4 days before my scheduled caesarean I headed to the hospital after talking to my midwife and was monitored for around 3 hours; during this time there were major increases and decreases in her heartrate dropping to 110 and sky rocketing up to 240 in a matter of minutes – which was extremely scary I’ve never felt so scared in my life; so after hours of monitoring and different doctors, discussions of moving my C-section forward and further monitoring; thankfully her heartrate remained within normal range and her movements balanced and everything was perfect. 

So moving on, lets talk about more positive things. 

Other than the above situations my pregnancy was as smooth and perfect as it could possibly be; every midwife visit was positive, every consultant appointment was fabulous, every scan went amazing – and overall my pregnancy was such an amazing and magical experience. 

I absolutely loved being pregnant, I loved every little thing about being pregnant, about carrying our beautiful, perfect little girl until the day we finally met her. I cherished being pregnant and enjoyed every moment. 

Taking bumpies weekly watching my bump grow – until eventually I could no longer see my feet haha. Heading to scans watching her moving and fidgeting around, seeing just how much she had grown since the last appointment; how each time the sonographer would struggle to fit her whole body on the screen and eventually all we could see was her head, listening to her heartbeat at home – which I found very therapeutic. 

Feeling and watching our little baby girl wriggling around and moving into different positions; her favourite was sitting in a ball on the left side of my bump – in fact she spent a majority of the time, pretty much the entire pregnancy curled up on my left side, I had a rather odd shaped bump kind of, ya’no...a bit off centre haha; but hey, at least she was comfortable!  I loved our family time, Zachary and I would sit snuggled on the sofa or on our bed; he’d sit and talk to my bump, talking to Evie; hugging my bump feeling her wiggle too. I much prefer our family snuggles now though being able to cuddle her and kiss her chubby little cheeks. ♡ 

I’d sit with Zachary and my family and we’d talk about what she’d look like, how much hair she’d have, her eye colour and how much she’d weigh at birth. But she’s even more beautiful, even more perfect than we could’ve ever imagined. ♡ 

My pregnancy journey was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in my life (obviously meeting Evangeline tops everything I’ve ever experienced and nothing will ever beat that) and I wouldn’t change it for the world. We now have our beautiful, perfect, loving, cheeky little lady – and I couldn’t be any happier, I  love her more than anything. 

Having a natter

26-08-2016

Hello lovelies, I hope your all doing well! I haven’t done a chit chat post for what feels like months – even though I only done one the other week haha. It’s Friday 26th August as I’m writing this. It’s a lovely day, so sunny, hot and just in general such a beautiful summers day; I’ve spent my day shopping at ‘westwood cross’ I believe it’s located in Margate...but I’m awful with locations so I’m probably wrong hah; either way I’ve had a lovely day with Evie, my mum, sister and nephew browsing the shops. 

I’m back home now (obviously) Evangeline is sleeping in her mosses basket next to me, it’s taken me quite a while to get to this point in my post purely because I keep stopping and watching her sleep, she’s just so beautiful; I could sit and watch her all day. I’m sat at my desk waiting for Zachary to return from work – to finally start the weekend. I don’t think we’re actually going to be doing very much this weekend, perhaps we’ll go for a walk or something- I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, be a tad spontaneous. 

I’ve been working on a few blog posts recently, well over the last few weeks, covering quite a variety of topics- my pregnancy, being a mummy, ‘why I prefer being a loner’ where I talk about toxic friendships and my ‘BFFL’s’, there are several more but I don’t want to give them all away haha! So I should be uploading these post’s in the next few weeks, so keep your eye’s peeled. 

Zachary and I are purchasing a new pram this weekend the ‘Mamas&papas urbo 2’ I yes, I know we’ve only been using our pram for 7 weeks (we didn’t take Evangeline out for the first week)– so it’s pretty much brand new. But being completely honest, I was always drawn to the Mamas&papas urbo 2, don’t get me wrong I love the mothercare orb it’s a great pram and has some amazing features; but we both much prefer the one we’re buying...technically we needed to purchase a new pram anyway, we’ve recently bought a car with 4 doors! Woohoo, our old car only had 2 so getting Evie’s car seat in and out was a workout, well at least it was for me – Zachary didn’t find it a workout haha! (I’m just not very strong). Regardless we now own a car with 4 or 5 doors a fiat panda. And our current pram doesn’t fit particularly well into the boot, which is a bit of an issue; so that’s the main reason we’re purchasing a new one...I’m so excited! 

I’m going to be spending a majority of next week in our house with Evie, waiting for some deliveries from some lovely brands that we’re working with; I’m looking forward to finding out what goodies we’ve been sent. If you’d like to see what we’ve been sent I’ll the posting them on my Instagram some point next week, so feel free to have a nosey my username is @dons__steph 

I’m going to end my post here otherwise it’ll be never-ending haha, I love a good ramble! I hope you all have a fabulous weekend and I’ll speak to you soon.