It's a bit of a shitty time at the moment - Mike is going away to Sri Lanka tomorrow for 2 long weeks, then I've got money worries, house renovations and I have to decide the colour of the baby's room right NOW. And to add insult injury I woke up yesterday crying my eyes out after a very vivid dream that my little brother had thrown himself off a balcony in front of me. So I'd say that all in all I'm feeling a wee bit stressed!

In a bid to keep it light today, I'm going to talk about Calcium instead! When in doubt think about food (I also tried the exercise circuit (by Abigail Kluttz that I told you about on Monday), which was hard and made me feel a bit better).

So, calcium. Why is it so important in your pregnancy diet? Well, it primarily makes junior's teeth and bones. It

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I turned 33 weeks pregnant on Thursday and I'm feeling better than I have done at earlier points in my pregnancy. Despite this I didn't get much chance to workout with various other things getting in the way. So on Saturday I was well up for a good gym session. Here's what I did:

20 mins on the bike (I did about 140 cals)

> 10 x squat to shoulder press (with 5kg weights)

> 20 x slow sumo squats

Just a quick update on pregnancy stretch marks...I'm 33 weeks pregnant tomorrow and so far, amazingly, I've not got any stretch marks. On the other hand my other, pre pregnancy stretch marks (probably from growing too quickly as a teenager) that I'd never really noticed before, are more obvious. What's the opposite saying to 'every cloud has a silver lining'?

I'm applying moisturising cream every time I pass the bottle (the massaging of your belly is supposed to be effective for women who got stretch marks during adolescence) and am battling on with my anti-stretch mark diet. The other day I was walking down the cereal aisle and was (sadly) delighted when I came across some ground flax seeds!

Ground flaxseeds from Linwoods

"Wahoo," I hear you cry! Or probably more likely, what's so exciting about this?

Well, I'll tell you. Flax seeds are the best source of Essential Fatty Acids (according to WHFoods.org and

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Following on from my Prenatal Vitamins post and the decision to eat my vitamins rather than trying to gag down those massive tables, I thought I'd continue what I started ages ago about how to get all the vitamins you need from your pregnancy diet. I've hunted through various advice websites to get a good overall picture of what specifically you need to make sure you have covered by your diet.

The main culprits are Folic Acid and Vitamin D, and nearly always cited as being the most important vitamins in pregnancy.

However, these vitamins and minerals are also very important:

Calcium

Vitamin K

Vitamin C

Omega 3

I've already covered Vitamin K and Vitamin D, and through the anti-stretchmark post and the prevent-stretch-mark shopping list post, that has covered Vitamin A, Omega 3 and Vitamin C, to a certain extent. So, I thought I'd go back to basics with Folic Acid.

I think it's pretty common knowledge that the

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I LUUURVE reading the New York Times' articles on pregnancy. They're pretty left and talk about things like how hippies give birth, home births, obesity and pregnancy, and general research relating to pregnancy. A wee while ago I read all the articles they have that are tagged with pregnancy. It's sad but that was a fun day for me. There's a whole bunch of stuff on there I want to talk about here but in time...one that stuck out for me as requiring discussion a bit sooner is the article about prenatal vitamins.

The said article is actually about taking vitamins both before and after conception and how this can impact upon your baby at birth. The study, which took place in Denmark looking at 36,000 women, apparently found that mothers who took prenatal vitamins 4 weeks before and 8 weeks after their last period (and were of 'average weight -

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I had a dream last night about stretch marks. I think it's because I hit 30 weeks pregnant yesterday, which is entering the stretch mark phase. So I've just made myself a lovely juice for the first time in ages. I feel like I've not got enough time to do 'stuff' at the moment and as a result my diet's gone out the window a bit. So, working from home today, I rounded up what I had in the house and managed to make a pretty yummy juice that I'm calling the...

Sherbet Dib Dab (I'm sure no one else has come up with that name)

2 apples

1/4 of a sorry looking pineapple

a small bunch of green grapes

1/2 lime (peeled)

1/4 lemon (waxfree skin on)

the middle section of a wilted bunch of celery (probably 2 medium sticks and then the little uns in the middle, leaves on but shitty bits removed)

Juice the lot

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A few weeks ago I started my stretch mark panic...since apparently creams (and I've read a few academic papers about this since) are not proven to work, I started to think about how to prevent stretch marks with food and then put together this shopping list for the best foods to prevent stretch marks.

I've even asked my other Juice Guru, Jay Kordich (who looks 60 but is about 120), what he would recommend to prevent stretch marks and, despite getting a million questions a day, he's always kind enough to get back to everyone and this is what he said:

I'd need to check with my midwife about actually taking a supplement, but I'd looked up the best sources of omega 3 after my first post and found a good website, called WHFoods, that gave a nice and in depth description of Omega 3 and where you can find it. Firstly, flax seeds

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This is your PREVENT STRETCH MARKS Shopping List! I was meant to post this yesterday but I was in such a shitty mood! I’m telling you, staying up late on a Saturday night when you're this pregnant is not worth it.

I’d spent yesterday worrying about work, feeling emotional about the birth (a.k.a. pushing the baby out of that tiny hole and where I should do said pushing) and other such things. So, when I discovered O2 had taken £300 out of my account (when they shouldn’t have, I’d already spent 45 minutes on the phone with them to make sure they didn’t take any money and was assured they wouldn’t) it felt like the end of the world. And, the final icing on the cake? I dropped something on my hand and it hurt so I cried and that put paid to any attempt I was going to make to

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I really admire what The Shape of a Mother's creator is trying to achieve - namely giving mothers a place to show off their mum badges of honour and talk about how they feel about them. The idea being this is liberating and shows people what women really look like when they aren't busy being air brushed.

HOWEVER, since I've not yet had my first child it has scared the shit out of me. I don't want a bum on my belly and loads of horrible stretch marks but it seems that this is the only possible outcome (unless you are my lovely friend Ania who has no stretch marks and has gone back to the size she was before having 2 kids, if not smaller - please, dear god, let me have her genes too!!).

So, aside from panic about the fact that I've put on another 4 lbs over the

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I am ashamed of myself.

I went out last night and had a brilliant time at The Stand comedy club (a sort of nod to my Birthday organised by best bud Alex) - a delicious, three course meal, lots of cranberry and soda, followed by fantastic comedy (if you ever get chance to see Tom Allan I would highly recommend him, I was on that verge of hysterical laughter turning into sobbing by the end of it. Make up was a mess). Then, despite it being 90's hiphop night, I left Alex and Len to go clubbing and drove a rather drunk (he denigns it) Mike home.

What did we do on the way home? Got a dirty kebab with chilli sauce and settled down to watch some Geordie Shore. It was the most Geordie thing I've ever done. And, my gut certainly isn't proud. I should think that given the wriggling

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