I think I'm losing the plot! I arrived in Olney yesterday to visit my best friend, Alex, and her boyfriend in their new, lovely house, and yet I have zero crack.

I'm not sure if it's because I've just waved Mike off for his 2 week 'work trip' (he keeps accidentally referring to it as a holiday!) to Sri Lanka, you know the place with tsunamis, earth quakes, civil unrest, and food that could give you the shits? Or if it's because I'm going to be living out of a suitcase for the next 2 weeks bunking at my parents, or if it's the state of the house and the fact that when we get back there's still 2 more weeks of living out of 3 of our 8 rooms (kitchen, bathroom, spare room). Equally it could be my self imposed deadline for a first draft of my work's report, which

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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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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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Right, no one told me this could happen. You might think I'd have come across this as part of all my 'research' for this blog, but no. It may surprise you to know that I tend to write about things as they happen to me...And, when it comes to leaking nipples I thought that was surely the domain of the breast feeder.

Yesterday I stayed back at Mike's Mum and Dad's while everyone else went out for a walk. I decided I'd have a little nap and actually went into what felt like a coma, and I got rudely awaken by everyone as they trooped back into the house. I wondered around in a daze for a little while until Mike pointed out that I had something ominous looking on my t-shirt directly above my left nipple. It turned out it came from my nipple and it was sore for quite

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Last week I said that I would take my back pain (over the pelvic issue) any day of the week...while this is still true, I am soooooo miserable! I have a pain on the left hand side of my lower back and sometimes it doesn't hurt too bad, for example if I'm sitting or lying down. If I try to walk somewhere within about 15 minutes the pain becomes excruciating. There's so much I want to do so this is really getting me down that I can't do it - exercise is pretty much out of the question and even trying to figure out the logistics of getting to work (where I have to do the least amount of walking) is hurting my head. What I really want to do is work from my bed, but that isn't possible at the moment, and as my time on this project is slowly

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So a quick update - I'm almost certain that what I experienced when pushing the pain barrier in the name of 'curing my back pain' on Tuesday at the gym was SPD (Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction).

Baby Centre have a very useful post about SPD and here's what they say it is:

It's another of those pesky pregnancy symptoms that seem able to strike at any time during pregnancy. Baby Centre say that it rears its ugly head through the following symptoms:

Back pain, pelvic girdle pain or hip pain

Pain down the inside of your thighs or between your legs. It can be made worse by parting your legs, walking, going up or down stairs or moving around in bed

For anyone out there who was thinking: 'geez, this girl has had it easy' or 'I've had morning sickness for X months, when's she going to get something?' or any combination along that theme... fear not as I am in a world of misery as I appear to have broken my fanny.

I'd been suffering a wee bit of sciatic pain on Monday and Tuesday, so walking was a bit of chore but I thought I'd 'walk it off' at the gym last night. Walking didn't work, in fact it was friggin' painful so I got myself on the cross-trainer, which was 10 minutes of blissful, ignorant exercise. But I was bored. I went down stairs (to where the big boys hang out and push massive weights) to do some back strengthening work in the hope this would also ease the pain. Instead something serious happened in my 'area' and I ended

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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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Courtesy of  SERGE BIELANKO, from babble.com/dadding

Now I haven't intentionally been thinking about it but sex during pregnancy has popped into my head a few times. For example, a book I downloaded about pregnancy didn't download properly apart from the bit about sex (so I read it), it's a topic of discussion amongst pregnant women, etc. so, I've naturally got to thinking about it in more detail - enough to want to write about it. Plus, it all counts as exercise, right?

A wee while ago I mentioned some of my pregnant friends had gone off it. And, then in another post I mentioned that pregnant woman can get a libido surge. It's a bit of a mystery as to which way you'll go - yuk or yes?

But never mind the lady in all this, apparently it can be just as much as a minefield for men. They too can go off it

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Back in my heady days as a Civil Engineering student I was lucky enough to study in Singapore for a year. As a 21 year old, who thorough enjoyed the 'Lady's nights' (free drinks for 'ladies' to entice the men into you bar), I wasn't massively keen on the Asphalt and Tarmac module I had to take from 5-7pm on Friday nights. Seriously. Only in Singapore.

Having said that, I still remember quite a bit of what we were taught and what's worse I've been reliving it. The basic premise of part of the module was to study accidents that can occur due to excess water on the road and how you can prevent the accidents through the composition of the road surface. Last night driving back from dinner with Gabriella, it was chucking it down. Really chucking it down. And, I was seeing the accidents that could happen in graphic

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