Drowning in Work

Well. last week was hectic to say the least. It began with 4 days of lectures, 10-5 each day, with reading to do every night in preparation for the next day. despite feeling like being back at school, with breaks and lunch time etc, I did quite like getting everything all over and done with in the space of a week, rather than having only a couple of hours once a week for 11 weeks. It does mean that there is technically less time to do the essay, as usually we get the titles and have 14-15 weeks to do it, even though no-one does anything until the week before anyway. The essay is due on Nov 5th, but as I'm on holiday, I have to hand it in before I go, i.e. before Oct 27th, which outs the pressure on me a little bit to get it done. Luckily, the title is a generic 'discuss your method' type question, open to interpretation and pretty easy for me to write after 12 months of research methods training. I do also have a literature review to produce for my supervisor by next friday, but that will inform part of the essay so I don't mind doing them simultaneously. It's just getting motivated to do them thats the trouble. I'm too distracted by baby stuff and crafty things that the last thing I want to do is sit and write an essay!

I met with my supervisor on friday, and he decided that in order for me to get all the work I need to do completed before the baby is born, we will have supervision every 2-3 weeks, and he will expect me to produce 5-8,000 words prior to each meeting. Yes it'll be tough, particularly as we get closer to D-day, but it needs to be done, and he's so much easier to talk to and more approachable than my supervisor last year that I don't mind really. I need someone to be a bit tough with me and keep me working, but at the same time to be a bit of a mate and understand what else is going on in my life. I'm so glad we get to work together on this project. He was such an inspiration to me at undergrad and I really want to prove to him that he was right to have faith in me then. Plus, he did his PhD in 2004, so he's not that ancient in academic terms, and it means he can still relate to what the process is like and understand just how daunting it is, even without anything else going on your life. I think we're gonna make a really good team and it's going to be a good few years working together - maybe it'll lead to new projects once I'm a post-doc, who knows.

Speaking of crafty things, I exhibited, with my future business partner, at our first ever craft show this weekend which was a hue success. We sold lots of our decoupaged frames, handmade cards and customised furniture, and got tons of positive feedback from other stall holders who commented on how professional we we're for first timers. The customer response was great too and we might have got ourselves a stall at a bigger christmas fayre next month :) We were so pleased coz its all just been a bit of a hobby for us the last few months and we said the night before that if we sold anything we'd be happy and if we didnt we'd carry on just doing it for friends and family etc, but we made way more than we expected and are now planning a website, and an expansion into wedding stationary too :-)

Bump is growing steadily. Still not quite obvious to the outside world that theres a baby in there and not just a lot of cakes and chocolate! I have put on weight elsewhere though, its not just my belly and boobs that are rapidly expanding. Unfortunately I've gained weight on my bum and thighs, but I always expected to as they are my problem areas and I've never been able to keep weight off from there, even when I eat healthily. He took quite a cool picture of my belly the other day with our bedside lamp shining on it. I think its quite arty...

... it's just a shame about my horrendously unattractive maternity bra! I've decided that later on in my pregnancy, I want to get either a portrait done, in really soft colours, of just my body, no legs or head - or to get a series of black and white photos taken of my bump, for me to keep as a memory of my pregnancy, and even to put on the wall of the nursery with the first pictures of the baby. I might suggest it to Him to organise as a christmas or birthday present for me perhaps.

We have our foetal anomaly scan next week, where they take lots of measurements and look at the baby really carefully to make sure theres no signs of developmental problems or illnesses - obviously some things we wouldn't know about until it was born anyway, but if there are any problems, they will tell us then. I'm sure there won't be but it's still an important step to cross. We won't be finding out the sex of the baby. He is determined to wait until the baby is born. I wanted to know to begin with but the further the pregnancy gets, the more I like the idea of waiting. As long as the baby is ok, and I'm ok then I couldn't be happier :-)