So the first appointment with the Doctor was short and sweet. I have to admit that I was a little surprised about it. The Doctor was a a young girl and she asked F a few questions about her medical history and told us she would write to the local hospital to book us in for the first appointment with the team their, but that was it. There were no tests or anything, all in all it took about ten minutes - we were in and out!!!

Its getting quite scary, and seems to be happening very quickly. mum and dad are very excited and are telling a few relatives. I was chatting to my brother about it for ages and my Aunt visited on Sunday. Everyone is very excited, but I still have quite mixed feelings.

It's hard not knowing how I feel, sometimes I'm excited, and sometimes I'm terrified.
I think F is finding it very hard, she feels very alone here. She's only lived in Belfast a few months and hasn’t made very many friends. She feels very isolated and separated from her family (they're very excited too!!!), who are all back in Berlin. Its hard for me to see her upset and not be able to do very much about it apart from give her lots of hugs and love!!! It's hard to know when to hug and when to back off and give her space (even though i don't want to!!). I guess I'll keep taking my queues form her and make sure she knows that I'm here for her and love her. I think the whole situation has made me realise just how much i do actually love her and cherish her.

We can't wait to start buying baby things!!! I've been looking online for all the things we're going to need and making lists of stuff, from a pram to baby bags and monitors!!! It's all so exciting, but quite expensive!!! It's going to cost us a fortune so I hope all of our friends are ready for the baby list and get shopping - lol!!! I can't wait to start stock piling all this stuff, but its still far too early!!! But we need to get ssssooo much stuff!!! Not only that but we've decided to break our lease and move in May a couple of months before due date, to give us a chance to settle in and get our new place set up!! We need to break the news to our lovely land lord though, which could go either way, he's a nice guy so hopefully he'll understand!!!

We visited the Dr's today to register, since birth I've been registered in Portstewart but F has never been registered in the UK. We found a really nice practice off the Holywood Road. It's a huge health center building that seems to do a little bit of everything, and its only a 10 minute walk from our house, which is fab!!!

We have an appointment with the Dr. next Thursday about being pregnant and then a health check up on Dec. 5th with the Nurse wo complete registraion. Its nice toget the Dr. appointment confirmed and finalised, I was a bit concerned aboyt F being from Berlin, I wasn't really sure about what was involved in registration for non natives, but it was all very straight forward!!

I put F on the car insurance today, something I've been meaning to do for ages. With me working in the city center and walking to work everyday, the car is sitting not being used, so it makes more sense than ever. She's a bit stressed out about driving on the wrong side of the road, what with everything else thats been changing recently. I think she's maybe a little bit overwhelmed!! We went out for a drive up and down the street and she was getting on fine, then she drove to work, with no problems what so ever. She needs to get as much practice as possible so that she can use it when its harder for her to get around!!!

SO my efforts to be supportive and give up smoking along with the lovely F have drastically come off the rails, it was all going so swimmingly well until this morning when i was half way to work and had to turn around 'cause id forgotten to put out the bin. I was amazed, completely oblivious to the thirty or so i passed on the way down the street. So that caused was fag number one!

I allocated myself four for the day, along with my puffer, but much to my surprise I’d finished them by lunch, as I was much distressed by the news of being wrenched from my home store and sent to the rescue of another for the next two weeks, having to cancel my week off work (only hours after it being approved) and finding out that I was off on Tuesday, not Thursday so had to cancel the appointment to register with the doctor!!!. SO all in all not a great start to kicking the evil weed, but lets take it one day at a time!!!

On the baby front, we're still excited, I'm still shitting myself, and the lovely F is developing quite a sharp edge, which I presume is due to hormones, but to be honest, I'm a bit scared to ask. Its not that bad really, it just kind of washes over my head, sometimes i think the fact that I smile and say "of course baby" makes her even more annoyed. Like tonight when I told her about the bin incident, she got all worked up shouting "why didn’t you just call, its not like I couldn't have put it out", it was kind of comical.

But life is moving on, baby appointment has been postponed until later this week or next, it has to be a priority though! We bought prenatal vitamins and have started to research everything online, NHS Direct has a great section about pregnancy and stuff, its all so exciting!!! I can't wait to get everything confirmed so that we can start planning and organising. So much is going to have to change, its a bit overwhelming to think about it all.

I think one major change that is inevitable is that we have to move. At the moment, we're living with my cousin in a gorgeous rented house. I know for sure we're going to want our own space, and she definitely doesn’t want to live with a couple and a baby, but we're tied in our lease until next August, one month after the baby is due. I think we would prefer to move a lot before then to give us a chance to get moved in and settle down, I'm just not sure about breaking our lease and abandoning my cousin, there’s so much to think about, then to top it all off there’s all the baby stuff we're going to need - scary biscuits!!!

About two months ago my girl friend took her last pill, we both joked at the time about how we could just leave it and let nature take her course. We never quite got around to making an appointment with a doctor or family planning whatsit, and here we are five weeks pregnant.

She missed her period about two weeks ago, and did a test on Wednesday, confirming what we thought. It's a strange feeling, our whole lives are going to change in a very short time, and nothing feels very different. We’re both very excited, but life is just going on as normal, we both get up and go to work, while our little secret grows in her belly!!!!

I'm not sure if its sank in or not, I mean, neither of us were very surprised by it, we kind of suspected what was happening, and we both knew that it would happen eventually, I guess we figured it wouldn't happen so quickly. She was a bit more shaken up by it than I was, a bit more emotional, I think she was worried about what I would think.

I'm not really sure what way people normally react to news that your whole life has changed, that the countdown is on to a brand new person entering the world, someone that we'll be responsible for, that we'll take cre of for the rest of our lives. It's amazing thinking about what the future will hold for the tiny thing inside her, but is very scary at the same time. I'm not sure what to make of it all.

The changes in attitude have happened already, she has more or less stopped smoking and I'm making good progress, I've even bought and use a nicotine puffer to help me, today was day one and I managed to go from 20 a day to only four, so I'm quite excited. There’s no way we can continue to smoke, it has to stop, for us and our baby! (how cheesy!!!)