I haven't updated for a few days so I thought I had better do so! :) Thanks for the lovely congrats to people who are still finding out! I am really eager to blab, uh, REVEAL at Facebook, but it seems a bit early still! I am not sure how to do that when the time comes. I'm wondering about being a bit cryptic...
Anyway! Today I am 17DPO, which means that tomorrow is the last day I will temp and I will also take my last pregnancy test in the morning too. I will actually miss that part! But 18DPO is a well established pregnancy and it's exciting to move on from there! :) My temps are a little bit rocky, but basically still staying between 36.7 and 36.9 - still nice and "up there", which is good! Yesterday at 16DPO I took another pregnancy test. It does look a bit darker than the 14DPO one, but once it faded to the same degree as the older ones, it really doesn't look much darker at all. I should post a photo so it's clear what I'm on about! I'll do that with the whole lot after I've taken my last one tomorrow. I hope tomorrow's is darker. I like to see them getting darker, and they ARE but just not as much as I'd thought they would. The difference with yesterday's is that the line was visible pretty much immediately, instead of within the first minute (or 30 seconds) at 14DPO, and a bit longer before that, etc.
I told my brother that I'm pregnant yesterday! :) It was fun. He's always so neutral and congratulatory, and that's so refreshing to me. He was commenting (on the phone) on how, when we all get together in July for Grandoug's birthday (85th!!), the great-grandchildren will be 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (well, a few days later!) and 0 (5 months)! I then pointed out that we'd be adding another next year since there's one due in December! ;) He said, "What?!... Really?!!" and then said congratulations and so on. He was very sweet and said that if I do have a heavy bleed this pregnancy and need any sort of help - with the boys, a lift to the hospital, etc - then I must call him and he'd help. He is working from home at the moment so would be available. Lovely brother! He was wonderful during Nathan's pregnancy when I bled heavily.
Speaking of which, I am beginning to feel a little bit apprehensive as I approach the 5 week mark. Any time between 5 and 7 weeks is when I tend to have a bleed, and I so so so hate to see blood during pregnancy, especially at the "typical" stage for most miscarriages to occur. For me, it isn't that thing where some women get a sort of light period around the time the usually would if they weren't pregnant. I just tend to get bleeds from the placental site around that kind of stage (and later, apparently, as I found out with Nathan's pregnancy). I am just REALLY hoping that I don't have to go through that this time. Somehow! Because I usually do. And I was thinking yesterday, it IS slightly reassuring to know that I have had healthy pregnancies with lots of bleeding before, but at each new occasion, it's not really all that reassuring. Because yes, I have had 4 healthy pregnancies. Yes, I have had bleeding each time. But that doesn't mean that just because I've had that experience that THIS time is going to be the same, you know? What if I were to have a proper miscarriage? I bet that would start with spotting or bleeding, just the same as the bleeds I'm used to do. So really, even though I'm accustomed to it, it still could be either possibility at the time. I'm nervous. And just praying that I will stop being so.
Yesterday I went to my GP to "book in" with my new pregnancy! Yay! That was fun! :) I love those appointments! I lied about the first day of my last menstrual period, as I finally learnt to after my second pregnancy, since *I* know when I ovulated, and they won't hear it that I ovulated any day but CD14! *sigh* So I just count back 14 days from the day I ovulated, and call THAT the first day of my last menstrual period! ;) Works out much better because then I don't get, "Ohhh, baby is measuring almost a week behind... Are you sure of your dates?" at the nerve-wracking early scans when I'm bleeding, or "We're going to change your (YOUR!) dates because baby is clearly measuring 5 days out (which *I* tried to tell them it would from the start! Tsk!)." etc. I also like it when I go to the doctor to book in, and tell her my LMP was 8th of March (it was the 4th), and she fiddles with the cardboard wheel thingy and says fondly, "You have a due date of December 13th!" - exactly when I KNEW I was due, hehe! ;)
So, that's done! I had to do the usual thing of giving all the dates and details of my other births - where, when, which boy, their birth weight, any complications, etc. She was impressed that I had all four boys' stuff on the tip of my tongue to tell her, but I told her that it's my LIFE! These are my vital stats! ;) Of course I have them right to hand :) I always LOVE recounting those details for this kind of thing. I just realised she didn't weigh me or take a baseline blood pressure, but the midwife will do that I think - not weigh me, but the blood pressure, when I see her. I don't know when that will be. Probably not till after my first trimester, though I think it was around 8 weeks last time, which felt REALLY early! In the past it has been 16 weeks that I first saw the midwife, which felt really late to me!
My recent smear test was fine, which is a relief, because they will not do one on a pregnant woman, at any stage of pregnancy. I was hoping it was okay! The doctor went to fill out a form for maternity exemption (from paying for prescription medicines) but I still have maternity exemption from Benjamin up until July. I have to remember to drop a reminder at the surgery in June-ish and she'll start my new one so that I don't have a gap between Benjamin's and the one from this pregnancy. I haven't had a gap in maternity exemption since February 2004! It's for the duration of pregnancy and a year after the baby is born. I really must get my dental check-up, which is also free with my maternity exemption card.
I mentioned to the doctor that I usually bleed in early pregnancy, and she said that she was sort of expecting to see me again in a couple of weeks for that very reason!! :S She was very reassuring and said that if I get ANY bleeding or bothersome spotting, I should make an appointment with her straight away and she would refer me for a scan for reassurance. Phew. But I do hope I don't. I love having the opportunity to see my tiny one an extra time, nice and early, and I guess this time it would be exciting to find out earlier than 12 weeks if I have more than one in there (or not), but I would still MUCH rather not bleed and wait till 12 weeks!
The last few days have felt much more "back to normal". The excitement is wearing off a little - I mean, there's PERMANENT excitement! :) But you know, that initial high where I absolutely cannot concentrate on another thing for even a few milliseconds! And it's seeming a little more surreal now that it's settling back down to normal life again. I forget that I'm pregnant occasionally (not often, mind you!), or when I have chance to sit down and remember, I feel surprised that I haven't been feeling more pregnant. It's early days for me though. Six weeks will be a whoooooole 'nother ball game, and that's only 11 days away.
I have the distinct feeling that this pregnancy is going to FLASH by. I sense that it's going to be the fastest one yet. They all go by faster with each successive pregnancy. That's just how it works, I think. You're always surprised with the second pregnancy at how FAST it goes compared with your first! Which, looking back, is absolutely snail pace compared with pregnancy #4, even though it felt fast at the time. And I think #5 might go faster still. That's bittersweet, because I love being pregnant and want to cherish each moment of such a blessing! But I WILL be so glad for morning sickness to pass by quickly. How those weeks dragged forever when it was the first pregnancy! It actually felt torturous at the time!
I have started the freezer cooking so that I'll have some good stocks of meals in the freezer for when I feel too green to even look at food, let alone prepare it! So far I have started with a double batch of spaghetti bolognese sauce and a lamb and bean hotpot. I made chicken stock so that I can do a double batch of turkey casserole overnight tonight in the crockpot, and I'll do a double batch of shepherd's pie tomorrow. That's all the meat I bought this week. I will buy more ingredients at the next Tesco order (we order our shopping to be delivered, for obvious reasons, haha!) and continue. More spag bol would be good as we eat that every week, and another lamb hotpot. I have had to make that without garlic though, as I know I won't deal with garlic in a couple of weeks.
My sense of smell is really strong right now. Yucky smells are AWFUL! But not stomach turning. Just awful! I was out on the driveway this afternoon and caught a whiff of fast food from the main road a way off, and oh my goodness how I wanted some!!! It smelt absolutely heavenly! I remember this specific one from at least 2 other pregnancies, hehe! ;)
I am very hungry, and still just want TONS of protein. I am not much interested in sweet food at all, and want lots of healthy food right now. Yesterday I discovered a sandwich filling that tasted INCREDIBLE to me - perhaps it IS incredible, or maybe it's just my pregnant taste buds right now?! Tuna, chopped boiled egg, sweetcorn, and chopped cucumber, mixed together with a dollop of mayonnaise. I could only fit half of it in my sandwich (it was sooooooo good!!!) and ate the rest with a spoon! Mmmm! I am looking for more protein options. I eat eggs every day at the moment because I just want the protein and I like the taste. I can't eat more than a couple of tins of tuna a week while I'm pregnant, so other days I just have eggs and beans on toast and cover the whole lot with cheese, hehe! Yummy, but STILL leaves me hankering for protein. This is a new thing for me which I haven't experienced in my other pregnancies. New things are interesting and fun! :)
Another new thing is a really sore bruisey feeling very low down around my pubic bone. I even feel it underneath, almost like cystitis or something, but it's not. I can't even place where it's sourced. Last night it was really uncomfortable, but tonight it's a lot better. I am also having the usual mini twinges and ligament pulls. I had my first proper (though tiny still!) round ligament pain getting up from my bed this morning with a twist of my body. Ow! But nice and familiar, so it made me smile! :)
I am not really peeing all that frequently for some reason, although I really really need to go first thing when I wake up. I was so glad I wasn't having to save it up a bit longer for a test this morning, and I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that tomorrow! But not actually peeing more frequently really, at the moment. Not much breast discomfort either, though I do have some painful twinges now and then. My milk supply is normal at the moment.
I'm more tired than usual still - definitely pregnant tired rather than just tired tired. I could sooooo take a nap every day. I'm blessed that Neil lets me lie-in till 8.30 or so (the boys are up a couple of hours before that) because I don't know how I'd manage without that otherwise at the moment! I get breathless easily and my muscles tend to feel more tired after nothing much at all.
I know it's taken me five pregnancies to finally come round on this (!), but I really want to be more healthy this pregnancy. I want to exercise (I NEVER do, can't remember when I last did. Years, I think?) daily, and I want to eat more healthily than I usually do when I'm pregnant. I also want to slightly duck when I say this (since I've been such a BIG ranter about the subject all my other pregnancies, haha!) but I think I would like to NOT gain so much weight as I usually do. I am NOT a fan of weight-obsessiveness during pregnancy, which like the WHOLE WORLD is! Tsk! Not healthy, ladies! Pregnancy = weight gain = normal! You're MEANT to lay down LOTS of fat supplies for breastfeeding. You actually need to gain fat, and not a small amount of it either!
The thing is though, I gain 55lbs per pregnancy. That's 4 stone folks. That's a lot of weight! Before my first pregnancy I was 7 stone 10lbs. Too light actually, and I was seeing a dietitian for a while because I could not for the life of me put weight on. But anyway, pregnancy fixed that! ;) And before Matthew was conceived I was back down to 8 stone 5lbs, I think? GOOD weight for me. I did not want to get back down to 8 stone or less again. But then I got pregnant with Nathan and gained a truckload again. I went back down to 9 stone 2lbs, I think? Not sure of the exact lbs, but I think it was 9st 2. Then I gained the usual with Benjamin, ending up above 13 stone!!! Yikers! I am a petite build, so that's a LOT for me, and not natural at all for me to carry that much about. So I am now pregnant again 8 months later and last time I weighed myself I had juuuust tipped under 10 stone for the first time, but only by a lb I think, so let's call it 10 stone exactly. Yeeks. I do NOT want to end up 14 stone this pregnancy. I really think it will make me very uncomfortable and probably struggle more carrying the pregnancy, maybe bother my blood pressure at the very end, and so on.
I reeeeally want to gain less. I think I can do that by exercising, and also by NOT stuffing my face continually with chocolate in the evenings! But that last one will be verrrry hard, and I'm not convinced I can do it. The pull is so strong, especially when I'm hungry and craving chocolate! I love that so far I really want large quantities of savoury healthy foods. Right now when I make myself a meal I usually have half the plate covered with vegetables, because that's what I want - lots of veg! And I have been eating raw veg this evening - cauliflower, carrots and broccoli. I really like those veg raw so will probably eat snacks of them regularly. Thing is, once I start feeling sick, it will all go out of the window, and then anything that I can actually ingest will do, because otherwise it's a nightmare. You have to go with what you can stomach. AFTER the morning sickness the sugary cravings usually kick in. And those are really really really really hard to resist! I am also incredibly useless on the willpower front - always have been - so I'm not sure I'll do so well.... I DO want to exercise though!
A month or so ago I went to the doctor because my abs are still separated and I wanted to know what she thought about it. They were just over THREE fingerwidths apart at the widest part (my belly button area), which is proper abdominal separation. I was worried it would never go back! And the doctor wasn't reassuring - she said that's what comes with many pregnancies very close together, and they probably would never really go back! I asked if there were any exercises I could do, but she didn't really know. I googled and found a YouTube video by a Pilates instructor (there was SO much conflicting advice when I googled generally - and some of it looked authentic and good, but was actually POOR advice which could cause the abs to separate even more!!). It's a bunch of stretches and gentle muscle toning exercises. Good for poor separated abs after childbirth, and also for a complete novice to exercise like me! So I have been doing those faithfully every night before bed for 3 weeks, and guess what?! My abs are now just over 2 fingerwidths apart! :) It's working!!! But I'm not sure how long I can do those safely if I'm pregnant again. I want to add to that kind of exercise, just other parts of the body and not just the abs, and also general fitness. I am utterly utterly unfit, except for mothering-related fitness (weight lifting, etc, hehe!), so today I just did some bicep and tricep exercises (gentle!), the Pilates abs ones, and some stretches, and then decided to march (not jog - would DIE if I jogged, lol!) on the spot for 5 minutes and see how I got on. Sounds a bit daft, I know! ;) And I felt a bit of a sausage, but I marched away at a fast pace and worked up a good heartrate and was breathing hard by the end of it. Then I felt great for the little bit of exercise I'd done, so I jogged on the spot for a minute, and was KNACKERED but felt even better! :) I really need to start slow because of my total lack of fitness though. I think I'll try that simple routine every day for a bit, and meanwhile maybe look out a low impact pregnancy aerobics DVD to start in a few weeks if I feel able.
Okay this is getting really waffly, so I'll stop now! It's getting late as well. Baby tiny has already finished Carnegie Stage 7 of Embryonic Development, and is starting Stage 8. Finally visible to the human eye at 1mm long!! :) This is when I started calling Benjamin, "Babydot" because he was just a little dot of a baby back then :) I still haven't settled on a baby name for this little one, though I use various cutesy nicknames frequently. I'm happy doing that for now, so that's okay. I'm sure one or two will stick soon! My littlest one is now pear-shaped, has blood cells already developed, and is working on the beginnings of the nervous system (the neural groove). Exciting!!! :D This stage only lasts until 19DPO and the next stage starts the same day and will probably pass very quickly. Embryonic development is incredibly speedy and miraculous! I'm so amazed at what's going on inside my body at this very moment. It's almost too brain-boggling to comprehend when you cast your eye down at the zip of your jeans!
Will update again soon! :)
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