I'm soooooo excited to be starting my second trimester tomorrow!!! :D For anyone who hasn't read here for long, I always go by the Developmental Method of dividing pregnancy into trimesters, rather than the Gestational one of just taking 40 weeks and dividing by 3 (13 weeks and 3 days). It's less boring (!!), makes more sense to me (following the development milestones of the actual pregnancy and fetus), and allows me to be OUTTA the first trimester over a week sooner! ;) I don't find the first trimester much fun. I LOVE the second trimester! So why draaaag out the waiting when it's totally not necessary, being down to opinion in any case?! So my 2nd trimesters always start at 12 weeks exactly. The baby is fully developed, and needs to grow, and fine tune those systems and organs it has been working on in the first trimester. That lasts until 27 weeks, after which time the goals are weight gain and lung maturity - the third trimester! :) I'm so excited to be 12 weeeeeks tomorrow!!! It has felt like AGES coming, but at the same time I can't believe I'm here already!
Right before I posted this entry, I made an ultrasound gallery and a belly gallery and posted those, so you should find those if you scroll down below this post OR in the "ultrasound galleries" and "belly galleries" links on the right hand side there. I think I have permalinked them into those galleries.
I got a belly picture at 5 weeks, and didn't get around to taking the 10 week belly picture until 11 weeks (oops!). They both came out horrible light and quality with my GOOD camera, which is annoying, but oh well. I've compensated as well as I can, but the light and contrast is still a bit weird. Anyway, the point is, you can see my tummy and the shape change! I am definitely showing now - Neil has really noticed it in the last 3 or 4 days, and I can feel the difference too. The non-maternity jeans that I had been wearing before getting pregnant were rather baggy on me because I was still losing weight after having Benjamin, and I was not yet fitting into size 12 jeans, but the 14s were getting a bit baggy. Anyway that has worked out great because they still fit me very comfortably in the leg (girth!), but my tummy is really filling out the waistline so they're not feeling like they're going to fall down all the time. They're the perfect in-between jeans. I think I will have to get out my maternity clothes soon though, because once I start showing I think the weeks zip by and I seem to change size quite quickly in the tummy department!
I can not think of what I want to eat this evening. I've had dinner, though it was hard to get down as I have been feeling REALLY sick today (and the last two days as well, they've been bad ones for nausea). But I keep getting a sort of HINT of a taste of something that I really really want, and it's driving me crazy! I can't put my finger on what it is! I keep thinking maybe it has to do with chicken? More to the point, it needs some sort of sauce, and the sauce is... tangy - vinegary, I think. Not mayo, that's too mustardy... I just can't think what it IS! We have no chicken anyway, so I am boiling a couple of eggs to nibble on. I have had a couple of boiled eggs at around midnight (or later some nights!) for most of this week. It's not so much that I am wanting egg, but I just need something savoury and with good protein, and we really don't have much in the house this week to choose from, so egg it is! I am going to need to do something to these eggs to satisfy the "something" my taste buds are after, but I am not sure what!
Okay so my eggs are ready and I don't want them at ALL, suddenly! :S I am eating an apple instead. At least they're hard boiled so I can save them in the fridge and they needn't go to waste. I feel sick and sometimes the freshness of an apple out of the fridge can help (I do waaay better with these than apples at room temperature), but this one hasn't worked so far. This week, everything seems to smell mildly of either petrol or leather (both smells that I normally hate and which make me feel queasy when I'm otherwise fine!). At first I thought there were car fumes coming in the window or something, but it's just persistant, window open or not. Blech! Even the sofa smells of cars. It really makes me feel travel sick, which doesn't help!
Food-wise, so far this pregnancy, I am NOT a fan of salty foods. I know in my first trimester in other pregnancies I have found salt and vinegar crisps very yummy, and things like that. I can't bear the thought of even plain crisps at all, the whole of this first trimester. They were very helpful for me when I was trying to eat again (after not for a while!) in my first trimester with Arthur, and I remember finding them helpful in France and when we got home, early in my first trimester with Benjamin, but I haven't wanted them at all. Last week we had zero food to snack on (desperately needed to go food shopping!) and I found myself too hungry to wait until I could get a meal ready, and the only thing I could find to instantly snack on was a bag of plain crisps. I literally gagged on the first few, because they were unbearably salty. Sometimes that can happen though, so I thought maybe it was a bag that had been overly salted, and persevered a bit. It was like someone had emptied salt heavily all over the crisps and they'd been damp or something so the salt had coated them evenly, all over. It was like trying to drink sea water! Blech! I had to put the bag down, and Neil finished them happily. I asked if they tasted overly salty and he said no, they were just as they normally were.
The only salty thing I do eat at the moment is Marmite. At times it does seem a bit on the salty side, but I like it on toast sooooo much, and it goes down a treat for breakfast or a late night snack. It leaves a nasty taste which I'm not used to, but otherwise it's still yummy! :)
The things I am more tending towards are fruity, I think. NOT sweet foods, particularly. I don't seem to want salty OR sweet! ;) I don't fancy chocolate or sweets, or biscuits, cakes, etc. I have eaten chocolate and enjoyed it, but definitely don't want to go out of my way to eat any right now, so I'm mostly staying off it. It does give my nausea a kick for a short while if I'm in a pinch, but it doesn't last long, and can leave me feeling horrid once it comes back again.
I am eating quite a lot of something I used to have for dessert as a child sometimes when we didn't have much money (and continued after times got easier, as it's yummy!) - tinned peaches (in light syrup) and evaporated milk! :) I keep a couple of tins or each in the fridge (I like it cold) at all times, and pretty much eat that much over a week. Bananas are good too, but only if they're exactly the right "ripeness". If the flavour is too strong then it's NOT good! I like my veg too, for the most part, and really really like beans right now. Green beans are the best! I would love baked beans if they weren't sitting in so much sweet/salty sauce!
Water is still really really hard to drink. I am managing to drink a little better right at the end of the evening than any other time of day. I can get maybe a glass of water down then. The rest of the day I don't really get good fluids. I can drink milk now, but not in large amounts, and I have milk on cereal. I can also tolerate Ribena better than water, but still not very much at once. I am really looking forward to swiging down tons of fluids when I feel thirsty without feeling like returning them immediately! I feel so thirsty a lot of the time, but quenching it is SO yucky that it doesn't feel worthwhile to push it.
What else foody? I am not a big fan of cheese, but I can eat it. I think it's a bit different to what I remember from my other first trimesters, but they've all varied a little, so it is probably just another variation. I weighed myself last week and was surprised to see that I'm 9 stone 7.5lbs! So I have lost 7lbs since the beginning of my pregnancy! :) I may have started gaining some back this week, since I am suddenly seeming bigger in the baby department.
Well, I have now eaten one of the boiled eggs with mayo, and it was definitely NOT what my body wanted! ;) Oh well! I will save the other one for tomorrow.
I cooked salmon a few days ago in a sauce that my daddy taught me to make - white wine, a bit of mustard, creme fraiche, and dill. We ate it with pasta and veg, and it was SOOOOOOO good! I always love that meal, but it has been heavily on my mind ever since, hehe! I could have eaten it all over again a couple of hours after the meal, and wanted it the next day for ALL THREE of my meals, haha! The sauce is so flavoursome and has a tang to it, and I'm just wondering if that's what my taste buds are after? I could pretty much just eat that sauce over pasta or potatoes (or egg!) at all times lately. I adore salmon right now, but I'm not eating it often. I think maybe it's for Cornflake's brain development or something, with all the Omega 3 (and 6??). Last pregnancy I was heavily into tuna sandwiches and it was hard not to eat them every day when I wanted them (twice a week maximum, the midwife said), but this time I have not had any tuna, because I reeeally don't fancy it. Too salty, probably. Fresh salmon = bliss! :)
What else? I'm super tired this week. I have had a couple of nights here and there where I'm not getting to sleep too easily. My brain is still running and I can't get sleepy, even though I'm WIPED OUT. So I think I'm more tired from that maybe? Neil is STILL letting me lie in and nap with Benjamin during his morning nap - he's so wonderful! But I feel ridiculously tired all the same. I am having quite a lot of dizzy spells, which I feel are just part of the tiredness, and they are a bit of a nuisance but I continue doing whatever I'm doing, just a bit more carefully, and don't pay much attention to them. Hopefully they won't get worse.
I'm starting to get very excited about my scan!!!! There are only FOUR days to go - it's on Thursday!! I still haven't figured out how we'll juggle getting Arthur to Kids' Club and attending the scan, but I'll sort that out after the Bank Holiday weekend. I can't believe there are only four days to go till I see my tiny weeny sweetie pie for the very first time! I have never had to wait this long before seeing my new tiny for the first time. It feels like a long wait this time in comparison, and I can't waaaait to see that precious sight of my own REAL baby moving and wiggling and looking like a real little person inside me!! So exciting! I will definitely be keeping my eyes verily peeled for the angle of that little nub! ;) I recapped myself on the research yesterday, and looked at the u/s pictures from my other 12-week scans. Only Benjamin and Matthew had visible nubs. Benjamin was absolutely 100% undoubtedly a boy (and now I feel all the more confident about being SURE of determining the gender if I see a clear nub with an angle like that again!). Matthew was - surprisingly - pretty much all GIRL! ;) His nub was almost parallel to his spine! Which is supposed to be GIRL. His was the earliest scan out of the four though, at 12 weeks and 2 days, and the thing with the nub is that they all start out pointing down. From 12 weeks onwards, the angle increases in boys, as their crown-to-rump length increases. Normal CRL in a early 12 week fetus is 62.6mm, apparently. Matthew was measured as 58.7 or something like that. Now, the sonographer was daft though, because I remember Matthew did like a tummy crunch and rammed his chin onto his chest, and the sonographer froze the image and did a crown-to-rump measurement!!! What?!?! Wouldn't that be like, TOTALLY INACCURATE?!?! Tsk. Anyway, so he measured small, but obviously he WASN'T. In any case, his measurement puts him smaller than the usual 12 weeks, which is the key aspect for the nub angle changing. So I wondered if he was just caught too early for his little nub to have started angling up properly yet, since he was only just past 12 weeks? Otherwise I have no idea!
I think if I see a girly nub like Matthew's was, unless it's REALLY obvious and pointing straight down, I will have to try to remember that Matthew had a nub like that (I'll only be 12w3d this time, a day more than at Matthew's scan, but mind you, only 2 days earlier than at Benjamin's...) and it could easily be a boy. They say if the angle is between 10 and 30 degrees from the spine, you can't assign gender anyway. It could be either and there's no way to tell at that angle. If it's greater than 30 degrees, it's a boy. MUCH more likely to wrongly determine that it's a boy than the other way around, apparently. Girl angles do NOT go higher than 30 degrees. Benjamin's angle was NINETY degrees, haha! ;) I do expect that this baby is a boy, because why wouldn't it be?! ;) So I will be essentially looking for confirmation of that re. the nub, on Thursday. It will be good to know early, or at least have a good clue! :)
Well I am going to post this and go to bed, I think. Oh I almost forgot - the midwife rang me to tell me that I have two risk factors and thus need an appointment to see the consultant, which I am not feeling too happy about but oh well. Risk factor #1 is the usual Group B Strep positive thing - they presume I am because I was before. Doesn't necessarily work that way, but it's quite likely. I have a new risk factor this pregnancy. I am (fanfare please!) A Grand-Multip! :D I'm just waffling about trying to explain the terms, but then I googled and found a site that will do it much better! Here's the bit I wanted:
"In the UK, gravidity is defined as the number of times that a woman has been pregnant and parity is defined as the number of times that she has given birth to a fetus with a gestational age of 24 weeks or more, regardless of whether the child was born alive or was stillborn.
* A nulliparous woman (nullip) has not given birth previously (regardless of outcome).
* A primagravida is in her first pregnancy.
* A primiparous woman has given birth once. The term 'primip' is often used interchangeably with primagravida, although technically incorrect as a woman does not become primiparous until she has delivered her baby.
* A multigravida has been pregnant more than once.
* A multiparous woman (multip) has given birth more than once.
* A grand multipara is a woman who has already delivered five or more infants who have achieved a gestational age of 24 weeks or more, and such women are traditionally considered to be at higher risk than the average in subsequent pregnancies.
* A grand multigravida has been pregnant five times or more.
* A great grand multipara has delivered seven or more infants beyond 24 weeks' gestation.
The whole article is here, and I'm posting the link for my own reference really, because it went on to say a lot of stuff about the management of grand multips. I see that I am actually NOT a grand multip, since I would have to have birthed 5 children to have that title, so the midwife is wrong! ;) But I am a grand multigravida, and the article goes on to say that management should involve birth in a hospital setting, preparation for possible haemmorrhage, etc, (yikes!) after the birth - which is the reason the midwife said I was more at risk. Soooo, I have to see the consultant. I have already emailed my doula about it, and am looking forward to her (sure to be very reassuring) reply, but I think she's away this week for half-term with her family. Anyway, the midwife had already made me an appointment for July 15th. I'm not looking forward to it, because I am pretty sure it will be anxiety provoking (they'll basically "make me aware" of all the things that could go wrong, and then tell me I must deliver in the hospital). I don't actually know whether I want to have a homebirth or not this time. I loved my last homebirth, but I take it pregnancy by pregnancy, and listen for what God is saying now. I definitely lean towards staying at home, but sometimes that choice is taken out of my hands (like when my waters broke at 35 weeks with little Nathan!).
Sooo, that's a bit of a bummer, but news I wanted to make note of.
Okay, going to bed! Will update again soon! Can't wait for Thursday!!!! :D
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Samuel's Belly Gallery
5 weeks pregnant
11 weeks pregnant (a week late on the 10-week shot!)
I missed 14 weeks and 16 weeks! :(
18 weeks pregnant
I'm so sad that I've been terribly lax at keeping up with my belly pictures this pregnancy! :( I kept forgetting and forgetting, and so there's a TEN week gap where I normally take pictures every other week! I feel so sad about it :( But anyway, here is the next one, at 28 weeks...
28 weeks pregnant
Complete slack-ness continues with me missing all the usual milestones for belly pics - oh dear! :( However, here are the two I've managed to take since 28 weeks:
33 weeks pregnant
37 weeks and 5 days pregnant! :)
40 weeks pregnant - taken on my due date!
Samuel's Ultrasound Gallery
First scan at 12 weeks and 3 days (baby measuring 12w5d) - see the nub in the first picture?! Looks boyish to me! :) The "cloud" on the last two pics is, um, my bowel, apparently! ;)
Here are the ultrasound pictures from the scan I had at 20 weeks and 2 days. I got 3 sweet little profile pictures which remind me so much of Nathan, but actually they look ever so like Benjamin's profile pictures from his 20 week scan! We also got photographic evidence confirming that he is indeed a boy - Samuel Robert, our FIFTH baby boy!! :D
So excited, and I can't WAIT to meet him! :)
Here are the ultrasound pictures from the scan I had at 20 weeks and 2 days. I got 3 sweet little profile pictures which remind me so much of Nathan, but actually they look ever so like Benjamin's profile pictures from his 20 week scan! We also got photographic evidence confirming that he is indeed a boy - Samuel Robert, our FIFTH baby boy!! :D
So excited, and I can't WAIT to meet him! :)
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
11 weeks, 1 day
Over a week since I updated last - whoops! I have all sorts of news, but unfortunately have started this post rather late (isn't that unusual?!), so I am not sure how much of it I'll manage to churn out before I absolutely MUST go to bed! I'll get started!
Continuing weirdness with the morning sickness that went away completely - it's back! Bleurgh! I have no idea why it went, or why it's back, but it's WELL AND TRULY back, just as bad as before. It faded out like I described last time I updated, exactly as it always has before in my other pregnancies when it is finally finished. I did have a bad cold, and it seemed to go with that. As soon as I was almost over my cold, I noticed queasiness setting in again. I thought maybe it was a "bad" day as they used to be, so that with the morning sickness almost gone it felt like a little mild queasiness at my old "peak" times of day. The next day I had mild queasiness for most of the day. The day after, my old peak time of day was more than queasiness, but the rest of the day I was still just queasy. And right after that I was back to the old horrible nausea that prevents me doing stuff, ugh! I was admittedly really really bummed at first, because I honestly thought it was gone! And it was disappointing to get it back full force. But I adjusted pretty quickly. After all, I had a week off! That's never happened to me before in a pregnancy, so I'll take it! :) And now that I'm this close to my 2nd trimester, SURELY the weeks are few before I'll feel better anyway? I hope so!
I had my first midwife appointment last week, at 10 weeks and 4 days! :) I love appointments! :) It being the booking appointment, it was LONG because there's the whole medical history questionnaire to go through, and then the previous maternity history too, and let me tell you, I am taking up quite a bit of time now with four pregnancies, labours, births, and postnatal periods to recount in detail! :) That is one of the main reasons why I LOVE booking appointments though. I just love to talk about my pregnancies and births, and my little ones!!! *blissful sigh*
I had a ton of blood taken for the usual screens and tests, and my urine sample was perfect. My blood pressure was 100/60, which is absolutely what I expected it to be. It's almost always that exact reading on my first couple of antenatal appointments! ;) Last pregnancy it did go lower, and I was very tired and had dizzy spells around that time, and the midwife said that was why. This pregnancy I am also having some dizzy spells and feeling breathless at times, so I presume I am having some low blood pressure again. My blood pressure is low in general, and a little lower still when I'm pregnant, so I'm not awfully surprised. I do need to drink more fluids though, because that could be part of it, and I am just not able to drink enough when I am morning sick :( Especially now the weather has gone all hot and summery.
The midwife I saw was Carol - the same one who came round to do my 40 week check on the day I went into labour with Benjamin. I AM writing my birth story! You'll read about that very soon, I promise! ;) So far I have written long-windedly up until 6.30pm on the day he was born, and he was born at 7.30pm, so take heart! I may finish soon, lol! ;) Anyway, I had had a show by the time she arrived and when she heard about it she told me she would be sure to see me later. Sure enough, she was with me for most of my short labour, and then in the last hour she finished her shift and another (lovely!) midwife came instead. I didn't click wonderfully with Carol, so I was happy about that, but she is still a lovely midwife so it was nice to see her again! She sounded surprised to see me "already", and told her student with some fanfare that I was back for number five! Everyone seems to be reacting like it's a big deal that I already have four, and especially when they hear their ages, and the fact that they're all boys. "Hoping for a girl this time??..." is the question I hear ALL THE TIME, and what do I say to that?! I usually say that a girl would be lovely, but I love having boys so I will be thrilled with another. "When are you going to stop?!!" is the other one I keep on hearing, and also the midwife asked me, "Was it a surprise?" I said noooo (in a sort of "don't be daft!" tone!) and told her that I am very lucky (wish I had said blessed instead though, tsk) that my body is ready to conceive around the 9 month mark postpartum, so that is when I do. I told her we don't prevent pregnancies. She and the student looked to me like they would have both loved to roll their eyes or exchange some sort of glance, but they didn't, which I have to say I am glad of! They also were overly wow-y when we got to the questions about breastfeeding with the other boys. I had to say how long I had breastfed for, and so Arthur is 4 years, Matthew will be too (he is 4 in two weeks - whaaaaat?!?! - and still very occasionally breastfeeding at bedtime), Nathan self-weaned at 16 months, and Benjamin is obviously still breastfeeding at 10 months. I am NOT supermummy just because I breastfeed for years! It's both lovely and slightly uncomfortable when people OVERLY wow about it! I just do what I think is best for them (THEM, not me), and also happen to love it. I think I mentioned here years ago now that I had a little sort of goal or dream - I would love to breastfeed without a break for a decade. I don't even know why, and it's a pointless goal! It's not a huge thing for me, so it doesn't drive me at all, but there it is. If Benjamin does not self-wean while I am pregnant, hopefully I will get somewhere near to 8 years (it'll be 6 straight years in November) even with no more babies after this one. I just LOVE breastfeeding!!! :D
Okay, getting off track!
So my appointment went well. It was just blood tests and questions - no dopplers or palpating my tummy or anything like that (too early apparently, haha!). My next midwife appointment is after my scan, at 16 weeks, and I booked it with the midwife last week. It's June 25th. My scan is getting closer - NEXT WEEEEEEEEEK!!! I can't wait to see my little one! It's on Thursday. We can't figure out childcare, so we'll have to take the three littlest with us. They don't like you to bring children, and ours MIGHT not behave, but we'll keep them in the tandem pushchair or in arms and give them a snack to work on, and hopefully it'll be okay. The rooms are tiny so I hope we fit in! :S Usually my grandparents offer to watch them for a scan, but they have been STONE COLD silent since finding out about the pregnancy. Granny phoned me last week in her normal cheerful and chatty way, but did not mention the baby or ask me anything about my pregnancy or how I was feeling at ALL. It was like she had forgotten I was pregnant (and she never forgets things like that). Grandoug still hasn't spoken to me since before I told Granny over the phone. So we were not about to ask them.
Since making that decision though, last night Granny phoned me out of the blue as though nothing had happened at all! She straight away asked how I was feeling, and how the morning sickness was going, and when was the baby due again? And so on! I was a bit stunned, but SO relieved and happy that she has come around. Mummy said she would, and I'm just so glad. It was weighing on me more than I realised. I still haven't talked to Grandoug, but oh well. Hopefully soon. But I wouldn't ask them to watch the boys. The scan happens to fall in half term, and our church runs a kids' club on two afternoons that week (Arthur LOVES these!) for primary school age children. It's a bit fiddly because my scan is at 1.50pm and Kids' Club starts at 2pm! :S I tried to rearrange the scan (because there is NO WAY I am letting Arthur miss Kids' Club, not even a bit of it!), but they are fully booked and can't change a thing. Soooo I am trying to figure out either dropping him off REALLY early (checking to see if that's okay and who will be there), OR seeing if I can drop him at the home of another kid who is going, and see if they would mind taking Arthur along with them? We'll just have to take the other three. I am glad I have a doppler, because I would be so nervous otherwise, of having three little kiddies in the scan room and then finding out the I had lost the baby or something horrible like that. I would not want to have little ones to deal with while we receive that news, so I will be using my doppler on the morning of the scan to just check on Cornflake for reassurance!
I am SURE there is only one baby in there now. My uterus comes up to halfway or just a bit over, between my pubic bone and my tummy button (still fairly flat though), which is about right for 10-11 weeks, comparing my other pregnancies with this one. If it was twins then I am sure I would be growing much bigger than that by now. I can now hear Cornflake's heartbeat loud and clear the instant I turn the doppler on - no searching any more! And even if I angle it all over the place, there is only one heartbeat in there! ;) I can't wait to see my tiny little new baby person! Cornflake is now just over 4cm long from head to bottom!!! Amazing! I know that is still so tiny, but when I hold my fingers up that distance apart and then picture the shape of a fetus within them (and add legs!), it's just amazing to me. Cornflake has grown soooo much already! In such a short time since conception, really. And looks totally human-baby-like.
Last week, from about 10w2d or 10w3d, I have had times every day where I have a sort of suspicious "awareness" feeling. I stop and wait, but I feel nothing, so I just think I was "feeling things". But since it's something that I'm noticing daily, I am thinking maybe not. Every time it happens, it's like the tiniest possible squirming sensation low down around pubic bone level or a touch higher. The instant it distracts me, I stop whatever I'm doing and go very still and wait, to see if I feel any movement. But nothing more happens. I have been VERY suspicious that it IS Cornflake moving that is giving me that sensation, but I have not been able to actually say I have felt the baby move as such. Yesterday and the day before, I had several times each of those days where it happened, and I was SO SURE I felt movement that I would lie on my tummy or back and wait - almost hold my breath! - for something more to confirm what I could have sworn I'd felt! But nope.
This afternoon I was feeling sick and exhausted, and Neil took the boys out to the park (all four!) for their regular outing. I lay on my bed on my tummy just resting, and suddenly for a split second I felt like a little something with the most featherlight touch just swiped across the inside of my skin just to the side of my pubic bone on the left. I froze and waited. Nothing! After a while I started to doubt that it was Cornflake because maybe that was sort of low and to the side a bit for baby movements? I don't know. But I still remember the sensation, and I do think now that it might have been Cornflake. Anyway, after a bit I was lying on my back, and starting to doze off when - again very suddenly - there was an odd sort of "flumple" feeling just about a centimetre above my pubic bone. It only lasted a split second again, but it felt a bit like the ripple of a waterbed if you push it and then let go suddenly. But it was so quick that by the time I went still to wait for something more, it wasn't even there any more and nothing else happened!
This evening I was checking blogs lying on my side on the sofa with my laptop on the edge of the sofa, and suddenly felt a definite squirm!! It was tiny, and fast as a flash again, but a clear "shifting" feeling, like a very tiny somebody squirming or shifting position for a moment. I am now absolutely sure that I am feeling Cornflake move! No actual taps or pokes yet (I was getting those with Matthew from 10 weeks, but then he WAS the boy who shifted my butt on the computer chair with a kick to my hip at 17 - SEVENTEEN! - weeks, and remains that kind of child to this day, lol!).
So I am very excited!!!! It's so wonderful and indescribably lovely to be feeling a precious newly created little person move about inside me again! The wonder NEVER gets old - as I think I have said before! And I honestly think I feel more and more in awe and in particular, THANKFUL, each pregnancy as I feel these amazing sensations. I adore pregnancy for the gift of being able to feel my baby move inside me. So precious! I'm so so so thankful to be here again, and just blissful every time I feel a squirm or a "flumple" low low down - I have felt several of these sensations this evening since the first one I described above! Yay! :) My bond with my unborn child INSTANTLY makes a huge leap when I start to really feel them move and touch me - make contact with me so I can feel them there. That first sensation FLOODED me with fresh new love for my tiny one, and made me all the more eager to meet him!
Well, that is my main news! I did have a weird time over the last few days - particularly the weekend - because I was 10 weeks and 6 days on Sunday, and ever since Nathan's pregnancy.... That is the gestation where I suddenly and inexplicably started to bleed (I honestly feel that haemmorrhage is a better description, if I sit on the toilet and hear a continuous weeing sound, and it's blood). I know it was just Nathan's pregnancy, but I remember feeling sort of weird and anxious around that time in Benjamin's pregnancy. Of course nothing happened! But the same gestation has had me feeling odd and uneasy this time too. It was so incredibly scary, and affected me more than I think I realised at the time. Horrid! Anyway! Not something to dwell on! I am still praying for a pregnancy with no bleeding, and it still amazes me that I'm 11 weeks pregnant with not a spot of bleeding this whole time!!!! Never experienced anything like that before, and it's sooo nice! :)
The boys got to hear Cornflake's heart beating last week. I found Matthew with his T-shirt up and my doppler held to his little torso, very seriously listening for the baby in his tummy! I asked if they wanted to hear our baby in my tummy, and was really pleased that as soon as the doppler was on, the heartbeat was there loud and clear instantly. They were all so thrilled, and Benjamin went very quiet listening to the new sounds. Arthur wouldn't let me turn it off for five minutes! He had a big smile on and said he could listen to it for ages, bless his heart! I discovered for the first time that I have quite a wiggler in there! There were only a couple of those little "whomp" sounds that indicate a limb moving under the doppler, but several times the little one completely disappeared from under the doppler and I had to do some searching to relocate him! :)
Okay it's LATE because Benjamin woke for a feed, and now I must go to bed! Glad to have managed to fit all my news in though! Hopefully I will update again much sooner next time. SIX days to go until my 2nd trimester starts!!!!! Wheeeeee!! That's so soon! :) Oh and I need to start answering comments in the comments section, I think, because I keep meaning to answer a question or comment on something that somebody has said, in my next post, but then I forget! :S So I will try to reply to comments occasionally and keep up with it better that way! :) Thank you for the comments! I am loving getting them! xxx
Continuing weirdness with the morning sickness that went away completely - it's back! Bleurgh! I have no idea why it went, or why it's back, but it's WELL AND TRULY back, just as bad as before. It faded out like I described last time I updated, exactly as it always has before in my other pregnancies when it is finally finished. I did have a bad cold, and it seemed to go with that. As soon as I was almost over my cold, I noticed queasiness setting in again. I thought maybe it was a "bad" day as they used to be, so that with the morning sickness almost gone it felt like a little mild queasiness at my old "peak" times of day. The next day I had mild queasiness for most of the day. The day after, my old peak time of day was more than queasiness, but the rest of the day I was still just queasy. And right after that I was back to the old horrible nausea that prevents me doing stuff, ugh! I was admittedly really really bummed at first, because I honestly thought it was gone! And it was disappointing to get it back full force. But I adjusted pretty quickly. After all, I had a week off! That's never happened to me before in a pregnancy, so I'll take it! :) And now that I'm this close to my 2nd trimester, SURELY the weeks are few before I'll feel better anyway? I hope so!
I had my first midwife appointment last week, at 10 weeks and 4 days! :) I love appointments! :) It being the booking appointment, it was LONG because there's the whole medical history questionnaire to go through, and then the previous maternity history too, and let me tell you, I am taking up quite a bit of time now with four pregnancies, labours, births, and postnatal periods to recount in detail! :) That is one of the main reasons why I LOVE booking appointments though. I just love to talk about my pregnancies and births, and my little ones!!! *blissful sigh*
I had a ton of blood taken for the usual screens and tests, and my urine sample was perfect. My blood pressure was 100/60, which is absolutely what I expected it to be. It's almost always that exact reading on my first couple of antenatal appointments! ;) Last pregnancy it did go lower, and I was very tired and had dizzy spells around that time, and the midwife said that was why. This pregnancy I am also having some dizzy spells and feeling breathless at times, so I presume I am having some low blood pressure again. My blood pressure is low in general, and a little lower still when I'm pregnant, so I'm not awfully surprised. I do need to drink more fluids though, because that could be part of it, and I am just not able to drink enough when I am morning sick :( Especially now the weather has gone all hot and summery.
The midwife I saw was Carol - the same one who came round to do my 40 week check on the day I went into labour with Benjamin. I AM writing my birth story! You'll read about that very soon, I promise! ;) So far I have written long-windedly up until 6.30pm on the day he was born, and he was born at 7.30pm, so take heart! I may finish soon, lol! ;) Anyway, I had had a show by the time she arrived and when she heard about it she told me she would be sure to see me later. Sure enough, she was with me for most of my short labour, and then in the last hour she finished her shift and another (lovely!) midwife came instead. I didn't click wonderfully with Carol, so I was happy about that, but she is still a lovely midwife so it was nice to see her again! She sounded surprised to see me "already", and told her student with some fanfare that I was back for number five! Everyone seems to be reacting like it's a big deal that I already have four, and especially when they hear their ages, and the fact that they're all boys. "Hoping for a girl this time??..." is the question I hear ALL THE TIME, and what do I say to that?! I usually say that a girl would be lovely, but I love having boys so I will be thrilled with another. "When are you going to stop?!!" is the other one I keep on hearing, and also the midwife asked me, "Was it a surprise?" I said noooo (in a sort of "don't be daft!" tone!) and told her that I am very lucky (wish I had said blessed instead though, tsk) that my body is ready to conceive around the 9 month mark postpartum, so that is when I do. I told her we don't prevent pregnancies. She and the student looked to me like they would have both loved to roll their eyes or exchange some sort of glance, but they didn't, which I have to say I am glad of! They also were overly wow-y when we got to the questions about breastfeeding with the other boys. I had to say how long I had breastfed for, and so Arthur is 4 years, Matthew will be too (he is 4 in two weeks - whaaaaat?!?! - and still very occasionally breastfeeding at bedtime), Nathan self-weaned at 16 months, and Benjamin is obviously still breastfeeding at 10 months. I am NOT supermummy just because I breastfeed for years! It's both lovely and slightly uncomfortable when people OVERLY wow about it! I just do what I think is best for them (THEM, not me), and also happen to love it. I think I mentioned here years ago now that I had a little sort of goal or dream - I would love to breastfeed without a break for a decade. I don't even know why, and it's a pointless goal! It's not a huge thing for me, so it doesn't drive me at all, but there it is. If Benjamin does not self-wean while I am pregnant, hopefully I will get somewhere near to 8 years (it'll be 6 straight years in November) even with no more babies after this one. I just LOVE breastfeeding!!! :D
Okay, getting off track!
So my appointment went well. It was just blood tests and questions - no dopplers or palpating my tummy or anything like that (too early apparently, haha!). My next midwife appointment is after my scan, at 16 weeks, and I booked it with the midwife last week. It's June 25th. My scan is getting closer - NEXT WEEEEEEEEEK!!! I can't wait to see my little one! It's on Thursday. We can't figure out childcare, so we'll have to take the three littlest with us. They don't like you to bring children, and ours MIGHT not behave, but we'll keep them in the tandem pushchair or in arms and give them a snack to work on, and hopefully it'll be okay. The rooms are tiny so I hope we fit in! :S Usually my grandparents offer to watch them for a scan, but they have been STONE COLD silent since finding out about the pregnancy. Granny phoned me last week in her normal cheerful and chatty way, but did not mention the baby or ask me anything about my pregnancy or how I was feeling at ALL. It was like she had forgotten I was pregnant (and she never forgets things like that). Grandoug still hasn't spoken to me since before I told Granny over the phone. So we were not about to ask them.
Since making that decision though, last night Granny phoned me out of the blue as though nothing had happened at all! She straight away asked how I was feeling, and how the morning sickness was going, and when was the baby due again? And so on! I was a bit stunned, but SO relieved and happy that she has come around. Mummy said she would, and I'm just so glad. It was weighing on me more than I realised. I still haven't talked to Grandoug, but oh well. Hopefully soon. But I wouldn't ask them to watch the boys. The scan happens to fall in half term, and our church runs a kids' club on two afternoons that week (Arthur LOVES these!) for primary school age children. It's a bit fiddly because my scan is at 1.50pm and Kids' Club starts at 2pm! :S I tried to rearrange the scan (because there is NO WAY I am letting Arthur miss Kids' Club, not even a bit of it!), but they are fully booked and can't change a thing. Soooo I am trying to figure out either dropping him off REALLY early (checking to see if that's okay and who will be there), OR seeing if I can drop him at the home of another kid who is going, and see if they would mind taking Arthur along with them? We'll just have to take the other three. I am glad I have a doppler, because I would be so nervous otherwise, of having three little kiddies in the scan room and then finding out the I had lost the baby or something horrible like that. I would not want to have little ones to deal with while we receive that news, so I will be using my doppler on the morning of the scan to just check on Cornflake for reassurance!
I am SURE there is only one baby in there now. My uterus comes up to halfway or just a bit over, between my pubic bone and my tummy button (still fairly flat though), which is about right for 10-11 weeks, comparing my other pregnancies with this one. If it was twins then I am sure I would be growing much bigger than that by now. I can now hear Cornflake's heartbeat loud and clear the instant I turn the doppler on - no searching any more! And even if I angle it all over the place, there is only one heartbeat in there! ;) I can't wait to see my tiny little new baby person! Cornflake is now just over 4cm long from head to bottom!!! Amazing! I know that is still so tiny, but when I hold my fingers up that distance apart and then picture the shape of a fetus within them (and add legs!), it's just amazing to me. Cornflake has grown soooo much already! In such a short time since conception, really. And looks totally human-baby-like.
Last week, from about 10w2d or 10w3d, I have had times every day where I have a sort of suspicious "awareness" feeling. I stop and wait, but I feel nothing, so I just think I was "feeling things". But since it's something that I'm noticing daily, I am thinking maybe not. Every time it happens, it's like the tiniest possible squirming sensation low down around pubic bone level or a touch higher. The instant it distracts me, I stop whatever I'm doing and go very still and wait, to see if I feel any movement. But nothing more happens. I have been VERY suspicious that it IS Cornflake moving that is giving me that sensation, but I have not been able to actually say I have felt the baby move as such. Yesterday and the day before, I had several times each of those days where it happened, and I was SO SURE I felt movement that I would lie on my tummy or back and wait - almost hold my breath! - for something more to confirm what I could have sworn I'd felt! But nope.
This afternoon I was feeling sick and exhausted, and Neil took the boys out to the park (all four!) for their regular outing. I lay on my bed on my tummy just resting, and suddenly for a split second I felt like a little something with the most featherlight touch just swiped across the inside of my skin just to the side of my pubic bone on the left. I froze and waited. Nothing! After a while I started to doubt that it was Cornflake because maybe that was sort of low and to the side a bit for baby movements? I don't know. But I still remember the sensation, and I do think now that it might have been Cornflake. Anyway, after a bit I was lying on my back, and starting to doze off when - again very suddenly - there was an odd sort of "flumple" feeling just about a centimetre above my pubic bone. It only lasted a split second again, but it felt a bit like the ripple of a waterbed if you push it and then let go suddenly. But it was so quick that by the time I went still to wait for something more, it wasn't even there any more and nothing else happened!
This evening I was checking blogs lying on my side on the sofa with my laptop on the edge of the sofa, and suddenly felt a definite squirm!! It was tiny, and fast as a flash again, but a clear "shifting" feeling, like a very tiny somebody squirming or shifting position for a moment. I am now absolutely sure that I am feeling Cornflake move! No actual taps or pokes yet (I was getting those with Matthew from 10 weeks, but then he WAS the boy who shifted my butt on the computer chair with a kick to my hip at 17 - SEVENTEEN! - weeks, and remains that kind of child to this day, lol!).
So I am very excited!!!! It's so wonderful and indescribably lovely to be feeling a precious newly created little person move about inside me again! The wonder NEVER gets old - as I think I have said before! And I honestly think I feel more and more in awe and in particular, THANKFUL, each pregnancy as I feel these amazing sensations. I adore pregnancy for the gift of being able to feel my baby move inside me. So precious! I'm so so so thankful to be here again, and just blissful every time I feel a squirm or a "flumple" low low down - I have felt several of these sensations this evening since the first one I described above! Yay! :) My bond with my unborn child INSTANTLY makes a huge leap when I start to really feel them move and touch me - make contact with me so I can feel them there. That first sensation FLOODED me with fresh new love for my tiny one, and made me all the more eager to meet him!
Well, that is my main news! I did have a weird time over the last few days - particularly the weekend - because I was 10 weeks and 6 days on Sunday, and ever since Nathan's pregnancy.... That is the gestation where I suddenly and inexplicably started to bleed (I honestly feel that haemmorrhage is a better description, if I sit on the toilet and hear a continuous weeing sound, and it's blood). I know it was just Nathan's pregnancy, but I remember feeling sort of weird and anxious around that time in Benjamin's pregnancy. Of course nothing happened! But the same gestation has had me feeling odd and uneasy this time too. It was so incredibly scary, and affected me more than I think I realised at the time. Horrid! Anyway! Not something to dwell on! I am still praying for a pregnancy with no bleeding, and it still amazes me that I'm 11 weeks pregnant with not a spot of bleeding this whole time!!!! Never experienced anything like that before, and it's sooo nice! :)
The boys got to hear Cornflake's heart beating last week. I found Matthew with his T-shirt up and my doppler held to his little torso, very seriously listening for the baby in his tummy! I asked if they wanted to hear our baby in my tummy, and was really pleased that as soon as the doppler was on, the heartbeat was there loud and clear instantly. They were all so thrilled, and Benjamin went very quiet listening to the new sounds. Arthur wouldn't let me turn it off for five minutes! He had a big smile on and said he could listen to it for ages, bless his heart! I discovered for the first time that I have quite a wiggler in there! There were only a couple of those little "whomp" sounds that indicate a limb moving under the doppler, but several times the little one completely disappeared from under the doppler and I had to do some searching to relocate him! :)
Okay it's LATE because Benjamin woke for a feed, and now I must go to bed! Glad to have managed to fit all my news in though! Hopefully I will update again much sooner next time. SIX days to go until my 2nd trimester starts!!!!! Wheeeeee!! That's so soon! :) Oh and I need to start answering comments in the comments section, I think, because I keep meaning to answer a question or comment on something that somebody has said, in my next post, but then I forget! :S So I will try to reply to comments occasionally and keep up with it better that way! :) Thank you for the comments! I am loving getting them! xxx
Sunday, May 16, 2010
9 weeks, 6 days - morning sickness???!
Folks, I am sitting here at 9.15pm rejoicing over a bowl of shredded wheat in MILK!!!! At 9w6d!!!!
Okay, so for much of this past week, I have had the odd hint that my morning sickness wasn't QUITE as bad as it was last week. I totally denied it and put it out of my head. You know how it is - allow yourself to think that it might be improving, and get your just desserts the next morning! :S Little things though, like instead of having to grimly sip tiny bits of water (and feel horrible for it!), I am finding that I can take a few good gulps of water without really thinking about it, even if I feel a bit yuckier for it - that's still a big improvement. But then on.... trying to think which day it was.... Thursday (it's Sunday today), I had a surprisingly good day. The nausea kicked in at the start of the day as it normally does, and got worse throughout the day as usual, BUT it was very very mild to start with and so as it got worse, it really only got to just plain nausea, rather than HORRIBLE all-consuming nausea, by late afternoon! It was SO much better than I was used to that I was able to put together (from scratch! Including yeast, which I personally think smells more gross than anything!) a homemade pizza to surprise the boys when they got home from the park! It's been so long since I have actually cooked anything decent, and I've been feeling bad that Neil is doing so much meal-prep and cooking while he's out of work. It was nice to do that! In the evening I did feel pretty sick, but still, it was a good day!
The next day (Friday) I felt nearer to my usual level of nausea - blech! Saturday, I woke up with a horrid cold and Benjamin (and eventually Nathan) were feverish and sad and tired, so it wasn't a usual day. BUT, my nausea was quite mild for what I was used to. I noticed in hindsight at the end of the day that I had eaten breakfast and then with all of Benjamin's unwellness I hadn't eaten again for over 3 hours (nearly 4!) and hadn't noticed!!! Now, usually I eat breakfast and then within 20 minutes I'm so green that I have to stagger back to the kitchen and find food whilst not being able to bear looking at it (a tricky combination!). And so on every 20-40 minutes till I fall asleep at bedtime. If I go an hour or more, I get so nauseated that I start to panic because I CAN'T get near food to choose something I might try to eat, so I don't know how to stop the cycle. In other words, I've gone too far. Every day for 5+ weeks I have had to make sure I nibble or eat within every hour or else I am done for. I have been done for a fair few times though! ;) And it's hard to force myself to eat once I get to that stage, but if I keep at it then eventually I start to feel better.
Anyway, the point is - THREE PLUS HOURS!!!! And I didn't even notice!!! That really made me ever so slightly hopeful last night! :)
Today, my cold is kicking my butt in an extreme manner, and I have just had to go to bed with it for some of the day. I'm so achy and stuffed up and streaming and throaty and exhausted on top of the usual pregnancy exhaustion, so I got to thinking that mayyybe yesterday was just a better day because my cold symptoms were distracting me or something?! Is that even possible?! Well, today I had to go back to bed without having breakfast for most of the morning, I just felt terrible. Neil has the cold too (he's the source!) but is doing better today, and hasn't been so whacked over the head with it as I seem to be. I'm SO glad he's home right now! Phew.
Anyway, when I got up again I had some breakfast, and realised I was not even slightly queasy. I bumbled about feeling rotten and snuggling little boys, and then they had lunch. I rested on the sofa while they ate, and then some more time passed, and I was going to put Benjamin to bed for his afternoon nap when I realised I hadn't eaten lunch. So I grabbed an apple because my head was stuffed up and I just wanted something cold and juicy. Then I put him to bed. After THAT we were getting the boys ready to go out for a walk with Neil, and suddenly I realised that I did not feel nauseous. Not one bit! I searched and searched for a bit of quease, but found none!!!!! This was more than 3 hours after breakfast, and at least an hour after my apple! I hadn't had ANY nausea yet for the whole day! I still didn't want to get my hopes up, so continued to put it down to cold symptoms being more of a focus right now, and perhaps when those let up in a couple of days I would feel yucky again. I just felt grateful for the cold so that I didn't have such a focus on feeling sick, at the time!
Well then a couple more hours passed, during which time Benjamin woke up too early and was very cross with me for trying to resettle him, and threw his Very First Real Big-Boy Tantrum Ever on the living room floor (he's only 10 months old!!!), and after he calmed down I let him breastfeed for a long time, and then the boys got home from their walk. Then we ate dinner, around which time I noticed evvver such a slight feeling of queasiness. I ate okay except for not really feeling up to a big meal with how rotten I was feeling, and then it was only at about 5.30pm (we eat early!) that I started to notice a general queasy feeling just sitting on me. But it was ever so mild. I put Benjamin to bed without the queasy feeling being bad enough to bother me, and tucked the boys in, chatted with Arthur for a bit and snuggled him in his bed, and then came downstairs feeling OKAY!!! Still that background queasiness, but wow! For me, by this time of day, that's amazing and definitely very different to usual. I ate some chocolate!!!! Wheee! :)
Then after an hour I felt a bit more queasy, probably getting on towards actual mild nausea, so I heated up some Covent Garden Soup (those ones I mentioned before which have been great lately for my nausea) and ate that. While I was eating it, I really started to think that my morning sickness IS ACTUALLY GOING AWAY! But so early?!?! I usually feel sick till 13/14 weeks, and Nathan's went to 16 weeks, and Arthur's to 18 weeks (or was it Benjamin to 16 weeks?? I can't remember!). Matthew was the lovely surprise feeling better at 12 weeks! But in Week 9?!?!?! So right away, once I was really letting myself believe that the morning sickness might actually be going, I started to worry about WHY. I haven't listened with the doppler this week, so as soon as I finished my soup I whipped it out. For ages and ages I looked everywhere at every angle, and was starting to freak out a bit, getting all sorts of mental images of seeing a tiny baby with no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and things like that. I started to think, "Please, please let me find it!..." Eventually I decided to try an inch higher than my bikini line (where I've found it all the other times) in case my womb has just grown more than I thought recently, and PHEW, there it was! :D Beating at 180 beats per minute, and sounding good and fine! Soooo relieved!
I do still have ever such mild "background" queasiness, but as soon as that started to pick up a little, I just went to find something to eat. I realised that I could probably test it by trying to eat something I haven't been able to face since the very start of my morning sickness. I haven't been able to eat cereal with milk on it at all - though I tried at first. I can't get more than a couple of mouthfuls into it before I have to stop for the nausea getting overwhelming, and then it takes an hour or two to ease back to the normal level of nausea. Yuck! So I was really excited to pull out the shredded wheat, sprinkle some SUGAR on (another no-no!), and drench it with milk! I just finished it, and loved every bite! :) So now I feel much more convinced that for some reason or other, my morning sickness really IS coming to an end before 10 weeks has even arrived! Wow. I just can't believe it! I'm so thankful! And don't really understand it, but yeah, soooo thankful! :)
And now that I'm beginning to return to somewhere near normal fluid intake (although I have a cold, plus a poorly baby permanently attached to a breast), the frequent weeing is REALLY kicking in! I was wondering why I really hadn't noticed that symptom at all. Now I am getting it! Last night I resettled Benjamin (in the evening) and went for a wee, and then back to the laptop. I read blogs for about 10 or 15 minutes and Benjamin fussed again (wind) so I burped him and put him back down, and lo and behold, I had to pee again! Craziness - for me, anyway! I also had to get up at 2am to go, even though I went right before bed. Today I am having to go fairly frequently, and I REALLY like it! It makes me feel happy and pregnant to have to keep nipping to the loo for a wee! :) I think that as well as the fluids increasing a bit, my womb is also growing big enough now to squash my bladder much more than it has been. In fact if I recall, between 10 and 12 weeks can get rather uncomfortable and even crampy in that department, as it runs out of room in my pelvis before it pops up.
Now, my nausea has been fluctuating from day to day, so if this is a "good day", I could feel a fair bit queasier tomorrow. But even so, it should be a lot less than my bad days used to be! I really hope this is IT!
So TWO weird differences from all four of my other pregnancies this time: Different morning sickness (starting a week early, tailing off WEEKS earlier than usual), and NO bleeding! My brother is starting to think it's because it's a "different sort of baby!" ;) I still can't bring myself to think that it could ever really be possible that I might be pregnant with an actual girl, hehe!
My SIL had her big scan on Friday, and found out she's having a girl! Which adds to the whole "we'll be having a boy then!" feeling for me, because it does seem that our siblings have the girls and we have the boys! ;) I do have one scrummy little nephew though - but four nieces now! My brother's little girl turned 3 yesterday and she is so girly! She just wants a dress that's pretty, and ballet shoes, and anything pink or sparkly! My mum bought her a dress, and for weeks we would talk about it on the phone, and I would say how lucky she is to go shopping for girly party dresses (how I would LOVE that! I'm very girly myself, you know!). Then Bennie told me that Thea can never have too many hair clips (she loves them) - the more sparkly the better, so I have had the JOY and privilege of browsing through racks and racks of hair clips for little girls - pink ones, purple ones, smiley ones, sparkly ones, butterfly ones - ooooh the choice is endless! It really brought home how I never see, do, or buy anything girly at all, with alllll my little boys! I am so glad to have nieces to legitimately browse through girly things for, but I admit, it isn't quite the same as your OWN baby girl.
I know I said (and I stick by it!) that I would LOVE a fifth precious baby boy! I DO love boys, and would be glad to have eight boys and no girls! I would never prefer having a girl over a boy to the point where I'd try to "swing it" so that we conceive a girl instead. But ohhhh the truth is, how I would love to have a daughter! I know they are a whole different kettle of fish to boys, and can be harder work apparently! But I don't care. I would love to have a daughter! I am such a girly type. I would love to buy pink! And dresses! And flowery stuff! And do her hair! And on and on (really, pretty much ad infinitum). My heart will NOT sink when (if??) we see those ever present boy bits flashing at us at the scan. We already know his name and we love him, and we WANT him! I want to burst with pride and joy thinking of my FIVE little boys, and the fun they'll have, and the snuggles I will get, and how very cute a tiny little boy is when he's wearing denim dungarees with cars embroidered on the front and taking sweet little stumpy toddly steps! I am LONGING for that particular baby boy, and the likelihood is that we'll meet him in December. But, totally aside from that feeling.... I would so like a little girl as well! :)
Well, whoever this sweet little person is, he/she is currently known as Cornflake (Arthur's choice). Oh! I never did give detail on how we told them! We told them after dinner one evening, a couple of weeks ago. They had been busily playing imaginary games all afternoon, and the one they were called away from at dinner time was Pretend Christmas. All three older boys were playing as they usually do - they play together all the time and enjoy each other so much! :) So they had been wrapping each other presents in playsilks, and were about to play Christmas Morning and be all excited. It gave me the idea to tell them about the baby, and tie it into Christmas, because Cornflake is due so soon before Christmas. So while they ate, Neil and I snuck little bits of conversation about how best to tell them, in between supervising the meal. That one just happened to be a meal just for the boys, though we usually eat all together as a family probably 6 days a week. While they ate, I prepared clues, since that's how we decided we'd tell them!
When they came out from eating, we played Christmas Morning with them and they opened all their presents and so on. After they finished, I told them that we had some news about something that was going to happen right before Christmas this year! They were all interested, and Arthur was especially intrigued, and hopped about eager to hear. I told them I had some clues to show them. They weren't the best because they had to be thought of and put together really quickly, but it went down a treat all the same! The first clue was that I handed Arthur one of their teddies wrapped in a while terry towel, and laid it in his arms. They looked at it, clueless. So I asked if they wanted another clue. They were excited and said yes! So I pointed to our button numbers up on the wall, and put my finger under the number 5 (bit cryptic for little ones, I know, hehe!). Arthur said, "Five??!" in a confused way. So I gave them clue number three: I went to the blackboard and let them each choose a colour because I told them I was going to draw each of them on the board. I drew stick figures with smiley faces - Arthur first, then Matthew next to him, a bit smaller. Then Nathan, a bit smaller still, and then Benjamin even smaller. I wrote "4" underneath them. Then I wrote "+" next to their line, and drew a baby with "1" underneath it, and then wrote "=5". I stopped to look at them, and you could see their little cogs turning, hehe! That one seemed really obvious to me, I was sure they'd get it, but they were staring at it with furrowed brows. I know probably only Arthur would understand it though.
So I stood up and asked if they needed one more clue, and they said yes, still looking at the blackboard. So I let my button and zip down a bit on my jeans, stood sideways on and said, "What shape is Mummy's tummy?" Arthur took one look at my tummy and said, "Big... BABY!!!!" The dots in the middle represent about 0.24 seconds where his eyes shot into wide-as-saucers mode as he got it! :) He yelled, "BABY!!!!" at the top of his voice and started jumping up and down squealing and shouting, "It's a BABY in Mummy's tummy, A BABY, A BABY!!!" Matthew and Nathan started jumping up and down about 2 seconds after Arthur did and shouting similar things. I could see that Arthur and Matthew really did get it, and were very excited! But it was so sweet to see Nathan joining in with his brothers as he always does, hugely excited and shouting, "A baby inna tummy! A baby inna tummy!" with great glee, but he obviously didn't have a CLUE as to the reality of the situation, lol! ;) Sweet little boy! :) Neil took photos which came out blurry (such a shame! I hoped he would take video, but apparently not), and Benjamin sat on Neil's lap shrieking and clapping with joy and excitement as he watched his brothers. It was the sweetest picture, and I WISH I had it captured for prosperity, but alas I don't! :( Still, it will stay in my memory for ever all the same :)
Once they stopped jumping, and caught their breath (they kept it up for a while!), Arthur and Matthew started to ask soooo many questions for the next hour before bed - these were mostly from Arthur, but some from Matthew: "How long has the baby been in your tummy? Since MARCH?!!! Why didn't you tell us?!?! Can we call it Cornflake?! Can we call it Crumb?! Can we call it (insert any one of fifty million increasingly silly other choices - Matthew and Arthur alternated these for quite some time!)?! How big is your baby now? Is it this big? Is it this big? Is it this big? (repeat same question with different hand shapes for a long time) Is the baby going to die? How do you know? Will it be born at Christmas? Which date in December? (arranges and re-arranges calender) This one? This one? This one? (this goes on for a while) What if it's late though? What if it's later than Christmas? How do you know? But Matthew was late, so what if THIS baby is late like Matthew was? Can I hear the baby's heart beating? Here? Here? Here? (various ear-to-my-tummy poses) Shoosh boys, I'm trying to hear the baby's heartbeat!... Why wouldn't I be able to hear it? When can I? Will I be six when the baby is born? Will Matthew be 4? Will Nathey be 2? Will Benji be one? Will you have the baby in our house? Remember when you had Nathan in the hospital? Will you do that? When will we know?! Will Heather come and see us? Will you make lots of noise? (followed by much cheerful reminiscing from Arthur about Benjamin's homebirth) Are we really calling it Cornflake?! When will we know it's REAL name? Can we come to the scan?! Why not?! Will you see the willy? Yes, but it'll probably have a willy - will you get a picture of it to show us? Why not?! Can we see that picture though? Oh good!.... I can't WAIT till December!!!" :)
They are so happy and excited, and Arthur is joyfully telling people that we run into: "Did you know that my Mummy has a baby due in December?!" He sounds so proud and pleased, and that makes me soooooooo happy, because you know, he's the eldest of soon-to-be FIVE children, and he's only FIVE himself! I have actually had insensitive people tell me in the past (when we only had 3 I think!), "Poor Arthur!" or "Your poor kids!" because they see it as some huge burden we're putting on them, especially Arthur, being the eldest and still so young. Well I am here to tell the world that he is so very excited! He loves his role as biggest brother, and he's one blessed little boy with endless playmates who look up to him and adore him. Every year another little boy develops enough skills to suddenly be able to play cars and trains with the rest of them, and he LOVES being in charge of that kind of game! ;) He is also joyfully affectionate with his baby or toddler brothers, and finds them cute and cuddly. He gets excited about their milestones, and looks forward to ones that mean they can get more involved in playing with him. He will happily entertain a sad baby brother if I ask him to for 5 minutes if I'm tied up, and usually that results in a happy and giggly baby brother, and a proud and victorious Arthur who is enjoying playing with the little one! I think it's proof positive that it's GOOD for him, our expanding family with close age-gaps, if we tell him yet another baby is coming and he rejoices so VERY much! :) And I can't tell you how happy that makes me! I do have my moments of not knowing what we're doing and worrying and guilt-tripping that we're messing them (particularly Arthur) up! But it's good to have feedback like this from him!
Well I think I will finish this post for now. Oh except that tomorrow I am TEN WEEKS pregnant!!! Double figures! A quarter of the way there! :D I have not forgotten about a belly gallery! Usually I take a photo at 5 weeks (to compare) and then at 10 weeks. Then 14 weeks, and then fortnightly from then on. I have taken a 5 week photo, but not made a gallery yet. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to get Neil to take a photo and then once it's uploaded I'll make a "Belly Gallery" post with both of them! :)
And as of tomorrow, Cornflake is no longer an embryo. He'll be in the final stage of embryonic development (Stage 23), and then officially a FETUS from that point on! Yay! :) Cornflake looks like a little human being, about an inch long. The tail is almost gone, ears and eyes are not quite in the right place but will be soon, and the fingers are separate and the hands can grasp across the body. All the internal organs are in place and the critical period for their development has finished, though they'll still be continuing to develop and grow. Tongue development has just finished. Baby teeth are at cap level, and adult teeth are beginning to form high up in the jaw. The eyes are partly closed, and the gonads are now recognisable as either testes or ovaries (inside the body though). Genitals are beginning to form, and the muscles are getting stronger. The baby can make all sorts of spontaneous movements, and around this time the first brain waves can be detected! My little one is being knit together so amazingly by my wonderful Father God! I can't wait to meet Cornflake, but ohhh how I enjoy "growing" him (her?) in the mean time! :)
Okay, so for much of this past week, I have had the odd hint that my morning sickness wasn't QUITE as bad as it was last week. I totally denied it and put it out of my head. You know how it is - allow yourself to think that it might be improving, and get your just desserts the next morning! :S Little things though, like instead of having to grimly sip tiny bits of water (and feel horrible for it!), I am finding that I can take a few good gulps of water without really thinking about it, even if I feel a bit yuckier for it - that's still a big improvement. But then on.... trying to think which day it was.... Thursday (it's Sunday today), I had a surprisingly good day. The nausea kicked in at the start of the day as it normally does, and got worse throughout the day as usual, BUT it was very very mild to start with and so as it got worse, it really only got to just plain nausea, rather than HORRIBLE all-consuming nausea, by late afternoon! It was SO much better than I was used to that I was able to put together (from scratch! Including yeast, which I personally think smells more gross than anything!) a homemade pizza to surprise the boys when they got home from the park! It's been so long since I have actually cooked anything decent, and I've been feeling bad that Neil is doing so much meal-prep and cooking while he's out of work. It was nice to do that! In the evening I did feel pretty sick, but still, it was a good day!
The next day (Friday) I felt nearer to my usual level of nausea - blech! Saturday, I woke up with a horrid cold and Benjamin (and eventually Nathan) were feverish and sad and tired, so it wasn't a usual day. BUT, my nausea was quite mild for what I was used to. I noticed in hindsight at the end of the day that I had eaten breakfast and then with all of Benjamin's unwellness I hadn't eaten again for over 3 hours (nearly 4!) and hadn't noticed!!! Now, usually I eat breakfast and then within 20 minutes I'm so green that I have to stagger back to the kitchen and find food whilst not being able to bear looking at it (a tricky combination!). And so on every 20-40 minutes till I fall asleep at bedtime. If I go an hour or more, I get so nauseated that I start to panic because I CAN'T get near food to choose something I might try to eat, so I don't know how to stop the cycle. In other words, I've gone too far. Every day for 5+ weeks I have had to make sure I nibble or eat within every hour or else I am done for. I have been done for a fair few times though! ;) And it's hard to force myself to eat once I get to that stage, but if I keep at it then eventually I start to feel better.
Anyway, the point is - THREE PLUS HOURS!!!! And I didn't even notice!!! That really made me ever so slightly hopeful last night! :)
Today, my cold is kicking my butt in an extreme manner, and I have just had to go to bed with it for some of the day. I'm so achy and stuffed up and streaming and throaty and exhausted on top of the usual pregnancy exhaustion, so I got to thinking that mayyybe yesterday was just a better day because my cold symptoms were distracting me or something?! Is that even possible?! Well, today I had to go back to bed without having breakfast for most of the morning, I just felt terrible. Neil has the cold too (he's the source!) but is doing better today, and hasn't been so whacked over the head with it as I seem to be. I'm SO glad he's home right now! Phew.
Anyway, when I got up again I had some breakfast, and realised I was not even slightly queasy. I bumbled about feeling rotten and snuggling little boys, and then they had lunch. I rested on the sofa while they ate, and then some more time passed, and I was going to put Benjamin to bed for his afternoon nap when I realised I hadn't eaten lunch. So I grabbed an apple because my head was stuffed up and I just wanted something cold and juicy. Then I put him to bed. After THAT we were getting the boys ready to go out for a walk with Neil, and suddenly I realised that I did not feel nauseous. Not one bit! I searched and searched for a bit of quease, but found none!!!!! This was more than 3 hours after breakfast, and at least an hour after my apple! I hadn't had ANY nausea yet for the whole day! I still didn't want to get my hopes up, so continued to put it down to cold symptoms being more of a focus right now, and perhaps when those let up in a couple of days I would feel yucky again. I just felt grateful for the cold so that I didn't have such a focus on feeling sick, at the time!
Well then a couple more hours passed, during which time Benjamin woke up too early and was very cross with me for trying to resettle him, and threw his Very First Real Big-Boy Tantrum Ever on the living room floor (he's only 10 months old!!!), and after he calmed down I let him breastfeed for a long time, and then the boys got home from their walk. Then we ate dinner, around which time I noticed evvver such a slight feeling of queasiness. I ate okay except for not really feeling up to a big meal with how rotten I was feeling, and then it was only at about 5.30pm (we eat early!) that I started to notice a general queasy feeling just sitting on me. But it was ever so mild. I put Benjamin to bed without the queasy feeling being bad enough to bother me, and tucked the boys in, chatted with Arthur for a bit and snuggled him in his bed, and then came downstairs feeling OKAY!!! Still that background queasiness, but wow! For me, by this time of day, that's amazing and definitely very different to usual. I ate some chocolate!!!! Wheee! :)
Then after an hour I felt a bit more queasy, probably getting on towards actual mild nausea, so I heated up some Covent Garden Soup (those ones I mentioned before which have been great lately for my nausea) and ate that. While I was eating it, I really started to think that my morning sickness IS ACTUALLY GOING AWAY! But so early?!?! I usually feel sick till 13/14 weeks, and Nathan's went to 16 weeks, and Arthur's to 18 weeks (or was it Benjamin to 16 weeks?? I can't remember!). Matthew was the lovely surprise feeling better at 12 weeks! But in Week 9?!?!?! So right away, once I was really letting myself believe that the morning sickness might actually be going, I started to worry about WHY. I haven't listened with the doppler this week, so as soon as I finished my soup I whipped it out. For ages and ages I looked everywhere at every angle, and was starting to freak out a bit, getting all sorts of mental images of seeing a tiny baby with no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and things like that. I started to think, "Please, please let me find it!..." Eventually I decided to try an inch higher than my bikini line (where I've found it all the other times) in case my womb has just grown more than I thought recently, and PHEW, there it was! :D Beating at 180 beats per minute, and sounding good and fine! Soooo relieved!
I do still have ever such mild "background" queasiness, but as soon as that started to pick up a little, I just went to find something to eat. I realised that I could probably test it by trying to eat something I haven't been able to face since the very start of my morning sickness. I haven't been able to eat cereal with milk on it at all - though I tried at first. I can't get more than a couple of mouthfuls into it before I have to stop for the nausea getting overwhelming, and then it takes an hour or two to ease back to the normal level of nausea. Yuck! So I was really excited to pull out the shredded wheat, sprinkle some SUGAR on (another no-no!), and drench it with milk! I just finished it, and loved every bite! :) So now I feel much more convinced that for some reason or other, my morning sickness really IS coming to an end before 10 weeks has even arrived! Wow. I just can't believe it! I'm so thankful! And don't really understand it, but yeah, soooo thankful! :)
And now that I'm beginning to return to somewhere near normal fluid intake (although I have a cold, plus a poorly baby permanently attached to a breast), the frequent weeing is REALLY kicking in! I was wondering why I really hadn't noticed that symptom at all. Now I am getting it! Last night I resettled Benjamin (in the evening) and went for a wee, and then back to the laptop. I read blogs for about 10 or 15 minutes and Benjamin fussed again (wind) so I burped him and put him back down, and lo and behold, I had to pee again! Craziness - for me, anyway! I also had to get up at 2am to go, even though I went right before bed. Today I am having to go fairly frequently, and I REALLY like it! It makes me feel happy and pregnant to have to keep nipping to the loo for a wee! :) I think that as well as the fluids increasing a bit, my womb is also growing big enough now to squash my bladder much more than it has been. In fact if I recall, between 10 and 12 weeks can get rather uncomfortable and even crampy in that department, as it runs out of room in my pelvis before it pops up.
Now, my nausea has been fluctuating from day to day, so if this is a "good day", I could feel a fair bit queasier tomorrow. But even so, it should be a lot less than my bad days used to be! I really hope this is IT!
So TWO weird differences from all four of my other pregnancies this time: Different morning sickness (starting a week early, tailing off WEEKS earlier than usual), and NO bleeding! My brother is starting to think it's because it's a "different sort of baby!" ;) I still can't bring myself to think that it could ever really be possible that I might be pregnant with an actual girl, hehe!
My SIL had her big scan on Friday, and found out she's having a girl! Which adds to the whole "we'll be having a boy then!" feeling for me, because it does seem that our siblings have the girls and we have the boys! ;) I do have one scrummy little nephew though - but four nieces now! My brother's little girl turned 3 yesterday and she is so girly! She just wants a dress that's pretty, and ballet shoes, and anything pink or sparkly! My mum bought her a dress, and for weeks we would talk about it on the phone, and I would say how lucky she is to go shopping for girly party dresses (how I would LOVE that! I'm very girly myself, you know!). Then Bennie told me that Thea can never have too many hair clips (she loves them) - the more sparkly the better, so I have had the JOY and privilege of browsing through racks and racks of hair clips for little girls - pink ones, purple ones, smiley ones, sparkly ones, butterfly ones - ooooh the choice is endless! It really brought home how I never see, do, or buy anything girly at all, with alllll my little boys! I am so glad to have nieces to legitimately browse through girly things for, but I admit, it isn't quite the same as your OWN baby girl.
I know I said (and I stick by it!) that I would LOVE a fifth precious baby boy! I DO love boys, and would be glad to have eight boys and no girls! I would never prefer having a girl over a boy to the point where I'd try to "swing it" so that we conceive a girl instead. But ohhhh the truth is, how I would love to have a daughter! I know they are a whole different kettle of fish to boys, and can be harder work apparently! But I don't care. I would love to have a daughter! I am such a girly type. I would love to buy pink! And dresses! And flowery stuff! And do her hair! And on and on (really, pretty much ad infinitum). My heart will NOT sink when (if??) we see those ever present boy bits flashing at us at the scan. We already know his name and we love him, and we WANT him! I want to burst with pride and joy thinking of my FIVE little boys, and the fun they'll have, and the snuggles I will get, and how very cute a tiny little boy is when he's wearing denim dungarees with cars embroidered on the front and taking sweet little stumpy toddly steps! I am LONGING for that particular baby boy, and the likelihood is that we'll meet him in December. But, totally aside from that feeling.... I would so like a little girl as well! :)
Well, whoever this sweet little person is, he/she is currently known as Cornflake (Arthur's choice). Oh! I never did give detail on how we told them! We told them after dinner one evening, a couple of weeks ago. They had been busily playing imaginary games all afternoon, and the one they were called away from at dinner time was Pretend Christmas. All three older boys were playing as they usually do - they play together all the time and enjoy each other so much! :) So they had been wrapping each other presents in playsilks, and were about to play Christmas Morning and be all excited. It gave me the idea to tell them about the baby, and tie it into Christmas, because Cornflake is due so soon before Christmas. So while they ate, Neil and I snuck little bits of conversation about how best to tell them, in between supervising the meal. That one just happened to be a meal just for the boys, though we usually eat all together as a family probably 6 days a week. While they ate, I prepared clues, since that's how we decided we'd tell them!
When they came out from eating, we played Christmas Morning with them and they opened all their presents and so on. After they finished, I told them that we had some news about something that was going to happen right before Christmas this year! They were all interested, and Arthur was especially intrigued, and hopped about eager to hear. I told them I had some clues to show them. They weren't the best because they had to be thought of and put together really quickly, but it went down a treat all the same! The first clue was that I handed Arthur one of their teddies wrapped in a while terry towel, and laid it in his arms. They looked at it, clueless. So I asked if they wanted another clue. They were excited and said yes! So I pointed to our button numbers up on the wall, and put my finger under the number 5 (bit cryptic for little ones, I know, hehe!). Arthur said, "Five??!" in a confused way. So I gave them clue number three: I went to the blackboard and let them each choose a colour because I told them I was going to draw each of them on the board. I drew stick figures with smiley faces - Arthur first, then Matthew next to him, a bit smaller. Then Nathan, a bit smaller still, and then Benjamin even smaller. I wrote "4" underneath them. Then I wrote "+" next to their line, and drew a baby with "1" underneath it, and then wrote "=5". I stopped to look at them, and you could see their little cogs turning, hehe! That one seemed really obvious to me, I was sure they'd get it, but they were staring at it with furrowed brows. I know probably only Arthur would understand it though.
So I stood up and asked if they needed one more clue, and they said yes, still looking at the blackboard. So I let my button and zip down a bit on my jeans, stood sideways on and said, "What shape is Mummy's tummy?" Arthur took one look at my tummy and said, "Big... BABY!!!!" The dots in the middle represent about 0.24 seconds where his eyes shot into wide-as-saucers mode as he got it! :) He yelled, "BABY!!!!" at the top of his voice and started jumping up and down squealing and shouting, "It's a BABY in Mummy's tummy, A BABY, A BABY!!!" Matthew and Nathan started jumping up and down about 2 seconds after Arthur did and shouting similar things. I could see that Arthur and Matthew really did get it, and were very excited! But it was so sweet to see Nathan joining in with his brothers as he always does, hugely excited and shouting, "A baby inna tummy! A baby inna tummy!" with great glee, but he obviously didn't have a CLUE as to the reality of the situation, lol! ;) Sweet little boy! :) Neil took photos which came out blurry (such a shame! I hoped he would take video, but apparently not), and Benjamin sat on Neil's lap shrieking and clapping with joy and excitement as he watched his brothers. It was the sweetest picture, and I WISH I had it captured for prosperity, but alas I don't! :( Still, it will stay in my memory for ever all the same :)
Once they stopped jumping, and caught their breath (they kept it up for a while!), Arthur and Matthew started to ask soooo many questions for the next hour before bed - these were mostly from Arthur, but some from Matthew: "How long has the baby been in your tummy? Since MARCH?!!! Why didn't you tell us?!?! Can we call it Cornflake?! Can we call it Crumb?! Can we call it (insert any one of fifty million increasingly silly other choices - Matthew and Arthur alternated these for quite some time!)?! How big is your baby now? Is it this big? Is it this big? Is it this big? (repeat same question with different hand shapes for a long time) Is the baby going to die? How do you know? Will it be born at Christmas? Which date in December? (arranges and re-arranges calender) This one? This one? This one? (this goes on for a while) What if it's late though? What if it's later than Christmas? How do you know? But Matthew was late, so what if THIS baby is late like Matthew was? Can I hear the baby's heart beating? Here? Here? Here? (various ear-to-my-tummy poses) Shoosh boys, I'm trying to hear the baby's heartbeat!... Why wouldn't I be able to hear it? When can I? Will I be six when the baby is born? Will Matthew be 4? Will Nathey be 2? Will Benji be one? Will you have the baby in our house? Remember when you had Nathan in the hospital? Will you do that? When will we know?! Will Heather come and see us? Will you make lots of noise? (followed by much cheerful reminiscing from Arthur about Benjamin's homebirth) Are we really calling it Cornflake?! When will we know it's REAL name? Can we come to the scan?! Why not?! Will you see the willy? Yes, but it'll probably have a willy - will you get a picture of it to show us? Why not?! Can we see that picture though? Oh good!.... I can't WAIT till December!!!" :)
They are so happy and excited, and Arthur is joyfully telling people that we run into: "Did you know that my Mummy has a baby due in December?!" He sounds so proud and pleased, and that makes me soooooooo happy, because you know, he's the eldest of soon-to-be FIVE children, and he's only FIVE himself! I have actually had insensitive people tell me in the past (when we only had 3 I think!), "Poor Arthur!" or "Your poor kids!" because they see it as some huge burden we're putting on them, especially Arthur, being the eldest and still so young. Well I am here to tell the world that he is so very excited! He loves his role as biggest brother, and he's one blessed little boy with endless playmates who look up to him and adore him. Every year another little boy develops enough skills to suddenly be able to play cars and trains with the rest of them, and he LOVES being in charge of that kind of game! ;) He is also joyfully affectionate with his baby or toddler brothers, and finds them cute and cuddly. He gets excited about their milestones, and looks forward to ones that mean they can get more involved in playing with him. He will happily entertain a sad baby brother if I ask him to for 5 minutes if I'm tied up, and usually that results in a happy and giggly baby brother, and a proud and victorious Arthur who is enjoying playing with the little one! I think it's proof positive that it's GOOD for him, our expanding family with close age-gaps, if we tell him yet another baby is coming and he rejoices so VERY much! :) And I can't tell you how happy that makes me! I do have my moments of not knowing what we're doing and worrying and guilt-tripping that we're messing them (particularly Arthur) up! But it's good to have feedback like this from him!
Well I think I will finish this post for now. Oh except that tomorrow I am TEN WEEKS pregnant!!! Double figures! A quarter of the way there! :D I have not forgotten about a belly gallery! Usually I take a photo at 5 weeks (to compare) and then at 10 weeks. Then 14 weeks, and then fortnightly from then on. I have taken a 5 week photo, but not made a gallery yet. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to get Neil to take a photo and then once it's uploaded I'll make a "Belly Gallery" post with both of them! :)
And as of tomorrow, Cornflake is no longer an embryo. He'll be in the final stage of embryonic development (Stage 23), and then officially a FETUS from that point on! Yay! :) Cornflake looks like a little human being, about an inch long. The tail is almost gone, ears and eyes are not quite in the right place but will be soon, and the fingers are separate and the hands can grasp across the body. All the internal organs are in place and the critical period for their development has finished, though they'll still be continuing to develop and grow. Tongue development has just finished. Baby teeth are at cap level, and adult teeth are beginning to form high up in the jaw. The eyes are partly closed, and the gonads are now recognisable as either testes or ovaries (inside the body though). Genitals are beginning to form, and the muscles are getting stronger. The baby can make all sorts of spontaneous movements, and around this time the first brain waves can be detected! My little one is being knit together so amazingly by my wonderful Father God! I can't wait to meet Cornflake, but ohhh how I enjoy "growing" him (her?) in the mean time! :)
Saturday, May 8, 2010
8 weeks, 5 days
It's been way too long since I updated here! Right after I wrote the last post, our internet cut out for 36 hours (very annoying!) and then only a couple of days later it went again for FOUR DAYS straight!! Aaargh! I was so annoyed about that, but it has relieved me of my Farmville addiction at Facebook, so it was probably God-ordained! ;) I have since discovered that looking at any Farmville images makes me nauseated - seriously! - such is my association with playing it while morning sick in the evenings! So I don't think I will actually be able to play it again without feeling sick, even when I'm well past morning sickness. I STILL can't play Zoo Tycoon - even the NAME makes me feel sick, typing it! - which I played a lot in the first couple of weeks when morning sick with Arthur! Yeeears ago. These associations hang in there, so I think Farmville is history for me.
Anyway! That was totally not relevant to my blog!
Thank you so so much for the many sweet comments on my last post! I can't tell you how much I appreciated hearing from you ladies, and knowing that you are checking in and happy for me! :) I do think Facebook affects my blogs (both of them) because I have definitely seen fewer comments since really getting into Facebook. That will be my own fault for going crazy posting photos and stuff there! When I post them at my blog, I don't really get comments any more, but I do get some at Facebook, so yes, I think that has affected my blogs :( Viks, THANK YOU for the sweet idea of a nappy cake!! Never mind that nobody helped out, it's the thought that counts and even knowing it now make me feel special! :) xxx
Well, as usual it is late and I am tired and nauseous, so I really should get on with writing what I want to write! :)
I can't remember all the stuff I was saving up to write when we were offline last week! Tsk! I will have to just start writing about what I CAN remember and go from thre!
At 8 weeks and 1 day, Neil went to bed early with a bad headache. I had no internet and no hubby around, and felt bored! I folded about 50,000 loads of laundry (only slightly exaggerating) and then thought mayyybe I could dust off my doppler in preparation for later in the week! :) I was glad Neil was in bed because I felt sort of silly getting it out so early! I had no intention of finding a heartbeat because it was so early, but I wanted to know if my womb was high enough to even hear placenta sounds yet. So I changed the battery and checked it was still working. I felt really fond of my doppler, getting it out after all these pregnancies! I have used that same doppler to listen to all FIVE of my sweet little ones, and it is really on its last legs. I have to wiggle the battery in its "socket" for a good few minutes before it will "catch" and the unit will work. In order to switch it off after I've finished using it, I have to disconnect the battery. It has been that way since Matthew's pregnancy, and for a while I would forget to disconnect it and the battery would be flat the next time I went to use it, but I am well used to that now and never leave it connected! :)
Anyway - goodness I'm rambling tonight! And tonight is NOT a night for rambling - I need to go to bed!
So I found some nice whooshy sounds of my own pulse, and was enjoying listening to that, thinking ahead of the end of the week when I might actually be able to hear my little sweetie's heartbeat with it! I had headphones plugged into the doppler so that I didn't wake anyone up, and that might have helped, because I was just about to put it away when I thought I could hear something fast and rhythmic EVER SO faintly in the background. If I moved the doppler even a millimetre in any direction it disappeared. The baby was only 10mm long at that stage (never mind what the size of the TINY heart must have been!), so that is probably why. After some careful angling I was able to hear my tiny little baby's heartbeat clearly enough to count it, for the first time!!! I was so amazed - at 8 weeks and 1 day! It's only when our internet came back on that I searched my older entries at my pregnancy diary and found that I had actually heard Nathan's heart beating for the first time at exactly the same gestation, 8w1d. I didn't remember that. I always though they were all around 9 weeks, and Benjamin was the earliest at 8w5d (which actually, according to my blog, turned out to be 8w4d - so much for my memory, hey?!). The heartbeat sounds were so faint that I didn't think they would be audible enough on a video taken with my not-very-good little handheld camera with video capabilities. It takes even worse videos than my old camera did! :S Anyway, so I didn't take a video. I did count the heartrate - 174 beats per minute, about right for that gestation! :) Funnily enough, Nathan's heartrate was exactly that at the same exact gestation! It's too early for that old wives' tale, before anyone suggests it! That's for later in pregnancy (though it hasn't proved true at all for my boys) - up until 10 weeks the heartrate increases like a rev from the slow 60bpm that it starts out at, up to about 180 or more. There's a specific heartrate (average) for each gestational DAY up till 10 weeks! Amazing! Then it slows down considerably and varies hugely from baby to baby after that. So right now, my little one is spot on! :)
The next day, 8w2d, Neil was better and I got the doppler out in the evening to let him hear the heartbeat. But I combed every square mm of my womb (or so it felt!) for a long time and the tiny pickle was being elusive, so I gave up. The NEXT day (8w3d) I got the doppler out again and found the heartbeat with no trouble. It sounded clearer, though still pretty faint and tiny. Neil enjoyed hearing it, and I enjoyed seeing him listen to it! :) Because it was a little stronger, I took a video of it. It's uploading at onetruemedia right now, but when it is finished I will clip it (it's long!) and post it here - hopefully in time for me to do it before I finish this post and go to bed tonight. It still sounds distant, and I hope you guys will be able to hear it! You can hear my whooshy placenta sounds and the baby's heartbeat is much fainter, but very fast. I counted it again and it was 174 again!
The clip is ready, so here it is! I know I will cave and post it at Facebook as well anyway. *sigh* I can't help it! I like to keep special things for my blog audience only, but I want everyone to hear it - it's SUCH a precious sound to my ears! :) In the clip, you hear my placenta at first, and then I go looking for the little one. At first it's ever so faint - I'm not sure if you'll hear it (unless your volume is RIGHT UP, lol!), but it does get easier to hear in the last 10 seconds of the clip if that helps:
It's SO lovely to have heard it already! I'm so glad! And the first time I heard it felt like a real turning point for me. Now I have made actual "contact" with that little baby, and it's more than just an IDEA to me - hoping that it's alive and well - for the first time I really felt like I have FIVE children. I mean, I have seven more months before the reality of having FIVE children really kicks in, hehe! But yeah, it was a nice moment! :) I'm loving the number 5 lately, everywhere I see it, it gives me a warm glow and a smile! I think it's my favourite number right now! :)
What other news? There must be loads!
I'm still morning sick as usual but I think either it is slightly easing as I get near to 9 weeks, OR I am just becoming used to it and it's not so all-consuming? I think? I can't remember if this happens every pregnancy around this stage, but it rings a bell anyway. The nausea seems just as bad, feeling-wise, and it's no less severe if I let myself get too hungry, and I don't think I have any windows without it in my waking hours, but somehow it doesn't seem so awful as during 6 weeks and 7 weeks. Those are always two AWFUL weeks to deal with, every time I am pregnant, so maybe there's just a period of adjustment to the awfulness of the nausea and two or three weeks is what it takes to settle down to existing with the level of nausea always with me? I don't know. Anyway. Another thing I have discovered since my last entry is READY MEALS. I can't think why I didn't consider that before now! Hang the freezer meals - READY MEALS is what I need! Shop-bought, balanced and nutritious ready meals in single portions. We started buying a small variety of Tesco or Sainsbury's ready meals, like cottage pie, shepherd's pie, lasagne, chicken pie, chicken pasta bake, etc. And Covent Garden Fresh Soups!!! In those cardboard cartons! Well, only two flavours suit me right now (leek and potato, and winter vegetable) but I can heat up a teacupful of soup and eat it, and it not only gives me fluids, but REALLY good nourishment, and it knocks my nausea on the head too. I actually enjoy eating those soups - they taste delicious and hearty and comforting, and for my personal taste, they have the balance exactly right - not too salty, seasoned, bland, thick, thin, etc. JUST right. Yum! :) I put a ready meal in the oven for 30 mins (oh for the day when we had a microwave - these would be ready in 5-7 minutes and 30 mins is horrible when I feel sick!!) at lunch time and eat that, and a "proper" meal really helps a lot with the nausea - waaaay better than a sandwich or nibbles or something. I do have to eat pretty much hourly or even more frequently throughout the day, because I feel nauseous all the time and about 20 minutes after I eat it really starts to accelerate in intensity. By one hour I am feeling too sick to look at food usually, so sooner is better if I can manage to eat something. Sometimes I get fed up having to eat so often because I'm often NOT HUNGRY yet! ;)
These last two days I have noticed a new change in my appetite. The nausea is the same but I am often stomach-scrunchingly hungry underneath it. I woke twice in the night last night when Benjamin was still asleep (a first! He wakes often and I am totally unconscious unless he wakes me!) purely because of hunger pains, and I was worried my tummy would wake him as he was sleeping by my side and it was grinding so loudly that it echoed in the still of the room!! I am also needing to eat about double for breakfast compared to what I have been eating up to a few days ago. It just doesn't fill me so I eat a couple more slices of toast till I feel more satisfied!
I am not really having any sort of frequent peeing that is typical of early pregnancy and haven't noticed anything like it so far this pregnancy. Some days I only go twice from waking to bedtime, but it is because I am REALLY not getting enough fluids. I would say that some days I get a glass of fluids for the whole day at best. Fluids are always my biggest hurdle with morning sickness. I am so glad to find these soups because it's extra fluid. I can stomach apples fine, so I eat those a lot. Juice and water = yeuurrgh, though I deal better with sipping water if it has ice in it. This week I discovered by chance that ice-cream slips down ever so nicely, so long as it's NOT chocolate or anything fancy. Basic vanilla (real dairy) or strawberry is going down best, and that is extra calcium and fluid, so I'm happy to eat ice-cream once or twice a day right now. I was getting concerned about my calcium intake, especially since I am breastfeeding a hungry 9-month-old at the same time as being pregnant and having my own calcium needs! Benjamin eats pretty well but he self-feeds everything, and definitely still needs the majority of his intake to be breastmilk. My milk supply is holding up fine so far, but Benjamin is very clingy this week and spends a lot of time each day sprawled on my front in the living room breastfeeding. He has some eczema at the moment and STILL no teeth, so who knows, maybe it's one of those things bothering him? Matthew is still breastfeeding once or twice a week at bedtime (when I am in to tuck them in before he falls asleep - he goes off fast!) and tells me the milky still tastes the same, so it can't be the taste changing.
Anyway! Calcium! I really wasn't eating ANY sources of calcium up to last week, and started to be concerned about that. So I am now eating ready meals, many of which have cheese in, or cream or milk in the sauce. I am sipping a very small glass of milk with breakfast (milk doesn't sit well since I've been feeling sick!) and another if I can manage it later in the day. I am eating more things with cheese (tortellini - is that the name? Pasta filled with cheese/spinach, etc, anyway! With grated cheese over it or something), and the soups have added milk or cream too. Ice-cream is a good source, and I am eating a cupful of dry Cheerios a couple of times a day because I can just about stomach them and they have added calcium. I take my prenatal vitamin before bed most nights (occasionally I feel too sick to swallow it down) and that has added calcium too. So hopefully that is good enough? Much better than before anyway!
What else?
My uterus! I have been poking about for it since about 7 weeks, wondering when I would feel the top of it poking up above my pubic bone. I thought I could usually feel something around 8 weeks, so I was expectant, but sort of surprised that I didn't feel it. By 8.5 weeks I was wondering when I WOULD feel it, and thinking that the twin possibility was definitely out! ;) And one night at bedtime I was trying to feel it again and getting annoyed with some sort of distended loop of bowel (!!) or something getting in my way right across my lower abdomen at my bikini line. Took me a while to realise IT'S MY WOMB! Yikes! Not as firm as I remember it, but still solid enough, and to be honest I have a MUCH baggier, softer tummy between it and my hand than the other times! :S My skin/tissue which stretched last pregnancy doesn't seem to have recovered its elasticity this time too well! Never mind, it's a bit late now, lol! ;) It is starting to fill out more, and I have to admit that when I let it awwwwlll hang out, so to speak (!), much as I'm sure most of it is some serious bloating, I do have a rather rounded "bump"! It's a soft bump though - appearances can be misleading! ;)
My actual womb is high but "flat", like it usually it in the first few weeks that I can feel it. It doesn't protrude OUT, but lies quite high. I can feel the top of it clearly now that I have realised what it is, haha! When I lie down to feel it, the top of my womb is HALFWAY between my pubic bone and my tummy button! Flat though. But HALFWAY! When I discovered this, we had no internet access, and Neil was going quite frantic about it because he NEEDED me to be able to go online and search my pregnancy diary to find out if that was my norm in previous pregnancies! ;) I admit I was itching to do so as well. When we finally got back online, I did just that, and am not sure how to call it really. It could be within my norm - at 8-9 weeks the top of my (flat, not protruding) womb is usually 3 inches above my pubic bone and 5 inches below my tummy button (the sum total distance being 8 inches I presume! ;) ) So, that's pretty high, and while it is definitely NOT 5 inches below my tummy button this time, it's only an inch or so out, so it could still be within my norm for this stage. On the other hand, at TEN weeks I updated during a couple of my pregnancies to say that my (still flat, not protruding) womb was now halfway between my pubic bone and my tummy button, so hmmm... Of course it might just be something to do with it being my 5th pregnancy? I don't know. I guess if I AM carrying twins then it will quickly become apparent in the next couple of weeks, as growth should be quite accelerated in that kind of window.
Oh I have SO MUCH MORE to say!!! But it's really late because Benjamin woke twice while I was writing this, and I will HAVE to go to bed. We told the boys tonight about the new baby! I want SO MUCH to write lots of detail about that, and I will, but I can't tonight :( The baby is now to be known as Cornflake until we have the big scan! :) It was Arthur's suggestion a few weeks ago before he knew I was pregnant, for the next time I had a baby in my tummy. He is thrilled that I've remembered it and that we are using it! :) For tonight though (and I will update again soon), I am beyond thrilled that Matthew and Arthur are happy and excited (like Disneyland, seriously) to be having a new baby brother or sister. Nathan is joining in with their excitement but I'm sure he doesn't really understand yet! ;) Benjamin is happy and squealing and laughing because his brothers are! So we have a happy little bunch who are REALLY looking forward to Christmas this year! :)
Anyway! That was totally not relevant to my blog!
Thank you so so much for the many sweet comments on my last post! I can't tell you how much I appreciated hearing from you ladies, and knowing that you are checking in and happy for me! :) I do think Facebook affects my blogs (both of them) because I have definitely seen fewer comments since really getting into Facebook. That will be my own fault for going crazy posting photos and stuff there! When I post them at my blog, I don't really get comments any more, but I do get some at Facebook, so yes, I think that has affected my blogs :( Viks, THANK YOU for the sweet idea of a nappy cake!! Never mind that nobody helped out, it's the thought that counts and even knowing it now make me feel special! :) xxx
Well, as usual it is late and I am tired and nauseous, so I really should get on with writing what I want to write! :)
I can't remember all the stuff I was saving up to write when we were offline last week! Tsk! I will have to just start writing about what I CAN remember and go from thre!
At 8 weeks and 1 day, Neil went to bed early with a bad headache. I had no internet and no hubby around, and felt bored! I folded about 50,000 loads of laundry (only slightly exaggerating) and then thought mayyybe I could dust off my doppler in preparation for later in the week! :) I was glad Neil was in bed because I felt sort of silly getting it out so early! I had no intention of finding a heartbeat because it was so early, but I wanted to know if my womb was high enough to even hear placenta sounds yet. So I changed the battery and checked it was still working. I felt really fond of my doppler, getting it out after all these pregnancies! I have used that same doppler to listen to all FIVE of my sweet little ones, and it is really on its last legs. I have to wiggle the battery in its "socket" for a good few minutes before it will "catch" and the unit will work. In order to switch it off after I've finished using it, I have to disconnect the battery. It has been that way since Matthew's pregnancy, and for a while I would forget to disconnect it and the battery would be flat the next time I went to use it, but I am well used to that now and never leave it connected! :)
Anyway - goodness I'm rambling tonight! And tonight is NOT a night for rambling - I need to go to bed!
So I found some nice whooshy sounds of my own pulse, and was enjoying listening to that, thinking ahead of the end of the week when I might actually be able to hear my little sweetie's heartbeat with it! I had headphones plugged into the doppler so that I didn't wake anyone up, and that might have helped, because I was just about to put it away when I thought I could hear something fast and rhythmic EVER SO faintly in the background. If I moved the doppler even a millimetre in any direction it disappeared. The baby was only 10mm long at that stage (never mind what the size of the TINY heart must have been!), so that is probably why. After some careful angling I was able to hear my tiny little baby's heartbeat clearly enough to count it, for the first time!!! I was so amazed - at 8 weeks and 1 day! It's only when our internet came back on that I searched my older entries at my pregnancy diary and found that I had actually heard Nathan's heart beating for the first time at exactly the same gestation, 8w1d. I didn't remember that. I always though they were all around 9 weeks, and Benjamin was the earliest at 8w5d (which actually, according to my blog, turned out to be 8w4d - so much for my memory, hey?!). The heartbeat sounds were so faint that I didn't think they would be audible enough on a video taken with my not-very-good little handheld camera with video capabilities. It takes even worse videos than my old camera did! :S Anyway, so I didn't take a video. I did count the heartrate - 174 beats per minute, about right for that gestation! :) Funnily enough, Nathan's heartrate was exactly that at the same exact gestation! It's too early for that old wives' tale, before anyone suggests it! That's for later in pregnancy (though it hasn't proved true at all for my boys) - up until 10 weeks the heartrate increases like a rev from the slow 60bpm that it starts out at, up to about 180 or more. There's a specific heartrate (average) for each gestational DAY up till 10 weeks! Amazing! Then it slows down considerably and varies hugely from baby to baby after that. So right now, my little one is spot on! :)
The next day, 8w2d, Neil was better and I got the doppler out in the evening to let him hear the heartbeat. But I combed every square mm of my womb (or so it felt!) for a long time and the tiny pickle was being elusive, so I gave up. The NEXT day (8w3d) I got the doppler out again and found the heartbeat with no trouble. It sounded clearer, though still pretty faint and tiny. Neil enjoyed hearing it, and I enjoyed seeing him listen to it! :) Because it was a little stronger, I took a video of it. It's uploading at onetruemedia right now, but when it is finished I will clip it (it's long!) and post it here - hopefully in time for me to do it before I finish this post and go to bed tonight. It still sounds distant, and I hope you guys will be able to hear it! You can hear my whooshy placenta sounds and the baby's heartbeat is much fainter, but very fast. I counted it again and it was 174 again!
The clip is ready, so here it is! I know I will cave and post it at Facebook as well anyway. *sigh* I can't help it! I like to keep special things for my blog audience only, but I want everyone to hear it - it's SUCH a precious sound to my ears! :) In the clip, you hear my placenta at first, and then I go looking for the little one. At first it's ever so faint - I'm not sure if you'll hear it (unless your volume is RIGHT UP, lol!), but it does get easier to hear in the last 10 seconds of the clip if that helps:
It's SO lovely to have heard it already! I'm so glad! And the first time I heard it felt like a real turning point for me. Now I have made actual "contact" with that little baby, and it's more than just an IDEA to me - hoping that it's alive and well - for the first time I really felt like I have FIVE children. I mean, I have seven more months before the reality of having FIVE children really kicks in, hehe! But yeah, it was a nice moment! :) I'm loving the number 5 lately, everywhere I see it, it gives me a warm glow and a smile! I think it's my favourite number right now! :)
What other news? There must be loads!
I'm still morning sick as usual but I think either it is slightly easing as I get near to 9 weeks, OR I am just becoming used to it and it's not so all-consuming? I think? I can't remember if this happens every pregnancy around this stage, but it rings a bell anyway. The nausea seems just as bad, feeling-wise, and it's no less severe if I let myself get too hungry, and I don't think I have any windows without it in my waking hours, but somehow it doesn't seem so awful as during 6 weeks and 7 weeks. Those are always two AWFUL weeks to deal with, every time I am pregnant, so maybe there's just a period of adjustment to the awfulness of the nausea and two or three weeks is what it takes to settle down to existing with the level of nausea always with me? I don't know. Anyway. Another thing I have discovered since my last entry is READY MEALS. I can't think why I didn't consider that before now! Hang the freezer meals - READY MEALS is what I need! Shop-bought, balanced and nutritious ready meals in single portions. We started buying a small variety of Tesco or Sainsbury's ready meals, like cottage pie, shepherd's pie, lasagne, chicken pie, chicken pasta bake, etc. And Covent Garden Fresh Soups!!! In those cardboard cartons! Well, only two flavours suit me right now (leek and potato, and winter vegetable) but I can heat up a teacupful of soup and eat it, and it not only gives me fluids, but REALLY good nourishment, and it knocks my nausea on the head too. I actually enjoy eating those soups - they taste delicious and hearty and comforting, and for my personal taste, they have the balance exactly right - not too salty, seasoned, bland, thick, thin, etc. JUST right. Yum! :) I put a ready meal in the oven for 30 mins (oh for the day when we had a microwave - these would be ready in 5-7 minutes and 30 mins is horrible when I feel sick!!) at lunch time and eat that, and a "proper" meal really helps a lot with the nausea - waaaay better than a sandwich or nibbles or something. I do have to eat pretty much hourly or even more frequently throughout the day, because I feel nauseous all the time and about 20 minutes after I eat it really starts to accelerate in intensity. By one hour I am feeling too sick to look at food usually, so sooner is better if I can manage to eat something. Sometimes I get fed up having to eat so often because I'm often NOT HUNGRY yet! ;)
These last two days I have noticed a new change in my appetite. The nausea is the same but I am often stomach-scrunchingly hungry underneath it. I woke twice in the night last night when Benjamin was still asleep (a first! He wakes often and I am totally unconscious unless he wakes me!) purely because of hunger pains, and I was worried my tummy would wake him as he was sleeping by my side and it was grinding so loudly that it echoed in the still of the room!! I am also needing to eat about double for breakfast compared to what I have been eating up to a few days ago. It just doesn't fill me so I eat a couple more slices of toast till I feel more satisfied!
I am not really having any sort of frequent peeing that is typical of early pregnancy and haven't noticed anything like it so far this pregnancy. Some days I only go twice from waking to bedtime, but it is because I am REALLY not getting enough fluids. I would say that some days I get a glass of fluids for the whole day at best. Fluids are always my biggest hurdle with morning sickness. I am so glad to find these soups because it's extra fluid. I can stomach apples fine, so I eat those a lot. Juice and water = yeuurrgh, though I deal better with sipping water if it has ice in it. This week I discovered by chance that ice-cream slips down ever so nicely, so long as it's NOT chocolate or anything fancy. Basic vanilla (real dairy) or strawberry is going down best, and that is extra calcium and fluid, so I'm happy to eat ice-cream once or twice a day right now. I was getting concerned about my calcium intake, especially since I am breastfeeding a hungry 9-month-old at the same time as being pregnant and having my own calcium needs! Benjamin eats pretty well but he self-feeds everything, and definitely still needs the majority of his intake to be breastmilk. My milk supply is holding up fine so far, but Benjamin is very clingy this week and spends a lot of time each day sprawled on my front in the living room breastfeeding. He has some eczema at the moment and STILL no teeth, so who knows, maybe it's one of those things bothering him? Matthew is still breastfeeding once or twice a week at bedtime (when I am in to tuck them in before he falls asleep - he goes off fast!) and tells me the milky still tastes the same, so it can't be the taste changing.
Anyway! Calcium! I really wasn't eating ANY sources of calcium up to last week, and started to be concerned about that. So I am now eating ready meals, many of which have cheese in, or cream or milk in the sauce. I am sipping a very small glass of milk with breakfast (milk doesn't sit well since I've been feeling sick!) and another if I can manage it later in the day. I am eating more things with cheese (tortellini - is that the name? Pasta filled with cheese/spinach, etc, anyway! With grated cheese over it or something), and the soups have added milk or cream too. Ice-cream is a good source, and I am eating a cupful of dry Cheerios a couple of times a day because I can just about stomach them and they have added calcium. I take my prenatal vitamin before bed most nights (occasionally I feel too sick to swallow it down) and that has added calcium too. So hopefully that is good enough? Much better than before anyway!
What else?
My uterus! I have been poking about for it since about 7 weeks, wondering when I would feel the top of it poking up above my pubic bone. I thought I could usually feel something around 8 weeks, so I was expectant, but sort of surprised that I didn't feel it. By 8.5 weeks I was wondering when I WOULD feel it, and thinking that the twin possibility was definitely out! ;) And one night at bedtime I was trying to feel it again and getting annoyed with some sort of distended loop of bowel (!!) or something getting in my way right across my lower abdomen at my bikini line. Took me a while to realise IT'S MY WOMB! Yikes! Not as firm as I remember it, but still solid enough, and to be honest I have a MUCH baggier, softer tummy between it and my hand than the other times! :S My skin/tissue which stretched last pregnancy doesn't seem to have recovered its elasticity this time too well! Never mind, it's a bit late now, lol! ;) It is starting to fill out more, and I have to admit that when I let it awwwwlll hang out, so to speak (!), much as I'm sure most of it is some serious bloating, I do have a rather rounded "bump"! It's a soft bump though - appearances can be misleading! ;)
My actual womb is high but "flat", like it usually it in the first few weeks that I can feel it. It doesn't protrude OUT, but lies quite high. I can feel the top of it clearly now that I have realised what it is, haha! When I lie down to feel it, the top of my womb is HALFWAY between my pubic bone and my tummy button! Flat though. But HALFWAY! When I discovered this, we had no internet access, and Neil was going quite frantic about it because he NEEDED me to be able to go online and search my pregnancy diary to find out if that was my norm in previous pregnancies! ;) I admit I was itching to do so as well. When we finally got back online, I did just that, and am not sure how to call it really. It could be within my norm - at 8-9 weeks the top of my (flat, not protruding) womb is usually 3 inches above my pubic bone and 5 inches below my tummy button (the sum total distance being 8 inches I presume! ;) ) So, that's pretty high, and while it is definitely NOT 5 inches below my tummy button this time, it's only an inch or so out, so it could still be within my norm for this stage. On the other hand, at TEN weeks I updated during a couple of my pregnancies to say that my (still flat, not protruding) womb was now halfway between my pubic bone and my tummy button, so hmmm... Of course it might just be something to do with it being my 5th pregnancy? I don't know. I guess if I AM carrying twins then it will quickly become apparent in the next couple of weeks, as growth should be quite accelerated in that kind of window.
Oh I have SO MUCH MORE to say!!! But it's really late because Benjamin woke twice while I was writing this, and I will HAVE to go to bed. We told the boys tonight about the new baby! I want SO MUCH to write lots of detail about that, and I will, but I can't tonight :( The baby is now to be known as Cornflake until we have the big scan! :) It was Arthur's suggestion a few weeks ago before he knew I was pregnant, for the next time I had a baby in my tummy. He is thrilled that I've remembered it and that we are using it! :) For tonight though (and I will update again soon), I am beyond thrilled that Matthew and Arthur are happy and excited (like Disneyland, seriously) to be having a new baby brother or sister. Nathan is joining in with their excitement but I'm sure he doesn't really understand yet! ;) Benjamin is happy and squealing and laughing because his brothers are! So we have a happy little bunch who are REALLY looking forward to Christmas this year! :)
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