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
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