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! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment