Just a quick update about today - I know I only posted yesterday!!!! Gasp! ;) But I wrote how the idea of going into labour any time soon was totally surreal and I couldn't imagine it. No signs whatsoever.
Today (Friday) Neil has been at work and I've done the usual stuff with the boys (trying to get through the day basically!). Our internet connection was down from 9am to 4.30pm - so infuriating when I wanted to update earlier!!! I hope that doesn't happen repeatedly over the next few days because it could really mess up my plan to keep my online friends posted as things occur! Tsk!
Around 2pm or a bit later, I suddenly noticed I was feeling crampy. I lay down on the sofa on my side just for a few minutes to rest my pelvis as it was hurting, and the boys were (all four!) building the wooden railway track on the floor and running trains around it, WITHOUT fighting for a bit, so it was the perfect time to put my feet up! While I was lying there I became aware of feeling crampy like before a period, which was a very odd sensation because I really haven't had that kind of discomfort since, well, when I last had a period - or probably the early weeks of pregnancy around implantation time or something. So it caught my attention, and I immediately thought, "Ohhhh!", wondering if it could be a pre-labourish thing! It got worse quite quickly lying there, so I sat up again, but it didn't go away at all for the next couple of hours. It was bothersome front and back low down, and was bad enough to distract me a lot. After an hour I started to go to the loo and check for a show now and then because I just felt so crampy and I began to be paranoid that I could feel "something", but there was never any sort of a show at all when I checked.
After an hour of it, I also began to feel rather hot and irritable. My face got very flushed and wouldn't cool off, and I became more and more distracted and unable to deal with sounds and activity around me. I was VERY tired because it's Friday and I'm so not up to dealing with a normal week these days! So perhaps it was just tiredness? Anyway, it does also remind me of early labour, finding it hard to deal with distractions or stimuli of any sort, and the flushed thing too. I wasn't having any contractions of any sort though. The occasional Braxton Hicks behind the crampiness, but nothing else. I phoned Neil at 2.30pm to ask if he was coming home early today (his work is great and usually lets them home at 4pm on a Friday if their work is done! I LOVE this!), and he said he would be leaving at 4pm. I told him I was really crampy, just so he was aware.
By the time he got home at 5.15pm, I was feeling pretty unwell. I just felt hot and just NOT well, and could hardly bear the noise and antics around me with the boys. I also still felt very crampy, and had some sharpish pressure in my groin no matter how I positioned myself. I had started to feel queasy, which was getting worse by then too. I just couldn't concentrate on anything the boys said to me, and wanted to escape to lie down in the quiet upstairs for a bit. I admit I did feel very suspicious by then that I might be starting some sort of pre-labour-ish-ness, but still wasn't actually contracting and hadn't had a show of any sort. I also had that "if only I could poo I would probably feel lots better" feeling, hmmm...
When Neil got in, he made a quick beans on toast for the boys' tea, as I hadn't been able to sort myself out to do anything yet :S I felt yuckier and yuckier as he did that, and when they all went into the kitchen to eat, I went up to bed. I lay on my side feeling yucky and nauseous and crampy, and honestly kind of anxious about the prospect of labour ahead when I was already tired on a Friday evening! :S Neil was great - he got the boys ready for bed, dealt with a zillion discipline issues (they were HARD work this evening, more so than usual even), and then Arthur came upstairs and saw me lying in my bed and looked so worried. He asked what was wrong, and I said I was fine, but I just felt a bit tired and poorly and wanted a bit of a lie down. He seemed worried but I tried to reassure him. Neil started to put the boys to bed but it was not going well with the way they were behaving, and Benjamin was crying, so I got myself up and went in to help in my normal way. I breastfed Benjamin and rocked him and sang to him as usual, and that was reassuring for them I think. Benjamin did hold my face and look into my eyes while I was singing to him, in a way that reminded me ever so much of Arthur when I was breastfeeding him at bedtime while in labour with Matthew. He also clung tightly to my neck in a rather anxious-feeling hug before I put him in his cot, which is unlike him.
ALL the boys have been unusually highly strung today. They've been acting like very VERY over-tired children, which is all I put it down to, and perhaps that's all it is, but now I wonder? Arthur and Matthew have had numerous tearful meltdowns over things like someone putting a single Duplo brick in the wrong place and stuff like that (and then the Duplo misplacer responded by bursting into tears and sobbing due to the "unkind accusation"!!! Goodness!). They've wanted more cuddles than usual, and just seem very sensitive and easily upset by each other. Which does happen, but it's not often, and very very rarely more than one or two children on the same day. Nathan has that kind of behaviour more than anyone else because he IS tired - he doesn't nap any more but really still needs to. So he is prone to tired, over-sensitive meltdowns, but not Arthur and Matthew. I am wondering if there's a little something in the air to do with impending labour or something? I'm sure I've had little ones acting this way in the run-up to labour in the past...
After I put Benjamin in his cot, Arthur started to cry and wanted to talk to me somewhere private, so I took him out of the bedroom. He told me (chin wobbling, bless his sweet little heart!) that he was feeling sad because I was poorly, and I hugged him and told him again that I was absolutely fine - NOT poorly, just very tired and just a little bit queasy, that's all. I told him I was going to use my evening to rest up so that I felt better, and he should not worry about it at all. He seemed reassured and went to bed after that. Once they were all quiet I started to feel less physically overwhelmed and queasy, but I went and lay in bed all the same. While I had been lying in bed before they went to bed earlier (around 6pm), I had become aware of the continous crampiness being a little bit wave-like. It never went away, but sometimes it seemed more intense for a bit. I began to glance at the clock whenever I felt like the crampiness was extra bothersome, and noticed over about 30 minutes that I was glancing at the clock at roughly 5-minute intervals. Hmmm, again! I still wouldn't call them contractions at all though. Anyway, they weren't there when I went back to lay down after the boys were in bed.
Neil decided to get pizza, and at the time I didn't know if I could stomach it, but when he arrived home I found that I had an appetite and ate well. I felt SO much better for eating, and also for going to the toilet. I had some lovely COLD cold water and a COLD apple from the fridge and those never tasted so good in my life before! I felt much much better when I went back to bed to lie down after all that. I still am aware of a mildly crampy feeling like last night, but nothing as bad as this afternoon/early evening. I'm tired and my body is longing for some GOOD sustained rest - how thankful I am that it's FRIDAY and thus the weekend!!! Yay! What wonderful timing!!! I know my lovely husband will let me sleep and rest all I need to over the weekend and that is JUST what I need at this stage. I'm so longing for that lie-in tomorrow morning, and hopefully I will sleep well tonight and labour won't start or anything! I could really use some sleep and rest in preparation for labour. Plus this weekend is just what we need to tie up those loose ends of things that aren't QUITE ready yet. I am slightly dreading the thought of Monday rolling round (and 40 weeks therefore!), and nothing happening still, and having to wave Neil off to work again! Each week is harder than the previous one at this stage of pregnancy, and I seem to recall it gets a WHOLE lot harder from 40 weeks onwards. Forty-one weeks is a whooooole 'nother ballgame but I am truly hoping not to get to that stage this time!
So that is my update for today. No 9th-of-the-month baby this time, nor the 10th. I wonder what the 11th and 12th will hold for us?! Or if he'll wait till 40 weeks plus, from the 13th onwards? If I haven't had a baby by the end of the 14th it will feel very strange! I have a lot of confidence in "my window"! I can't believe how close I am to giving birth, either way. And yes, today it is feeling a LOT less surreal, and a LOT more realistic and imminent! ;)
Thanks so much for the comments, and on my belly gallery too! :) I'll update again very soon!
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