Just a quick post if I can manage one, because I didn't get round to the usual evening bulletin (!) last night, and now it's the morning I haven't got much time with the little ones up and about.
Yesterday Neil stayed home all day!!! :) In the morning I had quite a few strong BHs though nothing remotely regular, and I had a SHOW!!! So exciting! It was not a bloody show, so nothing that tells me for sure that labour is on the way imminently, but well enough mucus plug to be a proper show. Neil took the boys to the park in the morning before the heat of the day set in, and then phoned work to say I'd had a show (which occurred while they were out) and decided to take the day as holiday time if labour didn't start. Work have been very good and he hardly has any work to do there at the moment anyway, because they know I'm about to have a baby so they've pretty much cleared his calendar and given him temporary bits and pieces to do. Makes for a bit of a boring time for him there while he waits, but it's easy for him to drop it and go when he needs to without impacting on the work being done, so that's good.
Anyway, such a lovely lovely relief, to know the boys were getting out in the lovely weather. They were right to go out in the morning. It was 82 degrees (28C) in the afternoon and kind of muggy with it, and we all just flaked out wearing as little as possible with the curtains closed to keep the sun out. The air outside was much much warmer than inside, so we had to keep the windows shut too, urgh. NOT a day to give birth!
How I wished I would have a baby yesterday! But when I was trying to rest during the afternoon I realised it was a BAD day to have a homebirth. Baaaad. My bedroom is where I give birth, and it faces south. It's a tiny bedroom and when I'm labouring we keep the door shut. Even with the fan on full-blast and the blackout curtains shut (and window, to keep the hot air out), it was pretty unbearable to try to even rest in, let alone labour and give birth. Today is meant to be a bit cooler, but I'm not sure now. It looks like it's going to get as hot as yesterday to me... Anyway, hot enough for the bedroom to be pretty awful again, so I guess it wouldn't be great to have to try and labour in there again this afternoon. Evenings are obviously better in there with the window open, without the sun on the front of the house, and the mornings have a lovely cool breeze until noon-ish. But it doesn't get comfortable in the bedroom until about 4am! :S We do have an air conditioning unit that we can plug in and hang the hose out of the boys' bedroom window, but if my door is closed for labour and birth then I won't feel the effects of that anyway. We had to switch it on in the end yesterday, and it made the boys' room much more bearable for bedtime.
The night before last (after I last updated) I had SUCH a bad sleep! My RLS was the worst it has been, and even my usual stretches didn't make any difference. I couldn't get cool enough even with the fan on full, 2 feet from the bed, and the window and curtains wide open! The main distraction was that my feet felt really swollen and burning, and I couldn't elevate them properly since I can't lie on my back without feeling lightheaded now my bump is this big and heavy. I just tossed and turned and got up and stretched my legs, and did it all over again, until after 3am. A fox was dragging a bin about in the street for a while which was distracting! ;) I must have dozed off sometime between 3 and 4am, but I woke on the dot of 4am from a fragmented dream as though I had just had a shallow sleep a few minutes long. I had to go for a wee, and then thankfully I went to sleep, but woke at 5.45 and couldn't get back to sleep after that. Ugh! So thankful that Neil was home, but all the times I tried to go to bed and get some sleep, I just couldn't drop off no matter what I tried. My legs went horribly jumpy every time I lay down, or even sat still. In the end when they went out, and I had a show (yay!), I had a bath (trying to keep those quite frequent now, knowing that I could be giving birth soon!) and then pumped up the birth ball which I found at the bottom of my homebirth box. I thought I had lost the plug for it, but I found it in the bedside table drawer, yay!
I sat on the birth ball in my bedroom and bounced while I prayed through the prayers that Heather printed out and laminated for me when I was expecting Benjamin - they are based on the ones at the back of the book "Supernatural Childbirth" and I love them because they're so declarative and faith-based! They soothe me and make me feel more confident about what's ahead, and about my baby and myself being well. One of them is specifically a prayer against fear, which is very apt for me at pretty much all times! After I prayed, I sang some worship songs for a while and bounced some more. It was actually a really lovely time! Then I felt tired out, and tried to rest again, but to no avail. I kept going to the loo and checking but I had no more mucus plug.
Most of the day I felt kind of spacey and lightheaded, but that could easily have been tiredness or the heat in the afternoon. I tried to keep drinking, but I didn't have much of an appetite again. Late afternoon I had another show, maybe even a little bigger than the previous one! Still no blood in it though, but it encouraged me all the same. I also felt very very crampy and sore under my bump and in the small of my back, and I had to walk about very slowly holding my bump up a bit - it just felt tight and stiff and sore underneath.
As I was breastfeeding Samuel at bedtime last night, I started to have regular BH contractions again, which I could feel very pressurey in my groin, and quite sharply under my bump. Some of them were sharp in my cervix too, so all of the discomfort was VERY encouraging, but the actual contractions I was aware could be just the usual evening bout of BHs. This time I did my best to completely ignore everything, and get on with various activities and move about plenty if I felt like it - change positions and whatnot. TRY to make them go away, and if they didn't then I would maybe pay them more attention. I didn't time them in the slightest.
They obviously did fizzle out but I had them most of the evening - not as frequent or regular as the evening before, I don't think, but then I wasn't paying them much attention.
This morning I woke from a MUCH better sleep! Probably one of the best sleeps I've had in a while actually, which is so nice! My legs were jumpy as I got in bed, but it was my swollen burning feet that prevented me from sleeping again, so after a while of trying to elevate them without success, I went to the bathroom and got a cold wet facecloth and a towel. I balled the towel up on the bed, put my feet on it, and the facecloth on top of my feet, and aimed the fan (on full blast) at my feet. Bliss! I was asleep within probably 15 minutes! :) I did wake at 4.45am for a wee, but other than that I slept right through! When I woke up at 6.45 I rolled over in bed and my lower back seemed to be in a tight painful cramp which made it reeeeeally sore to roll over. I didn't really go back to sleep until Neil came in to wake me at 7.15, but I had a couple of tight BH contractions in that time. Being upright is less sharp and painful under my bump this morning, but my lower back is constantly sore and tight. I wonder if that could just be from bouncing on the birth ball? I am not used to any sort of exercise (unfortunately!) so I think it could just be that...
Kids are going crazy so I will be back later.
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