I'm still here!! The weeks have been passing by and I keep thinking how I MUST update my pregnancy blog, but just never getting round to it! I find that I consistently stay up CRAZY late whenever I use the laptop, and my willpower is zilch apparently, so 2 weeks ago I prayerfully made the decision not to switch my laptop on at all on weekday evenings, in general. One or two evenings, I did, and then I was up too late again. When I am not switching on the laptop, I prepare school things, I read stuff that REALLY needs reading that I am not getting time to read, I spend time with God and read the Bible, and I go to bed by 10.30 or 11pm. HOURS earlier than otherwise (yes, hours - I know that's awful of me!). At the weekend I do use the laptop in the evening, and still do on occasional weekday evenings (such as this one, but it's after midnight already, so proof again!). Neil's computer is on in the kitchen all day because he's working from home (or learning to, so far), so on rare occasions when he nips to the toilet or something, I jump on and have a flashby glance at Facebook and maybe update my status there or something! Or check my email quickly! ;) That's it though. So, even LESS time to update my blogs than usual, hence the bigger gap than usual.
So just a quick update so there's SOMETHING written between 12 weeks and ohhh, 20 weeks, haha! ;)
Still not feeling the baby move very much at all - JUST like Benjamin. I was sure I felt him move for the first time very early like the others, and felt him a few times over that first week, but then very little until 16 weeks. This baby is the same. I have DEFINITELY felt the baby move from - what was it?? About 11 weeks? I can't remember, already! My brain is such fluff these days. Anyway, earlier. I have had the odd poke (literally one single poke! Or two. Very measured and dainty too, hehe!) or shifty sensation maybe once or twice a week, and that's how it is still going. Except that I have probably felt some slight movement about once a day for a few days now, so that's already changing. At 14 weeks I got all worried suddenly and whipped out my doppler. Happy baby found straight away about an inch or so below my tummy button, with a heart rate of 147, so that's okay then! :) There's not much in the way of "bumph!", "whomp!" or "zoink" sounds on the doppler of a vigorous little person thrashing away in there, like my first three babies, hehe! Sometimes the heartbeat disappeared so I knew the baby had moved, but in a sort of gentle synchronised swimming sort of way I suppose, because there was not hefty shove with a foot to aid any motion! There was the odd little blip sound which was a little bit of movement, and I did find the umbilical cord pulse too, which was fun! :) Benjamin was very much this way in the womb, and on doppler too. Also it's funny how similar this baby was at the 12 week scan to Benjamin - even resting casually with his head on the placenta like a pillow in exactly the same way that Benjamin did! ;)
I posted the scan pictures at In-Gender to see what the "experts" thought of the baby's nub angle, and had 16 boy votes, 2 "50/50 - it could go either way" votes, and 2 "leaning girl..." votes. Interesting. But I do still presume it's a boy until proven otherwise! ;)
Heather (my lovely doula!) came round last week (13w6d) in the evening to do the official initial meeting. We chatted, laughed and generally caught up. Oh it was lovely to see her again! I have missed her! She joked that she knows she has been promising to pop round to see us since Benjamin was born, but she can see that because she hasn't got round to it, we've obviously decided the only way to get her round here is to have another baby, hehe! ;) We signed the contract and paid her the deposit, so wheeeeeeee, I feel wonderful that she's officially BOOKED and totally ours for the keeping when the baby is born (barring unforseen circumstances, obviously)!! Yayness! :)
I have my 16 week midwife appointment (!!!!) on Friday this week. It's a few days early - I'll be 15w4d. I can't believe how fast it is going! I will have to re-re-re-remind them (sigh) that no, I will NOT be having the anti-D injection like they informed me in writing recently (after I made sure they wrote in my notes that I don't have them because Neil is also rhesus negative!)!!! Aaaargh! This is the THIRD pregnancy of constantly saying NO and explaining myself over and over and over. I suppose it's out of the ordinary of me to decline, so I will probably just have to get used to declining and explaining.
I have a consultant appointment on July 15th to discuss my "high risks" - oh, what FUN! ;) Wonderful Heather is coming with me, and I'm so relieved! She has not come across anything substantial to prove that risk of haemmorhage is increased from birth number 5 onwards. She HAS found small studies that indicate the opposite, and we were talking about it and saying that it doesn't really make sense that a strong muscle would get worn out and over-wrought to the point of failing to contract and letting huge-o bleeding occur, with repeated use! I mean, if it does, it's the only muscle in the human body that doesn't IMPROVE strength, tone and ability with repeated use!! So, I don't buy it, especially if there's no research to back it up. She suggested that if the consultant tells me I am more likely to bleed heavily because I am having my 5th baby, I should ask him to point me towards the research to back that up. She doesn't think he will be able to come up with any, but if he does, it will be important reading, so either way it's good advice I think. Group B Strep is just Group B Strep, as last time. I will have the test, but I presume I am positive again, or will be at the time of the test. If it's negative, HOORAH!! But in the meantime, I will be praying and preparing to make a decision over whether to give birth at home again with no antibiotics, or have a hospital birth. I am leaning towards exactly the same choice as last time, but I am not particularly set on anything, so it's a much easier decision making process than if I was DETERMINED to have a homebirth or something!
I am STILL feeling sick! But I really really do think it's fading off now. At 13 and 14 weeks, morning sickness was undoubtedly still there, but manageable, and less intense and constant than the awful fortnight that is 6-and-7-weeks. These last few days I have been just mildly queasy, with a few non-queasy blocks of time thrown in, and a few more yeurghy queasy moments thrown in. I am eating with ease and back to cooking without too much greenness, and can wipe little faces after meals without wanting to hurl! ;) Pooey nappies also aren't phasing me, so I do think it's on the way out. I'm wary to call it that for sure because of that weird time at 9-10 weeks when I had NO morning sickness, at it had faded off just as though it was really clearing up, only to come back with a vengeance! But I do think it's going. I think it's funny if it clears up officially at 15 weeks though, because of the pattern of my pregnancies so far:
#1: Stopped at 18 weeks
#2: Stopped at 12 weeks
#3: Stopped at 16 weeks
#4: Stopped at 14 weeks
It's sort of back-and-forth-ing to a centre point, which would be 15 weeks, and how funny if it actually does stop at 15 weeks this pregnancy to complete the pattern! ;)
The top of my uterus is only an inch or so below my tummy button sometimes (but other times it's about halfway between my pubic bone and my tummy button - it varies!). I have a definite bump that's noticable now, but I forgot to do a 14 week belly picture! :( So I think I will have to miss that one out and just do the 16 week picture when it comes time to next week. Oh well. I have found "Box 2 of 3" and "Box 3 of 3" of my maternity clothes in the loft, but where on earth is "Box 1 of 3"?!! It's frustrating me that I can't find it, because "Box 2 of 3" is mostly heavy jumpers and wintery stuff (I left that in the loft for now), and "Box 3 of 3" is mostly summer tops and dresses (hooray!), but only 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of comfy trousers (too warm for this weather though), and a couple of VERY LARGE pairs of shorts that I lived in when enormously pregnant last summer! So basically, NOTHING fits me! I am in that stage where non-maternity jeans are really uncomfy on the waist, and maternity jeans are hugely baggy and if I try wearing them, they require me to constantly yank them up by the waistband, which is annoying! I'm sure they don't look too flattering either! I hope my little baby has a growth spurt soon, because I need to fill out my only maternity "bottoms", or else have absolutely nothing to wear on my lower half for another few weeks! :S I really want to find the other box of maternity clothes, but actually now I think of it, it's probably got all the jeans that will be too SMALL for me (hips-and-thighs-wise), so it won't help much anyway. It feels crazy to me to need to actually shop for maternity clothes with the huge maternity wardrobe that I already have, and four pregnancies already! But I do need some clothes that will fit me, especially cool clothes for the summer. Anyway! At least I have tops! I am currently squeeezing into non-maternity jeans which pinch my growing tummy (the overflow of which hangs attractively over the too-tight waistband!), and covering the embarrassing spectacle with a nice long maternity top! ;) So it's working-ish for now, but I really can't wear non-maternity jeans for much longer...
I am STILL sleeping on my tummy! Now, I haven't checked my diary to be sure, but it feels like I had to stop doing that WEEKS before in my previous pregnancies. There's a little pressure but it's still comfy and by FAR my easiest position to be able to fall asleep in when my legs are restless (which they have been driving me CRAZY with most nights lately, ugh!). I'm not looking forward to having to stop doing that, but I think it will be this week. Depending on where the baby is positioned, sometimes in the last couple of days it has HURT to lie on my tummy and I have not been able to do it even for a millisecond.
I can feel the baby very clearly now when it is up at the front of my womb. Sometimes the little back or side is along my tummy and I can feel the length of the baby. It is 10cm long at 15 weeks, from head to bottom - with legs added to that! I can also feel VERY clearly when the little head is anywhere against my abdomen. Sometimes it's at the end of the back or side when I can feel that, and other times there's no other parts of the baby to feel except a round (about 1.5 inches across) very very HARD lump sticking out there! ;) I remember this so well from my previous pregnancies. One good thing about my tummy still being somewhat baggy and slack (!!) from 4 back-to-back recent pregnancies is that it is all the more clear to feel obvious parts of such a teeny tiny little baby! I adore being able to feel my baby, especially things like knowing what I'm rubbing is a little head. Aww! :)
I'm lying on my tummy on the living room floor with my laptop right now, and it's mostly comfy - I'm not having to change position. And I just had a little gentle blip of a poke (or even a light kick maybe?!) - just the one, but how EXCITED I am to be feeling kicks and wiggles all the time! I just love this part of pregnancy! :)
I'm just trying to think what else before I finish this and go to bed... Oh thank you for the reminder (I can't remember off the top of my head who said it!) about finishing Benjamin's birth story! I haven't written any more the past few weeks, but I am up to 6.30pm (he was born at 7.30pm), and Heather has asked if I might finish writing it soon because it will be helpful for her to read it. So I WILL get it finished soon(ish?!) - I hope! I promise it won't get forgotten for much longer! As SOON as it's finished I will post it here.
Oh! I am still not wanting anything salty this pregnancy. At all. I do eat Marmite still, which is very salty, and to be honest it's actually too salty for me sometimes, but I am a lifelong Marmite-aholic and love the taste, so I am reluctant to give that one up even when I find it too salty, haha! ;) I have not eaten crisps for my whole pregnancy! Crisps were always a go-to food in my other pregnancies, just as a filler when ravenous, or an aid for nausea sometimes. I occasionally try one but I actually have to spit it out because it's like eating a spoonful of raw salt, seriously. I can't do it! I have the same issue with any especially salty food. Definitely a first for me. I am eating eggs quite a bit but MUCH less now that I'm supplementing with the Omega-3 capsules. I don't seem to want them as much, or the salmon. But even a plain boiled egg tastes like it has salt sprinkled over it when I eat it! It's salt free, an egg, isn't it?! But unsalted things even taste salty to me sometimes.
What DO I like to eat right now?... I can't think. Not crazy about chocolate and biscuits and the like, but they do still go down very nicely if they're about and I sample some! ;) MUST eat better this pregnancy though! I do like fruit, in general, and feel like "fresh" foods that are juicy or sweet-ish. I am eating cheese fine, but it's rather salty tasting. I just can't think of anything I'm particularly WANTING or eating eagerly right now. Maybe there's nothing yet?! I have still been queasy I suppose, so perhaps that will come soon.
Okay, I MUST go to bed! As always, there's sure to be plenty I've missed, but I will have to leave it at this for now. At least I got much more written than I expected, but the cost is that it's now reeeeally late. No laptop for me till the end of the week! I'll hopefully update about my midwife appt soon, and I really want to update my main blog the next chance I get too. Soooo much to write there!
Thanks for the comments last entry! When I (ever?!) get time I am going to change my comments to one of those "type the word you see in the box" doo-dahs, because I get spam on every. single. post now, and I'm fed up with having to go and delete it all the time! But, another time! :)
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Been for my scan! :)
I'm back from my scan, and have just put Benjamin down for a late afternoon nap. I should be dashing back downstairs to the other boys in a minute so this will have to be quick! I am writing this bit to save until I get to post the scan pictures with it a bit later. Then I'll post the whole entry - hopefully soon! :)
The scan went fine! We were nearly late because getting all the boys out of the door and dropping Arthur off ran a little later than expected, but thankfully parking was straightforward. I hadn't even checked in (was still in the queue!) when the sonographer called my name! I was panicking because I hadn't therefore paid and got a little ticket to allow me to get some scan pictures, but they said not to worry and that I could pay afterwards (it's £3 for a couple of pictures at my hospital).
They almost didn't allow the boys to come in the room, saying they would need to concentrate and small children would distract them, and that they DID ask people not to bring little ones, etc. *sigh* We said we were sorry but we couldn't do anything about it as we couldn't get child care for them - our eldest was being looked after but that's the best we could do. They said that the hospital would be changing its policy soon and not allow them in the scan room even if they were in the waiting room! That would mean Neil would have to sit out with them and miss the scan! :(
Anyway, they let us all in. The boys were AS GOOD AS GOLD!! I was so proud of them! And afterwards, the same lady came and complimented me on how well behaved they were, and said I shouldn't worry about bringing them to the anomoly scan, even though the sonographer would need to concentrate even more, because they were so good! :) However, we WILL be trying to find someone to look after them for us while we attend that scan! It's longer and more fiddly, and we really want to be able to relax and see our little one properly. The lady was great and told the receptionist to book us into room 1 for the next scan, because it's the biggest room and we'll have the most space to accommodate our tandem pushchair! :) I'm glad/proud that the boys were so good that they completely turned around her attitude towards them being present! :)
Soooo, the scan!!
We have ONE healthy-looking baby in there! :) No twins, which I was expecting at this stage because I am the same size as the other pregnancies. Also this morning I had a quick listen with the doppler for reassurance, and heard one very clear heartbeat. I searched all over at all angles and didn't find another, so I was more sure than ever that there was only one baby in there.
We saw our sweet little peanut looking very relaxed in there. Cornflake was lying face down with little legs curled underneath the tummy at first - so sweet! :) We saw the various little body parts - legs stretching lazily now and then, and arms occasionally lifting up near the head, but otherwise relaxed. The sonographer was a trainee, with the lady I mentioned above as the supervisor. The trainee scared me a bit at first. I declined the nuchal test for Down Syndrome, and they weren't too happy about that, but I insisted. Then the trainee started the scan, and kept looking at the same view over and over. She seemed nervous. Then she looked at me and said, "If I see something, do you want me to let you know?" and I said, "Yes please!" not really knowing what she meant. Her eyes looked back to the screen but her mouth was all grimacing and nervous for a moment, and SUDDENLY I had a panic that she had seen something wrong with the baby and was asking me if I wanted to know. I strained my eyes at the image of the baby, desperate to see the heart beating, but I couldn't see it - I guess it was the angle of the scan at that moment. And for a moment I panicked inside, and prayed desperately that God would let the baby be okay, and be alive. I couldn't tell if it was moving or just still, because it didn't look like it was moving, and the scan was whizzing around a bit so it was hard to tell. In the end, the baby was fine! But I guess she meant did I want to have her tell me when she had a good view of the stomach or something, to show me? I don't know. But phew, anyway! :)
Cornflake measures 2 days ahead, so they have changed my due date to December 11th, and made me 12 weeks and 5 days pregnant today, which I like! :) I am still not sure whether to take that on though, because I KNOW my dates, whatever the baby is measuring, and I don't really want to have a couple of extra days where I feel like I'm past my due date and waiting to go into labour, when I haven't actually reached it yet! ;) So I will think on that. I DO like being 2 days closer to 13 weeks though, for now! :)
We did indeed get an EXCELLENT nub shot, right at the end! :) The nub shot doesn't quite show it exactly as I saw it during the scan though. My eyes were pretty well trained to spot it fairly early on, and every chance I got, I watched out for it. Several times they froze the picture to make a measurement and I could see the angle very clearly. The shot they took for me to take home at the end shows a slightly different angle to the one I was more clearly seeing throughout the scan. This baby is pretty much 95% (according to moi, lol!) a BOY! :) The angle of that little dangle was between 30 and 40 degrees the whole time, but the actual picture that I'll show you in a moment shows it more like 30 or just less. Between 10 and 30 degrees is "inconclusive", as far as telling the gender at this stage. But there was a significant angle - not like Benjamin's was, but significant. DEFINITELY greater than 30 degrees, which means (with about 97% accuracy or something) a boy. It's easier to mis-assign GIRL gender to a boy with the nub, than the other way around. Boy angles can occasionally be quite low, but girl angles are NEVER greater than 30 degrees. This baby's angle is definitely 30 degrees plus, so I would say almost for absolute certain that we are having our FIFTH boy!!! I won't announce as much at Facebook I don't think, because I'd rather wait till the big scan to confirm it, but I can say here that I'm pretty sure, and will definitely continue calling Cornflake "he"! ;)
There are other things to note - he measured 63.2mm long, and there was also a moment of "between-the-legs-ness" where I saw obvious boy bits. I know that shot is less accurate at this stage, but I have seen CLEAR boy bits for 2 of my boys with that shot (Arthur and Benjamin) and I know what I'm seeing! ;) Neil said straight away that he looks different to the others, and I know what he means but can't put my finger on it. His nose looks a little higher to me, but we really didn't get a good crisp image as she had it quite magnified all the time, so it was fuzzy.
Anyway, a good scan! He lay on his back for the latter part, and stretched his legs about now and then, and opened and closed his hands in front of his face. He was lying on his placenta, and looked remarkably like Benjamin did - all laid back on a pillow of a placenta! - at his scan!
Boys are causing trouble downstairs so I must quickly post pics and get this posted! The scanner seems broken so I have had to take a photo of the pictures. Hope they turn out okay! We got 4 pictures, but the first two have a nice loop of my (apparently not empty!) bowel in front of the baby's legs! So here are the OTHER two! ;) First one is more magnified - how we saw the whole scan. The second one is the GREAT nub shot - don't need to explain where it is for you even! :) Look at his little hand opened wide (fingers bent at the tops, thumb scooping across the palm area!) - so sweet! :) And such tiny feeties!
Back soon to write more details as I remember them - I'm sure there was more I wanted to add! But I MUST go downstairs now!
The scan went fine! We were nearly late because getting all the boys out of the door and dropping Arthur off ran a little later than expected, but thankfully parking was straightforward. I hadn't even checked in (was still in the queue!) when the sonographer called my name! I was panicking because I hadn't therefore paid and got a little ticket to allow me to get some scan pictures, but they said not to worry and that I could pay afterwards (it's £3 for a couple of pictures at my hospital).
They almost didn't allow the boys to come in the room, saying they would need to concentrate and small children would distract them, and that they DID ask people not to bring little ones, etc. *sigh* We said we were sorry but we couldn't do anything about it as we couldn't get child care for them - our eldest was being looked after but that's the best we could do. They said that the hospital would be changing its policy soon and not allow them in the scan room even if they were in the waiting room! That would mean Neil would have to sit out with them and miss the scan! :(
Anyway, they let us all in. The boys were AS GOOD AS GOLD!! I was so proud of them! And afterwards, the same lady came and complimented me on how well behaved they were, and said I shouldn't worry about bringing them to the anomoly scan, even though the sonographer would need to concentrate even more, because they were so good! :) However, we WILL be trying to find someone to look after them for us while we attend that scan! It's longer and more fiddly, and we really want to be able to relax and see our little one properly. The lady was great and told the receptionist to book us into room 1 for the next scan, because it's the biggest room and we'll have the most space to accommodate our tandem pushchair! :) I'm glad/proud that the boys were so good that they completely turned around her attitude towards them being present! :)
Soooo, the scan!!
We have ONE healthy-looking baby in there! :) No twins, which I was expecting at this stage because I am the same size as the other pregnancies. Also this morning I had a quick listen with the doppler for reassurance, and heard one very clear heartbeat. I searched all over at all angles and didn't find another, so I was more sure than ever that there was only one baby in there.
We saw our sweet little peanut looking very relaxed in there. Cornflake was lying face down with little legs curled underneath the tummy at first - so sweet! :) We saw the various little body parts - legs stretching lazily now and then, and arms occasionally lifting up near the head, but otherwise relaxed. The sonographer was a trainee, with the lady I mentioned above as the supervisor. The trainee scared me a bit at first. I declined the nuchal test for Down Syndrome, and they weren't too happy about that, but I insisted. Then the trainee started the scan, and kept looking at the same view over and over. She seemed nervous. Then she looked at me and said, "If I see something, do you want me to let you know?" and I said, "Yes please!" not really knowing what she meant. Her eyes looked back to the screen but her mouth was all grimacing and nervous for a moment, and SUDDENLY I had a panic that she had seen something wrong with the baby and was asking me if I wanted to know. I strained my eyes at the image of the baby, desperate to see the heart beating, but I couldn't see it - I guess it was the angle of the scan at that moment. And for a moment I panicked inside, and prayed desperately that God would let the baby be okay, and be alive. I couldn't tell if it was moving or just still, because it didn't look like it was moving, and the scan was whizzing around a bit so it was hard to tell. In the end, the baby was fine! But I guess she meant did I want to have her tell me when she had a good view of the stomach or something, to show me? I don't know. But phew, anyway! :)
Cornflake measures 2 days ahead, so they have changed my due date to December 11th, and made me 12 weeks and 5 days pregnant today, which I like! :) I am still not sure whether to take that on though, because I KNOW my dates, whatever the baby is measuring, and I don't really want to have a couple of extra days where I feel like I'm past my due date and waiting to go into labour, when I haven't actually reached it yet! ;) So I will think on that. I DO like being 2 days closer to 13 weeks though, for now! :)
We did indeed get an EXCELLENT nub shot, right at the end! :) The nub shot doesn't quite show it exactly as I saw it during the scan though. My eyes were pretty well trained to spot it fairly early on, and every chance I got, I watched out for it. Several times they froze the picture to make a measurement and I could see the angle very clearly. The shot they took for me to take home at the end shows a slightly different angle to the one I was more clearly seeing throughout the scan. This baby is pretty much 95% (according to moi, lol!) a BOY! :) The angle of that little dangle was between 30 and 40 degrees the whole time, but the actual picture that I'll show you in a moment shows it more like 30 or just less. Between 10 and 30 degrees is "inconclusive", as far as telling the gender at this stage. But there was a significant angle - not like Benjamin's was, but significant. DEFINITELY greater than 30 degrees, which means (with about 97% accuracy or something) a boy. It's easier to mis-assign GIRL gender to a boy with the nub, than the other way around. Boy angles can occasionally be quite low, but girl angles are NEVER greater than 30 degrees. This baby's angle is definitely 30 degrees plus, so I would say almost for absolute certain that we are having our FIFTH boy!!! I won't announce as much at Facebook I don't think, because I'd rather wait till the big scan to confirm it, but I can say here that I'm pretty sure, and will definitely continue calling Cornflake "he"! ;)
There are other things to note - he measured 63.2mm long, and there was also a moment of "between-the-legs-ness" where I saw obvious boy bits. I know that shot is less accurate at this stage, but I have seen CLEAR boy bits for 2 of my boys with that shot (Arthur and Benjamin) and I know what I'm seeing! ;) Neil said straight away that he looks different to the others, and I know what he means but can't put my finger on it. His nose looks a little higher to me, but we really didn't get a good crisp image as she had it quite magnified all the time, so it was fuzzy.
Anyway, a good scan! He lay on his back for the latter part, and stretched his legs about now and then, and opened and closed his hands in front of his face. He was lying on his placenta, and looked remarkably like Benjamin did - all laid back on a pillow of a placenta! - at his scan!
Boys are causing trouble downstairs so I must quickly post pics and get this posted! The scanner seems broken so I have had to take a photo of the pictures. Hope they turn out okay! We got 4 pictures, but the first two have a nice loop of my (apparently not empty!) bowel in front of the baby's legs! So here are the OTHER two! ;) First one is more magnified - how we saw the whole scan. The second one is the GREAT nub shot - don't need to explain where it is for you even! :) Look at his little hand opened wide (fingers bent at the tops, thumb scooping across the palm area!) - so sweet! :) And such tiny feeties!
Back soon to write more details as I remember them - I'm sure there was more I wanted to add! But I MUST go downstairs now!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
12 weeks, 2 days - scan tomorrow!!!! :D
Just a quick post (it's late AGAIN!) to jump about excitedly that it's my SCAN tomorrow!!!! I can't wait to see my tiny one (something is seriously UP that I just typed "pony" instead of one?!?! Haha! I must be tiiiired!!) for the very first time! I usually get slightly nervous at the last minute that for whatever reason the baby will have died RIGHT before the scan - I know, I should never think like that, but it's just what pops into my brain at the last minute, you know? Anyway, for that reason I like to reassure myself with the doppler as last minute as possible. Especially this time, since we'll have a room-full of small children at the scan!
I did manage to organise Arthur's half-term club. We'll be dropping him off half an hour early, which is great! Hopefully we'll have enough time to turn around, drive the short distance back to the hospital, find a parking space (the BIG hurdle!) and get all the little ones out and into the maternity unit in the 20 minutes after dropping him off.
My scan is at 1.50pm, and I will update as soon as I can afterwards, but it still might not be till late afternoon or even early evening. What I want to do is update HERE before saying a thing at Facebook. I reckon blog readers are a bit more deserving of an update to something exciting before Facebook! ;) Plus I want to keep this blog going!!! It's so easy to post quickly at Facebook and then it's old news at my blog to most of my readers, who might already have done their commenting at Facebook. Come here for news tomorrow!!! :D I will, of course, be updating at Facebook later in the evening, so you could just wait till later for an update there - or not even see this last minute post and thus not check here anyway! ;) But I'll be updating here first, Facebook late evening before bed probably. I will be ITCHING to update at Facebook as soon as I'm home, but I do so want to keep SOME things special for my blog so that people might come here to get news instead of Facebook! :)
Nothing much more to add, except YAY, I'm in the 2nd trimester! And still feeling sick, but oh well. Still wanting eggs (soft boiled is what I'm LONGING for! :S ) and salmon a lot, and have started on prenatal omega 3 capsules daily. Peeing pregnantly, and dizzy quite a bit, but not too bad. Definitely starting to show now (please check my new belly gallery (link on the side) if you didn't see my last post - I have belly pics up! I think I'm bigger at 11 weeks than I was in my other pregnancies, but only a touch).
Benjamin is stirring and I need to go to bed, so I will be back tomorrow! :)
I did manage to organise Arthur's half-term club. We'll be dropping him off half an hour early, which is great! Hopefully we'll have enough time to turn around, drive the short distance back to the hospital, find a parking space (the BIG hurdle!) and get all the little ones out and into the maternity unit in the 20 minutes after dropping him off.
My scan is at 1.50pm, and I will update as soon as I can afterwards, but it still might not be till late afternoon or even early evening. What I want to do is update HERE before saying a thing at Facebook. I reckon blog readers are a bit more deserving of an update to something exciting before Facebook! ;) Plus I want to keep this blog going!!! It's so easy to post quickly at Facebook and then it's old news at my blog to most of my readers, who might already have done their commenting at Facebook. Come here for news tomorrow!!! :D I will, of course, be updating at Facebook later in the evening, so you could just wait till later for an update there - or not even see this last minute post and thus not check here anyway! ;) But I'll be updating here first, Facebook late evening before bed probably. I will be ITCHING to update at Facebook as soon as I'm home, but I do so want to keep SOME things special for my blog so that people might come here to get news instead of Facebook! :)
Nothing much more to add, except YAY, I'm in the 2nd trimester! And still feeling sick, but oh well. Still wanting eggs (soft boiled is what I'm LONGING for! :S ) and salmon a lot, and have started on prenatal omega 3 capsules daily. Peeing pregnantly, and dizzy quite a bit, but not too bad. Definitely starting to show now (please check my new belly gallery (link on the side) if you didn't see my last post - I have belly pics up! I think I'm bigger at 11 weeks than I was in my other pregnancies, but only a touch).
Benjamin is stirring and I need to go to bed, so I will be back tomorrow! :)
Sunday, May 30, 2010
11 weeks, 6 days - last day of the first trimester!
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
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
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
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