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2004-04-15 - 5.11pm��previous entry��next entry
10 weeks, 6 days - first birth dream!
Eleven weeks tomorrow!! Yay! I am so excited, I love Fridays! Still have my eye on that lovely 12-week milestone. I don't know when to say I've started my second trimester. I found a website that said it can be calculated several ways, but the most common ones are developmental and gestational. Gestational simply takes 40 weeks and divides that by 3, so each trimester is exactly 13 weeks and 3 days long. Which sounds a bit pants to me, and it means waiting longer to reach the second trimester! Developmentally, the end of the first trimester is determined by the completion of all the baby's internal organs and the complete takeover by the now fully-functional placenta. By those factors, the second trimester begins at 12 weeks exactly. I like that much better! Some sites seem to compromise and say you're not in the second trimester till 13 weeks exactly. So I'm not sure which to pick, or if I'll be cheating slightly to say I'm in the 2nd trimester a week before I really am. Silly detail, I know :)
On the other hand, my scan is on the day I turn 13 weeks, which would be a nice "Welcome to the 2nd Trimester!" present! So I don't know.
I had my first birth dream last night! It wasn't nice really. I was in hospital, and not happy at being there either. There was a huge bed and I was in a hospital gown. I was having painful contractions and I felt tired out and wanted to rest in the bed between contractions, but my whole family was in the bed, my brother and his fiancee too, and they were all smiling and looking like they wanted to do helpful things for me, but none of them could see that I just wanted them to move out of the way so I could rest in the bed!
And the midwives kept saying, "If you don't do X, Y or Z soon then we'll have to do A, B or C." It was just exactly why I don't want a hospital birth. Nobody was being sensitive to what I was needing, nobody listened to me if I asked for something or said I felt something, people were pressurising me to do stuff and there was always the threat of intervention if I didn't progress as they wanted me to. I felt completely out of control, and right as I realised this my contractions completely stopped. A midwife rubbed my back (?!) to get them going again and that hurt but not because I was having a contraction. It was horrible. I was trying everything to relax and get in my own zone and focus on being in labour but nobody was being helpful. There were too many people everywhere.
At one point, the room was full of about 50 people all wearing party hats and talking so loud I couldn't hear myself think, and I just stood on a chair and yelled, "Everybody just GET OUT!!!" but I couldn't make my voice shout loud enough to be heard. I wanted a birth ball to bounce and squat on to help things move along, and I asked a nurse for one but she acted all disinterested. In the end I was sitting out in the waiting room with my gown on, 5cm dilated, no contractions whatsoever, somehow (physically impossible I know!) hugging my knees and crying and just feeling thoroughly unheard and miserable.
Then I woke up. Yeurgh. That dream covered pretty much every fear that I have about giving birth in hospital. Pretty much. I really really really hope I do not have any reasons to transfer from the homebirth I'm planning. There is a midwife-run unit at my local hospital which is apparantly a fairly rare thing in this country, so if I HAVE to, at least I will try to get in there. But if I transfer because of complications I probably won't be eligible for that unit. You have to have an uncomplicated pregnancy to be admitted there to give birth. I soooo hope I can have my homebirth! I did not like that dream.
Yesterday I went out and had a little walk at the cemetery, and got some sunshine as well. I am going to try to do that more often because I felt better for it. I am still feeling really sick all day, and it is still much worse in the evenings usually. I have some hayfever again today and yesterday so that is making for more of that goo I keep swallowing, which makes me feel more sick, but oh well. I am really hoping it will all go away in the next few weeks!
I got a mean guestbook message in my guestbook but I deleted it, because the same message was left at my normal diary. I wrote about an argument I had with Neil a couple of nights ago, to do with feeling sick and blah and being hormonal and crabby. And this someone was kind of mean about it, so I wrote a big long ranty response in my normal diary. I thought I'd mention it here incase anyone had seen the message in this guestbook and wondered why I deleted it, and because it's to do with pregnancy so it relates to this diary. But there we go. Apparantly I'm lazy not working and I moan too much about feeling sick and I give my husband a lot of crap and I should be counting my blessings. Pfthth. Mean grumpy probably-jealous person.
I am moodier than normal these days but my pregnancy book says I am spot on time for that, since my placenta is nearly fully functional and is now giving out huge levels of hormones, notably progesterone (grumpy hormone!) and relaxin to soften my ligaments to help my pelvis get a bit more flexible for carrying a heavy pregnancy and for giving birth. I have noticed in the last few nights that my hips are getting pretty achy when I wake from lying on my side. I still lie on my front a lot to sleep, which isn't always super-comfortable, but I'm still able to do it. It's always been my most cosy sleeping position and sometimes I can't fall asleep unless I'm on my front, which worries me slightly! But oh well. I am pretty good on my sides too, except with this new hip discomfort. I'm presuming that's to do with relaxin?
I am still really into cottage cheese and salad sandwiches, but it HAS to be on brown bread, not wholemeal or white. Brown. Medium sliced. No butter. I eat at least 2 a day, and if I include those, I usually eat four meals a day. At least cottage cheese and salad sandwiches are healthy foods! Last night I suddenly craved beefburgers. Not McDonalds ones, but real thick mealy beefburgers like you get at a BBQ or a steakhouse. Mmmmm.... I just had to have one. But you can't get burgers like that around here unless you go to a BBQ or a good restaurant, and I don't yet feel well enough to go out to a restaurant and sit nicely at the table eating my meal all in one go like you do. I eat hungrily for a few bites and then have to stop because I feel sick, and then I pick my way through the rest of it, sometimes getting a hungry non-queasy burst for a few bites here and there. I couldn't do that comfortably in a restaurant, and I never really feel settled eating out anyway. I like eating at home. So the nearest we could get WAS McDonalds. Bleurgh. Neil went out, bless him, and he got food for both of us. I ate a small portion of fries and TWO burgers with lots of ketchup to hide the texture of matted cardboard (tasting vaguely of meat). I really hate fast food burgers. They are so not right! But I still wanted them, even though I also DIDN'T want them at the same time (?!). I still long for that REAL burger though... Must be needing some extra iron and protein.
I have now been taking my calcium supplement and prenatal vitamins (with iron) together for a few days. But today I am super super super constipated, so maybe it's true that they both (individually) cause constipation? Maybe I will have to come back off them. Hmmm. We'll see.
I have a cold sore on my lip. Yuck. I get these about once a year, so not often at all. I can't think what's triggered this one, other than maybe hormones? Periods approaching sometimes were the triggers for cold sores in the past for me. But oh well. I am using that cream you put on cold sores, the leaflet says it's safe for pregnant women.
I am also taking antacids more now, as I am having more of a problem with heartburn lately. At night it can be fearsome, and I take antacids if I need them when I go to bed. They work, which is lovely! I hope they are safe to take. So far I know that Gaviscon is fine (but gross), and so are Tums (which don't work for me). I take Rennies. I hope these are as safe as other antacids for pregnancy. I am presuming they are and I can't find the leaflet from the packet. Maybe I should check with the chemist or something? Anyway, they work :)
Well I am going to go. I feel weird and hot and sweaty and I think maybe I need to eat something. Right now I just want a meat pie and leeks and potatoes. Mmmmm! But we don't have that so never mind. I think I will have a cottage cheese sandwich. What a surprise! ;)
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