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2004-04-23 - 11.50am��previous entry��next entry
12 weeks - second trimester!!!
Welcome to my second trimester!!!
12 weeks, 12 weeks, 12 weeeeeeeks!!! I am so excited!! Today is the first day of my second trimester and I can't BELIEVE the whole first trimester is behind me and the danger zone is officially past! Woohoooo!!! I feel like I've been waiting to get to 12 weeks forever, and finally I'm here! I really can't believe this is happening, and I'm really really going to have a baby. I will be 100% assured of this a week from today when I have my scan (only a week, yay!!). Infact I'll be having it exactly NOW this time next week - it's at 11.40am. Of course they'll probably run late so I'll be sitting in the waiting area at this time next week with Neil, but oh well. I am just sooooooooooo excited to be pregnant!!!! I mean, I have been all along, but especially after the bleeding I kept a part of me cautious incase things went wrong. And now I am about 95% excited and believing I'm going to really be a mummy! The other 5% will come at the scan if all is well.
I have continued to feel a lot better since a couple of days ago. I think this is the 3rd day now. I still feel mildly queasy most of the day, and in the evening I often get nauseous as usual, but then that was always my worst time anyway. I am just so happy to be feeling better than I was!
I am getting a LOT of laundry done now, and I'm planning to do some proper housework (first time in ages!) today, and go out as well.
If I don't eat as soon as I get hungry I feel sick still. The other evening I got so hungry, I thought I wouldn't eat just yet because Neil would be home soon, and then he was but we needed a supermarket trip first, so I waited again and then dinner had to cook and by then I felt soooo sick! I ate a few cheese twist things and then when dinner was ready I could only eat a little bit, I just felt so rough. I guess that was a good lesson - I definitely need to pay attention the moment my body demands something of me, like rest or food. I have been behaving like before I was pregnant, getting round to rest and food when I'm good and ready, but that doesn't work anymore!
Yesterday we had steak for dinner which turned out to be kind of tough, and I had the WORST indigestion in the night. Bleurgh. I think I will give steak a miss for a while - it's hard to digest anyway, and my red meat craving isn't very strong anymore. I think we will still have roast dinners though! But in a way it was so cool because I woke up and felt really sick and gross, and then I realised it wasn't like morning sickness, it was like non-pregnancy nausea which I hadn't been able to notice for months because of the pregnancy nausea in the way! I know that probably sounds crazy to be excited about that, but I was anyway :) Yay for morning sickness wearing off!
Neil told me yesterday that he had a dream about the scan. For some reason I found that so touching, to think that he is dreaming about our baby and the pregnancy :) So sweet. Then I had a dream about the scan last night. Everything was fine, except the doctor kept coming in and showing a slide show of grossly abnormal fetuses at the same age as mine, and I got confused and couldn't tell which was my baby, the slides or the scan. But anyway, it was all fine. Neil's dream was of a normal scan too :) I hope it will be like that in reality.
I am concerned because my womb is growing up and pretty sharply to my right. There is nothing at ALL to feel on my left abdomen, but there's a bulge at the centre as always, just about an inch above my hair line, and then over to my right it extends another inch or two out that way. Weird. I thought there was no way it could really be my womb if it was that weirdly shaped, and I figured it must be a loop of bowel or something. But it all goes hard after sex, even that sticky up bit, and I was prodding it yesterday and discovered it's a shape about 2 inches by 1 inch, like a tube I suppose. I know I don't have an ectopic pregnancy because of the scans and the fact that I'm 12 weeks without any pain, but it IS weird. Eventually I got the doppler out and the lump has a heartbeat! So I guess it is my womb, but it worries me that it's such a weird shape and all leaning to one side. I am desperate for reassurance from a midwife, and thus completely annoyed AGAIN that I have not been allocated any antenatal care till I'm 15 weeks. I think that sucks. Especially with my first pregnancy. I have a ton of things by now that I NEED to discuss with a midwife, and I have 3 more weeks to wait. Obviously a scan will help, but I don't know if they can tell much about the womb in that.
Anyway, I considered calling the maternity unit and begging them to bring my appt forward, but I doubt they will be able to. I think I must have been given such a late appt because of a backlog or something anyway. So there we go.
Anyway, I found the heartbeat 2 inches up on this lump, and then I decided to listen where I normally find it (at least 3 inches down and across) and I found a heartbeat there too. At first I freaked RIGHT out, thinking, "Oh my gosh, there's TWO!!!!" but I am pretty sure I was just picking up the same heartbeat from 2 angles. I counted the heart rate at both sites and it was the same, and I picked up the rhythm and kept saying it while I looked for the "other" one, and it matched the first rhythm. So I'm sure it's the same heartbeat. But it gave me a scare for a moment! I could hear my placenta (very noisy these days!) whooshing away at the same time, and when I thought I heard 2 heartbeats my placenta started whooshing at almost double speed, I was that freaked out about it, lol!
I am still not really showing, and judging by the amount of twinges and stabs and pulls in my pelvis as I was pushing (lightweight and empty!) shopping trolley round the supermarket yesterday, I am pretty sure my womb still hasn't popped out yet. It's getting so uncomfy in there. Last night I slept with a spare pillow between my knees for the first time. They were getting achy and making my pelvis uncomfy if they weren't aligned. But sleeping with a pillow there kept me really wakeful and restless so I didn't sleep too well. Hopefully I will get used to it soon.
This morning Bean's heartrate was 167. According to old wives tales (well, not that old probably!), a heartrate above 140/150 consistently is good evidence of a girl, and a heartrate below that is likely to be a boy. There's loads of discussions and polls on this subject at FF, and many have confirmed it's true for them, or was for their older children. So Bean's heartrate is supporting my girl-hunch :) It hasn't gone below 161 so far, and that was an unusual count even for Bean. I guess she/he was sleeping.
Bean is 5.5cm long today (legs not included!), and now has sleep/wake cycles! This morning she/he was most definitely awake. The heartbeat was moving all OVER the place, away from the wand, back to the wand, out to the distance and back past the wand again to another distant place! Also I heard a LOT of bumps and splatches on the doppler today, which means she/he must be kicking and bouncing up a storm in there! I still find this impossible to believe, even though I can hear evidence of it. Maybe the scan will make me believe it next week.
You guys HAVE to go and see another ultrasound movie that I found! I hope this one works for you. It's at another site and you click where it says download movie. There's a still of the movie right above the download button. It's of a fetus aged 10 weeks (from conception), which is the same as Bean today. It's soooo amazing, it's only a very short clip but the baby is going CRAZY using the womb as a trampoline! You can even see it brings its knees right up to the body and when it hits the bottom of the womb it shoves its feet with all its might and bounces! Its little arms flail about mid-bounce. I can't BELIEVE my baby is now able to be that active. But what I can't believe the most is that I can't FEEL it!! How could anyone not feel that kind of action going on in there!
Anyway here is the link. I hope it works for everyone!
Also here is a photo of a baby in the womb at roughly this stage of pregnancy. It SAYS 12 weeks gestation but I am not sure it can be accurate, because I know that by 12 weeks the eyelids are fused shut - all the embryology sites say so. And this baby does not have closed eyelids yet. So I'm guessing it must be somewhere in the 11th week or something, but anyway here it is - so amazing that Bean is this far developed already:
Okay what else can I tell you today? My bladder is feeling uncomfy today. I don't know, it just feels kind of sore and I feel like peeing more. I haven't been drinking enough lately so I'm going to try drinking as much as I can today, and I have a glass of cranberry juice right here with me. I'll see how that goes for a couple of days. If it's a urine infection I would rather try to fix it withouth antibiotics first. My urine looks fine at the moment but I'll keep an eye on it.
My skin is more itchy these days. It has been a lot more dry since hmmm, about half way through the 1st trimester I think. Anyway I noticed today when I squat down and lean forward (I was sorting some papers on the floor), the skin on my back prickles like crazy, like it's over-stretching. Weird. It's too uncomfy to stay squatting even.
I seem to have outgrown all my bras that are 34inches. Cup size is the same at the moment (though I should hope so since I've gone up a couple of cup sizes already!), but the bands on all my bras are way too tight. I can't see any difference in my girth at all, especially at my ribcage, so I can't figure out how I'm outgrowing my bras in that way! Oh well, I have one or two that are 36 inches so I am living in those at the moment, much more comfy! I have no waist at the moment which I read is what happens before you show. It's like my waist has suddenly thickened up. Or not so suddenly - Neil says he's noticed my shape changing for a while, even though I have no bump to show yet. I bloat out in the evening and look pregnant still, but I don't think any of it is Bean.
Ohhh in the supermarket yesterday I bumped into a lady from church who I absolutely love to pieces. She was so sympathetic when I was upset one time because we were having trouble conceiving and I had just got us referred to a specialist. She and her husband were never able to have children. They tried and tried and it never happened for them. But I don't know her history, or if they tried treatment or anything. They decided not to adopt and served the church instead. They have taken more young couples and teens and just basically everybody, under their wings than anyone else at the church in their time. They are wonderful people, but I know it hurt them terribly that they couldn't have children of their own.
So I bumped into this lady in front of the deli counter. I haven't seen her since that time I mentioned when I was upset. She asked how I was doing, and I told her I am pregnant. She said lovely things, but somehow I felt so bad telling her I am pregnant, because even though she is 45 now and they haven't thought of having their own children for a long long time, I feel like it must still hurt to hear that someone else is pregnant. I could tell that she was genuinely delighted for me, but still, I hate to hurt people and I can't imagine it was easy to hear. I wish I knew what to say in that kind of situation. I had a taster myself of wondering if we might never have children of our own and the pain of hearing of others getting pregnant around me. So it makes me hurt and hurt for people who are in that situation now, and I feel dreadful to be a source of pain for anyone, even in my happy situation. Especially when it's someone I love. But I didn't say anything about it, because maybe that would have made it loads worse? I just did not make a big thing about being pregnant, just answered her questions (how are you feeling, when are you due, how is Neil doing, etc) and then asked how things were going for her with work and things like that. I hope I did the right thing if it was difficult for her.
Okay well this is another long entry so I will wrap it up for now and drink my cranberry juice!
Does anyone know if there is still such a thing as Lyons chocolate cupcakes in this country?!! I used to see those in shops EVERYWHERE and now when I am actually craving them, they cease to exist!!! Yesterday I went to Sainsbury's, Asda, and the garage down the road. The day before, Neil went to the big Tesco's. No Lyons cupcakes. They have to be chocolate, and they have to be Lyons. Some supermarkets make their own but I need LYONS!! Today I am on the hunt. After I eat and finish my cranberry, and okay, watch Neighbours and Doctors (!!), I am getting in my car and visiting corner shops, Safeways, the big Asda that's further away, Waitrose and basically anywhere else I can think of that might sell them. I have to have them!! If I can't find any, I shall have to do a web appeal (desperate measures!) begging anyone who finds a box (or 10) of Lyons chocolate cupcakes to mail them to me and I'll reimburse them!! The other things I seem to "need" at the moment are cheese savouries, you know those ones that are in different shapes - hearts, ovals, diamonds, etc. But those are easier to find. I bought two party size packs yesterday! :) Yum. And white seedless grapes. I am stuffing those away lately :)
Okay that is definitely IT for today! Back soon :)
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