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2004-05-24 - 9.47pm��previous entry��next entry
16 weeks, 3 days - kicks, nosebleed, and names!
Thank you to everyone who commented on my latest belly pic!! :) I am really excited that you think I am showing more! Yay! Also thanks for all the comments about the homebirth video - I found it quite by chance when I was reading through archived posts at a pregnancy chat site that I don't even use! I found that on Google but I can't even remember how. I'm so vague these days!
Well this is crazy - I am at my halfway point in the week AGAIN! I can't believe how fast the weeks are rolling by now! Little Bean is kicking and kicking and kicking and kicking.... (ad infinitum!).... I wake a few times every night, and usually it's because a) I need to pee, or b) my hip is sore from lying on my side. Either way I have to roll onto my back before I can sleep again (or get up to pee), and as soon as I do that I get bumpled to pieces! :) I love my Bean. 5am is exactly the same every night, I get a hard kick when I wake at that time. Bean never seems to sleep! But I guess he/she is more of a cat-napper.
This afternoon I ate a Cadbury's Boost bar (soooo craving those for the last week - we have multi-packs in the kitchen cupboard therefore, but I only eat one per day maximum), and when I eat one of these, Bean kicks a lot after about 15 minutes. They are basically 3/4 glucose so that's probably why! But anyway, Neil is off work all week to study for his exams next week, and that's nice because he gets more chances to feel Bean kick! So I ate my Boost bar and sure enough Bean gave me a few thumps and bumples, but not that many, and Neil was all discouraged because recently Bean has been stopping with all the kicking the INSTANT Neil puts his hand there to feel it. So the same thing happened today and then Neil had to go out.
After the sugar burst, Bean went completely quiet for 2 hours, which is now a weird thing (how amazing that I'm actually experiencing this - I'm actually pregnant! Wow! It keeps occurring to me still!). And I pottered about and watched some TV and Neil came home, and we chatted for a while and considered moving house next year, and then we decided to tackle the baby name crisis (!!), so we took the baby book and our previous shortlist upstairs to bed and snuggled down to find Bean a name. Anyway we were halfway through figuring out some names when I SWEAR for the first time I felt aware that my baby was waking up from having previously been either napping or else lying completely still for no obvious reason for 2 hours (!!). It was so lovely to feel that.
Bean suddenly gave me a soft little jolt, and I was like, "Hello! Somebody's waking up!" (I can't describe how it feels to have this connection with a baby, MY baby, in my womb) and right after that Bean started kicking like crazy, and hasn't really stopped since, and that was 3 hours ago!!! Okay so there's just the odd kick here and there now, but for the first half hour it was just constant! Neil got to feel lots of kicks, and after a while we just lay and watched my tummy. This is another cool thing that has started to happen - you can see my tummy ripple and distend with little kicks and rolls as Bean moves about. I love love love spending my time watching my tummy and seeing the little kicks as well as feeling them. I feel so gooey and tender inside when I see my tummy change shape, or a little bump suddenly poke out and then disappear again in a flash. The pokey kicks are now quite strong-feeling. They even feel a little uncomfortable if they hit a tender spot or if they are particularly strong. Sometimes after a hard kick I can feel the rebound inside my womb, but I can't see that on the outside yet.
Today when Bean was kicking, I am pretty sure he/she was somersaulting too. I read that is really common at this stage of pregnancy because there is enough room for somersaults and back-flips, and babies seem to do them a lot. I think there is more amniotic fluid than when I was first feeling kicks, because that rebound feeling is very... fluid. The nearest I can describe it is, if you hold in one hand a half-filled bottle of water with the cap screwed on, and tip it upside down sharply, the weight of the water dropping down makes a sort of rebound-ish jerk against your hand, right? Well that's sort of how it feels when there is a hard kick, the kick being like the water hitting the other end of the bottle, and the rebound to the kick feeling like the jerk you get on your wrist a second later. It feels like that rebound is bouncing within a lot of fluid. I don't know if that explains it very well!
Anyway, more fluid = easier somersaults, and I don't feel them as clearly as I used to, so that's another sign of more fluid too. Anyway Bean was kicking me high up about once every second or two, over and over and over, but not that rhythmically so it wasn't hiccups. And then there was hardly any break, only about a second from the last kick at the top, and suddenly there's this tiny swish feeling and the kicks carried right on about 4 inches lower, down by my pubic bone! And then about 5 minutes later the same thing happened and I was getting kicks out by my right hip. Bean has been busy today :)
I love this. It's so much fun. So wonderful.
I am STILL nauseous, but oh well. My IBS is bad at the moment so that is adding to the nausea. Today I thought I would be sick, but I didn't. I just needed to get the fan blowing on me and to, um, burp! I swear there is more air inside me these days than out. Tsk.
I had a nosebleed this morning! My first one in pregnancy, and only my second ever in my whole life! I know they are common from the second trimester onwards so I did not freak out. I blew my nose you see, because I have to quite often since pregnancy has given me a permanent sniffley feeling. Anyway this time I blew maybe just a touch harder than normal (feeling cross and grumpy with my pesky nose!) and uhm yeah, my hanky was red. So I pinched the bridge of my nose and stayed upright and didn't tip my head back and held a tissue under my nose, all the right stuff. And I called Neil from upstairs and asked him to bring my my pregnancy book and look up nosebleeds in the index. Neil completely freaked out!!! I mean seriously! He came running down and started flapping about picking up DIY books and cookery books and whatever else was lying about, in a complete panic that I had blood coming out of some part of my body! I had to tell him to calm down ("It's just a nosebleed!") and get the book that was on the floor in the bedroom. Which he did and read the bit about nosebleeds, and we were reassured that I was doing the right stuff to deal with the bleeding, and then he was more calm. I hope he will not freak out on me when I go into labour!
I should really wear bras more often. It's just that I am in the house most of the time and bras are so so so uncomfy. I have some that are pretty comfy but even those are worse than going bra-less. But I am sure I need the support. I have neeevvver been so comfy without a bra as now that I am pregnant, it's weird! I would have thought I would be less comfortable with my breasts getting bigger and being more sore and sensitive. But no. They are still growing. The last couple of days they've been aching again after quite a long patch of no discomfort, which usually means more growing. Today I was sitting with awful posture, all hunched over, watching TV, and (don't laugh!) I felt something brushing my tummy just below my ribcage, which felt odd so I lifted my top to take a look, and it was my BREASTS!!!! Aaaargh!! They were never big enough to hang anywhere, so I am thinking it's definitely bra time! D'oh. Neil likes that I have a cleavage. He also likes bouncing on the bed at night or first thing in the morning (ie when we're both in bed) and watching the ripple effect. This is apparantly an immensely fun sport.
Men.
I am feeling kind of crampy today, and recently in general. I think it is my bowel. How nice. I am having big problems with constipation, never mind all the water I'm drinking and fibre I'm trying to eat. Tsk. I guess I spoke too soon when I said the "first trimester" constipation had gone. Oh well.
We are at a complete loss all of a sudden with baby names. I'm gonna tell you them. Just because. Not for you to say what crap names or anything, but just because I was being silly not saying. Probably. So here's the dilemma:
My most favourite girl's name in the whole world is Georgia. There you go, I have now told you! Neil thinks it's only so-so, and this means we can't necessarily use it. But he has no other ideas at ALL for a girl's name, and I am thoroughly besotted with Georgia. It's what I've had in mind the whole time we've been TTC. But I'm beginning to have doubts that we're having a girl, so that leaves the boy's names to be considered.
We DID have a shortlist of 3 boy's names that we both liked a lot. They each have a problem though. The middle name for any boy's name will be Cameron, no matter what. So here are (WERE!) our three boy's names:
Matthew, Arthur and Nathan.
Matthew is lovely but extremely popular and it's pretty likely that our child would go through school as Matthew K. Something I was always so glad I didn't have to do since nobody else in my classes at school was called Alice. I like names that aren't everybody else's names. But we really really like Matthew. It goes beautifully with Cameron and our last name. I love the soft sound. I like Mattie as a shortened version. However I am not remotely crazy about Matt.
Okay, Arthur is so cute and unusual. It goes nicely with our surname and with Cameron. It's my great uncle's name. No other little boys in school are going to be called Arthur. We both don't mind the pet name Art, if that's what it ends up being shortened to at some (probably teenage) stage. But it's also the chosen boy's name of a very dear friend who just had a baby girl. She told me if it was a boy it would be Arthur, and I fell in love with the name. Neil spotted it in the baby book a few weeks later and suggested it to me, so we both like it lots. I know my friend is planning to use it if their next baby is a boy, so hmmm, I don't know if I should.
Nathan also goes well with Cameron and our surname, but not QUITE as well with the surname as the others. We both like it, and we don't currently know any children or babies called Nathan - with the BIG exception of Cameron's family. And their Nathan is a new baby too. So we feel like it's been recently used by very close friends, which again puts us off using it slightly. So we're not sure about that one.
There are lots of other names on our shortlists. We each made a shortlist of about 10-15 names for each sex, and then we marked the ones that we both agree on. Most of the others we don't agree on. But today we went through the lists again and temporarily put aside those 3 names above. Maybe we've been saying them and thinking them too long recently, because they none of them stand out anymore. Neil loves the name Chase. But that's because Chase is so cute and he's now hugely biased having seen Chase's photos! :)
Other boy's names we have considered are Charlie, Riley, and Ethan. I have loved the name Elijah for yeeeears. I don't even remember what made me like it or where I first heard it, all I know is it was lonnnnnng before I became a Christian so it's not about it being a Bible name. But I do love the Godly meaning now :) Anyway Neil hated (HATED) the name when I first mentioned it, and today he surprised me sooo much by suddenly saying he likes Elijah. Wow! So that's now on our shortlist too. It's different though. Kind of bold to use it in England. I know it's gaining popularity and use in America, but it's absolutely unheard of here, and I know we would get some really weird (ie. not supportive) looks if we told people we were naming our son Elijah. Even at church. Especially at church, probably. My mum knows I like Elijah, and she is always wonderfully supportive of any name I say I like. She's just lovely like that :)
Neil also likes Jamie for a boy, but I'm not sure about that just yet.
Wow I have waffled on! I need to pee and I feel crampy so I'm gonna stop now. Please no negative feedback on the names I've shared. That was kind of why I've avoided sharing them so far, but I figure it's my diary and my baby and my (our) choice of name, so while I'm telling you that my breasts are sagging onto my tummy (!!), I might as well share the personal nature of our baby name choices!
I am going to make a doctor's appointment tomorrow because it still hurts when I pee. I saw a doctor on Friday about it but he was as useful as a piece of fettucini. And not as dry either. So I'm going to try and make an appointment with the same fab doctor who diagnosed my UTI and then we'll see. At least I've been off the antibiotics since Friday, so if I still have an infection it should show up in a urine sample, since there are no antibiotics in my system to make my sample look clean.
And that is all. I will be back soon! :)
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