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2004-06-01 - 12.17pm��previous entry��next entry
17 weeks, 4 days - maternity clothes at last!
Thank you for more lovely comments about Bean's names and also about our new travel system! :) Yay! As far as a girl's middle name goes, my favourite middle name for a girl is Rose and has been for ages. But I really really want to use my mum's name as my first daughter's middle name, which is Jane, and I don't want to give Bean two middle names, so I can't decide right now. Rose is so beautiful, and goes so well with Georgia. But Jane means so much more to me. It doesn't go as well though, does it? Hmmm. Anyway, Neil is STILL not 100% keen on Georgia so I don't know why I'm being all "Bean's name will be Georgia!" about it!! I keep reading him your comments though, hoping to sway him, hehe!
Okay I only have 3 more days till I'm 18 weeks pregnant!! Woah! Where is the time going?! It's so crazy because then there's only a fortnight till I'm halfway through my pregnancy. Wow.
Bean is squirming. It feels soooo weird! I love to feel Bean moving but squirming makes ME squirm, if I'm honest! I am halfway through a tall glass of ice-cold orange juice (fweshly squeezed!) mixed half-and-half with lemonade. Mmmm! So Bean is starting to wiggle and thump with all that sugar :)
Guess what?!! I am officially IN maternity clothes!!!! Yaaaaaaay!! This is soooo exciting!! Okay so most of them are still falling off me, but I have a couple of pairs of jeans with the big stretchy jersey panel which fit me perfectly now. I am bigger in the evenings than the morning (and weigh 3lbs more then too!) so I fit things better in the evenings. But it's so cool and fun to be out of that annoying in-betweeny stage now. My pre-pregnancy clothes are officially obsolete, and I get to explore an exciting new wardrobe of clothes!! I have a LOT put away, lots of choice, you remember? My obsessive eBay days? Well they are paying off! :) I have a vast selection of maternity clothes now, which is so nice. And I didn't pay full price for a single item :) I am still buying the odd thing though. I still need basic T-shirts because I forgot all about those when I was doing my mad buying, and my normal T-shirts WOULD be okay, only uhm, I was surprised to discover that they no longer fit me round the bust! *cough*
My breasts are aching a lot these days which I know means they are growing again. I am in the biggest maternity bras I thought to buy before I got pregnant - remember I was saying, "Oh I'll probably NEVER fit these, but it's good to be prepared!!" Yeah. Well I've been wearing them for the last few weeks and I don't think I'll fit them for much longer if I grow any more. So I'll have to buy a whole new lot of maternity bras. Bras are so expensive. I think maybe I should start looking out on eBay for the next cup size up. I think that takes me to a DD. I was a B before pregnancy, and now I'm very comfy in a D. Yikes.
The other thing I am short of (hahahahaha!!) is shorts. It's gonna be hot soon and I'm already noticing that I have NOTHING to wear that makes me feel cool enough when it's hot. So I need shorts. I just won a lovely denim pair at eBay this week so that's good. I have a couple of pairs but they are like TENTS (I'm not kidding) and defintely for huge 3rd trimester bellies, and I think it will be getting cool again by the time I'm in my 3rd trimester. So I need better shorts. This pair I won is normal-fitting except for a jersey panel. I love them, and since I can't find ANYTHING in the shops or online that's decent - even for full-price - I bid loooads on these to ensure I won them! :) Fortunately nobody pushed my bid up to the max! But yay, I won nice maternity shorts :)
I love looking pregnant. I am still slightly impatient because I don't look pregnant ENOUGH yet for my liking (!!), but I do look pregnant now, and I'm loving every second of it!
Oooh guess what else?!! Yesterday was my first completely nausea-free day since 5 weeks, 6 days!!! AND I got super over-hungry, and it didn't make me feel even slightly sick to be painfully hungry! Usually that is when nausea is at it's worst for me, the more hungry I get. But no! I had a little queasiness, especially in the evening, but that's my normal IBS yuckiness which I always had before pregnancy, so I think yesterday was an entirely morning sickness FREE day!! Yay! I am soooo glad, I was beginning to wonder if it would stay for the whole pregnancy. I just hope I stay feeling that way and that it wasn't just a one-off good day.
Yesterday I was amazed at my appetite. I get soooo hungry, and then I eat a big meal that used to make me feel stuffed and achy if I ate it all, only now it sort of feels like it just "fills the gap" and I feel satisfied but not full. And then yesterday evening Neil made this gorrrrgeous pork stir fry thingy with rice, and I could barely restrain myself from eating like a pig - as in stuffing it in my mouth faster than I could swallow it, just because I felt sooo hungry and it tasted like heaven. I DID restrain myself, by the way! :) But anyway, I had a big portion and I just kept eating and eating and eating and eating, and I was so surprised, I started wondering if it was possible for me to feel full or if I could just eat forever and not get full. Crazy thought but I honestly wondered! I did get full in the end though :) And then 2 hours later my tummy hurt with hunger and I had heartburn, so I ate a bowl of cereal with milk, and voila, happy tummy and no more heartburn! :) So things are definitely changing, but all for the better.
I think I have gained 6lb now this whole pregnancy. I am not fussy about weight because I think it's stupid to monitor it during pregnancy (unless there's cause for concern like you are emaciated or obese when you were not before pregnancy). So long as you are eating well and healthily there is no need to monitor weight in pregnancy. But anyway, I am so curious to see if I really do gain weight because I'm pregnant. I guess it's another visual sign of pregnancy for me, another thing to look at and say, "Oooh look! I'm really pregnant!!"
So I weigh myself just to be gleeful. And I now weigh 6lbs more in the mornings than I used to weigh in the mornings before I was pregnant. It doesn't change from day to day so I guess that's how much I've gained. Babycentre says for 16 weeks I "should" have gained between 5 and 10lbs. I don't know what it says for 17 or 18 weeks, and I'm pretty sure I'd only gained 4lb by 16 weeks, but who cares. Pah! :) I now weigh 8 stone 2lbs in the morning, and 8 stone 5lb in the evening, which is more than I've ever weighed before!! So I can tell something is going on and I'm definitely pregnant!! Yay!!! I think I am gaining weight nicely, and I'm not remotely bothered about what the numbers are. I just like to watch them climb! Grow baby, grow!
When my daddy came to stay, he brought us music. He composes and records his own music, mostly jazz and classical, and he has written some absolutely beautiful sonatas things for the piano. He brought us a CD of him playing his latest pieces, and I always love when he finishes a CD so I can listen to it anytime I like. I am extra pleased this time because I want to play it to Bean as womb-music. I really wouldn't have minded if Daddy could have made a CD of his jazz stuff that he plays when he winds down at the end of the day. He has done that for as long as I have a memory, and my childhood is full of soothing memories of easy-listening jazz pouring out of the piano around bath/bed time. Daddy still plays the same stuff now when he wants to relax, and it soothes me the second I hear it, so I know it had a big effect on me hearing it during my childhood. I wanted to play the same stuff to Bean from when he/she is in the womb, because of how lovely I found it. But Daddy hasn't made any CD of it yet and I'm never there to listen to him play :( I asked him to make one though, so maybe he will?
Anyway I told him I would use the CD for playing to Bean, and later in the day he went out and when he came back he said he had a present for Bean!! The first one! (not including the knitted item that Meg has had waiting for me for months now!) It was a CD of Mozart's 40th and 41st Symphonies. It was so nice to get a real present for Bean, and that Daddy enjoyed giving it to us so much, knowing that it was for his grandchild. So we are going to play that to Bean too.
I can't find out when it is that babies can hear in the womb. All the books are vague about it and say, "By the fifth month" or "Sometimes during the fifth month", etc. Some say completely different things. And I am finding the same thing online. So I don't know what to think. Babies can FEEL sound much earlier, I'm sure Bean can already, because they feel the vibrations. But the ear doesn't fully function till much later. I'm not sure when though. I am in my fifth month now, but only just starting it really. I don't know when to whip out the headphones and play Bean some music!
My second urine sample came back clean from the hospital, so that's good. I still have symptoms of a UTI but not nearly as bad. I'm going to make a doctor's appointment every couple of weeks, like he suggested, to keep an eye on my urine while I continue to have symptoms. I feel a lot safer that way. Boy am I glad health care is free here! :)
Hmmm, I don't think there's anything else to report today. Nope. I am finding myself quite nervous about having an incompetent cervix this week, I guess because I keep hearing of it happening to people, and because you typically discover it when your cervix opens and you deliver your little baby between 18 and 20 weeks of pregnancy. I can't imagine anything more terrible, and the idea is scaring me silly. The only way to be super sure that your cervix is fine is to get past 20 weeks without delivering. Scary. I don't want to lose my little Bean. How awful that must be, when you've had this long to bond, and pregnancy has gone on for this long, and you felt kicks and had that contact with the baby. It terrifies me to think there's a chance it could happen. Apparantly 1-2% of pregnancies have incompetent cervix.
Oooh ooh, that reminds me!! She has no guestbook, but go and see Angelsmomi - I have been reading her diary since she lost her little boy because of incompetent cervix, and she has since got pregnant again, had a cervical stitch put in, and delivered her tiny little girl at only 27 weeks gestation! But all seems well. Welcome Jessica! :)
But yeah. I'm scared about my cervix. I am praying about it all the time. I just hope everything stays where it should until after Bean can survive outside my womb.
The other day I tried to find Bean's heartbeat with my stethoscope, but I know it's early for that. Anyway I tried, and didn't find it, but it's the first time Bean has seemed to kick deliberately! I was pushing the stethoscope piece into my tummy trying to find Bean's heart, and Bean hadn't been kicking or moving much around that time. Anyway all of a sudden Bean gave this huge single thwack, right smack on the centre of the stethoscope! And that was it. So obviously I stopped! I have never felt Bean kick something specifically before, it was so lovely :)
Please stay inside and grow healthy and strong, little Bean. I love you and I want to meet you when you are able to breathe and thrive. I love you so much.
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