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2004-06-24 - 9.25pm��previous entry��next entry
20 weeks, 6 days - Christmas concerns
Thank you for the lovely guestbook messages! :) And also big apologies to people who are STILL waiting for emails from me, urgh, I am so behind and naff at emails at the moment! Sorry! I will get to it soon.
Well I am 21 weeks tomorrow, but my big excitement is there is only one week from today until my scan!!!! Yay! One week! That's so close now. Neil and I are getting so excited. We looked at our names list again this evening, just because we suddenly thought what if we see Bean on the screen and he/she is just totally NOT a ___ or a ___ (those are our secret boy and girl names, incase you were wondering! Hehe!). We are decided on the names we want to use for both boy and girl, but this evening we set about picking a back-up or two incase Bean just doesn't look like the names we've chosen. Okay so it's grainy 2D ultrasound but we still might get a vibe, y'know? Anyway it's just incase. So we have picked one back-up name for a girl that we both LOVE, and two for a boy. It wasn't difficult because those names were on our absolute favourites list when we made our final decision a few weeks ago. But hopefully we'll feel a definite closure on the name at the scan and I will be able to reveal all to you this time next week! :) So exciting!!
No nosebleed for 3 days!!! This I like. But lots of hayfever. Sometimes I wonder if my nose is somehow toughened up by hayfever or a cold, because that's when I go crazy blowing my nose and sneezing and you'd think my nose would bleed more because of that, but nope. Anyway that wasn't very interesting was it?
My tummy is growing. In the evenings I always weigh a couple of lbs more and my tummy feels soooo tight in the evenings now. My skin feels taut and uncomfortable, but it's not too prickly or itchy or anything, so that's good. I really hope I don't get stretch marks. I noticed last night that my belly is standing out more at the front than the day before. I seem to be growing and gaining weight so fast at the moment it's like you could visibly see it happening if I stood still long enough! Yesterday I weighed 2lbs more than when I last checked (a few days ago), and today for some crazy reason I weigh 2lbs more AGAIN. I have now gained exactly 1 stone, and this evening I weigh 8 stone 13lbs. I can't believe I'm really gonna weigh more than 9 stone, as I've rarely gone over 8 stone before so it just seems weird to my mind to see that kind of number on the scale! But I'm not bothered by it. Carrying a baby and fixing up all its luggage and nutrition means a lot of extra weight! So that's fine by me. I just don't want to be 10 stone, because I can't see how my frame would support 10 stone. And I'm sure I would have stretch marks by then!
My mum didn't get any stretch marks on her tummy, though she said she was huge with me (smaller with my brother), but she did get a couple of tiny ones on her breasts. Granny (my dad's mum) has horrendous stretch marks - you can still see them even though she's nearly 80, all over her tummy. But she had polyhydraminoes with Daddy (excessive amniotic fluid) so she was exceptionally massive. Anyway I am hoping I inherited Mummy's skin type and not Granny's! That has much more to do with getting stretch marks than anything else.
Ooh another thing I noticed the other day - well, it was Neil actually - is that I have lost my hips. Until now, even though my waist has thickened and I have a bump on the front, you could still see my hips sticking out. When I'm not pregnant they are reeeally prominent. Not cause I'm too skinny normally, but just because that's how my hips are built. Mummy is the same. Anyway so it's super weird because all of a sudden you can't see my hips anymore at ALL! My bump seems to be starting to expand round the sides as well as on the front. I told Mummy this and now she's wondering if Bean might be a girl after all, since that's how she carried me, and with my brother he was all on the front. Well, we'll see next Thursday.
Bean has kicked a lot today. There have been quiet patches but also very active ones. This is how it usually goes though. Neil is watching the football with the headphones on (it bores me stupid) as I type this, and earlier on England scored and he yelled out sooooo loudly, which made me jump. And you have to know how Neil yells, it's a combination of seriously loud bellow, and high screech! Anyway it was another first, because I know Bean heard it. He/she instantly started kicking me like never before, I mean like kick kick kick-kick... kick kick... kick-kick kick... kick... etc! Like more than one kick per second sometimes, and it seemed like all his/her poor little limbs were flailing at once! It was crazy. Bean didn't calm down for several minutes. I have never been kicked that much in my whole pregnancy so far! It was fun. But poor Bean. I can't imagine he/she was kicking for joy or anything! More like, "Aaaaaaargh, what's that loud and scary sound that just woke me up and startled my mummy so that all her chemicals changed?!!" That sort of thing. Anyway Bean is nice and quiet at the moment. Which obviously is evidence that England have not scored any more goals yet. Football. Pfthth.
Yesterday evening Neil and I had a big discussion-which-turned-into-an-argument about Christmas. I am slightly dreading Christmas. It feels like ages away but it's not really, and last year we made all our plans in May, so it's normal for us to be figuring out what to do around now. Then once we figure it out we just let everyone know and relax about it till Christmas. It's better that way, rather than getting to November or even December, as used to happen, and have nooo idea what we were doing and have to fit in with what everyone else has already decided.
We have lots of dilemmas this Christmas. Bean will be pretty new, less than 2 months old. We have noooo idea how we personally will find parenthood in that early stage, and noooo idea of what Bean will be like as a newborn. We don't know if there will be any complications or stuff like that. We don't have any local family anymore. Neil's parents are a 5-6 hour drive north, and my parents are, uh, a whole country to the south! That translates as a 10-hour drive including the Channel Tunnel, or a shorter but slightly hassley flight, or a vastly expensive and choppy ferry crossing with hours of driving either side. Or the train (also expensive). With a new baby. Bleurgh. We always fly, it's about 10 times cheaper than the other options! Plus nice and quick and it's no big deal to have to trek through London on trains and tubes to get to the airport. But with a new baby? There doesn't seem to be a suitable option for travelling to see my parents.
Anyway the very idea of doing what we did last year (visiting and staying with BOTH families over the 2-week Christmas/New Year period) fills me with absolute dread. It was a stretch last year, but noooo way can I envisage doing it with a new baby. With sleep-deprivation. And hormones. And endless unknown factors.
My mum has already made it clear that they don't want to put any pressure on us about Christmas, and maybe it would be the best thing if we stay home over Christmas and don't see any family at all, but that makes me want to cry! I have never had a Christmas without family around me, and I think I will need it more this year than any other. Probably. So I want to plan SOMETHING around family. My parents can't come to England, and my brother and grandparents are going out to them, and Neil's parents can't come down because of Neil's dad being so ill. So we HAVE to go somewhere.
Okay so I want to go to my parents. Going to Neil's parents always stresses me out, it just does. I can't seem to help it, I find it stressful and in my ideal world I would never visit them probably. Not that I don't want to see THEM, I'd love them to come to us. But staying with them and the trip up there is always a stressful deal for me and I usually dread it before, struggle with it during, and leave relieved and drained! So I am already concerned about having to go through that on top of whatever it's like to be a new mummy with a baby who has X personality and Y issues at the time (X and Y obviously remaining completely unknown until, like, the day before Christmas, hehe!).
BUT. Of course this will be a new baby. The first grandchild. The first grandchild's first Christmas. I think it will hurt Neil's family's feelings if we visit MY family at Christmas and not them. The only way to please everybody is to visit everyone, or visit no-one. Visiting no-one is something that will upset me at the time. Visiting everyone makes me want to hide in a hole.
So we "discussed" this last night. I brought it up. The subject has been on my mind and starting to stress me, so I wanted to hash it out and come to some resolution so that it wasn't a stressor for me any more. Naturally Neil had concerns about not seeing his family. Then they turned into sort of defensiveness about his family having to miss out. Which then turned into an argument about why I don't like his mother (which I totally DO!). Neil gets furiously defensive about his family and is easily angered if he thinks anyone (including me) is attacking his family in any way. *sigh* Which is understandable, of course, but urgh for the way the conversations always turn out. It's always downhill from that point on, and he's so great at understanding my point of view and hearing me out up until he gets that way, and then I'm the baddy on all topics under discussion.
I am definitely more sensitive when we argue now that I am pregnant. We never yell when we argue or anything, just the discussions get so heavy and stressy. Urgh. Anyway I got all shaky and everything, it was just stressing me so much to be arguing and to feel like Neil had gone like a brick wall. He figured we'd just chat about it some other time (I hate when he decides the conversation is over before I am finished discussing something, or arguing, lol!), and he went to get pizza for us. I cried and sobbed like a baby after he went out. I figured I just needed to cry the stress off me for a few minutes and then I would be fine, because I've always been like that, it helps me to cry if I have pent up stress, but it didn't help. I just felt upset. I feel selfish.
My pregnancy books have sections about being a new parent and advice about stuff in the first few weeks/months. Things like, accept help wherever possible, don't knock it back, let the house get messy, sleep when the baby sleeps, etc. Well I read this stuff a while back, and lots of different sources keep telling me that having a newborn around is a time where it's okay to be selfish and put your needs first. I mean, the baby's needs should come first, but what the baby needs most of all is a non-stressy mama. I know the baby needs a non-stressy daddy too, but well the books say that mummy is home with the baby all the time, the source of nutrition, etc. De-stressing priority definitely lies with the mummy.
I feel so bad that no matter what I do, someone isn't going to be happy, but it feels too much, I felt like I couldn't handle it, and I felt pulled in too many directions when I just wanted to do what the books say and do what *I* needed to do around Christmas. If Bean was born in the summer then it would be different. But Bean will be a newborn still around the Christmas period. And we'll be new parents feeling everything out. Who knows what it'll be like. I don't want to be negative but I also don't want to plan like it will all be rosy, because although it COULD be and that would be great, it very likely may NOT be in the early weeks.
I planned to have my lil cry and be done and tidied up by the time Neil got back with the pizza, and I tried making a salad while he was gone but I just cried all over it and was still going when he got home. So we talked again. He is the sweetest man. He held me and listened to all my feelings about things, and he said he felt bad that he never thought about the fact that I would need some support maybe, and a "normal" Christmas would be pulling me in too many directions. He also felt bad because he forgot arguing would be stressing me out and stress + pregnancy hormones + Bean = not a good idea. He was so sweet to think of me like that. And Bean.
I said if I was being totally selfish and not giving a monkeys what anyone else thought at Christmas, I would consider that I might be tired and stressed and longing to see my family and have them around me to help with Bean and pamper me a little. If I could pick anything for the ultimate de-stressor when tired and stressy with a new baby, I would choose to have my family around me. That's it. Some people would choose maybe to have everyone leave them alone for a while and just have some time with their baby and husband, and others maybe would want a simple holiday away somewhere. But for me, it would be my family. I need them. I think I will need them at Christmas. It has nothing against Neil's side of the family at all, it's just what I would selfishly want if I had the choice. The idea of anything else stresses me or upsets me.
I don't know how we finished talking about it, but Neil was really understanding and sweet, and he said maybe we should think to do it that way, to visit my family over Christmas if I need to, therefore only having the stress of one big trip, and see his family earlier in December. Or January, since earlier in December makes Bean even more new and all that, so January would be better. We are looking forward to the day when we move to a bigger house and can invite all the family to have Christmas with us. I think that will carry it's own stress-factors! But it would be a relief not to have to travel hundreds of miles every Christmas.
Anyway I stopped crying in the end and the air felt much nicer and we ate pizza and watched Friends and laughed a lot. I love my husband. I just wanted to cuddle him all night long, isn't it funny how arguments (the ones that get resolved!) do that? Anyway he is lovely. He said if his mum has a problem with our ideas about Christmas then he will talk to her about it, and I shouldn't worry. I still feel selfish, because actually I DO care about everyone else's feelings, but I don't know... I feel so much easier and happier on the inside with that weight off my shoulders, now that I am thinking we won't have to do something I find stressful at a time that might well be the most stressful in our lives yet!
Wow that was long-winded!
Okay I had better finish up for today. I have heartburn. Oh I forgot to say last entry, this week I am having a lot of trouble with - rather yucky - regurgitation! Mmmm! ;) It's not always accompanied by heartburn, but if I lie down, my food escapes upwards. Bleurgh. I can't seem to avoid it or hold it in my stomach if it happens. Not that it's anything major though, I don't get sick or anything like that. It just means I have to sit up fast and wait till it settles again, and then when I lie down it happens again pretty soon. It doesn't matter if I'm on my left or right side or on my back. I tried an extra pillow but that didn't help either. I absolutely can't sleep sitting upright, or even at a 45 degree angle. But at least it doesn't always give me heartburn. Maybe I should just eat smaller amounts? My belly is starting to crush me a bit if I am sitting hunched over or lying down curled up slightly. I was sitting hunched over a little the other evening and I took a deep breath and discovered I couldn't! At the peak of my inhale I got this horrible pain like a stitch, like I'd over-stretched against something. I felt very breathless at times sitting up normally on the sofa at housegroup this week. Particularly when talking. I just feel like I need to arch my back in order to give my diaphragm enough room from my bump, and this is CRAZY because I'm only 20 weeks!!! My bump is a mini thing compared with how it will get towards the end! But maybe I'll get more used to it? I don't know.
Anyway that is all. Housegroup was good and I showed my nappies but they all seemed to think I was crazy mad. They thought the nappies were cute, but nobody looked converted :( And they think I'm crazy. Oh well, I don't care. My baby is gonna have the happiest bum at church anyway :)
Okay going now. But back soon!
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