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2004-07-03 - 7.55pm��previous entry��next entry
22 weeks, 1 day - getting used to my little boy :)
Wow, thank you all SO much for the guestbook messages congratulating me on my little boy!!! :) I am so overwhelmed by how many people actually READ me! Heh. Thank you all for saying such nice things :)
I am 22 weeks pregnant � I meant to update yesterday but um, I didn�t. And we forgot about the belly pic too, we were going to do one today but er, we forgot that too (!), so hopefully I�ll have one for you tomorrow. Neil is getting pizza (we are soooo tired tonight) and when he�s back we�ll eat it, and watch some Friends or something, and then probably go to bed! So it will have to be tomorrow now. Tomorrow we are going to church in the morning and then picking up my brother and his fianc�e (Sarah), and driving to my grandparents� because it�s Grandoug�s birthday and we�re all having a meal and spending the day there. So I think we�ll be pretty tired tomorrow too! But hopefully I�ll remember to get Neil to take a belly pic, and I�ll put it in the gallery asap after that.
Today has been so amazing. Well okay, just the last half hour (!), because we are on the rota for making meals for Gordon and Katie (our friends from church who just had a baby �
Ooooh I�m having a Braxton Hicks contraction!!! It�s so not comfy, but it doesn�t hurt. It�s just too hard and tight and it makes me want to say �Oooh� a lot (!!). Arthur doesn�t like it either. He is kicking my cervix, as in, �Get me out of here!� or something!! It�s gone now. They never last that long. I�ve had several today.
Anyway so we (or rather, Neil!) made dinner for G & K, and then we took it round to them with a new baby card. I didn�t expect to be asked in, but they did ask us in for a couple of minutes and so they could give us back our tray that we took the food on. They both look ssssooooooo exhausted!!! We were both quite worried by how they looked, seriously! I mean, we�re not stupid, we know that having a newborn and recovering from birth is absolutely knackering, but it sort of scared us into a reality check to see our once-normal-looking friends looking sort of ill with exhaustion! Katie is also moving about quite painfully. She ended up with a 36 hour labour (!!) and Joshua chose to put his arm down the birth canal before his head (!!!!!) so yeah it wasn�t exactly straightforward and she ended up with a ventouse delivery. I think she�s an absolute star after going through all that and still giving birth vaginally and only using gas and air for pain relief. Go Katie!! :) I made sure to pump her full of praise when I saw her. I know I am going to be a good midwife when I remember how instinctive I find it to do that to every pregnant woman or new mother I see, no matter what her experience or attitude. I just thrive on making women feel good about themselves and about their pregnancies and their ability to give birth and breastfeed and be good mothers. That�s just about my favourite aspect of midwifery, much more than cute little babies or seeing births. Although MAN I love births!! I am a birth junkie (hence the diaryring!). But I just love the �with women� aspect, the most important part which is empowering women to feel good and confident about their bodies and their abilities. So cool.
Anyway, BIG aside there! So yeah we went in and they looked tired out, and they showed us Joshua asleep in a little moses basket! Oh. My. Goodness. They have the cutest baby boy I have EVER seen. Ever. And sooo tiny. He was apparently 7lbs 13oz at birth. Both Neil and I did this big gasp because we were so shocked at how tiny he was, and therefore how tiny Arthur will be when he�s outside my body and needing us all the time! I found that so weird because of how many countless newborns I have seen, some much smaller than Joshua, but it�s so weird how you can forget that stuff. Or maybe the shock was because this time it means something to us � I have one of those in my tummy, and in four months that�s what he�ll look like. Yikes. I have to admit we both were kind of�. what�s the right word?.... anxious? About what is bulleting towards us at what feels like the speed of light! To see it in the flesh is a reeeally big reality check. But he�s so cute. And they are a family. And I can�t wait for that. I can�t wait to meet Arthur.
By the way, I should update you on what life is like now that we�re expecting to have a baby boy! We�ve had a couple of days for it to sink in, and we�re so happy still!! It has made everything seem more real, and once or twice that has felt kind of scary over the last couple of days, but it�s countered by how much I love Arthur and long to meet him.
His name has been surprisingly easy to get used to, which confirms that it�s meant to be his name! We never refer to him as Bean anymore, and it�s not weird or difficult at all. He�s just Arthur, as if he could never have been anything else. I talk to him a lot, and play poke-and-kick with him :) He plays that with me much more readily these days. Neil likes to listen to my bump with his ear pressed against it, and Arthur kicks him good and hard in the ear! Neil likes that, because he can hear a �whomp� sound. He likes �hearing� what Arthur is doing in there!
Knowing he�s an Arthur has made me feel so much more in love with him than I expected a name to make me feel. I don�t even know why. Maybe it�s not to do with �Arthur�, maybe any name would make me feel this way because naming a child is a stage further in bonding with it? I don�t know. I love that he�s a boy!! I can�t get over it.
Yesterday I sorted all the baby clothes and nappies. I only have about 10 nappies that are waaay too girlie for Arthur, which I will pack away with the girlie clothes. We have a LOT of girlie clothes, and some of them made me feel a bit wistful as I folded them to pack away, because we don�t get to have our sweet little girl. But I�m too greedy! One baby at a time, and I�m just so happy it�s a boy. I am hoping we will still have a girl one day though. I love little boys but I think I would feel a bit sad if we never had a daughter. And vice versa, but yay, a boy is already on the way!! :)
So now Arthur�s clothes are all sorted into piles � tiny baby size, newborn size, and 0-3 month size. The bigger sizes are in the loft. His most adorable outfits are hanging up on the rail in his wardrobe. Man this child has some cute outfits!! I washed one of them yesterday. I like washing baby clothes, it�s fun! I can�t wait to show you guys photos of my little man in his cute outfits! Or his gorgeous nappies! I need to make more nappies. He has some lovely ones but not nearly enough cute blue prints. Not that he NEEDS blue things, but I have some very cute fabrics, like a Peter Rabbit one on a blue background, and things like that, which will make adorable nappies for Arthur. I am not going to want to use his nice outfits to cover them up!
Okay Neil is back with pizza so I have to cut this short. Just wanted to update to say thanks for the lovely comments and to tell you how much FUN it is to be expecting a little boy! And how much his name fits him like a glove. It�s so natural to call him Arthur, and I think he likes it too � I sometimes put my hand on my tummy and call out �Arthur!� a couple of times, and almost every time I get a kick after calling his name once or twice! He never kicks me when I try to get him to otherwise (unless he is being particularly interactive during a game of poke-and-kick!), so we are taking it that he likes his name :)
I have other things to say but my pizza smells so good that my mouth is watering fit to short-circuit the keyboard. So I will update again hopefully tomorrow evening if I�m not too tired from wowing my family with my lovely little boy and my bump :)
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