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2004-07-05 - 11.41pm��previous entry��next entry
22 weeks, 3 days - seeing family
New belly pic is in the gallery at last!! Sorry about the delay. Neil took it last night at the end of a verrrry long day so I don't exactly look radiant! ;) So it's a 22 weeks and 2 days belly picture. Let me know if the belly gallery is now taking ages to load - I have broadband so it loads quick for me, and I don't know how annoying it is for dial-uppers to use! But let me know and I'll split them up or something.
Don't know if it's that obvious in the picture, but I'm starting to LOOK like I am really gaining weight now. Just in the last week I think. My face is a tad rounder and feels a bit more squidgy around the jaw (!), and I got a bit of a shock yesterday when I was trying clothes on to go to G&G's house - you know I bought like 50 thousand pairs of maternity jeans and trousers?! Well um, they are ALL tight on my bum and upper thighs. Urrrghhh. I am going to exercise. I think that is seriously lacking in my routine now! Most of the 16lbs I've gained does seem to be on my bump, but I guess I didn't NEED to gain 16lbs because there is definitely some excess gathering on parts of me that I'm not happy about! And here speaks a woman who was all ranty about pregnant women getting hung up on weight gain at the beginning of her pregnancy! Tsk. I'm so two-faced! ;) But I just don't want chunky thighs, or to buy a whooole load of new maternity jeans. Nope.
However, when he saw me yesterday, my brother said he doesn't notice any particular change to me other than my bump, and he hasn't seen me since Christmas (wow, that's really bad. I should see family more often!).
Oh well. Anyway we had a great time at my grandparents' yesterday. I got to show everyone the ultrasound pics (and explain what they were all seeing!), and they got to see my bump, which I was sooooo proud about.
Arthur's activity is changing. He used to wake when I did, then snooze all morning, then wake mid-afternoon (2-3ish), then snooze, then some days he would wake early evening, then snooze again, then start a big kick fest at bedtime. But that's all changed. The books/websites all say that babies in the womb sleep 18-20 hours a day. Well Arthur does NOT, I can assure you!!! Maybe he USED to, but not anymore!
Saturday he kicked all afternoon long, I mean alllll the time, and then there was an hour of quiet and he woke up when the Friends theme started when we watched a couple of episodes in the evening (yep, still working through those episodes!), and then he kicked me all evening, so I thought okay, maybe he will go nice and quiet at bedtime. But bedtime is still his favourite time to practise for the black belt he is obviously going to attain in later life. So Saturday night was the first time I've really been kept awake when desperate for sleep! He kicked hard enough and long enough to keep me awake till 1.30am!!! And then I fell asleep, and woke around 9am feeling wiped out, and he instantly started kicking again so I couldn't go back to sleep.
THEN he kicked all morning, and I mean ALL morning without a break. We made Grandoug a birthday cake and decorated it, and Arthur kicked the whole time, sometimes it was quite painful on my bladder, but I was generally getting kicks and punches all over. When I woke up that morning and Arthur was kicking, I asked Neil to "have a word with his son" (!!), and Neil put his mouth to my tummy and said to Arthur that he should calm down and rest for a while, and he told him we wanted him to have lots of energy for the afternoon so family could feel him kicking. He talked for a little bit like that, and Arthur went completely silent!!! I mean seriously! I didn't get kicked for a full 10 minutes after that! :)
Anyway so then we went to pick up my brother and Sarah, and drove to my grandparents' (about 30 minutes drive), and Arthur kicked the whoooole journey there. Of course he went quiet when we arrived, but I did get the odd thump through lunch, and wow I ate soooo much food for lunch, my family's eyes were popping out of their heads, hehe! Anyway I guess Arthur was feeling as bloated and sleepy as I was after lunch because he took a long nap and it was all quiet in there. We watched the Wimbledon men's final and at the mention of cake, Arthur woke up quite suddenly! Heh.
Anyway so I said, "He's awake!" and I let Sarah put her hand on my belly and feel him kicking. I love this part. People are all awed and amazed, and they can't seem to get enough of feeling him kick. They do take their hand away quite quickly but I know it's because they feel like they're intruding to leave it there! I know how much I've longed to put my hand on a pregnant belly and feel a baby kick in the past, and I have no issues with people doing it to me (although it's nice if they ask first!), so I just kept inviting people to feel and they did with lots of excitement. My brother came over all squeamish when Arthur kicked his hand, I don't think he could believe what he was feeling! So sweet :)
Earlier on when Arthur had been asleep, he had his little bony bottom sticking out of my belly near my tummy button, and I let people prod it. Wicked Mummy! ;) But it was so cute and bony and obvious, and absolutely nothing feels like another person's bony part sticking out of a soft part of your belly. It's so cute. So I'm glad they got to feel that. They were all anxious about poking him or putting any pressure on him, but I made them anyway ;) After the way the sonographer was pushing and shoving him, and how calm and un-bothered he looked on the screen, we are less anxious about poking him.
So it was fun :) My brother and Sarah LOVE the name Arthur, and they are so excited to be having a nephew! They stared at my bump for aaages after we got out of the car and I stood up looking pregnant! They just kept staring and saying, "Wow!" because I guess they couldn't believe I'm actually carrying a baby. Like I said, the last time pregnancy happened in my family, my brother was the bean in question! So it's a rare and amazing phenomenon for us! Anyway I love attention (!) so it was lots of fun for me :)
I ate all afternoon. I am just so hungry, and when there's good food like Granny makes... I ate 2 servings of the biiiig salad at the start of the meal, then we had roast dinner and I ate all of that plus 2 extra potatoes and then I needed all the spare gravy and bread to soak it up!! And then we had dessert and I ate a big piece of pie. And then chocolate. And then an hour later I was itching for birthday cake! So when we had cake I ate it easily, and literally as soon as I finished it, I craved the leftover grated carrot with French vinegraitte dressing that I knew was in the fridge! So I asked for it and it was yummy. Everyone was making crazy eyes at me and blaming it on the pregnancy - which is probably accurate since I am picky normally and eat small portions! Then I needed Pringles. Those should be banned for pregnant women. It should be on the list of things you can't eat. When you see the midwife she should say, "Now, you know the foods to avoid? Pate, soft cheeses, swordfish, undercooked eggs, and Pringles." Yeah, it should be a rule. I ate Pringles all afternoon like a cow grazing. Not good.
We were tiiiired by the time we got home. We didn't get to go to church in the morning (which on hindsight is a good thing, since I would have been too exhausted to enjoy the afternoon), because we got behind on making the birthday cake, and I was too tired from a bumpy night!
Arthur kicked me again in bed last night, but not as hard as the night before, and I fell asleep after about an hour. I woke at 4am from a horrible dream that had me crying in my sleep (!!) about Gordon and Katie dying, and Arthur started kicking as soon as I woke from that. I was like, "No, no, sweetie, it's not morning yet!" and amazingly he stopped! So I went back to sleep and we both woke up around 9am. I love my little boy. Even though he is making holes in my bladder as I type this! ;)
Yesterday at G&G's, I felt a record kick!! A new record for the hardest kick I have ever felt so far. It was one of those knee-kick things that I once described a month or so ago, and he doesn't do those often but they are really hard. Anyway he did one right above my right hip, and it was so hard it made me say, "Ooooffffhhhh!" Strong boy :)
Ooh last night I was lying in bed and I got up again to switch the light off or something, and these days I have to roll like a log onto my side, and then push myself up, to get to an upright position. Well I was lazy last night, and I rolled onto that side, but instead of using my arms to lever myself up, I tensed the upper side of my tummy to get myself up. Silly. Never, never in my life have I felt such pain! It was just a round ligament stretching, but man that can be soooo painful! It felt like my side was ripping open and bursting into flames at the same moment! Ow. And it didn't start to ease off for a minute and a half. I was all doubled up and groaning and trying (pathetically) to breathe through it, and Neil was worried until I had the breath to tell him it was a round ligament. I learned 2 things - one, I am never being lazy getting up again! And two, I need antenatal classes to learn how to breathe in labour! My breathing did not work at all.
Well that's all I think. Today I am doing a ton of laundry and I want to get some cleaning done too. I feel so tired at the moment, like I am waking up at 3am and starting my day. My whole system feels sleep-deprived and like it's on a weird schedule - which is weird because it's neither. I just feel like it is. But anyway, I want to plant a few potted plants in my front border as well. I keep meaning to, but I plan to do it today. Also I neeeed to exercise!! But how am I supposed to do that if I am this tired and when I try to push myself a bit, I get all sweaty and weak and weird?! It's frustrating. Maybe I'll just make a LOT of use of the stairs today, if I can!
This week has no particular pregnancy landmarks. My midwife appointment is next Thursday, not this one. Nothing in particular is happening, except I'm at a halfway point in my week already and I'll be 23 weeks on Friday! It's going so fast!!!
Thank you for the guestbook messages, I am really happy to see that people like Arthur's name and super huge thanks to anyone who said he looked beautiful!!! You have stumbled upon the magic words which no mother can resist! Hehe! Of course you can't tell that easily what he looks like from the scan pics, but *I* think he is absolutely beautiful and cute and gorgeous, even just from that information alone! So thank you for agreeing :)
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