Journal
Sign guestbook
Arthur's Mummy's Diary
Matthew's Belly Gallery
Nathan's Belly Gallery
Benjamin's Belly Gallery
My Fertility Friend Chart
2004-07-22 - 1.25pm��previous entry��next entry
24 weeks, 6 days - lil hospital visit
Wow, wow, wow! I have so many more readers than I thought! And the nicest ones ever, it seems! :) Thanks for all the lovely guestbook messages! You have definitely satisfied my curiosity! :) I�m glad people like my diary! And that all you lurkers have come out of the shadows, hehe! But feel free to disappear back into them if you want to - I won�t be demanding guestbook messages on a regular basis or anything! :)
I am behind on emails (what, me?!!) yet again, and I�m hoping to get to them soon. Heather and Cristie in particular :) Sorry about the lonnnng wait! Shelley, thanks for the insight on Moses baskets � I think we�ll be okay though because ours is a particularly cosy fleecy one, and our house is a completely draft-free 1980s-built house, so he shouldn�t get chilly in there! It came with a little tag on it saying how many layers of covers to put on (tog rating, etc) depending on the room temperature, which is helpful too. And we have a room thermometer so we can easily see how warm any of our rooms are.
Well I am doing fine. I can�t believe I am 25 weeks tomorrow! I know I keep saying it, but it�s all flying by so fast! We are off to France the day after tomorrow as well, to spend a week with my parents � yaaaay!!! I can�t WAIT to see them! I am having a tricky time packing though, because I have nooo idea what maternity clothes to take. It�s forecast HOT weather, and I am only comfortable in underwear (or less!) in hot weather, so hmmm, not sure what to pack. I don�t have cool enough maternity clothes. I have some nice shorts but many of them are tight on my butt now :( I am doing major laundry sessions at the moment so that everything is clean and ready to agonize over for taking to France!
Yesterday we had quite a day. Arthur has had 2 quiet days again, and yesterday was much quieter than normal, although he was definitely moving about now and again. Just no real kicks, and he was completely quiet all night and all morning. I worry less when that happens now, but all the same, if he�s particularly quiet I like to dust off the old Doppler and check in on him to make sure he�s still there. So I had some chocolate and lay down for a while, but he kicked me once, and then was completely still, which isn�t like him. I got the Doppler out and listened in, and the first thing I heard was his heartrate plummeting like a stone to around 60 beats per minute and then picking up again, which obviously freaked me RIGHT out. So I decided to listen in for 15 minutes, which is the longest I�ve ever listened in. But that worried me so I decided I�d listen that long for reassurance.
Ohhh it�s only 9.45am and not even hot yet really, and I only just got washed and put clean clothes on, but ALREADY I need to take them off if I want them to stay dry. Tsk. Pesky pregnant sweating! Just gonna de-robe a little�.
That�s better! By the way I just have to say how much I am loving Bravado nursing bras. I have this one old and battered Bravado which I bought (well worn and washed) from someone online, and it was the most stiff and uncomfortable and ill-fitting bra I had for the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy. I think maybe part of the problem was that it was a size M when I think I needed a S+ or something. But anyway, now it fits like a dream and is the most comfy one I have! It was a greyish-white colour from all the washing and wear it�s had, so I washed it with my bright red velour and now it�s a nice pastel pink :) Plus it�s a nursing bra, so if I happen to still fit it after my milk comes in (not likely!) I know it will be a great comfy bra to breastfeed in :) I have lots of maternity bras (most of them are getting tight though now) but I�m considering getting more Bravado ones. Thing is, they are soooo expensive, as maternity bras go. And I know I would buy size M, but for the next pregnancy that won�t be any use for the first 20 weeks, so hmmm. But anyway, I am hoping to miraculously find someone selling a second hand one online for not much money, haha! I�m allowed to hope ;)
But where was I? Yesterday�s news, ah yes!
So I listened for 15 more minutes with the doppler, and Arthur�s heartrate was okay for a while and then dipped again, not as low but still a dip. I ended up listening for half an hour, and there were two more very low dips, one was below 60bpm which was scary. But they only lasted for like 5 beats or something, and then picked up again quickly. But I didn�t know what I should think about that. I couldn�t imagine it was normal. So I looked in my CTG book that I used to use for my midwifery training, and there are various patterns of normal and abnormal traces. Normal ones never had any decelerations, even slight ones, so I phoned the maternity unit and asked to speak to a midwife there. One of them spoke to me and was soooo nice, she asked a billion questions like how many weeks pregnant am I, and how much was he moving and did I feel well, and where did I get the doppler from (!!), etc. Then she said for some reassurance I should come in to have Arthur monitored for a little while. This was about 3.30pm. So I called Neil at work and he (happily!) left early and we went into hospital.
Everyone there was so nice, it was lovely. The receptionist knew we were coming, and like the good girl I am, I remembered to take my medical pregnancy notes with me so they could fill them in while I was there. We waited a while and then we were sent round to the antenatal ward, where I stayed the night last time. A midwife met us all smiley and cheerful and said, �Are you Alice?� when we walked up to the desk, it was so nice to have friendly hospital staff. We got a bed and waited for a midwife to see us. When she came through, oh my goodness, she was the nicest midwife I have EVER met, seriously! I want HER to do my homebirth!!! But poo, she�s a staff midwife at the hospital :( Anyway, she was so lovely. She called us Alice and Neil from the moment she appeared, and I never got called Mrs Surname (obviously not my surname, but I don't want to put it online!) by anyone, which I like :) I like being Mrs Surname, but it�s so formal and it makes me feel about 50 years old! I�m just Alice, and I like it when people make me feel relaxed by using a familiar way of addressing me. And it�s extra nice when they acknowledge Neil too.
The midwife sat on the bed with me and explained to us all about babies� heartrates and things. It was really interesting. She said maybe I picked up my own pulse for a moment with the doppler. I said no, I didn�t do that, because I know what the different sounds are like and I had sat and listened to his normal heartrate suddenly slow right down, rather than hearing a different sound to his heartbeat in the first place. She told me something I didn�t know, which was this early in pregnancy, babies often decelerate their heartrates. They don�t really know why, but sometimes it is because they are lying on their umbilical cord or briefly compressing it, and other times it�s to do with their immature nervous system. After 28 weeks they would worry about that a little more because the immune system should be mature enough to regulate the heartbeat consistently, but at the moment Arthur is still building and fixing his nervous system, and decelerations show that he is testing it out normally. So that was reeeeally reassuring! :)
She said that before 28 weeks, the baby would be considered non-viable for intervention � yikes, I did not know that!!! Babies are viable if they are born spontaneously from 24 weeks, but if they get into trouble in the womb, apparently the hospital won�t try to deliver them to save them :( That made me so scared/angry/sad/hugely protective about Arthur incase something DID happen to him and he got into difficulties in my womb before 28 weeks, and knowing that he would just be monitored and left to die basically, is just the most awful thought, when I know he can survive outside my womb with help now. After 28 weeks they would do a C-section to rescue him if he got in difficulties. Roll on 28 weeks! Yikes.
Anyway the midwife said she would listen in to see how he was doing. She just used a doppler because she said they don�t normally worry about trace readouts till nearer 28 weeks. She felt my tummy with the GENTLEST hands, soooo different to the rough student midwife from my last appointment. There was just this great vibe of respect towards me and towards Arthur, it was lovely :) Anyway she couldn�t tell me what position he was in, but I think he was lying across me, because that was the general shape of him and also she said she found a limb lying down across me just above my pubic bone. She didn�t want him to wiggle too much while she listened with the doppler for a few minutes, so she wedged him between the doppler and pressure from her other hand, poor little chap! He put up with that for a couple of minutes and then started to get wriggly and kick the doppler, right on the spot so that it bounced off my tummy! He kicked it once, paused, and then gave it a quick double kick, which was nice because it was obvious that he was fine. His heartrate sounded good to the midwife too.
I guess the midwife had read my notes before coming through to see us, because she chatted to us while we listened to Arthur, and she said, �How are you getting on with your homebirth plans?� Wow!!!! So I said, �I want one! I�m HAVING one!!� hehe! She asked me who my midwife was, and I told her the midwife�s name. As soon as I said her name, she said, �Oh, you�ll get one!� really confidently, which surprised me as my midwife had been so funny about things. I�m glad I felt so at ease with this midwife because I felt able to say, �But she was a bit funny about it when I told her I wanted a homebirth�� and this midwife said that I just need to show her I�m confident and positive about having one, and that I�ve really thought about it. She says they sometimes get first time mothers who decide they want a homebirth without really looking into it, and then they get iffy about it and end up transferring at the last minute. Which is fine, they have every right to do that, but she said maybe that�s why Pat (my midwife) is a bit cautious. I hope so. The midwife asked when my next appointment was, and I said 28 weeks. She said I should go in all confident and things would be fine. I am really reassured to hear that, but somehow I can�t believe Pat will be so completely different about it to how she was at my last appointment. Hmmm. We�ll see. Neil piped up at that moment and said we hadn�t even told Pat that we are hoping for a water birth at home, or at least to use a birthing pool during labour, and would she have a problem with that? The midwife said she didn�t see why there would be a problem, but that we would have to book the hire of a birthing pool pretty much NOW if we were going to get one for November. Yikes. I hadn�t even thought of that, it still seems so far away! She said the hospital doesn�t hire them out but NCT do (the National Childbirth Trust), and that�s where I�m going to try to hire one.
She chatted with us some more about nice lighthearted stuff, like how obvious Arthur�s boy parts were at the scan, etc, and we laughed and it was just soooo nice to be with such a friendly interested midwife :) She said everything seems fine and not to worry about Arthur�s heartrate or anything, but that we did the right thing by coming in. She said so long as I am feeling at least 10 movements in 24 hours, he�s okay. She said if it was a significant drop from his normal then maybe to get things checked out. I said he normally kicks me like a hundred times in a day (!!) so 10 would be a significant drop. But she asked me how many times I had felt him move that day and I think it was probably at least 10 or 20. So she said that was fine. She said if I find that he doesn�t move much then by all means use the doppler if it will reassure me. If it doesn�t reassure me or his quietness persists, or I get less than 10 movements in a day, then I should go in. She was so nice. She said always call in if I am worried and they will check me out or reassure me :)
At the end she said good luck with the homebirth, but that if we didn�t have one in the end then come to the midwife-led unit at the hospital, because that�s where she works! :) Yay! So I am feeling slightly more swayed towards the midwife unit now, but still not enough to want to go there over having a homebirth. I just want to be at home. Shame she is a hospital midwife, I would love her to be my midwife at the birth! Let�s hope Pat is as good and nice and supportive as this other midwife says she is.
So we came home again feeling really relaxed and very happy to know that Arthur is fine. He wiggled in the car on the way home and made us feel like a family going home together instead of just us as a couple :) That�s always nice!
Today it is humid so I am sweating again. Yesterday at the hospital I apologized to the midwife about my tummy being so sweaty when she was feeling it! I said I had been having quite a few BH contractions and said that maybe it was to do with not getting enough fluids. She asked if I was working, and I said, �No, just sweating� hehe! She was really nice, she laughed at all my silly comments :)
Arthur is a busy boy again today. I woke up this morning while Neil was getting ready for work, and rolled onto my other side, and Arthur kicked me good and proper, the best type � the �full leg fling� (!!) � the ones that are the strongest and hardest of all his movements. He kicked me high up above my tummy button on my left side, and I poked him back right where I felt the kick. He kicked me right back! I poked a couple of inches over to the right, and my clever little boy kicked me back exactly where I poked! We did this a few times back and forth, and then he got bored. He did a big fluttery roll and was in a completely different position after that. Neil got to lay his hand on my tummy and say hello to Arthur before going to work which was nice. He kissed him goodbye too when he went to work (on my tummy, obviously), which was so cute! I sometimes have to pinch myself because I just can�t believe we�re a family. I know he�s not here yet, but wow, we have a little boy, we are a family. He can hear me and his daddy, and he shows he�s aware of us in lots of ways now. He kicks me when I poke, even if I change the place I�m poking. I love him like I didn�t know I could.
I was saying to Neil yesterday, that I keep thinking, �Wow, I love Arthur sooooo much, this must be what mothers keep saying about loving their children like no other type of love!� and then a couple of weeks later I realise that somehow that love has grown even bigger, and so I think, �Okay, THIS must be the stuff that other mothers talk about!�, but then it just keeps growing bigger again. So I don�t think I can know till he�s here and we�ve spent hours and days and weeks and months looking into each others� eyes and lying skin-to-skin, and learning every detail of his face and his personality, and giving him milk from my own body. If I think I love him now, I think I probably haven�t seen anything yet compared with what will come over me when we are bonding like that after he�s born. It just blows my mind because right now I can�t imagine loving him more than I do. But I know I will. Is there a gift greater than this? Well I personally have found God to be my greatest gift, all that he�s given me in Jesus. But after that�. I never knew there was such a gift as Arthur. He�s more than just a baby. He�s MY baby, my own genetic material, combined with that of the man I love the most in the whole world � what a combination! He means motherhood, and that�s a different thing than just �having a baby�. He is the trigger for my heart to double in size and my capacity to love to increase beyond anything I�d imagined, and nothing else can trigger that I think, so that is a wonderful gift that having Arthur is giving me. I am beginning to realise that to love Arthur is more than just to love a baby, and I don�t know if that makes sense, because I don�t think I would have understood that before, even if someone had explained it to me. I had to experience it. I am learning so much already. He is the most precious thing in the entire world.
Ahhhh�.. so mushy!!
But that is all I have to write about today, I think. Wait, did I forget anything last time? I�m sure there was something�. Oh yes, I knew there was!!! I have got some teeny tiny light purple stretch marks on the sides of my breasts, and just underneath. My mum says she had them exactly like that but never got any on her bump. I hope I will be the same! I think these have actually been there for some time, because I can�t really heave the things up and out of the way enough to look underneath them (!!), and Neil hasn�t checked them for me in a while, till last week when he noticed them. I think I might have seen a tiny purplish line on one of them quite a few weeks back when I was having a shower, but I presumed it was a vein or something, since they are VERY veiny now. But it�s definitely not a vein, it�s too small and thin, and also there are more of them near it now, and on the other breast too. But oh well. I don�t mind stretch marks if they are going to be that mild! I hope they stay mild. My breasts have almost increased by 3 cup sizes so far, so it�s fairly reasonable of my skin to have stretch marks as a result!
I have had a couple of nosebleeds again, one yesterday and one today. Tsk. Just when I had said here that I hadn�t had any for a couple of weeks! But oh well. They are still mild and just pesky rather than a problem. My feet are becoming really annoyed in the evenings now. They feel prickly-hot and burny, and can�t bear to be touched or have any contact with even a sheet. They feel swollen in the evenings but they don�t really look swollen. They do get kind of veiny-looking and maybe my toes go slightly sausagey, but I don�t have any swelling in my ankles or hands or anywhere else yet. I hope I don�t get any!
Arthur kicks me whenever I am sitting on the toilet now! If he was asleep and I go for a pee, by the time I am finishing up he is kicking me. Every time. I think it must feel weird to him that a whole wall of his home is sinking as my bladder empties, so he seems to respond to that with kicking and wiggling about! My sweet boy. He doesn�t like me to sit upright with my torso slightly leaning forwards over my thighs. It puts pressure on him and he always always kicks or punches me in the groin, so that it feels like the movements are practically in my hip joints, until I lean back again! He likes to lie low down in my womb so I guess when I sit forward I squish him gently, and this boy does not like to be squished even gently! Last night before bed he kicked me, and it felt as though he was sitting on his feet again like we saw at the scan, only he jerks them out underneath him, which makes a pretty hard kick down, and at the same time it pushes his head up, so I get a sharp jerk up and down at the same moment from opposite ends of him. Last night he was doing that, and his head end was on my bladder, and it was soooo painful! I was loving it to bits even though I was going, �Oooch!..... Ow!!..... Oooh!� the whole time! It was just so nice after his quietness and the whole thing with his heartrate. The pain was like a very sharp pinch to my bladder. Ow. But awww, my little boy� (mushy-mush)�!!
Okay, that�s definitely it for now! I will try to update tomorrow for 25 weeks, but I�m not sure if I�ll get to it, because we are leaving the next day for France and I have a ton of packing and stuff to do. Also I just said everything here � d�oh! But oh well. As usual, I will continue updating while we�re in France from my parents� computer. I will turn 26 weeks the day before we come home, which is belly pic day, so you�ll have to wait till we�re home for the belly pic I think. Unless I use my daddy�s digital camera and his software� hmmm. Anyway but I�ll update soon, whether it�s from here or there. I am hoping for a good journey � that has been nagging at me for a while. I am not crazy on travelling but particularly not now that I�m pregnant. I just want to stay at home all the time and �nest�! And I�m a nesty person anyway, even when not pregnant! I was not crazy about flying incase the weather was bad and we had a bumpy flight, but it looks like it will be great flying weather. Too hot, but good for flying! We are driving to the airport this time, instead of all those tubes and trains through London. We�ll have to do that if we fly after Arthur is born anyway, so we thought it would be a good test run. It does mean a huge long trip round the M25 though, which doesn�t thrill me, and we need to set out at 6am � urgh!! I am hoping I will be included in priority boarding passengers this time since I am pregnant. I want a seat near the front of the aircraft as my pregnancy book says the oxygen is better near the front and pregnant women should sit there if they can. They always call for people with children or those needing assistance to board first, so I hope they will include me. I�m gonna stick my bump right out and look tired and needy, hehe! My back will not thank me for standing in long queues if I don�t get priority boarding, so pllleeease airport people, be nice and co-operative!
I will update soon. Oooh, p.s, I�m glad people like Arthur�s Moses basket!! :) Isn�t it cute?!
Recent entries.....
Babies 7 and 8! :) - 2016-01-10
Babies 6 and 7! - 2013-02-17
Baby #5 !! - 2010-04-03
Nearly 3 months postpartum! - 2009-10-05
6 weeks old already! - 2009-08-25