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2004-08-01 - 5.01pm��previous entry��next entry
26 weeks, 2 days - back from France
Oooh I�m sorry it�s been so long!! I totally planned to update for 26 weeks but oh various things happened and so I only got around to it today. Thank you so much for all the guestbook messages! Very interesting about the redhead comments, hmmm�. I guess we will just have to wait and see with Arthur then!
I have sssoooooo much to write, it�s going to be a long entry! Just to warn you!! ;)
Okay first thing is, I am 26 weeks pregnant!! Neil took a belly pic today and it�s in the belly gallery now. Thought you guys might like to see a naked (gasp!) belly so there it is. Don�t get too excited though, it�s just a normal belly pic with my bump panel pulled down! See my nice belly?! And my flat belly button?!! Well, that is not too visible in the photo but oh well. My tummy is getting more veiny at the sides as it stretches now. That�s something I remember seeing a lot on hugely pregnant women, and I just can�t believe it�s actually ME that looks that way now. Wow. But yeah, my bump keeps feeling so huge but actually on the grand scale of things, it�s still a little bump really. The top of my womb is now about 5 or 6cm above my belly button, but it�s hard to find � I have to really press in to feel it, as it curves inwards from just above the belly button. Arthur wiggles and kicks in all parts of it though, all the �far reaches�! He likes his space. He hates when I squish him, even slightly, by leaning forward or raising my leg when I�m sitting, or wearing a seatbelt or having a tray on my lap or something. He kicks me right on the offending item until I move it. Hmmm, maybe he�s gonna hate co-sleeping? Maybe he�ll be like me � I like my space as well, especially in bed. Hmmm� Well, we have our Moses basket, and that�s a good 6 weeks of use, and we can see how we go.
So, the 26 week stats! Arthur is growing amazingly! He is now just over 14 inches long, and weighs roughly 1lb 10oz. His nostrils are now unblocked ready for breathing outside of his mummy, and he is constantly developing new blood vessels in and around his lungs and secreting surfactant in there, in preparation for breathing. This week his eyes are opening for the first time! His brain is undergoing super fast development, and his sense of touch and hearing are making leaps and bounds. He can feel me when I tickle him through my belly now, and he can hear sounds outside the womb clearly. He is also much more sensitive to light from last week, as his optic nerve is making fast developmental progress since it started functioning.
On Friday I will reach my third trimester!!!! I can�t BELIEVE that. It�s too amazing. How weird to have been through a whole second trimester � I don�t really feel like it�s happened. This will be my last trimester too! Yikes! And today is the first day of August. So I will reach full-term the month after next. Wow. At church when we started announcing that I was pregnant, there were 3 women expecting (including me). One has had her baby in June, and the other is due in August. Both of those felt like ages away when I was telling people I was pregnant, and now I am about to be the next person to give birth!!! Aaaaaaaargh!!! I am surprising myself by starting to feel a bit nervous now that this journey is drawing to a close. I mean, there�s still 14 weeks so there�s a while to go yet, but it still FEELS like it�s drawing to a close, what with the big bump and the 3rd trimester and being the �next birth� in line and so on. I alternate between being impatient for the 14 weeks to hurry by so I can meet my little boy and start being a mummy at last, and feeling like I have 14 precious weeks of life as I know it left, slipping through my fingers like sand and making me feel all weird and scaredy, and I want to get off this ride and go home, that kind of thing! But I know that�s all normal. It will all be fine :)
Well that�s the general 26-week stuff. We are now home from France (got home yesterday) and it�s vaguely good to be home, but I miss my mummy like crazy at the moment and that is not a great feeling in combination with the ambivalence/anxiety about impending motherhood! I feel sooooo far from my mum and everything feels so grown-up and scary here as we prepare for parenthood. She never felt so far away as now :( Especially since I just spent all my time with her for a week.
Okay a few things happened since my last entry that I need to write about. Too many pregnancy-related things keep happening now at this stage, so I should update more often to keep track of them all! I kept wanting to write about them but never really having the opportunity to update.
It got super-hot in France the second half of our week there. I mean, yeurgh it was hot! But at least the humidity was less than it is here. It�s horrid here. I am back to sweating and sweating again now. Also the air feels too muggy for enough oxygen to be carried in it, so that�s not nice either. But in France it was hot but there was more of a breeze and it was less muggy. But reeeeally hot. 95 degrees hot with no air con. I stayed indoors most of the time because it was cooler in there with the windows all covered against the sun. We spent evenings outside though, and that was quite a nice temperature by then, without the strength of the daytime sun.
My virusy thing has hung around a bit, but only in the annoying end-of-a-cold type of way. I didn�t sleep too great because of that, but on Thursday something else happened that was much more pesky than my virus. It also gave a tiny weeny bit of valuable insight into the kind of support I might find myself needing in an out-of-control situation, which was helpful!
I had a nosebleed. Which, yeah, you�ve heard before, because I get those a lot now that I�m pregnant. But maaaaaaaan did I have a nosebleed!!! It was different to all my others, which have all been mild and just annoying. I had a bad nosebleed once before in my life, and that was scary, but oh my goodness I never had one like this. My mum was a PE teacher for 25 years so she has seen her fair share of nosebleeds, but she said (the next day!) that she never saw one as bad as this one.
We had just finished eating dinner outside, and I was wiping (okay, poking!) my nose after blowing it, and maybe I wiped (poked) too hard on the spot that seems to bleed easily, but suddenly there was an audible �pop� inside my head, and like half a pint of blood fell out of my nose! Seriously, I had no time to get the tissue to my nose before it splattered my arms, clothes, the chair, the floor, everything. I know that nosebleeds do look bad and feel scary, but I have never seen one like this before and I can tell you, I have never ever ever ever been so scared in all my life. I would say I am not even that scared about being sick, and as most of you will know, I have had a really big phobia of that all my life. I had no idea I could bleed like that or feel that scared about it.
I stood up to stop the blood going all over me and everyone was all around me grabbing extra tissues and saying things that I wasn�t hearing at all. I pinched my nose like you�re supposed to, but all I knew was that my nose was flowing hot fluid over my hands and arms like a tap and I was just sooooo scared. I didn�t panic at first, I just thought, �Wow, this is bad!� and felt scared, but I didn�t panic. Until it kept on going like that and I got helped inside and onto the floor (tiled, not carpeted!) and someone got me ice to hold onto my nose as I pinched it, and hands kept removing my tissues and replacing them under my nose. That seemed to happen very frequently and all the tissues were sodden with blood and dark red, and during the brief seconds where nothing was under my nostrils, there was audible splattering of blood onto the tiled floor. Boy did I get panicky then!
I stopped hearing what was going on around me properly, and I think I kept saying things like, �I�ll bleed to death!� and other extreme comments!! I know it sounds soooo stupid, but I honestly got scared that it wouldn�t stop and that I would bleed to death. I started saying to people that I was scared, over and over. And I got very scared about Arthur. Neil and my parents were sooooo wonderful. I didn�t take in stuff that they were saying much, but their tones were constant soothing sounds all around me, sometimes several of their voices at once. Neil sat behind me on the floor with me between his knees, and someone was rubbing my feet and shins in a nice soothing way. I think that must have been Daddy because Mummy was by my side a lot with fresh tissues, saying everything was okay and that Arthur was fine and it would stop soon. My hands shook so violently that I was rocking my nose really badly as I pinched it, so Neil took over pinching the ice over my nose and he and Mummy coached me with my breathing to help me stop hyperventilating and calm down. I was scared that I would pass out if I bled much more or that I would get sick or something, or that I would need to get to a hospital if it didn�t stop (it had been 15 minutes by then � Mummy was timing it), but everyone was so reassuring and kept telling me I was a good colour, etc. I remember after a while she and Daddy slipped out of the room to �fetch more tissues� which I know means they were worried and wanted to figure out whether they should get some help or wait it out some more, without worrying me.
I was so scared about the amount of blood I was losing (it was quite a lot) being detrimental to Arthur, or my panicking for that matter. But after a couple of minutes of high adrenaline, he started to kick like crazy so at least I could feel him and know that he was there and active while I bled.
After 25 minutes of bleeding it started to slow down and the ice had melted anyway so I just pinched my nose as normal. I was getting calmer now that the blood wasn�t running like a tap every time I changed the tissues under it, and every time I handed old tissues to someone, everyone made a big thing of how there was less blood than the last change � they were so sweet to me! I feel like such a child about it, but seriously, it was that scary. It took a full 2 hours to grind to a halt, and by then I was exhausted and feeling weak and it was really late too. We went to bed after a while, but I sat up all night and dozed for 25 minutes in total, because I can�t sleep sitting up and if I leaned my head back even slightly, I could taste blood going down my throat. By the morning my nose was one big blood clot (how nice!), and honestly I am still losing parts of it today, 3 days later! The blood-in-my-throat taste only stopped yesterday. I didn�t sleep much the following night either because it was still sort of bloody and I kept worrying that it would start again if I nudged my nose in my sleep. I am really disappointed that it took so much enjoyment out of the last 2 days with my parents, but oh well. I�m just sooooo glad I was with Neil and my parents when it happened, because I don�t know how I would have managed it if I was at home here during the day. If it happens again Mummy says I�ll be fine because I know what to do now, but I am pretty scared of being on my own and having that happen again. I am not allowed to blow my nose on the bleedy side for the rest of my pregnancy, which is kind of hard since pregnancy makes me kind of snotty.
BUT. The whole thing made me wonder about labour and birth. First thing I thought was if I bleed and panic then would I wish I was in hospital rather than at home? I mean, when my nose was bleeding it scared me that we were not within easy access of a hospital, and that was just for a nosebleed! I only wondered because I didn�t realize how badly I seem to cope, when I sort of expected not to fall to pieces quite so much! Secondly it was a big eye-opener as to the type of support I seem to need when feeling out of control or anxious or whatever. Neil was so wonderful, he is going to be great when I am in labour, I can tell. But having Mummy there as well seemed to be the combination that suited me best. So we decided based on that, that we would definitely like her to be present during my labour and at the birth, if possible. I asked her if she would be, but she is nervous of stepping on our toes and being intrusive in such a special intimate occasion that she thinks is best left to just the two of us. I keep reassuring her that we are both really happy for her to be there, and that I feel I would NEED her there, but she says just to see how we feel nearer the time. I am pretty sure we will have her at the birth, if she is okay with that. I think she will be thrilled to be at the birth, but so far she is not letting herself assume that she�ll be there, incase we change our minds. I feel like there�s a huge weight off, just thinking that she will be there. I feel like everything I was left with any anxiety over is now sorted, which is nice. The only thing is, she lives in France and I live in England! They are thinking to arrive in England around November 1st, which is 4 days before my due date, so hopefully Arthur won�t come before that or his Nana won�t see him born or be there to support me and Neil during a labour I have noooo idea about. They plan to stay a couple of weeks, so hopefully Arthur will turn up vaguely on time! All these plans are getting so exciting/scary!!
Anyway, long-winded, but that�s the nosebleed story!
On Friday, Daddy played the piano for Arthur � his jazzy stuff which is my favourite of his music to listen to, because hearing it has relaxed me instantly from as far back as I can remember. He always used to come home and play that music in the evenings to relax himself, and I would find it instantly relaxing too. I used to hear it as I was having my bath before bed sometimes. I have very early memories of hearing that music flowing from the piano at the end of the day, and I could always feel Daddy relaxing as he played. I could feel it in the music, in the way he played it and improvised. So I wanted Arthur to hear that while he was still in my womb, so that he could hear the music and feel my response to it. He won�t hear Daddy playing it regularly like I used to as a child, so he won�t have that lovely emotive connection with it, and I wanted to give him something of that while he was able to get a feel of my responses to the music. So Daddy played. The piano is such a lovely resonant instrument, the sound carries so clearly. The piano at their house is a baby grand so it�s not soft-sounding at all. I lay on the sofa and Daddy played, and as soon as he started, Arthur gave me a huge kick and then went really quiet. I love to think that he�s listening, and I wonder what he makes of the sounds that he hears. Do they surprise him? Do they make him wonder what they are? Or is it just a source of calm/irritation/stimulation? I don�t know. But I love the idea that he is hearing things that I love to hear. He was quiet through the calm songs and he kicked and squirmed quite a lot during the more bouncy ones! It was so sweet :) Daddy was really pleased that Arthur responded such a lot. He played a lullaby at the end and Arthur went super quiet, and as the last few notes were played there was a single gentle little roll in there, almost as if he was turning over to sleep or something! Hehe! Yeah I�m so mushy. But I�m allowed.
In the car on the way to the airport to go home, Mummy sat with me in the back while Neil sat in the front. I had my belly exposed so she could have some last minute bonding with her little grandson, and the sun shone on my belly through the car window. As soon as it came onto my belly, Arthur started kicking and moving, like he was wafting his hands or feet across my tummy, it was really cute! Mummy put her hand over him to �shield� him from the bright light, and he did lots of little strokey movements against her hand with his little hands. I can really tell now whether a little limb-end is a hand or a foot. I love being able to tell what is poking me! Mummy loved being stroked by Arthur�s hands, she said it was so sweet! She is besotted already. I love that my parents got to feel Arthur moving and kicking a lot while we stayed with them. I wish Daddy had been able to feel him more, but he didn�t get so many opportunities as Mummy did.
The flight home was a full one. I used my French to ask if they would search me instead of having to go under the metal detector arch, but they wouldn�t let me. They said it was the same as the detectors in a supermarket, so that reassured me and I walked through the arch. I�m glad I understand some French or I would not have known what they were on about! The waiting lounge was full and nobody gave up a seat for me, which for some reason bugged me quite a lot, since I was looking tired and hot, and large and pregnant, and ended up having to get down on the floor rather awkwardly to sit down cross-legged while everyone stared at me instead of offering me a seat. My consolation was that I got to board before all those selfish seat-hoggers!! Hahaha! The flight home was okay � a bit bumpy at times and Arthur kicked me a lot when the plane banked sharply and tipped him (as I�m sure it must have) in the womb at the same time as being bumpy!
The drive home from the airport was an absolute nightmare. The M25 kept being at a standstill, it was nearly 90 degrees (somehow!) and we had no air con in our car. We had the windows open but the sun was so hot through the windscreen and the air didn�t seem to bring any coolness at all. I started to feel quite ill with the heat so we had to stop for an ice lolly and some more water. Then when we finally got off the M25, the route home was closed completely due to an accident, and this is a baaaaad bad thing on a major motorway on an overheated Saturday afternoon! So we sat in complete gridlock for an hour and got hotter and hotter and sweated more and more and more, and the car started to smell of a nasty burning smell, and then we did a U-turn and I used my sense of direction (wow!!) to try and get home via residential roads and back roads, etc. We did get home that way, but man we were so hot and exhausted by the time we arrived. I jumped straight in the shower and kept the water cold, and then I drank 3 glasses of water in a row, and then rested. Neil insisted on flaking out in bed before freshening up or rehydrating, and has consequently been ill with a migraine since then. Poor Neil, but tsk!! He doesn�t listen when I give advice that I KNOW will help him not end up with a migraine.
Last night I felt so sad and lonely and weepy. I guess because Neil was ill in bed and I was missing my parents soooo badly that it ached all over. Home always feels weird and not-nice when I am first back from visiting my parents, and I always wish I was still there with them. It�s worse when I feel lonely if I�m on my own for whatever reason, and also worse when I am feeling ambivalent and a bit scared about the future with such a big change coming up. I couldn�t cry because of my stupid nose still being a bit bleedy, so I had to just sit around and do laundry and not make any sounds incase it made Neil�s head worse. I watched some blooper outtakes programme on TV in the evening and that made me laugh so I felt better after that. I couldn�t update my diary because the typing sound would bother Neil�s head. Today he is much better but still feeling woozy and headachy.
I am getting cramp in my legs, feet or hips (!!) every single night now, every time I wake to turn over. If I stretch my legs or point my toes, my calf cramps up and I have to pull my toes up really quick to avoid it really getting bad. I think I should start taking my calcium supplements again, because I heard that can ease or prevent pregnancy cramps, and anyway, Arthur�s calcium needs are at a record high now. He is ossifying his bones and starting work on some permanent tooth buds deep in his jaw behind the milk tooth buds in his gums. My clever boy :)
I am wondering if maybe I might have some haemerrhoids :( Nice. But I don�t know. Not the external type though. I just think this tailbone pain is weird and almost like I have something IN there that is aching and throbbing and it�s always worse when I�m too hot or have been sitting for a while, or when I go to the loo. Also I am getting really achy and painful in general in the groin, so hmmm, I hope I am not gonna get a ton of varicosities before I give birth! That would not be nice. I hear they ache like nothing else and can be very painful. And can also be highly aggravated by giving birth once they are there! Okay, you don�t need to know any more about this! But I just wanted to note it down here.
There must be soooo much more than I haven�t remembered, but I will try to remember to write bits and pieces as I think of them in future entries. Today I am feeling less weepy and more settled without my mummy, as I knew I would be, so that�s good. Oh my breasts haven�t been leaking since I last wrote that they were, but today they started again, and quite a bit too. Arthur is so cute. He did this laaaazy stretch with his leg this afternoon and I felt this little foot (quite big now!) push out up towards my ribs on my right side. I never saw my tummy distend that much before from a limb! But anyway, he pushed it out so slowly, it was like a lovely lazy stretch, and then he left it there, so I scratched it with my fingertips, like a tickle! It was soooo cute � he immediately did this huge kick so that his whole body seemed to ricochet around my womb, hehehe! I think I surprised him :) He did poke it out again later though, and he seems to respond a lot to me scratching at the bits he pokes out. It�s so cute. I know I am overusing that phrase but it reeeally is so cute! He is the sweetest baby boy.
Okay that is all for today. I can�t think of anything else for now, and my ribs ache so I will get up and move about a bit! I have missed checking up on my favourite diaries and I�m sure it will take me forever to catch up on those, I have so many!! But I hope you�ve all had a good week, and I hope I will also catch up on emails soon!
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