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2004-08-12 - 1.28pm��previous entry��next entry
27 weeks, 6 days - midwife appointment
Thank you for the nice messages for my midwife appointment! :) I just got home from seeing the midwife so here I am to write all about it!
It went much better than I expected � yay!! My home birth is officially BOOKED!!! Woohoo! My notes have �HOMEBIRTH� written across the top :) The midwife (Pat) did ask if we were sure we wanted one, and we said definitely, and she did start to go over some of the �risks� again, but not in so much detail and we were both confident with her about it all, so it went much better. Some of the things she had raised last time were perhaps due to the fact that my community midwife team seem to be quite a cautious team. She explained that while they encourage women to labour in water, they don�t deliver babies under water, they ask women to be on dry land for the delivery. I asked why, and she said basically because they had an incident once where a baby aspirated water during the birth, and they are not covered for water deliveries now. Also the midwives on the team are not experienced at delivering water births, so that�s fair enough. I would want a midwife experienced in water births to deliver me underwater, so I am happy not to pressure one who isn�t so experienced into doing so! I just hope transition to land won�t be a huge issue for me at the time. But I�m glad she was supportive of using the birthing pool throughout labour.
She also said that their community midwife team likes to arrange homebirths that are low risk, if possible. So maybe that would explain why she was so iffy about risks with me before? I hope I stay in the low risk category so I don�t have to put up a big fight to keep my homebirth plans! If I was high risk enough to need to be in a hospital then of course I wouldn�t fight for a homebirth, but yeah. I feel a bit better about all her previous negativity now that I�ve realised they are just generally cautious as a midwife team.
Anyway it went fine. I had the same student midwife there too, but she seemed in a WAY better mood than last appointment (!) and Pat felt Arthur�s position, not the student, so I didn�t have to deal with her harsh poking like last time! Pat was really gentle and only seemed to touch my belly for a few seconds to know where he was. I said I had thought he was lying across me because of all the movement in both my sides, but she said she thought she could feel a head down in my pelvis!! Yay! She said I am carrying really neatly, and that Arthur is in a good position for birth. She said to the student that �this one is a nice one to feel�. Neil was round the other side of the screen at the time, but he said to me afterwards that he swelled with pride when he heard her say that, hehe! Proud parents already! ;)
My womb is measuring right on target for growth � 28cm from my pubic bone, so right on track for 28 weeks. The student took blood from me, and I was kind of nervous about that since you never know how good students are going to be at it! But I was one once, and I had mothers refuse to let me do it sooooo many times because I was a student, and c�mon, a girl�s gotta learn! So I wouldn�t refuse a student, unless I had previously had a horrible experience with them. Anyway I have NEVER had such a completely painless and comfortable blood test in my life!! I was amazed. My arm didn�t even feel pinched by the tourniquet. I didn�t feel the needle go in or come out. I complimented the student and she went all shy and blushing :) Aw. A patient once complimented me on blood-taking, so I know it�s always worth mentioning it to a student if it was a �good� experience, because it really does make them feel good about what they�re doing and it gives them lots of encouragement and motivation.
Then the midwife gave me my anti-D injection � thankfully in my arm this time instead of in my butt! It was painful � they seem to be pretty painful injections � but she administered it really slowly which I�m sure made it less painful. The liquid is really thick and so is the needle, so the slower the better really. I am fine to go to my aquanatal class tonight if I rest up this afternoon apparently, and I had a crappy sleep last night so I�m going to force a nap this afternoon. Hopefully I�ll feel a lot less tired and groggy by the evening for my class! I�m so excited!!
What else? My blood pressure is 120/60 which is groovesome, and my urine tested fine for protein, but there was some sugar in there. Pat didn�t seem worried about it and she explained that renal function is lowered during pregnancy and sugar in the urine isn�t necessarily an issue. But I feel really nervous about it all the same. She asked if I had eaten chocolate or something this morning. I hadn�t, but I had coco pops for breakfast. She said that�s probably all it is. But I�m still nervous. I desperately do NOT want to develop gestational diabetes. At all. Nope. It would mean bye-bye homebirth, hello crappy diet, a huge and not necessarily healthy Arthur, and a much higher risk of a Caesarean. She said my blood will be tested for sugar anyway � it�s routine at the 28 week blood test � so that will tell us if I have too much sugar or not. Pllllllllleeeeeaaase don�t let me have too much sugar Lord. I really want a pregnancy without any complications, and especially a baby without problems.
But everything else was fine. I didn�t have a reaction to the anti-D so I got to come home without any problems! I have to wait 20 minutes before I�m allowed to go home since that�s the time when you can get a reaction if you�re going to. Anti-D is part of a human blood transfusion so they need you to stay there for a while to be sure you don�t have a bad reaction to it or something.
We are both feeling much better about this midwife so I am going to stick with her. Neil says he saw something in her eyes that made him feel quietly confident in her for the birth. He said if something DOES come up to prevent me having a homebirth, then maybe that�s just God showing us that we need to be somewhere different this time around. I�m glad we�re more relaxed about it.
Sooo my next appointment is at 32 weeks and I have to see my GP for that one, which is fine by me because I love my GP. Then I see Pat again at 34 weeks (on Sept 23rd � I just booked it), and I get another lovely anti-D injection. Then she says she will come to my house for my 36 week appointment and bring a big list of things I�ll need for homebirth! Yay! I am going to order the birth pool now � well, not literally this second, but now that everything looks fine. Do birthing pools need to be emptied into a toilet or down any old drain in this country? Does anyone know? Pat brought it up and said she couldn�t remember if it had to be down a toilet. I never thought of that! It could be tricky emptying it down the upstairs toilet when the pool is downstairs! I think I will ask the girls at my homebirth forum.
My antenatal classes should start either at the end of August or in September. Apparently I have to call the health visitor team (not sure why!) and ask them which class I�m booked onto. So I�ll do that later probably, if I can find the phone number for the health visitor team. I asked when Pat wanted my birth plan � I have written most of it in rough last night! It is quite fun and exciting to write, because it really brings it home that this is actually going to happen � I�m actually going to give birth, and not too long away either! I used The Birth Book to help me, they have some good points to remember and a good sample birth plan. But Pat said the antenatal classes will go through writing birth plans with me, so it might be good to wait till I�ve done the classes before finalizing my plan and going through it with her. She said we could go through my birth plan together either at my 34 week appointment or my 36 week one. I can�t believe 34 weeks (which feels like an incredibly impressive stage of pregnancy) is only next month!!!! Yikes! But ooooh it�s so exciting!!!
Okay I think that�s about it. I got two maternity packages from eBay in the post this morning. One was a light blue dress and jacket (very smart cut) for a wedding I�m going to at the end of September. It fits me well but I�m hoping it will be warm enough. The end of September could quite easily be either warm and balmy, or frosty and windy! So I sort of need a wintery back-up outfit, but the one I wore to the July wedding doesn�t fit my bump anymore. Hmmm. Oh, I also got some maternity jeans. I am buying the next size up these days, and OH MY GOODNESS the jeans I got this morning are the nicest, most flattering, and most comfortable maternity jeans I ever put on!!! They are from good old H&M again � I had nooo idea their stuff was so lovely and flattering and comfy! These jeans are slightly stretchy denim so they are really comfy and don�t pull at me when I sit down. They have no elastic or jersey panel at the front so no tugging on me or tight waistline! And I can wear short tops instead of huge tenty ones to cover a panel. I like. They fasten with a button and zip at the side. Wow, they are just soooo nice!! I suddenly LOVE H&M, and can�t wait to find more of their gorgeous trousers and jeans to flatter my little bump! The only thing is, their stuff is long in the leg and I�m, well, short in the leg!! And I don�t know that I�ll fit their trousers by the end of pregnancy as they are snug and flattering at the moment on the biggest setting. But oh well. They are sooooo nice!
Oooh ooh, we are getting a new car!!! The one we have at the moment was new (we have one of those deals with Ford where we get a new car, then trade it in for another new one after 3 years of monthly payments), but it has a front passenger airbag so that�s not suitable for putting Arthur in his carseat in the front like you�re supposed to when they�re tiny. So we had to change it anyway. Neil went to the dealership and asked to trade it in early, and we got a good deal on a brand new car which will be available from early September � it�s going to have a switch fitted so we can turn off the passenger airbag, and it has AIR CON � woohoo!!! And it�s a nice metallic light green colour (I really like the metallic light green or blue cars out there these days) which is much nicer than our current car :) So that�s exciting. Getting ready for Arthur. It�s so much fun. It is starting to feel quite close now, even though there�s still 12 weeks to go.
Okay I will update tomorrow for 28 weeks (wow!), and tell you about my aquanatal class too. Tomorrow is a belly pic day again, so I will try to get one posted when I update. Not a naked belly this week though � I have too many nice clothes to show my bump off in, hehe! Ohhh I�m still crap at emails � so sorry about that! I will get there, honestly.
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