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2004-08-26 - 9.16pm��previous entry��next entry
29 weeks, 6 days - updatey stuff
Thank you for all the lovely guestbook entries and emails!! Please note that I am still the world�s crappiest email replier, but I appreciate them so much and will definitely reply! Thanks for the compliments on the nappy I made and the supportive things about my SPD-ish-ness (!) � oh and thank you Meg for reminding me about the absolute disaster I made of laying the spare bedroom floor last year! I had completely forgotten and shall now definitely remember to leave the kitchen floor to the professionals! That was a really �good friend� thing to say, thank you! Even though it boiled down to �Alice, don�t forget you are crap at laying floors� � I won�t hold it against you! ;) *hugs*
I can�t BELIEVE I will be 30 weeks pregnant tomorrow!!! Thirty weeks just sounds so� mature, pregnancy-wise! I feel so proud of the number, like I just graduated to something really impressive! Hehe! Wow. The thirties. That�s all there is left, because by the time you hit the forties (if I even do) you could literally expect to be giving birth like any second! Or something. So to be in the thirties is exciting! And scary. But yay, exciting!!
Also next week I am 7 months pregnant. That feels pretty impressive too! I can really start to count the weeks down and it is starting to feel like there aren�t many weeks left now. Well, 10 to go. Tomorrow. Then single digits! Yikes.
Okay lots of rambly news to say so I won�t waste any time! Arthur is still changing position. He has become Mr. Flippie. Seriously. He�s been breech, then transverse, then I think he was breech again yesterday afternoon, but when Neil got home in the evening we were having some Arthur-time with me lying on the sofa and my belly naked, just watching it and feeling him moving with our hands. He was very wiggly which was nice! Anyway at one point we were just watching my belly move, not touching it, and suddenly he swung round from breech to transverse! It was amazing to watch, I�m so glad we actually got to SEE it. I sure FELT it, but it was a whole �nother thing to actually watch him turn. It was weird and slightly scary (in an Alien-esque way!) and we both went, �Woooah!!� because my whooole belly swivelled! We could clearly see his head and bottom at opposite sides of my belly, they swivelled at opposite points and looked very rounded and large! They also stuck out a long way when he was turning, as if they would almost come right through my belly! It was weird! But yeah, he really likes it across my tummy. He�s there now even. But there�s plenty of time for him to turn for the birth, and as he gets bigger he is going to get much less comfortable lying across my tummy, so that might help persuade him!
He had hiccups 3 times yesterday and 2 times so far today. It�s now unusual for him to only have one bout of hiccups in a day, and I can�t remember the last time I had a day where I felt no hiccups! He is a hiccupy boy :) Someone posted on FF about their baby having hiccups a lot, and they were worried about it. Another lady said she asked her OB and he told her it�s a good thing if a baby hiccups a lot in the womb, because they usually hiccup when they are practicing inhaling and exhaling the amniotic fluid. He said when a woman arrives in premature labour, the first thing they ask is whether her baby hiccups a lot, because it gives them an idea of whether the baby might be a little further on than average with lung maturation! How cool!! I�m so pleased, because Arthur is being such a good boy and practicing his breathing so well. He might even be a little ahead in terms of his breathing apparatus right now, which is encouraging! Whenever he gets hiccups we always pat my belly and tell him, �Good boy Arthur!� He�s just the sweetest thing. I am so in love with him. I can�t believe I feel this way about a little person I have never met and don�t even know what he looks like yet! I just love him so much.
I have started having weird dreams about how he looks when he�s born, and I don�t like them because he�s always really really ugly in my dreams. He never resembles Neil or me at all, and his features are really grotesque on his face. I worry in my dreams that I won�t love him just because he�s so ugly, and that feels so awful because a mother should love her baby no matter what he looks like. In fact, I always believe that looks don�t matter a jot, so these dreams are weirding me out. I guess I have to admit though that I do really want Arthur to be cute-looking! Not all babies are, and I really want him to be cute and gorgeous for everyone else to see and go all mushy over my little boy! Not that it matters of course. I will think he�s gorgeous and cute no matter how he looks. But I do hope he�ll be adorably cute with a little button nose and a normal-shaped head (!!) and all that. Is that wrong of me?
I did more sewing the other day and while I sewed I put some music on that I love. I love it because my daddy taped it from the radio during 1979 and 1980 (chart hits at the time) and I used to dance and sing to the songs when I was a little girl. I have played them back through my whole childhood, so that by the time I reached my teens I found them uplifting and comforting to listen to. I associated them with childhood and happiness and security, and that�s how they�ve always made me feel since, when I hear them. The tapes are still working (wow!) but I guess I need to transfer them to CD or something because they are getting a bit muffly in parts and I don�t want them to chew up and lose them forever. Anyway so I wanted Arthur to hear that music because I love it and it�s fun to listen to � old style disco and all that. So I played some and sometimes I got up and boogied around as much as a pregnant woman with a large belly can boogie! And I sang and clapped sometimes too. Arthur got very wiggly and excited :) He particularly liked Jermaine Jackson�s �I got your number (written on the back of my hand)� probably because it�s fast and has a good strong beat, plus maybe because I was having a good old boogie to that one and enjoying myself lots! :)
I have started trying to sew a Cuddlebuns diaper using the serging method with my overlocker machine. Yikes, that�s a bit scary, because I haven�t really mastered that machine yet! I got it a while back and serged some cloth wipes with it, but never felt safe to attempt to serge a nappy with it. I kept making too much of a huge botch up to want to make a mess of sewing a nappy. But I decided I have to just practice, so I used the fabric that I paid the least for and which I like the least, to make a few practice attempts with. That way if I mess it up so much that I have to throw it away, at least it wasn�t expensive fabric or something I�d longed to not mess up. It�s so hard, and I have made some mistakes already but I�m getting there I think. I have so many cute knit fabrics that I want to sew into a Cuddlebun but I wouldn�t want to do that till I�m sure I won�t make a huge mess of it! So I�ve been sewing a lot. And I tidied the sewing room too! It was a really big mess with fabrics everywhere and the spare bed was covered with things for Arthur � his moses basket, car seat, bouncy chair, cosy toes for the travel system, and some other bits and pieces, also baby clothes and breast pads! They are all stashed away as neatly as possible now on the floor so that the bed is clear for me to rest on during the day if I want to. I can�t believe we have so much stuff for a real baby! It�s so exciting to see it all! Did I tell you ages ago that I bought a Humphrey�s Corner soft toy which is a sleeping baby elephant complete with little sleepsuit and baby blankie clutched in one hand?! It�s soooo cute! Humphrey has his little head turned to one side and his eyes shut, and his legs curled up underneath him, and he is sooo soft. If you press his hand, he plays a lullaby. He fits neatly into the newborn insert in the car seat, so that�s where he�s been since I bought him, looking very cute and saving Arthur�s place for him! Last night we got Humphrey out of the car seat and laid him on my belly and pressed his hand so the lullaby played. Arthur had been quite wiggly, but the moment the music started, he went absolutely still! It felt as if he was in a stunned silence, I never felt him go so still from being active! He stayed completely still for the whole lullaby, and when it finished I played it again. He was still till about 30 seconds after the lullaby finished and then started wiggling again. We thought that was so cute because he must have stopped whatever he was doing to listen. Isn�t he just the cutest boy already?! :)
I would normally be at aquanatal class at the moment, but my pubic bone hurts more today so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to miss it this evening. I don�t think there�s many of the exercises I should be doing anyway, not with my pain so easily provoked. Yesterday I went shopping at the supermarket in the early evening, because I HAD to have party ring biscuits! I was watching TV earlier in the day, and I don�t even know what programme it was, but there was a scene where this lady in the background had a plate of hard cookies with hard icing on them, and she bit into one and I heard it snap, and that was it. I just had to have party rings! They are the nearest thing to those cookies on the TV, and anyway, I just wanted party rings. They are hard and have hard icing on, and taste lovely! I haven�t eaten any since birthday parties in my childhood. I told myself don�t be silly, it�s just cause you�ve seen a cookie on the TV and it does not mean you need one! But the urge didn�t go away, and by the time Neil got home in the car I just had to go out and buy some! Neil went to bed for a lie-down as he was tired from work, and thought I may as well get the rest of the food shopping we needed. So I drove to the supermarket and did the shopping. I had to change my shopping trolley 3 times because the wheels kept being wonky or the trolley would veer off to one side, and I usually just put up with trolleys like that and carry on shopping, but I discovered I have to use a lot of back and pelvic muscles to keep the trolley on an even keel, and in absolutely no time at all, my pelvis and back hurt a lot. So I had to keep changing the stupid trolleys! But I found one that worked in the end. It felt weird that I needed to do that in order to shop without pain. I guess I�m just really pregnant now!
Anyway I did the shopping but I got so exhausted so quickly. That seems to happen every day now. I�m sure my iron levels are great, because they were great 2 weeks ago, so I guess it�s just third trimester tiredness kicking in. I need to nap or at least lie down in bed at least once a day now, or I�m just too woozy and exhausted to do anything if I try and push through it. I read that I should be expecting this in the third trimester though, so I�m not too bothered about it. I had a sleep for an hour and a half this afternoon and I still feel like I�ve done a full day at work since then! I worry a little about how on earth I�ll cope feeling like this next pregnancy when I am truly knackered from entertaining little Arthur all day (and possibly half the night!). But I guess it�s doable because other women do it, and I�ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I have a few years yet anyway!
By the time I got to the checkout I was so wiped out, I had to lean on the counter, and my eyes were stinging and prickling with tiredness. There was a pregnant lady in front of me in the queue and she looked even bigger than me, but quite energetic and wide awake. She packed her stuff and then it was my turn, and the lady behind the checkout took one look at me and offered to pack my shopping for me! Which was nice :) I was glad of her help. It was hard pushing the trolley back to the car and that�s when I got hit with panic over feeling the same way and being out doing the shopping at this stage of my next pregnancy, only having Arthur potentially throwing a huge tantrum in the trolley seat or something, after a looonnnng day! Yikes. I don�t know how other women do it. But I guess you just do, when it comes to it. I drove home and crawled up the stairs, dropped into bed, and mumbled to Neil that there was shopping in the car, and then I just lay there knackered for 40 minutes! Neil unpacked the shopping (he�s the sweetest) and then he made dinner and I felt better after a rest and a good meal.
Today I am wondering if my increased pubic bone pain might have something to do with the first few trolleys I was trying to push round the supermarket. I can�t think what else I might have done to make the pain get worse. Usually if it gets noticeably worse it�s because I�ve been to aquanatal, so that�s why I figured it might be best not to go tonight.
The osteopath phoned back today!! He seems really good. I told him all my symptoms and described the pain and answered a million questions, and he says it sounds to him like SPD, or at least the prelude to SPD. From my description of the pain and where it�s located, he said it sounds as though the left side of my pelvis may be rotated forwards slightly, and the right side rotated backwards a bit. This is probably putting the baby�s weight and the weight of my womb more onto my right side, and he said I may even notice my belly button seems a little pulled that way. It�s okay right now, but I have noticed that sometimes, always to the right. He said this will put tension on the left side, and the whole thing will put strain on the front, and start causing the pubic bone to separate more than it should (SPD). He said it would be a good idea to get the problem fixed, especially if I planned to have more babies in the future, as it tends to get worse with subsequent pregnancies (something I have read also). He said he thinks it will be �easily fixed� given that I am getting something done about it so early with my symptoms. I have an appointment for tomorrow!! Wow! It�s a long drive, a couple of hours maybe, I�m not sure. But he gave me detailed directions and I am glad to be sorting it out so soon. I hope I will only need one or two sessions to fix the problem, and I feel confident because I know he is a leading expert on SPD and successfully treats women with much more severe cases. Anyway that�s another reason I didn�t go to aquanatal � I want his opinion on what is safe to do while I get treatment, and then maybe it will all be better after that so I can go to the classes without any further problems. I hope so. Thank you to everyone praying for me over this!
Okay I had more to say but dinner is ready so I need to go. I will update tomorrow for 30 weeks!! And it�s belly pic day, so I will put a 30 week belly pic in the gallery tomorrow evening. It has to be evening so that Neil can be home to take the photo in the first place! More tomorrow.
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