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2005-12-04 - 10.14pm��previous entry��next entry
13 weeks, 4 days - just thoughts and stuff
Thank you all for doing the Chinese Gender Chart and letting me know if it worked for you!! Okay so it looks more like it's kind of 50/50. Which is about the same as taking a wild guess at the baby's gender! Oh well. I am kind of hanging to it a bit myself because of how there haven't been any babies born in my family in 100 years that were predicted wrong yet. That's so weird though, given how many babies it got wrong for everyone else. Hmmm...
Well I am nearly 14 weeks pregnant!! That is just so crazy. How is it going by so fast?! Yesterday I was exactly one third of the way through my pregnancy. Wow. One whole third behind me. Only twice what I've done so far to go and I'll have my baby! I can't actually imagine having another baby. It just won't go in my head. Life is so fixed and focused on Arthur that I can't imagine it ever changing to have a different focus. Sometimes I'm not even sure I want to have a different focus. I know I'll still be focused on Arthur, but also on another little one. I just can't imagine it at all. I hope I start to before the birth, otherwise I worry about finding it all too surreal and then struggling or something. But I bet I just fall in love with my new little one the instant he or she comes out - or probably before then even.
I am feeling Sprout move several times a day now, mostly taps and pops and little tiny kicks, but also whole body pushes and squirms. It's so lovely!
Having yet more trouble with IBS and constipation, pfthth. Last pregnancy I wrote here that constipation disappeared with the first trimester, so I hope it won't last much longer. I feel quite sick today which is a bummer. I haven't felt too sick for a while now. I have been eating eggs more this last week for some reason. Scrambled with fried mushrooms. I ate that on toast for lunch today and now I feel yuck. Eggs sometimes do that for me, so maybe that's all it is.
Due to all my obsessive eBay shopping last pregnancy (!), I don't think I will EVER need to buy any maternity clothes again! Unless I become 2 clothes sizes bigger pre-pregnancy or something. The maternity clothes that I have fill three 3ft by 2.5ft boxes (I kid you not), cover 3 clothes sizes (need to sell all the smallest size as I will NEVER be that size again when pregnant!), most maternity clothing brands out there, and all four seasons! I have too many of certain things, like four pairs of maternity dungarees. A girl really doesn't need four pairs of maternity dungarees. I have pyjamas, vests, shorts, t-shirts, shirts, smart outfits, summer dresses (including ones bought specially for a wedding), skirts (big mistake - who wears skirts when pregnant?!), jeans, joggers, smart trousers, jackets, sweaters, nighties, leggings, long-sleeved t-shirt tops, pregnant logo tops, and of course, the dungarees! I will never need another maternity item, I am sure of it!! But that was the idea, back then. I knew I wanted to be pregnant at least a few more times, so I wanted to get stuff that would last me through them all, covering all seasons. I'm so glad I did! It was all second hand or sold new at eBay so I saved unfathomable amounts of money. I don't feel the pull of eBay's maternity section at ALL this time round, which is great for our bank balance (which is rather unwell in any case). I feel good that even though I had a winter baby last time and this time I'll have a summer baby, I know I will still have plenty of things I can wear when I'm huge. I have lots of summer things.
Two days ago I noticed some changes. First of all, I am suddenly unable to do the button up on my jeans. But also first thing in the morning when I am lying on my back in bed, I can feel my womb RIGHT on the front of my belly, not poking up from my pelvis. I can cup Sprout's little shape in there with my whole hand! But I am still peeing more than usual - although not quite so much today now I think about it. And not noticably sporting a bump, so I don't know if my womb is actually officially up and out of my pelvis or not. But then I never got a sudden bump last time, so who knows. I am definitely showing a lil curvy belly thing low down! :) At 14 weeks I had another belly pic with Arthur so I'll do another one at 14 weeks this time too - that's only 3 days away, yay! It feels like ages since the last belly pic. After that it's ever other week. I keep looking at the ones from my last pregnancy and trying to see if I look like that now, but I don't know. My shape seems a little different this time, maybe because I have completely slack slackness where last time I had some nice un-stretched tautness! I just seemed to get progressively more gentle curve to the curvy bump last time, but this time I have a low pouch. Anyway, I will be able to compare better when I take the next pic.
I have lots of CM at the moment. And not a lot else to report. Can you believe that Sprout has now reached about 8cm from crown to rump (that's not even including the little leggies!) and weighs over 1oz?! When I think of it like that, I feel like, "Of COURSE I can feel the baby moving!" I can't imagine how an enormous thing like that in my fairly slim frame could not be obviously felt the moment it even twitched a limb! ;) It just seems so big when I look at my non-existant belly, to be hiding away in there!
Last night I was lifting Arthur in a never-lift-your-baby-this-way type of motion, up and then across me to put him on the bed next to me, and when I do this I tend to get sharp ligament pains, but THIS time I got a nasty pain in my pubic bone on my left side - same side as with all my SPD pain last pregnancy, and exactly as I remembered it, almost as though no time had passed since I last felt it. Ow. I knew it was likely to be at least as bad as last time, but I hoped it would wait for as long as possible before hurting again. I am slightly dreading the second half of pregnancy now. I already have so many problems with sleep at night, and soooo much more of a reason to get a good night's sleep, and last pregnancy the SPD kept me awake in pain for MANY nights. Or woke me every time I even flinched in bed. Urgh. I just hope it somehow won't be as bad as I am dreading it might be.
I have felt really breathless and exhausted today and yesterday. Mainly I am just sooooooooooooooooo tired with Arthur still waking so much at night. We are on stage 2 of our night weaning programme, but so far it means he is awake and protesting for longer than he would usually be, and thus less sleep for me than usual, so I am really really really tired out. I seem to be more exhausted pregnancy-wise than any point up till now, just when the books all insist your tiredness is fading away with the first trimester! Mind you, I seem to remember feeling absolutely exhausted last pregnancy till halfway through, and then I got a bit more energy.
I think I will start back on the prenatal vitamins though. I went a bit slack on those once the folic acid was no longer necessary for Sprout. Mine have iron in so just in case it's an iron thing, I should go back on them. But maybe they'll make the constipation worse? But then, it didn't get better when I stopped taking them, so probably not. I had great iron levels all last pregnancy though, despite feeling this wiped out and breathless.
Oooh, I have my first midwife appt this month!! It's not till the 20th though, but that's only 2.5 weeks away now! I know it won't be toooo exciting. Lots of questions and history-taking (which actually I DO find quite exciting, especially since I will have the history of my sweetie boy to talk about this time!), and lots of blood removed from my body. I'm really looking forward to meeting the midwife though! And telling her I'm having a homebirth. I hope she'll be the one I saw early on in my labour last time. She was sooooooo lovely. She did Arthur's guthrie test too.
IF we move, IF Neil gets this job he is applying for, I will be giving birth somewhere else. So I looked up the maternity services in the new town. It was so hard to find out a thing about it! Eventually I discovered that there was one hospital with a large consultant-led maternity unit (does not bode well!), and then after googling homebirth for ages I discovered that it is about the worst place in the entire country to have a homebirth. They were even in the news last year for suspending their homebirth service! After a huge to-do, they reinstated it, but grudgingly. Urgh. In the meantime, some fab midwife attended one anyway and got FIRED by the hospital trust!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh. These days, the homebirth rate is absolutely tiny, about the lowest in the UK, and not much support is given. Birth activists are recommending mothers to hire independent midwives if they want a homebirth, to help raise the profile of homebirths in the area. Of ALL the places to move before having my baby!!
On the other hand, the whole thing gave me a rising sense of rebellious determination, haha! This is my second pregnancy, I know my body and how to have a baby already. I have a lot of knowledge about and passion for homebirths and women's rights in childbirth. Oh boy, I really do feel my blood fizzling, as though I want to hurry up and MOVE there just so I can get all activist on them and become a Voice for homebirths and women's rights, hehe! It would be just my cup of tea ;) I am very stubborn and determined, especially when someone tells me I can't do something or have something the way I want it, and I know full-well that I have every right to. Ohhh yes. Itchy to go and take 'em on! But on the other hand. I don't think I'll feel like "taking 'em on" at 38 weeks pregnant, exhausted and hormonal and just wanting to be able to relax in my choice with people supporting me. I just hope that if we do move there before the birth, I won't have much trouble.
Neil said we could factor the cost of an independent midwife into the house move. That is a definite possiblity, and I love him for suggesting it! It would be ultra cool to have an independent midwife! They are just the BEST support for homebirths and all things natural during the birth. I would never have to convince anyone I didn't want a controlled third stage or internal examinations. Nevvver. I have some friends who are independent midwives - they are girls I trained with, and it's soooo strange to think that they are already in this awesome job (I wanted to be a community midwife and then an independent midwife) while I had to drop out and never even qualify. I don't ever feel bad about it, just in awe of them somehow. Like, that could have been me. And it's nice to think that I could ask one of them to attend MY birth! I know some of them really well, and knew straight away that I would be 100% thrilled to have them attend one of my births, when we were training together. So that's a possibility, maybe.
Well, that is about it. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow my baby boy has to go to the hospital and get plaster casts put on both his legs to correct his curvy feet :( I am dreading it. I just want to go to sleep and wake up in 2 weeks when he should be free of them again. I have no idea if they will make his nights worse, which would be pretty dreadful as well. I hope not! That should have been in my other diary but I am too tired to update it now. I'll update again soon though!
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