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2006-01-05 - 11.54pm��previous entry��next entry
18 weeks, 1 day - long update, belly pic and milestones!
Phew, an update at last! We're home from France but when we arrived home we found that the modem had died, so we haven't had internet access till this afternoon when a lovely lovely BT man LENT me his own personal modem because none of the ones in his van would work, and I guess we are going to have to buy a new one and give him back his one. Which, um, no money. So maybe not just yet. But hopefully we'll figure something out. Anyway, yay, here I am!
I am 18 weeks pregnant!!!!!! Wow. It just seems like this pregnancy is getting so far on already! 18 weeks feels like another mini milestone somehow. It's so close to half-way! Wow (again!).
I reeeeeally wanted to update twice since my last entry, but I couldn't because we were in France or travelling or tired out and so there just wasn't time. So I have things to remember to include in this entry and I just KNOW I'll forget one or two! Oh well.
First of all, thank you for the lovely messages!!! Thanks also for the comments on our name choices so far! I'm glad people seem to like them! And Mallory, I just love you! xx
Okay let me see.... I made notes, haha! I am so silly. But they help me remember :) I warn you though, it is a big list! ;)
First of all, Neil finally felt Sprout kick!!! Yay! It feels like it has taken AGES for that to happen because of how I have been feeling Sprout with my own hand for weeks now. Last pregnancy he got to feel pretty soon after I did, though Arthur was elusive with him at first! But this time I was 17 weeks and 6 days pregnant. It was our last night in France and we had just carried our sleeping baby boy from his "evening bed" above the kitchen where we spent the evening (eating!) with my parents (it's waaaay too far from our bedroom to hear him properly if he woke up) to our bed, and I settled down in the bed next to him. We were both all mushy over our beautiful little boy all sleeping and cute next to us, and then Neil got up to turn out the light, and Sprout started kicking me like crazy! I could feel clear kicks with my hand so I called (whispered!) Neil over to feel. He couldn't feel Sprout with the palm of his hand, so I took his fingers and pressed them right on the point where Sprout kept kicking me. And Sprout kicked him repeatedly! :) Those were some big kicks so Neil got to feel it really clearly, which was LOVELY!!! I am so glad he got to feel at last. It's later than with Arthur. I think Sprout kicked him four or five times before going quieter and then we went to bed. Of course I lay awake in the dark with the huge grin on my face and hand on my smallest one for a while :) I LOVE being pregnant. It's so amazing.
Okay I can cross "Neil felt Sprout" off my list, hehe! ;)
Talking of kicks, Sprout is getting STRONG in there lately!! While we were in France, for the first time I was able to be absolutely aware of Sprout's position for a few days. For three days running, all the kicks were down on my bladder and cervix for the first time this pregnancy. The first time I felt one of them, it was the strangest feeling. It was like a strong and not-too-comfy muscle twitch on the inside of my bladder, or rather where I pee from, only on the inside of me. The instant I felt it, it was like a FLOOD of memories from my pregnancy with Arthur. He was breech for several weeks between about 25 and 28 weeks (ish) and boy oh boy did some of those bladder/cervix kicks hurt! At least Sprout is much more tiny than he was, since it's so much earlier at the moment! But the sensation is exactly the same - of course it is, but it surprised me how completely FAMILIAR the feeling was all the same. Like suddenly it was only yesterday that I felt Arthur kick me in that place, even though before Sprout kicked me there, I had completely forgotten how it felt. Then suddenly it felt so familiar again. I love my little ones! :)
Sprout was very active in France. Verrry active. I am really able to discern completely quiet times (sleep) and very active times, but Sprout has a lot of active wakeful patches throughout the day and night. I love feeling the first kick after a few hours of quiet in there. I always feel so mushy, just like when Arthur has had a loooong nap (though rare!) so that I am actually missing him, and then he wakes and I just scoop him up and breathe him in and kiss him and tell him, "Hello my sweetie-pie! Mummy loves you!". I am beginning to notice the same phrases rolling off my tongue to Sprout as I feel him/her awaken and bumple me :) It's lovely.
The other day I noticed Sprout's position start to change, as I got a kick in the back of my bowel! How nice! Then today I was sitting at the computer, a few hours ago, and I got the hardest kick by far this pregnancy. It amazes me how hard a tiny 18 week old fetus can kick! I can't imagine not being able to feel movements at this stage, with how strong Sprout's kicks are, though I know it's still perfectly normal for the ladies in my due dates group who still haven't felt movement yet. This kick was a real hard kick-box-type blow directly out into my left hip, about an inch below the top of my hip level. It's the very first time that my teeny tiny baby has kicked me so hard that my body shifted on the seat!!!! Because it was sideways, it didn't make me feel winded but I kid you not, my butt actually shifted sideways! Sprout is a strong baby. I feel sexist even suggesting it, but does this mean he/she might be more likely to be a he? I know Jemma's baby boy has far stronger kicks than Jaya gave her, so I'm wondering....
On that note, I still have that huge boy vibe going, but the weird (nice) thing is that it's like it took no time at all to feel adjusted to the idea of having another little boy, and I'm so relieved because I am SO excited if it's true and Sprout IS a boy! I was worried because I had felt like I wanted a girl these last few weeks. I didn't want to be disappointed in any way if Sprout turned out to be a boy. But now I feel so much like he/she is a boy that it's like I already know, and it feels GREAT! I love that it's a win-win situation, because you know I would love it if Sprout was a girl, but also I am just so excited if Sprout is a boy too! I know I won't feel any disappointment either way, which is a relief.
Weirdly enough, at the end of our stay in France the idea entered my mind that Sprout could be a girl again, and for a moment I actually had a pang of disappointment as I had got so used to the idea of having another boy already! :) I now know that it would take me SECONDS to be thrilled about a gender that I wasn't expecting, either way, so I'm really happy about that.
The reason (well, two reasons) that I wondered about a girl again was just a little thing really. Last pregnancy Daddy was like, "Oh it's a boy" right from the start. Just like that. He never wavered through my whole pregnancy, till we found out for sure. This time, no matter what anybody says, he is sure it's a girl. That made me think, "Ooh I wonder if he's right again?!"
Then on New Year's Day some of my parents' French friends from the village turned up unexpectedly with food (it's a very normal occurrance where they live!) and spent the evening with us, and they were soooo sweet about Arthur and the new baby. My parents have some LOVELY friends in their village. They had a wrapped present for me with my name on! I was so surprised! It was a beautiful book which I have left downstairs and therefore can't remember the title of, but it translates something like, "Whispers to a baby who has just been born" or something like that. It's full of beautiful photographs of babies and bellies, and the most touching poetry from parent to baby that I have ever read. Ever. It made ALL of us get weepy reading it. It's so beautiful. Shame I have to be bent over a French-English dictionary for HOURS to get the most out of it! ;) But it's so beautiful. I never saw anything like it in English before.
Anyway right before they left, Maria suddenly seized me and insisted on doing that thing where you thread a needle (or wedding ring, depending on where you're from) and watch it swing to "predict" girl or boy (circles for girl, back and forth for boy). Personally I felt a bit weird about doing that, even though I know it was meant to be a bit of fun. I don't know. I just makes me think dodgy spiritual stuff to me! But I prayed a ton afterwards :) My family are not Christians and everyone was so excited to see what would happen, and well, they had all had plenty of wine and there was no disuading them by that time of the night really! So Maria did it.
It's weirdly uncanny. She did it on my mum first. It went in circles for her own gender (female), then for the first child it went in circles (me) and for the second, it went back and forth (my brother). After that it stopped dead (my mum only had two children). Weird. Then to prove that Maria wasn't doing it, she had my mum do it on her. Circles for Maria, then back and forth for her first child (her son), and then Mummy got freaked out and wouldn't do any more! She said she wasn't doing a THING to move it one way or the other and it weirded her out!
Maria did me, and it did circles for my own gender (nicely reassuring, haha!), then back and forth for Arthur, then clear as day - circles for Sprout!! A girl! Then she did the "third" child, and got circles again. Then it stopped. I was so excited at the idea (however fictional) of a boy and two little girls, but was completely bummed at two things - one was Arthur being my one and only little boy, and thus I have had my LAST baby boy already!! And two, I really want more than three children! But oh well. It's not exactly science, is it.
She did say afterwards though, that she had done it on her sister when her sister was pregnant and got boy, and her sister was so convinced that she went and bought all blue stuff for the baby (!!!) and lo and behold, it was a girl! ;) So yeah, not exactly science. But interestingly entertaining!
I got the doppler out the following evening (our last night) and we all listened to Sprout, whose heart beat seems deafeningly loud these days! I guess he/she is getting big in there now! The heartrate was 140, slower than Arthur's ever was. Which of course means "boy" if you believe the old wives' tale about heartrates, which I don't, especially since Arthur should be a girl according to his! Sprout's heartrate does seem to sit constantly in the 140s though, lower than Arthur's ever sat. I think his sat in the 150s, and was quick to go up to 180 even, when he was active. Sprout's doesn't shoot up that high, although it goes up when he/she is busy. We also heard a LOT of boomphs and swipes and splatches on the doppler as Sprout was kicking and wriggling a lot at the time I used the doppler! That was lovely to hear :)
My daddy asked if we had any girl names (they know the boy name, which is now definite) and so we all talked about girl names for a while, which was nice. My parents love our shortlist! Yay! But then they were super supportive about our name choices last pregnancy too. I LOVE my parents, they are always so encouraging about everything. My in-laws weren't that subtle about the fact that they didn't like our name choices last time. Pfthth. I love my parents for being so wonderful and supportive about anything and everything I have ever done :)
Soooo our girl shortlist now has four names (including a new one that occurred to me in France): Sophie, Maisie, Georgia and Bethany. Bethany is the new one. A name I have loved for YEARS is Bethia. It's so unusual and it has a beautiful Biblical meaning. Noooobody has that name. Absolutely no-one. But I don't think it rolls so nicely with Arthur or our surname as an "ee"-ending name. I used to LOVE the name Bethany but it got ridiculously popular so I went off it. It suddenly re-occurred to me out of the blue while we were in France, because it has become much less popular after being overly so for a while. The main group of Bethanys in this country are about 6-8 years old now, and I checked the 2005 list and found it down in the 40s!!! Plus I love the shortened versions, Beth and Bethie. It goes well with Arthur, the middle name Jane, and our surname. Neil nods in pensive head-on-one-side way when it is suggested, so it goes on the list, yay!! But I don't know if it's our top choice yet. I don't know WHAT our top choice is actually! But at least we have narrowed it down to four (for now, we may add more!) which will be good to go with to the scan.
Soooooooooooo many of my June due dates buddies are getting their scans already! Since Christmas it seems like there are half a dozen posts every DAY saying, "It's a....!!" I get so excited to see them because it fuels my excitement over my own upcoming scan! But also it makes me all the more impatient! But it's coming! Only 25 days to go!!!!! Wheee!
Apparently Sprout can now hear my voice!!!! It will be a while before he/she can hear sounds outside my body, but how amazing that my little one can hear my voice (and recognise it by now, apparently!). I love that thought.
Sprout is growing so big and baby-like (obviously, since he/she IS a baby, but you know what I mean!)! Sprout now measures just over 14cm from crown to rump (just over 5.5 inches) and with legs he/she is now NINE INCHES LONG!!! Curled up, but anyway! That's so big. Also he/she weighs about 190g or 6.7oz. Still soooo light! If Sprout is a girl, her womb and ovaries are fully formed, and the ovaries already contain all her egg cells for her own children! That just amazes me. But yeah, she's probably a boy. Which makes me laugh because I remember typing a similar comment in this diary when I was pregnant with Arthur - earlier on though. I was writing that at this stage, if the baby is a boy his testes are already producing testosterone. And then I wrote that he was probably a girl though, so that wasn't even relevant! ;) And of course he was a boy after all! I drive myself crazy. Have a little patience, woman!!! Tsk.
Sprout is developing vernix all over his/her skin at the moment, and still working on the lanugo (covering of fine downy hair). At 18 weeks with Arthur, I posted some amazing photos of an 18-week fetus from the book "A Child Is Born" by Lennart Nilsson. At the time it just amazed me sooooo much that he was already that "newborn" looking and well-developed. And big! I feel just as amazed this time. I won't post them again, but here is the link to that entry so you can see them again. They are so lovely.
I always check my entries from Arthur's pregnancy to compare where I am now with the same stage last pregnancy. I love that I can do that! That's why I always wanted to keep ALL my pregnancies journalled here. I love the easy-compare thing.
At 18 weeks things looked pretty similar to now, re. movements and appetite, sleep, etc. I was waking once a night to pee, and that's the same as now. I can't make it past about 3.30am without having to pee, but that's all I need for the night which is a VAST improvement on five times a night a month or two ago! I wrote at 18 weeks with Arthur that I could no longer get comfy in bed without some support for my bump. Funnily enough I was just thinking the same thing this last week. While I was in France I suddenly found that I could no longer sleep on my tummy, and now it's way harder to get cosy and comfy for sleep at night. My bump feels a little "pulled on" when I lie on my side, like it's heavy but not big enough to rest itself on the bed from that position, so I'm glad I read my old entries from Arthur's pregnancy, because they have reminded me that I have my little wedge-shaped pillow that worked wonders for side-lying until my bump got too big for it. Also I have my maternity body-length pillows, but I don't know that I need those just yet. Also they do not go too well with co-sleeping! But I still spend some of the night in the (extremely comfy!) spare bed, so I could use them there if I needed to. I would use my wedge pillow tonight if it wasn't buried somewhere in the big cupboard next to where Arthur is sleeping. I'll try to remember to dig it out tomorrow.
Also last pregnancy at 18 weeks, Arthur was head down and would kick me aplenty just below my belly button! I wrote that I had a new experience where he left his tiny foot sticking out instead of pulling it back in one time when he kicked, and Neil and I were able to feel it and stroke it and be mushy over it. The bulge of it sticking out was only about a cm squared. So cute. I can't WAIT for that experience with Sprout! I can't believe I already had it this early with Arthur! I remember last pregnancy, every new stage felt so far on in pregnancy, and this time it feels so early in the pregnancy still. I guess it's a whole different perspective once you have seen pregnancy right the way through and come out the other side. Going through it again you feel more like you're part way through a road already travelled, a journey you already know. The first time it's like an unending road that is being carved out afresh each day, and it lasts a long time somehow, and always feels like it will be forever before the next milestone or even the next week! This time it's whizzing by.
Well, let's see. This is LONG and it's so late that I am beginning to feel dizzy, but I have nearly everything checked off my list and I'm just glad to be posting EVERYTHING rather than having stuff hanging over to another entry again!
What else can I update about before I go to bed? My appetite is good - not overly enormous, but hearty for sure. I have switched back to semi-skimmed milk now that I'm gaining weight. Funny how thin and watery that seems after you're used to whole milk! But I love my milk at the moment so that's fine :) I also love chocolate right now, and anything savoury as well. I just LOVED the French bread, and ate and ate and ate as much as I could! I love salad with dressing (but not as a craving like last time with Arthur - though that didn't become an actual craving till maybe 19 weeks or so), and tomatoey things like lasagne - oohhh my mouth is watering and yet my stomach still aches from the HUGE portion of chicken pie, new potatoes and veg I already ate this evening, hehe! I wanted savoury things more than I wanted sweet things in France, even when sweet things were offered after a meal. Sometimes I just wanted more savoury things instead. Old wives would say that's boy-ish. I also just want loads of CARBS!!! I could eat bread and potatoes for ever sometimes!
I feel very nesty lately. I keep wanting to clean, which if you know me, is VERY unusual, haha! When we got home from Neil's family after Christmas, I cleaned the bathroom like crazy, and the floor, and even added a new coat of floor coating!! The kitchen is making me positively itchy. I am longing to work on it from the floor up and just make it clean clean clean and tidy. Like I NEVER want to, normally.
Also today I became consumed with a passion for cleaning the indoor porch. I sorted shoes and coats and everything that clutters it up, and cleaned SO much junk out of it. I vacuumed the floor despite poor Arthur's wails of tearful terror while I did it, and then the two of us got wet cloths and cleaned the walls and skirting boards! Arthur loves to help clean things so we had a blast! I organised the things hanging up and put a lot of stuff away, and THEN I tackled the inner porch door that never got finished - there is no latch in the door frame yet so it doesn't shut properly. I got hammer and chisel and made the hole for that latch! Now we have a clean and tidy porch, and the inner door shuts and even locks (go me!) and Arthur can't get out there so I don't have to keep fetching him back when he goes there all the time! Yay! I feel sooooooooooo nesty. I can't explain it. I guess it's hormone-related! It's fun though :)
One thing I am LONGING to do these days is sew. Sew sew sew. I am so desperate to sew nappies for Sprout. I am going to make myself wait till I know if Sprout is a girl or a boy, because I have some seriously cute girlie fabrics, and I would still want to make more nappies if Sprout is a boy, even though he would have Arthur's nappies too. Some of Arthur's nappies are no longer new-feeling, and I want super-soft luxurious unused nappies for Sprout's tiny new tushie! If Sprout is a girl, I will still keep Arthur's nappies since I definitely plan on having more children after this (please be okay with this Neil! ;) ).
But I long to sewwwwwwwwwwwww. I also want to sew Arthur some more cover-all bibs. The shop ones are crap (I have discovered). I sew a seriously fab cover-all bib :) But he only has one. Why am I writing this here?! My poor poor other diary is so neglected, and it only makes it worse when I write "other diary" stuff here! Tsk. I WILL get it updated very soon. Okay, anything else pregnancy related? I am getting nervous about that stupid noggin in my nose (see last pregnancy for details). I know it's been surgically removed and I have as low a chance as any pregnant person (extremely low in the first place!) of getting it back again. But it was around this stage last pregnancy that I got my first big nosebleed from it, and I SWEAR I can see a new growth in there at the site of the "old" noggin. Urrrgh. I hope it doesn't come back. That was by far my peskiest pregnancy issue last time. And I do NOT want surgery on the inside of my nose at 37 weeks pregnant again!
IBS is bothering me hugely at the moment. In France I had another big old double-up with unmanageable pain episode for a few hours, and then the inevitable dash to the loo. Bleurgh. The night we came home (two nights later) I had it again. I was asleep and dreaming that I was in labour, having really painful contractions and feeling nauseous, and I woke up to find it was 3.30am and the contractions were actually horrible bowel cramps + some nice nausea thrown in, which had me shaking and freaking out with a bowl for fear of having some lurgy that would make me throw up (huge fear about that, remember?). But no, it was just my darn IBS again. I don't feel great in my tummy today so I hope it won't happen again. It happens more at night. I know it happened a lot in the first half of my pregnancy with Arthur, and less in the second half. I hope it eases up soon.
Okay I MUST go to bed!!!!! Oh but my 18 week belly pic is in the gallery, yay!!! Another belly pic already!! Next one will be at 20 weeks. I have changed shape for sure since the last one, but I don't stick out too much more than last time, it's more that my bump is growing upwards and out to the sides. Well, outwards too, but less quickly in that direction at the moment. It's still quite a little bump but I like that people are noticing it now :) When I hugged my mummy in France (we always hug close, tummy to tummy), she got all mushy and said, "I can feel Sprout against my tummy!" Aw :) Sprout is beginning to get "in the way" (though I couldn't love that fact more!) of things more this last week - like when I lean against the sink while I'm brushing my teeth, Sprout sticks out far enough in there so that my bump rests against the sink, not my hips anymore. If I am sitting with my legs at 90 degrees to my torso and I try to cross my legs, my top thigh feels restricted by my bump. I love all this!!! :)
Today the BT man said, "Last time I was here you were pregnant!" (looking at Arthur in my arms) and I said, "I am again, actually!" :) It was such a proud moment somehow. I don't even know why but I do feel somehow proud that I'm pregnant again when I have such a young child. I can't figure out why, but the feeling is there. I can't wait to show more obviously so that people see me with my little toddly boy and an obvious baby on the way! I love that they are going to be close in age, I feel so proud of it for some crazy reason! How I LOVE my situation! I love being pregnant again. I am so blessed. Thank you Lord for my two little ones!
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