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2006-01-16 - 3.36pm��previous entry��next entry
19 weeks, 5 days - immune system, still nesting, and other stuff
Nearly halfway there!! Or maybe I am already?! Two days till the halfway point, but right now I am halfway to being 39 weeks and 4 days. I wonder when this baby will be born? Arthur was 4 days past his due date (well, would have been 3 if he hadn't turned at the last minute!) so that's pretty much on time. It's one of those things I just CAN'T know! It's exciting :) I can not believe this pregnancy is already halfway through. It's too weird.
The other night I was lying awake with my hand on Sprout, feeling him/her kick (vigorously!) and I suddenly thought I have one and a half whole pregnancies behind me, in the past, as memories. Yikes. Alllllll my life I seemed to be waiting and waiting and waiting to experience pregnancy and get to have babies and all that, and SUDDENLY (and it really does feel like I have blinked!) I have done one and a half pregnancies! If I was having two children like nearly ALL the families around here, I would be a few months off being completely done with pregnancy and childbirth. The very thought fills me with gloom and horror, so I feel sure that I really am (as I always thought!) meant to have lots of children. I just soooo hope Neil doesn't mind that idea. I can't just "make" him have more children, but I would be so sad if he said no more. Not that he's saying no more! But anyway. And then if we have three children I would only have one pregnancy ahead of me. That's all that would be left!!! Even that feels kind of sad to me. Inside, I feel like I am still just at the beginning of child bearing. I hope I am not setting myself up for disappointment if we are not meant to have a large family! I ADORE being pregnant and giving birth and having little ones. Well, of course I have only given birth once and had ONE baby around to look after so far! My mum insists that I will change my mind after two, but then she is different to me. I always knew I would not feel like she did, and she can't FATHOM having two children under two years old.
Well, everything is fine here! There are exactly two weeks to go until my scan!!!!!!!!! Yay! I can't can't can't WAIT!!! I am now in the relatively small group of ladies in my due dates group who has not had the scan and found out the baby's sex. Which feels weird since I'm due weeks before some of them, since I'm due at the beginning of June! But it's coming! One or two don't have scans till February, and mine is January 30th. My friend Katie at church who is due 2 days after me, is having a late scan, in February. She wanted to make sure she got a date that her husband could make it to. I am so glad Neil's work is very accommodating about appointments and such. I wouldn't want him to miss the scan! Arthur will be there too of course :) He's too young to know what is going on though, really.
Sprout is kicking much more "largely" these days. Not so much harder as just with bigger feet, hehe! Or at least, that's how it feels. Two nights ago I was lying in bed and Sprout was kicking and bumpling, so I lay there with my hand on my belly, and for the first time this pregnancy I felt kicks that REALLY reminded me of the sensation of Arthur's kicks in the second half of pregnancy. They are no longer just pops and short sharp kicks - well, I still get those, but now I am also starting to feel "sweeping" kicks. Like a kick that makes my tummy bulge out with the little foot there, but it doesn't just snatch back, it stays sticking out and then sweeps across my tummy before going back in. I LOVE those, because for a brief moment I get to feel my little one's foot under my hand, moving across me, rather than just a split-second appearance and then gone again. Sprout's foot feels soooo little! Not much more than an inch long. It's so cute :)
Arthur was climbing on me a few days ago on the sofa, and he put his knee right on my belly and pressed down to climb up. My belly is getting increasingly intolerant of that kind of action from Arthur! It just feels tender if he puts any pressure on it, and has a general feeling of not wanting to be touched at all with any pressure. Sometimes I just want to shove him off me, the feeling is so strong! But I guess that's just my body protecting my Sprouty One.
Anyway I moved him off me and said not to climb, and to be gentle, etc, but literally a couple of seconds after he did it, Sprout woke up (had been totally still for 2 hours till that point!) and kicked me like he/she had fifteen limbs!!! I got kicked in the cervix, bladder, and all over my belly, about 10 kicks in as many seconds! Poor Sprout! But I know he/she is well protected in there. I guess he/she didn't like being kneeled on too much! Neil and I were joking that it was their first little sibling tiff, and then all of a sudden Neil got worried that it might not bode well for their relationship! ;) I hope they get on well. I have a younger brother (by 2 years and 10 months) and we had the most difficult and turbulent relationship of any brother-and-sister pair I have ever known I think. We fought all the time, and the jealousy was all on my part so my poor little brother got the brunt of my insecurity and I got all the horrible twisted-up-inside feelings throughout my childhood. I do feel sorry for little ones who get picked on by an older jealous sibling, but I will always have a heart for the older sibling too, as I know it's a horrible feeling to be jealous and unhappy like that. I love my brother dearly and we get on great now, but it took for him to leave home to go to Univerity for us to really start getting on. I sooooo don't want that for my children. I don't think there is a lot you can do, as it is often down to the children's personalities and stuff. But I hope to give Arthur a head start by tandem nursing so that he isn't left out of the breastfeeding relationship he sees me having with the new baby, and by staying very attached to him in all the ways we have been doing so far. I think/hope that the very Attachment Parenting methods we have used in our parenting of him so far have helped him be a much more secure child in any case - we have SO many people commenting on how secure and happy he seems - so that should help him too. I know from my experience that it is all about the sense of security of your parents' love that seems to be the issue. We will TRY so hard to make sure our children are secure and attached and never wondering which of them might be loved more than the other, etc.
But other than that we just have to wait and see. He is likely to feel some sort of displacement I guess, but we'll try to minimise it!
My bump is getting bigger! I mean, obviously! But it is. It is really out in front now and it's getting harder to hold Arthur on my hip, as my hips are ceasing to exist and his leg/knee over my bump isn't too comfy now that it's getting bigger. Also he is heavy and my hips are starting to hurt a little when I hold him there. So I should try not to as much, but I won't stop holding him completely unless my pelvic pain gets toooo bad. I feel generally more achy and stuff around my bump area, and my back aches a bit more too. I have been getting some discomfort and achiness in my solar plexus too and just under my ribs, which is to do with the uterus growing upwards and shoving other things up which put pressure on the ribs and diaphragm. But I love it, even though that's crazy of me! I just love that it's because I'm pregnant :) I am getting a lot more ligament pains up the sides of my belly, right up from hip to rib sometimes, when I get up awkwardly or something. They hurt a lot more than they used to, but I think that is just because they feel like a bigger area of ligament is complaining than before.
I got so worried this week, because you remember I said I found unpasteurised Brie and ate it (all of it in the end!) with glee?! Well then I came across a page at Babycentre.co.uk that said ANY soft, mould-ripened cheeses should be avoided during pregnancy, not just the unpasteurised ones, as it's the mould-ripening that gives a risk of listeria (which can make me ill and harm the baby)!!! Yikes! I had no idea. All this time I have thought it was specifically to do with the pasteurisation. So I was worried. Listeria symptoms don't show up till several weeks after exposure so I will just have to wait. But then it is fairly rare to get it, even so. And then I realised that I had the same misconception last pregnancy and therefore ate my way through quite a bit of soft mould-ripened cheese (Brie and Caprice des Dieux and stuff) that I thought would be fine because it was pasteurised! And I didn't get listeria and Arthur was fine. So I'm trying to relax about that. But I won't eat any more this pregnancy! I will look forward to munching my way through some gorgeous French soft cheeses after I have Sprout instead :)
I found out that the seats on the Mamas and Papas Twin Aria are only 9.5-10 inches across!! Wow, that really IS narrow! Fine for Sprout when he/she is little, but I don't think Arthur would comfortably fit in that (if he fits in it at ALL!) even now. So that puts that pushchair off the list, sadly. Which leaves the Nipper. I need to drive to the nearest place where I know it is stocked and see one for myself and put Arthur in it, etc. But I'm not 100% convinced that I'll love it. And it's expensive, urgh. I would have to hope to find a cheap one on eBay. Which isn't too likely as they are extremely popular. We did briefly consider the Jane Powertwin this weekend, which is a tandem (one seat behind the other) and I have seen a lot of rave reviews for it. But in the end I checked out the weight of it, and it's 14.8kg, which is a little heavier than Arthur's current pushchair (ie, WAY too heavy for me), so that's off the list too.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions in my guestbook, on the pushchair front! I have never heard of the Mirage Comfifolder one - will have to google and find out about it! I did consider the Maclaren Twin Traveller, and one of my friends at church who has a newborn and a two year old has got one, so I've seen one up close (with little ones in it!) but I looked up the weight and it's 14.7kg. I think that's perfectly manageable for lots of mums, but I just can't seem to manage hoiking that kind of weight in and out of the car boot, so it has to be a lighter one. I have seen lots of the Phil and Ted's E3s about town, and it is lighter than most tandems, and got great reviews, but we took it off our list earlier because I am not that crazy about the look of it (the little one being sort of underneath the older child) and also one reviewer found that their baby outgrew the bottom deck before they could sit unaided. That would definitely have been the case for Arthur as he was such a chunky monkey from even a tiny baby! If Sprout is a boy then I should probably expect the same, so that wouldn't do for us. It is expensive too, but probably not much more than the Nipper I guess. It's totally going to be necessary to buy second-hand!
I haven't even started thinking about other things we will need to get together for Sprout, which feels weird because of how I was WELL underway with planning and accumulating baby stuff with Arthur by now! But then that's probably because Sprout is a second baby and so we pretty much have everything. Except the double buggy and another car seat. We are DEFINITELY getting another Concord Ultimax car seat for Sprout. Arthur has one, and it is by far the best car seat I have ever come across. It won best something or other last year at a major baby show, and since Arthur was fast outgrowing his little baby "bucket" seat, and the Britax First Class 0+ seat we got him was so CRAP (and involved in my bump in the car!), we bought one. Oh my gosh, it is sooooooo fab!!! I love all the groovy colour choices, and it's so open (no high boxy sides) and wide and soft and comfy for him. He can see WAY more out of the window than from the Britax. It is birth to four years (there is a newborn insert) so we immediately knew that this would be the car seat he would use till the next stage of car seat became necessary, and that we would buy them again for future children. They are fab! So we'll get one of those for Sprout, but not till we know his/her gender! There are so many colourways and designs to choose from so I'll wait till we know more about our baby before buying him/her the appropriate car seat! Arthur has one in Active Blue which I now can't find anywhere except one on eBay. But there are loads of others so I'm sure I'll still have plenty to choose from!
I think my bump is a different shape to last time. I am carrying exactly the same so far, very low and all on the front, but I expected as much really, since I think I am just built to carry babies like that with my long torso. But the difference is the slacker muscles from the last pregnancy I think. I know that by 18 weeks last pregnancy I absolutely needed to use a little wedge pillow under my bump in bed at night when I lay on my side. Otherwise the weight of the baby felt like it was pulling my muscles and my bump wasn't big enough yet to rest on the mattress fully. This time I have got the wedge pillow out just because it's "time", but I don't need it at all. I have tried using it sometimes, but actually it just gets in the way! The difference seems to be that my bump is more "slack" (sounds so flattering!) and thus it rests itself on the mattress without overly pulling on my muscles. It isn't uncomfy at all. I think it will be when it gets a lot bigger, but for now it is fine. I am starting to want to put my top leg on something though, as my pelvis is getting a little less comfy in bed. My bump is definitely a touch bigger than nearly 20 weeks last time though, so it's not the size that is making the difference.
The only major difference I am noticing with this pregnancy so far (apart from morning sickness clearing up at 13 weeks instead of 18 - hooray!) is my immune system. Last pregnancy I just picked up EVERYTHING I came into contact with. I seemed totally run down, and I knew it was pregnancy related because I read that it's very common to catch everything going when you're pregnant, because your immune response lowers in order to protect your little growing baby from being rejected in any way.
So last time in the first trimester I had two AWFUL colds - both knocked me sideways and I was really ill for 2 weeks - in bed for one of those each time. I had a cold sore in the first trimester too, and a couple of mild UTIs around this stage. I wasn't even going out much to catch anything! One time I literally went to the shop and caught a cold, ugh! I even had a yucky virusy thing in July at 26 weeks! And a nasal infection.
THIS time is soooo different. I mean, I know it could still change I could start getting things, but it still wouldn't change the fact that the first half of this pregnancy has been incomparable to the last one, as far as my immune system goes.
So far this pregnancy I have had no UTIs, no colds, no cold sores, nothing! I feel like I have been constantly waiting to catch absolutely anything and everything, but I started to realise things were different to last time when Neil had a cold and I didn't get it. Then I was around a little one who had a snotty cold and I didn't get it. Then Arthur had a cold over New Year and we still kissed and shared drinks and food and cutlery and everything, and I didn't catch it! Amazing! So I can see that something is just really different to last time. I reeeally hope it continues as it's still cold/bug/flu season for a while yet, and Arthur and I will be going to more mother-and-toddler groups this winter/spring, thus more chance of catching things.
Today I have been updating during Arthur's naps, which thankfully have been a little longer, more like 45 minutes than 30, so it has given me a little more time to update than otherwise. I am still sooooooooo weirdly nesty. Today I have cleaned the kitchen floor!!!!!!!! Now, if you know me, you'll know this has not been done for over six months (yeurgh - except we do sweep it when it gets really out of hand!), and you can't even GET to the floor with the amount of stuff all over it (laundry, paint pots, buckets, etc, yuck!)!! So it's a big deal for me to have done it - it MUST be nesting, there's nothing else that would motivate me to do it, hehe! ;) So during this afternoon nap I have finally mopped the floor with disinfectant, wall-to-wall!! I spent the afternoon clearing the floor (with Arthur's help). I am so excited about cleaning! I couldn't sleep last night until I'd figured out how to do it!
Okay Arthur is up from his nap and trying to escape from this room, which has a door with no latch put on it yet (another nesty task for mama!), so I have to stop now. I'll update again for 20 weeks!! :)
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