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2005-09-28 - 10.18pm��previous entry��next entry
4 weeks pregnant!! Yay!
Thank you so much for the honest messages after my last entry! I feel better for reading them all, but also I feel better because I am still pregnant :) I am 4 weeks pregnant today, so 1/10 of my whole pregnancy is behind me already, hehe! I feel better having reached 4 weeks, even though that is still hardly any time to be pregnant at all yet. But it means my period is officially late, by anyone's calculations, since I am now 14DPO and have never had a LP longer than this before.
Also I started to re-read my diary entries from when I was pregnant with Arthur. I started right after ovulation when he was conceived, and read all my symptoms. I remember being crampy, but maybe my memory has faded, because my diary entries say I felt "really really crampy. Reeeeally crampy"!! So that is reassuring. I also didn't remember how much I felt nervous during the early days in that pregnancy too, and worried that it would all go wrong. Look what I found in an entry I wrote at - surprisingly! - exactly 4 weeks pregnant with Arthur!...
"I want to be able to have some contraption that can take a snapshot of my womb or my bean and give me an accurate reading of whether it is going to stick or not, so that I can stop worrying all the time. Every day I feel like, well I am pregnant today, but who knows if I will be tomorrow? And then the next day I get a positive test and my temp is up, so I think, well I'm pregnant again today, but who knows if I will be tomorrow? And so on. It's not nice. I just want to feel secure in this pregnancy so I can start to relax and enjoy it. I have just seen too many scary stories online, and people are always saying about miscarriages, it makes it seem like a high probability."
That is so how I have been feeling, so it's really nice to be reminded that I felt that way before, and it was completely unfounded because Arthur is here and he's fine and healthy! :) Yay! So that made me feel lots better.
But also, I took my last pregnancy test this morning and was relieved to get a darker test line - phew! I took a photo of all four of my cheapie tests together so you can see. It's a bit of a crap photo, the light was bad so I took a flash, which made the tests have a glare on them, and the whole thing looks a tad blurry, but oh well! You can see the pink lines getting stronger gradually.
The one at the top was 10DPO, then 11DPO, 12DPO, and finally today - 14DPO:
So all in all, I feel much better about everything today!
I joined the June due dates forum at Fertility Friend, yay! I was pretty active on the November due date forum there when I was expecting Arthur, so it's fun and exciting to be back there again! So far everyone there has due dates for the first week of June, like me. Everyone is so excited! There are a LOT of us. Like 50 at least, and there's still the whole rest of June to come yet! I know that a few of us will miscarry yet. I hope it's not me. I feel sad that statistically it will happen to some of us, even though right now we're all excited and planning for a new baby :( i remember it happened at the November group too. I will stop thinking like that now. But it makes me feel so sad for whoever it will happen to :(
I also finally moved from the TTC forum to the pregnancy forum at two of my parenting sites online! Yaaay! That is so much fun :) I feel giddy with excitement that I'm really legitimately posting in those pregnancy groups!! It doesn't feel real, it's too exciting to be real! :D
I have been pretty crampy again today, but I think less than other days so far. I am not really peeing much yet though. I have been needing to eat more frequently as usual, but feeling a bit gross where food is concerned. I can eat it when it's there though, and I don't feel sick as such, so I don't think it's morning sickness. Neil had a different dinner to me this evening, to use up something in the fridge. His was full of garlic. Ugh. I can't BEAR the smell now that I'm pregnant. I don't remember having any problem with the smell of garlic when I was pregnant with Arthur. I couldn't bear the smell of coffee then, and although I can smell it a mile off now, I don't actually MIND the smell. But garlic, blarghhhh! Take it awayyyy from me! Boy am I glad Neil is in with Arthur at the moment and I am in the spare room! I know I could not sleep near him while he smells of garlic at the moment. Ew.
Today my new bean is 0.2mm long! Well, this is for 13DPO actually. I don't even think that's really visible to the naked eye! According to online embryology doo-dahs, implantation is now complete, and a rudimentary placenta is already begun. At the moment, the start of the placenta is making more vascular connections with me, and has anchored itself firmly to the womb. The yolk sac has begun development, and is already beginning to make blood cells for the baby before it can make its own with its body. The amniotic cavity is filling with fluid, and the baby is a disc-shaped mass of a million cells, attached to the placental area by a new stalk (which will become the umbilical cord)! The baby is currently just beginning the process of gastrulation, which is where the embryo forms its cells into three distinct layers (the clever inside-out flip thingy!). Each layer will become specific different body parts. It's all just soooo amazing! I can't believe it's actually happening inside me right now! Wow.
I don't know what to call my new baby. Last time, right from the start, I called the baby "Bean". It just felt natural. It was as personal as a real name, and it was actually hard to think of switching to "Arthur" once we found out that Bean was a boy. This time I want an equally attached name. I keep referring to the baby as my new bean, because bean seems the obvious word for the little one as he/she is right now. Like last time, I suppose. But Arthur was Bean, I feel like that was HIS name. I feel like I should know this new baby by a new name, for the first half of pregnancy till we can switch to a real person's name!
But nothing else springs to mind. I have a few ideas but none of them feel natural. Except I did wonder about Sprout. It doesn't have such a complimentary sound as "Bean" though! ;) But the other day I read somewhere that blastocyst (which is what the baby was at that time) means "sprout pouch" and for some reason that funny little definition tickled me and made me think, "Ohh I've got a little sprout pouch!" Hehe! But a small part of me feels nervous to attach a fond name to my little bean, in case I still lose him or her.
I thought about referring to this baby as another bean but I wanted something different from last time, to make it really clear in my mind that it's another, new, different baby! I just think Arthur totally WAS "Bean", so this baby can't be. Maybe this baby can be Sprout? It is not flattering, somehow, which puts me off slightly!
Anyway. I told my mummy that she could tell her sister about my pregnancy today, since she and my uncle are visiting my parents in France at the moment. She said she was waiting to see if I would mind, before telling her. So I said fine. She told me she thinks her sister will be shocked! I think that is a reaction I will get quite a lot really. I think it's to do with still having a baby under the age of one and announcing another pregnancy. Maybe it'll be better as Arthur gets older? He isn't one till November so that doesn't even feel round the corner yet.
It's a weird thing to realise that this time last year I was pregnant! And not just about still pregnant, right before giving birth, but with plenty of weeks still to go! How amazing that I am pregnant again before my body has had a full year to recover! I don't think it is a problem though, physically. I read once that women are at their most fertile within the first year after birth. I don't know how true that actually rings, but for me it's right on the money! But I would never have believed it this time last year if you told me I would be pregnant this time next year as well! I think that accounts for some of the surprise (okay, shock, in some cases!) that people are showing as we tell them. It is a smallish gap, but we are happy with it :) I know there will be things about it that make life difficult sometimes, but I know I wouldn't swap it for anything else when it comes to it. My children (oh my gosh, I wrote "My BOYS"!!! Where did THAT come from?!!) will be close in age and be wonderful playmates for each other. They will have such a gift growing up together, as a result. I really like that!
Okay I think I will stop for now. It's late and my eyes feel boggly. And I need some water. I am soooo thirsty this last week!! Oh, my nipples are sore today. Arthur is teething big time though, and I know it's normal to get sore nipples when babies are teething (if you breastfeed, of course, hehe!) because their saliva contains raised levels of digestive enzymes. Therefore, owch! My nipples are being partially digested!! ;) My breasts are a bit sore today, but not too bad. I didn't have a problem with sore breasts early on last pregnancy, not at this stage anyway. It was a pregnancy symptom for me because I always always, without fail, got really painful breasts before a period. Anyway they are okay at the moment.
Nursing is still going okay. I am nervous that my milk will suddenly be all gone or something, at any moment! Silly. But it will go, eventually. Maybe even soon. I don't want it to! But it has to, for everything to get ready for the new little one who needs colostrum when he/she arrives. I feel like it will be fun to nurse a tiny baby again. But it feels like I have never stopped so it's just like I'll carry on as normal. I am excited about breastfeeding another baby, and more so about two together, if it does work out that way, but nothing will change for me to start breastfeeding when the new baby arrives. I am already doing it! And about as frequently as a newborn too, given Arthur's frequent waking! I am still not nursing him in the middle of the night, and he is really starting to pick up the slack during the day now, which I am really happy about. I nurse him very frequently in the day now, whenever he asks for it, and after meals, and at naptimes, bedtime and first thing in the morning. And evening :) Lots. So the only difference will be that the person attached to my breast will be very tiny! And the other person will remain the same :) I hope!
Okay, definitely going now! Back soon though. Emails will have to wait again, urgh. Sorry, again!
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