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2005-10-01 - 10.48pm��previous entry��next entry
4 weeks, 3 days pregnant :)
Thank you for all the reassuring notes and messages about my spotting!! :) Also thanks for the understanding messages about the age-gap thing!
Another (hopefully) quickie entry, as I have to get to bed. I'm soooooooooooooooooo tired out today! It's weird how exhausted I am. Well, normal, but weird. I have been very dizzy today, on and off, for most of the day. Ugh. It's hard because I simply can't do anything with Arthur when I feel like that. I feel utterly exhausted at the same time and just have to lie down or the room gets spinny and I feel weaker and weaker. I am seeing the doctor on Monday so I'll mention that. I hope it isn't going to be a "normal" pregnancy symptom for me. I just can't do that one. Arthur needs me to do things with him during the day when it's just us. I am hoping it's just being totally tired out - Arthur's sleep is very disturbed at night at the moment as he's cutting his 6th tooth, so I'm up nursing him more at the moment. Also I have been highly stupid and gone to bed waaay too late for the last few nights. I need to stop doing that! Tsk. Of course here I am at 10.22pm just starting a diary entry. It's internet stuff that keeps me up, getting things done like my diary or checking replies to my posts at FF or other boards. Lately I have asked about my spotting and crampiness at a few places and I'm getting very reassuring replies which helps.
Anyway, for the above reason I am STILL pretty useless on those emails. I really do plan to reply, so sorry if you're still waiting! I got a few messages replied to tonight so that's a start :)
Today I am 17DPO, and 4 weeks and 3 days pregnant! So pretty much 4 and a half weeks - yay! 18DPO is a milestone, because it's the official "if you haven't got your period by now you're almost certainly pregnant" cutoff. Unless you have an unusual medical condition you are basically pregnant if you reach 18 days past ovulation without getting your period. Which I KNOW I am already, but I still like to reach the milestones for added reassurance! ;)
Sooo for this reason, tomorrow (18DPO) will be the last day that I chart and temp. I am so sad about that! I love charting, and I'll miss temping every morning. I feel like I barely got to do that since having Arthur! That's such an awful thing to say because how blessed are we to get pregnant again so quickly?! I feel so great about it because we tried for 9 cycles before Arthur, and gave it everything we had, and got fertility testing started and everything. Now here we are, just like that, and not even with a great chance this cycle! Thank you Lord! We are really so blessed. I do find a little thrill in "the chase" of trying to conceive without success at first. I know it was hard when we were trying for Arthur, but in some ways I remember feeling like we could really OWN the success when it finally happened, after everything we went through to get there. This time there isn't that hard-earned success. Of course the "fun" of TTC wears off pretty fast, when you really want to have a baby and it's not happening. But for a while, a part of me loved the chase! I LOVED charting. I will miss that part! But I'm so thankful and so happy to be pregnant. I know it is a blessing that I should never take for granted, and I hope I never will.
My spotting is still there, but hardly at all now. This is day 3 of spotting. Really there has been so little that I don't think there is anything to worry about. I have crampiness more to one side (my left, the side I know I ovulated from), so that in conjunction with the spotting worries me slightly still. But I am trying to think of the following:
1) Cramping is normal early in pregnancy.
2) So is spotting.
3) I ovulated from my left ovary (same as last pregnancy) and last time at the 5w6d scan, I had an ENORMOUS corpus luteal cyst where I had ovulated from. The corpus luteum is an essential part of early pregnancy. When you ovulate, the follicle that the egg came from forms into a corpus luteum ("yellow body") which produces progesterone. This degenerates after its natural life-span of about 14 days (give or take a few), thus bringing about a drop in progesterone and therefore the start of another period. Progesterone prevents a period starting. If pregnancy occurs, the pregnancy hormones tell the corpus luteum to continue producing progesterone and thus preventing a period. The corpus luteum will produce progesterone until the placenta is mature enough to take over production and sustain the pregnancy by itself. Wow, all that was off the top of my head, hehe! I just love pregnancy facts and trivia :) Sooo anyway, corpus luteal cysts are common in pregnancy. Mine was huge last time. If I have the same thing this time, I guess that could be a reason for cramping. I think it was 5.5cm last time, much bigger than the pregnancy at the time!!!
4)I am hugely constipated, which is normal in pregnancy. I think that could well be a reason for crampy discomfort low down. Also possibly spotting.
Last night I read that pregnant women who are also breastfeeding an older baby or toddler need much more rest and fluids than pregnant women who aren't nursing. Yikes! I didn't think about that much before. It makes sense though. The combination of the two is more exhausting and dehydrating, more energy consuming for my body than if I wasn't breastfeeding. Fluid-and-nutrient wise, Sprout will get first dibs on everything, and next in line is my milk for Arthur. Then I get the scraps left over, hehe! I know I haven't been drinking enough fluids for even a non-pregnant, non-breastfeeding woman! So maybe that's why I am dizzy, knackered and constipated? I have also noticed that I haven't had the frequent urination that is usual this early in pregnancy, so far. The book said pregnant nursing mothers need up to 800 more calories a day (!!!!) and 250mls (4oz??) of fluids per hour that they are awake!!!! Yikes!
So today I have taken that seriously, and starting at 9am, I have had a 250ml glass of water every hour on the hour. Well, except I got a couple of hours behind in the afternoon! But the end result is I have had 12 glasses of water, or 6 pints, or 3 litres!!! Plus a glass of chocolate milk :) So I am doing well. I am also peeing waaaaaay more :)
I am snacking a lot during the day, but I don't feel that great about food really. Today I had some cherry tomatoes and interestingly, I felt gaggy when swallowing them. With my first chemical pregnancy, that was one of my most obvious symptoms. Tomatoes made me feel horribly gaggy, and I just couldn't eat them at all. Last cycle, with the 2nd chemical pregnancy, tomato soup was very weird and unpalatable. I didn't have any tomato problems with my pregnancy with Arthur, in fact I craved them a lot. I would eat a tin of chopped tomatoes heated up like hot chocolate in a mug! Or add them to every cottage cheese sandwich I ate, when I had them like four times a day. And my biggest craving with Arthur was for tomatoes and vinegraitte salad dressing. I had to eat them around the clock, sometimes even at 6am if I woke up then. So it's very "opposite". I used to wonder if the chemical pregnancy would have been a girl since it was so different to Arthur's pregnancy, though I know every pregnancy is different and there's little point thinking about things like that anyway. So I wonder....
I have napped a couple of times today. Thank goodness it's the weekend! I am a little worried about when it's not weekend anymore, and Neil is back at work. He is going to be less available in general from now, because he has started his masters degree again - final year, urgh! Today he took Arthur out for an hour or two and I had a 2 hour nap, phew! And I slept an extra hour or two this morning after they got up. Despite that, I have been so exhausted all day, and had to lie on the sofa a lot while Neil watched Arthur. What am I going to do when it's just me and Arthur?!! Arthur likes a lot of interaction and attention when he's doing things, and he gets bored in the house after a while, but I have no idea how I'm going to fix that if I feel like I do now. On Friday he was bored and cranky and teething, and I desperately wanted to take him out, but I felt too tired out to walk, and too dizzy to feel safe driving, so we had to stay in. It was a lonnnng day! I hope it improves, or maybe the doctor will find out I'm anaemic and treat it and I'll feel better again? Although that's not likely since I am taking my prenatal vitamins with iron.
Okay I am tired and dizzy and my bed is calling me. I hope Arthur sleeps well tonight! I think he will have his new toothie in a few days. I'm sure I meant to write other stuff, but I can't think of anything now, my brain is pulpy. Sleep time.
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