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2005-10-09 - 8.29pm��previous entry��next entry
5 weeks, 4 days pregnant
Sprout continues to do amazing things! I am now 5 weeks, 4 days pregnant, or 25 days past ovulation, and at this stage, Sprout has 20 pairs of somites already!!! (see last entry for what those are). The entire neural tube is now closed, although yesterday it was still open at the forebrain. Today it's all zipped shut! Sprout is beginning to curve over into that "embryo" shape now too. The heart is beating away nicely, in fact I even have stats for the average heartrate at this exact gestation!! At 5w4d the average heartrate is 110 beats per minute and also today is the first day there are stats for an average crown-to-rump length (CRL)!!! Sprout (tsk, I wrote BEAN again!!!) measures approximately 2mm long. Other embryology sites say that at this stage, he/she should measure at least 3mm, but I went by this CRL chart last pregnancy and it was exactly in line with Arthur's lengths and exact gestations at his early scans, so I think that will be the more accurate one to go with.
Sprout has indents where his/her eyes are going to be, and the beginnings of ears too! Peristalsis has begun, and blood vessels are knitting together in the nervous system.
Another incredibly amazing thing will happen tomorrow! Upper limb buds will appear!! Isn't that incredible?! Already!!! Between weeks 4 and 8 of pregnancy, all the major body organs will be formed. Over the next couple of days, the cells that will become the digestive system are about to differentiate into the future locations of the liver, lungs, stomach and pancreas. The liver gets started first though. It's just so amazingly detailed and FAST, this development! It makes me feel less silly for being so tired despite doing nothing at all, when I think about the furious development taking place inside me, and fuelled by my body!
My milk seemed to be getting less abundant a few days ago. I wasn't leaking anymore and although Arthur was still gulping and gasping when I felt the milk let-down, it didn't seem to last as long. He started nursing CONSTANTLY, and was unusually whiney and clingy. He just wanted the breast all the time. He even cried when I put him in his highchair for lunch, and clawed at my clothing like he was trying to tell me he wanted to nurse instead of eat solid food, poor baby! So I figured my milk was making some changes at last. I had hoped I would have plenty of milk for a while yet.
Anyway, so I have just been giving Arthur the breast any time he asks for it, which has been constantly sometimes. Sometimes I just leave them out (obviously when we're on our own in the house, of course! ;)) for him to nurse any time he wants to stop playing and have a quick snack. He seems a lot calmer when he can see they are there for the taking, hehe!
Well, today my milk seems to have bounced back! I have plenty. I am leaking a little more than before, and Arthur gulps for longer and seems gaggy-full after both breasts. I sort of worried that if my milk was recovering then what might that mean about the pregnancy? But it might just be because of the enormously increased nursing lately, increasing my milk supply. I'm glad of it anyway, for Arthur's sake. I was also able to pump him a couple of oz last night for his breakfast cereal :) I have never really done pumping so I don't know how efficient my breasts would be at it anyway, but I'm glad I got to give him some on cereal for his breakfast! My breasts seem unusually sore today though, really stabby and achy. I guess this is pregnancy stuff starting up. So far it isn't making it any more painful to nurse, but we'll see if that stays the same!
I am wondering if I might be spotting ever so lightly again. When the spotting stopped, I had nothing of any colour to report, but now I have some light staining which I think might be slight spotting. I am also ultra crampy today, and yesterday. It is on and off so I'm sure it's fine and just due to the womb stretching and tugging on ligaments, etc, but something in me is nervous. Tomorrow is the exact gestation I was with Arthur when I started bleeding heavily :( I am crazy nervous about tomorrow for that reason, even though that's silly because this is a whole different pregnancy. My doctor said if I had any further spotting or cramps that bothered me, etc, to go back to her, so I think maybe I might make an appt tomorrow, just for peace of mind. Not because I think there is something wrong. I just feel uneasy somewhere and if advice or reassurance is available then I'd gladly take some. We'll see.
Another thing I'm slightly nervous about - well, not NERVOUS as such, just apprehensive maybe? - is that I was 5w6d pregnant when morning sickness hit me (specifically from about 7pm onwards, and that was it all day every day until 18 weeks!). That is the day after tomorrow, in this pregnancy. Of course, again, it's a totally different pregnancy, but I am apprehensive about the date approaching all the same. I have been feeling yucky and sort of motion-queasy and off my food for a week or so now, but it's pretty mild and I'm not sure I should be naive enough to think this is IT and I'm getting off this lightly! This time last pregnancy I felt FINE with absolutely no trace of morning sickness, and then a few days down the line it was a whole different story, so I am not counting my chickens... I hope to make it to 6 weeks at least before feeling dreadful. Of course there is always the chance that I WON'T feel dreadful, and that what I'm currently experiencing really IS all the morning sickness I'm going to get. But I don't want to believe that till a few more weeks down the line! Or a couple of days, if that's when it hits me again. Urgh.
Of course the main way to cope with morning sickness is to eat and eat and eat. Little bits, very frequently. So I'm already doing that, even when I feel gross and don't want to eat, I just do it anyway. Hopefully by doing that, I will manage any morning sickness I have from the start, better than I did last time. And lose less weight.
Oh we got new batteries for our scales! Yay! I weigh 8st 5lbs (sorry if you're having to whip out a calculator! ;)). Now we'll see how far up I go this time!
I am soooooo tired these days. Not just ohhh I so need an early night tired, but shaky weak gotta-sit-down-or-I'll-fall-over tired. My body feels so weak and knackered all the time, and I'm not even doing anything. Except of course building a baby and its life support system! ;) Which is pretty cool of me!
A couple of nights ago, I had a headache by the end of the day with Arthur, and we put him to bed at 7.30. My head hurt so much by then that after I nursed him (almost) to sleep, I had to lie down in the spare bedroom with the lights off, and I was asleep by 8pm. Neil woke me at 9pm to ask what I wanted to eat for dinner, but I just couldn't face dinner, my head still hurt, and I just wanted to sleep. So I slept till Arthur woke at 11-something, and then nursed him and tried to eat cereal but my stomach said NO WAY after the first two half-hearted spoonfuls, so I brushed my teeth and went back to bed for the night. I still felt cream crackered in the morning!
I took a break just now to nurse Arthur and then eat dinner, and now I can't think what else I was planning to write! Oh but I'm almost halfway through my first trimester - I go by the "developmental" definition as it's the one that makes the most sense to me. It classes the end of the first trimester/start of the second at 12 weeks. I like that better than 13.3 weeks which you get with the "gestational" method by simply dividing the 40 weeks into 3 (where's the fun in that?!) or the really wacky "conception" method, whereby you take 38 weeks (from conception), divide by 3 and add 2 weeks! Wha???!! Obviously developmental is THE best definition! ;) Because it goes by what is happening with the pregnancy, and the developmental stages of baby and placenta. That seems to me to be the only sane way to define parts of a pregnancy. Plus it's the most commonly used one by doctors, etc. Plus it means I get to the second trimester faster, hehe! ;) I like that! Anyway, so that makes me halfway there at 6 weeks pregnant, which I'm nearly at. Yay! Of course they can be like the hardest 6 weeks of pregnancy, but oh well, I'm trying not to think of that part!
You know what? I realised something after I wrote about the baby's gender last entry. I said so far I don't have any leanings towards preferring a girl or a boy. Since I said that, it has been playing on my mind. I still feel that I would totally love to have a girl or a boy, and don't mind which one it is, but last night I realised that deep deeeeeeep down there is the slightest of tiny weeny yearnings to have another boy. That surprised me because I always wanted a daughter. I wanted a little boy first (though I didn't even realise it till we found out Arthur was a boy), and then I thought I don't mind whether my other children are boys or girls, but I hope I have a daughter in there somewhere. I did know that if I had all my children the same sex I think I would rather a bunch of boys than a gaggle of girls! ;) I love girls, and if I only had boys I would mourn the daughter I never had, but I think I would have felt it that little bit more if I never had a boy. But that's irrelevant anyway because I HAVE my gorgeous boy now!! :) So I figured that next time I have a baby it would be nice to have a girl. That makes me quite surprised to discover that actually I sort of hope it's another boy. I love boys! I want to be able to say, "My boys!" with pride! I want Arthur to have a brother close to his age. I feel weirdly fond of the idea of another little boy growing inside me. Not quite so much with the idea of a girl. Is that terrible of me? I don't even understand why though, and until I searched and searched my own thoughts and feelings, I didn't even know I had that inkling of a preference.
But Sprout is soooooo likely to be a girl. I still would LOVE it if Sprout IS a girl! But I am going to try to think of Sprout as a girl as much as I can, and think of all the girlie clothes shopping I get to do, and all the girlie nappies I get to sew!! I have some really cute girlie clothes already from when I thought Arthur was a girl (poor Arthur, hehe!). Also I will try to think more of girl names than boy names, and imagine having a little girl called ____ (whatever we choose to call her!). I think that will help me feel ultra eager to have a girl. Don't get me wrong, I totally would LOVE it if this baby was a girl. I am happy either way. I just wanted to see if I had any leaning towards one or the other, however slight, and I discovered a "boy" leaning, to my surprise! I sometimes do find myself thinking of "my boys" and imagining this baby when he/she comes with the boys name we have chosen (one of two anyway), and it makes me feel soooo warm and fuzzy, and then I feel a touch wistful when I think it's probably a girl.
This sounds awful of me. I will stop writing about it. It's not even like it's hardly there at all - it's the slightest of feelings. And WHEN we find out at the ultrasound that Sprout is a girl, I will be over the moon, and hopefully ready with a name, and my credit card, haha! ;)
Okay, that was weird waffle to end the entry, but I can't think of anything else pregnant to write now, and I need to update my other diary because Arthur is 11 months old today!! And I have a bazillion photos that must be posted before any more time passes! But I'll update here again soon :)
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