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2005-11-23 - 1.54pm��previous entry��next entry
12 weeks pregnant!!! Second trimester - hooray!!!
Yay yay yay!!!! Lots of happiness today! :) I am 12 weeks pregnant! I am officially out of my first trimester and into my second, hooray!!! I can't BELIEVE how fast that first trimester went! I know the rest of this pregnancy is going to slip by all too fast, if that's how quick the hardest part went! Last pregnancy the first trimester DRAGGED by, and then it sped up once I was feeling better and more exciting things were happening with the pregnancy. I am almost a little anxious about it starting to go too fast. I want time to savour and cherish it while it's here. I love being pregnant soooo much! :)
I was excited to get rid of two now-outdated blinkies!! The "1st trimester" one and the sticky vibes one. My little one is definitely sticking by now, and I replaced the 1st trimester one with another that says I'm in my 2nd trimester! :)
Sooooo that's the main thing - I am 12 weeks and in my 2nd trimester, and in the "safe" zone at last! Hooray! Sprout is 5.4cm long from crown to rump - can you believe it?!! Getting so big for a tiny one! :) Sprout's heartbeat is staying pretty fast compared with Arthur's at this stage. I think Arthur's was down in the 160s or low 170s by now, but Sprout was 184 last time I checked! But active, so maybe that was why. Lots of pops and splatches on the doppler and he/she moved away sooo many times, I had to keep following with the doppler!
There are only TWO DAYS TO GO till my scan!!!!!!!!!!! I am getting so excited about seeing Sprout again! I can't help wondering if we'll see any tiny bit of evidence to suggest whether Sprout is a boy or a girl, since we did with Arthur at this stage. Sprout's genitals are now clearly discernable as male or female, now that I am 12 weeks. If it was a 3D scan or a transvaginal scan we would be able to find out the sex for sure this week, but obviously it's just a 2D scan. I read that it depends a lot on how modern the equipment is, and the thickness of the abdominal wall. If they still have the same equipment as last time even, I know it was good enough to see Arthur's bits at this early stage. And my abdominal wall is as thin as they come. Probably thinner this time, since I am already feeling Sprout move. Sooo I know I shouldn't think about it, but I can't help myself! I just want to see either absence or presence of "something". I don't mind not really being able to know. I hope they say yes when I ask them to zoom in.
I also want them to zoom in on Sprout's feet. I know it's probably too early, and the next scan will be the one to ask at, but I want to see if Sprout has curly feet like Arthur. It's such a strong gene in Neil's family, it seems, and it's pretty likely that Sprout will have the feet issues that Arthur has had, and need to have plaster casts, etc. I hate that stupid gene! We could see that Arthur's feet looked a little curly at the 22 week scan but thought nothing of it. The sonographer DID keep wanting to re-check his feet though, but she said it was all fine in the end. Tsk. So this time I'LL be checking for myself when I have my scans! I'll just ask them to zoom in for me so I can look. I hope they'll oblige on the bits though.
I have been thinking about our chances of having a boy or a girl. There are bazillions of online tests and old wives tales which I am not going to bother with. Even the chinese gender chart predicted girl last time, haha! But I know the 4-days-before-ovulation thing is much more likely to result in a girl. BUT, I read something the other day. It said that men with high sperm counts are far more likely to father boys than girls, regardless of likelihood with timing. A high sperm count will contain many more boy sperm than girl ones, and the only way to get the odds better for a girl would be to make sure the man had let those spermies out frequently leading up to conception time, so as to reduce the overall sperm count and thus the number of male sperm. Sooo Neil had a sperm count done when we were TTC Arthur. Obviously it can change so it might not be the same now, but at the time, his sperm count was 96 million per ml. I read that the average is now as low as 20-30 million. I know that fertility clinics are very pleased if a sperm donor has a count of 60 million, it is seen as an excellent count. Neil has a STONKING sperm count, not just high. Also those boys were sitting there a while this time! And we only had parsnips the once this whole cycle, and I am pretty sure Neil had had no extracurricular activity! ;) So that gives us a WAAAY higher chance of having a boy than a girl. But it would be a pretty strong boy to last 4 days until my egg rolled along (male sperm generally live 2-3 days in an optimum environment, and females up to 5 days)! On the other hand, it would be one tough girlie to elbow all those boys out of the way (okay, whip with tail) and make it to the egg first! So I just have no idea. But it was interesting to read about the sperm count factor. Maybe Sprout really is a boy after all? I am itching to find out already!
Althooough, now I think about it, we had frequent parsnips leading up to Arthur's conception, so hmmm, that should have made a girl more likely back then, shouldn't it? Oh, no, because of the fact that we had parsnips up to and including the day of ovulation. Oh anyway! Sprout is either a girl or a boy, and I want to know whiiiiiiiich!! :)
Other happy news is that the whole Kerri's diary thing is sorted out. I emailed her with some harsh words and a 24-hour deadline, and she replied within an hour with a one line apology and no explanation, just saying she never meant to hurt me, and she'll never do it again, etc. She assured me she removed all my images from forums she was using in another email 5 minutes later, and that she had deleted her diary permanently. I checked the diary and sure enough, it was down. At the same time, I got the nicest email from someone high up at pregnancy.org, saying that she had seen the evidence I gave her, and my diary, and was saving it all to her computer in case it became necessary to prove it later on - yay! She said she could officially verify that I was telling the truth about my identity. I know it is CRAZY of me, since there was obviously no question, but reading that made my shoulders feel light and my eyes fill up. It was just SUCH a relief to hear someone with authority say, yes, I believe you and I'm going to fix it for you. She banned Kerri from the site and removed all evidence of her posts and profile there. She notified Yahoo and Geocites for me, and saved everything for future reference, offering me copies of anything if I want them. SUCH a relief!
So I'm happy about that. I emailed Kerri back just to say thank you for the action she took in deleting everything, and for apologising. I told her I accepted her apology. I know she has done me wrong but I suddenly felt sorry for her and wondered if I had been too harsh in my email. I didn't say anything mean though, just no messing.
AND I have put that code in place at my diaries, and now you can't right click on my diary and access my photos or codes or whatnot :) I thought about watermarking my photos but it's such a faff and I don't know if I even have the stuff to do that (or the time), and I feel much better now I have the no-right-click thing going. I discovered I can't put the code here on my diary for people to see, because it is html and would go all funny in my diary entry. But you can email me (or Jemma, she gave it to me) and I'll send it to you as a text attachment so you can just copy and paste it into your template.
Thank you all so much for your support and advice over this horrid time dealing with the whole thing. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It has been yucky and I really needed some online hugs! :)
So, let's see.... I am queasy today and I was a little queasy yesterday too, sometimes a lot. It's generally not as bad though, and I am eating normal meals without any trouble, which I absolutely could NOT do when I was properly morning sick. Last night we had spaghetti bolognese with garlic in the sauce and I ate the whole lot with no difficulty or queasiness! :) Yay! I do think it will be better from now, even if it doesn't entirely go for some weeks yet. I am happy with that though.
Today I did some baking!! And yesterday some cooking. It's sooooo much more manageable when I am not feeling horribly sick all the time.
I am kind of achy and crampy in my pelvis at the moment, and low in my tummy. I am also peeing like CRAZY. Sometimes at night or in the evenings, I go for a pee, go and nurse Arthur, and need to go back and pee right afterwards - literally 5 minutes after I last went! I am peeing a lot more in the day too. It just feels like my bladder has noooo room any more. My womb needs to pop out and give it some relief! I can't remember when that happened last time, 14 weeks or so, maybe? I don't know if it will be the same this time.
I think I may have the start of my first craving!! Of course it might not be a real craving as such, just an increased interest in a certain food for now, and it has only been 2 days so it might be gone tomorrow and never really have turned into a proper craving. But I just have to have fried mushrooms at the moment. I had them yesterday and the day before with my baked potato for lunch, and my mouth is watering thinking about them now! Not greasy fried - just a tiny drop of sunflower oil in the pan. But they have to be fried, no other form will do! I have actually been thinking about them at night and stuff for a few days, before I started actually eating them. I never had a thing for mushrooms last time. Cheese on toast with sliced tomatos on top (grilled) is pretty darn good too at the moment. In fact, food in general is really beginning to thrill me! I love this about pregnancy :) I was such a picky eater before my pregnancy with Arthur, and never knew how bland food tasted to me until my taste buds EXPLODED during my first pregnancy! I don't think they dulled back down afterwards either. Yay for pregnancy! :)
Okay, mushrooms are calling me and I have a little while before Arthur will be awake again, so I am going to fry some right now! :)
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