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2004-10-03 - 8.46pm��previous entry��next entry
35 weeks, 2 days - so tiiiiired, and extra belly pic!
So tired. We did go to church this morning though, which was great! :) I had such a great time singing praise to God during the worship time. It�s the closest I�ve felt to God for a while, and I don�t know why it�s been so long, but it was great. I had the energy to sing my heart out for a couple of songs before I had no air and needed to sit down, and that was nice. People prayed for my stupid noggin to go away, which I soooo appreciated. The stoopid thing is growing like crazy all of a sudden. It also hurts a lot now, which the ENT people say isn�t possible as polyps don�t have nerves. Well, this one HAS nerves! Lots. Ow. So we�ll see what they say on Wednesday when I go back to see them.
The last few evenings I have been soooo breathless. Breathlessness is definitely my most troublesome pregnancy symptom these days. I am breathless most of the time, but it�s awful by the evening. I just can�t get enough air into my lungs and the combination of that and the blocked nose gives me a really claustrophobic feeling. It�s horrid because I can�t catch my breath even by lying down and resting. I have to arch my back and tip my head back for a while, and talking just gets me gasping for air in no time, it�s so annoying! I hate feeling out of breath, especially when I can�t seem to do anything to catch it. I am continuing to pray that God will protect me from colds and flu since it�s the season for those things now, and I don�t want to avoid going to church, etc. There were so many people with colds at church this morning � some of them were really streaming. I know my immune system has been pretty naff this pregnancy so I really need protection against colds and things now. Firstly it would suck BIG time to have a virus of any sort when I am this huge and tired and pregnant, but my main worry is the fact that I have a huge blockage in my nose! I really don�t need a snotty cold at the same time.
I don�t seem to need to do anything with my time in order to become completely exhausted these days. It gets hard to push my weight up the stairs (!) and I sometimes just feel woozy with tiredness. Today I haven�t been up to anything since church. I ate lunch but then I got so tired out that I went to bed and listened to a story tape, and since I got up I have just flopped on the sofa and not done much really. I like story tapes, they are so cosy. I used to listen to them a lot when I was little, especially if I wasn�t feeling well, so they feel cosy to me. Plus they keep me awake even if I�m in bed feeling sleepy, and I need to stay awake in the day otherwise I have the crappiest sleep at night.
Oooh talking of nights, I am starting to notice I�m waking in what looks like a pattern lately! At first I didn�t pay much attention to the times I was waking, because I presumed I was just waking to pee. But then I realised that I don�t always need to pee when I wake up, and after four nights in a row I realised that it was pretty much the same time each night when I looked at the clock. If I have fallen asleep before midnight (which I don�t always), I will wake at midnight, give or take 15 minutes. Usually I really need to pee. Then I will go back to sleep, and wake on the DOT of 3am. Sometimes it�s 5 minutes to 3am or 5 minutes past. Last night it was 15 minutes before 3 though. I do get up to pee when I wake at 3am, but I don�t always wake feeling like I need to. I find it hard to get back to sleep after the 3am-wake. It usually takes me 30-60 minutes to get back to sleep. Then I wake at 6am, give or take 20 minutes, and that�s getting harder to fall back to sleep from too. I don�t always need to pee when I wake then, but I go anyway. If I manage to sleep again, and nothing wakes me sooner, I will wake up at 9am, give or take 10 minutes usually. I always need to pee. And since it�s 9am I usually get up for the day unless I�m just groggy and pooped. But I�m usually kind of weirdly alert at those times when I wake in the night. It only recently occurred to me that they are all exactly 3 hours apart. Weird. I am starting to wonder if those are the times that Arthur is going to wake and feed? I wonder if he�s already waking and being active at those times, and maybe that�s why I�m waking then too, and finding it so hard to go back to sleep again. If I wake say at 4.30am because I need to pee, I�m groggy and half-awake and I fall asleep again immediately. So it�s something different about the midnight, 3am, 6am and 9am wakings. Hmmm. He IS usually active when I wake at those times. The 3am one is the most busy and alert for both of us, and he often gets the hiccups around that time too. So I think I�m gonna be busy at 3am till Christmas at least!! :) It might all change though, when he has more specific needs for food. He might feed more frequently than every 3 hours, so the timings might change.
I still keep wanting to post a photo of something in my diary, so tonight Neil took another belly picture, and it�s in the belly gallery. There�s only 5 days till the next belly picture is due, but oh well. I�m putting it in there as a 35 week belly pic! :) It looks the same as the last one really, so there�s no point in it being there. But I�m wearing my Tigger maternity nightie and I love that nightie, so I like the picture! :)
We are trying to get things ready for Arthur�s arrival at a slightly more frantic pace now! It suddenly feels like there is very little time left. I forgot that we wanted (needed!) to get everything ready by the time I reached full-term, not the due date! And that�s in less than 2 weeks!!!!!!! Yikes. So we have this huge list of things and um, not many of them are ticked off. This weekend we have been and picked out a new kitchen floor (cheap vinyl, all we can afford � plus easy to care for!), and someone is coming to fit it for us next Saturday!!! Yay! So we have to move all the stuff out of the kitchen on Friday and take up the old floor (fun, fun), but it will be sooooo worth it. I can�t wait to have a new, hygienic (!) kitchen floor!! Ours is soooo scummy. I am getting more distracted by it all the time. I keep thinking how Arthur will be crawling on it before I know it, and I want a nice floor for him to crawl on, one that I can keep clean easily too. So that was a good thing ticked off the list! We have also started to clear the clutter in our living room. That�s where I�ll be giving birth (unless I change my mind at the last minute!), so it needs clearing. We will also have to move either the armchair or one of the sofas, out of the room (not sure where to though!), as it will be too cramped in there otherwise, with midwives and me and Arthur and Neil and my mum, and a birth pool!! Which incidentally we�re not going to order till I reach term. Just because the midwife says I can�t have a baby at home if I go into labour before 37 weeks. So we�ll wait till then and order it. It should arrive within 3 days so that�s fine (I hope!). We still have to figure out how to drain it and where though. Our outdoor drains are bricked over, and I don�t fancy emptying birth water into the kitchen sink! And the toilet is upstairs (thus defying gravity!) so hmmm. But I might ask my midwife. She didn�t seem to know anything about that before though, so we�ll see.
I have quite a few things on this week!! Okay not loads, but it�s a lot for me! Tomorrow (Monday), someone is finally coming to tow away the old car that has been sitting on our driveway for 2 years!! Yay! We need the driveway space because we are now officially a 2-car family. We definitely don�t need 2 cars, and we absolutely cannot afford to run 2 cars, but Ford have completely diddled our dumplings and despite seeking legal advice, they are getting all pushy and lawyery with us and saying we don�t have a case against them. We desperately don�t need the stress of taking them to court (and potentially losing), so we are going to have to own 2 cars, now that we are apparently tied into both financial contracts for the next year or so. No idea how we�ll manage that financially but somehow we don�t have a choice. Which I can�t really believe. But apparently it�s true. Pfththth. We�re trying to just get on with it and put it out of our minds, as it has been stressing us both out a lot over the last few days, and there�s nothing more we can do about it. We�re still going through Fair Trade organisations to make the relevant formal complaints, and we are going to find a different dealership for our car services and things, so we don�t have to deal with the sucky people who sold us the car in the first place. But that�s it. We have to keep both cars. Which seems ridiculous, but there we go. So yeah, tomorrow we are having the old car towed � yay! And Sue (from church) might be coming round in the afternoon to pray with me :)
Tuesday my pregnant school friend is coming round, if she isn�t otherwise occupied giving birth (!!) � she is due on Friday! Tuesday evening is a prayer and worship evening at church, and I really want to go to that, but I have a strong feeling I�ll be breathless and exhausted so we probably won�t make it to the meeting. Wednesday I am going to the ENT specialist again at Big London Hospital. Thursday Judith (from church) is coming round to pray with me! :) I love it when people pray with/for me!! :) And Friday I have my first appointment with the midwife where she is coming here to my house!!! I�m looking forward to that! Another reason why we really need to get the house looking GOOD, and not cluttered, dusty and unhygienic!! Plus I am 36 weeks pregnant on Friday, which is soooo cool!! Saturday the floor is being fitted, so Friday evening will be busy getting the kitchen cleared. Though probably more so for Neil than me, since I know I am not up to anything useful by the evenings now :( And then Sunday we have a church lunch after the service. Those are always fun! So that should keep me busy! I don�t want a cold this week thank you! I want to enjoy my week.
At church today, I noticed everyone is looking at me and commenting on things differently now. I waddle through the door and people look at me all sympathetically and say, �Oh you look more tired every week! How are you coping?� or some people say, �You still with us?!� or they look at my bump with wide eyes and say, �Not long to go now then!� I also notice people are just looking at me a lot. If I waddle across the room (no point saying �walk� anymore, since I never do that these days, hehe!), people�s eyes follow me, even if they are busy chatting to someone else at the same time. A hugely pregnant woman just seems to draw the eye somehow! But I like it. A lot :) I even love having to waddle because it�s so pregnant of me!! :) Also I am wondering if people are starting to regard me as some sort of ticking time bomb these days, now that I�m getting close to term. During the service today, Arthur suddenly kicked me really sharply and suddenly in a tender place up near my ribs, just a quick flash of pain, and I reacted instinctively by whipping my hand to the spot and making a sudden gasp. The lady next to me flinched noticeably, she was instantly eyeing me up nervously and leaning away from me in her chair slightly, as if she was expecting my waters to break all over her at any second or something! I found that quite amusing :) Of course she relaxed when I didn�t bear down noisily and no baby appeared! ;)
Arthur is practising his breathing SUCH a lot these days. We can watch his little back rise and fall against my belly, so that my belly rocks gently where his back is. He is getting quite good at keeping a consistent rhythm, although sometimes the rhythm is all over the place!! The last few days we are noticing that his breathing rate and pattern is very similar to that of a sleeping newborn, when he is practising. He often breathes for several minutes at a time now, whereas he used to just seem to take a few breaths in any old rhythm and at varying speeds, and then stop for a moment and take a few more, and so on. He doesn�t practise it all the time, but I would say half the times that we look at my belly he is breathing, which I think is pretty good going! We do look at my belly a lot though! :) It�s so cute to watch. We always stroke and pat him after we�ve watched him practising his breathing for a while, and tell him he�s such a clever boy! I know he loves to swallow the amniotic fluid as well, because he was doing that at both the 22 week scan AND the 13 week scan, so I�m sure he is swallowing a lot. Maybe the fact that he likes to practise breathing and he loves to swallow are the reasons he gets hiccups so much? I�m sure there are times when he�s trying to do both at the same time, bless him! No wonder he gets hiccups if he does that! He�s such a sweetie.
Okay well this entry is getting long and I can�t think what else to write for now, so I�ll stop. I�ll update again soon though! I still have a ton of emails that I still haven�t managed to reply to, so please bear with me (yet again!) if that�s you. I�m sooo thirsty these days. My mouth is parched all night long and kind of stuck together (nice!) by the morning, even if I take sips of water when I wake in the night, and I am easily dried out during the day, so I am just trying to drink plenty at the moment. My appetite is definitely on the way down, but my thirst is going up big time. So I am going to get a drink! And that is all for now.
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