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2007-08-01 - 8.45pm��previous entry��next entry
12 weeks, 2 days - celeriac!
Thanks so much for the LOVELY messages!! :) Annie and L - *hugs* to you both, you guys did not upset me :)
I feel really sick tonight so I am not intending to be on the laptop for long. Plus I have Dominos Pizza reheating in the oven! Somewhat contradictory, but that's the way it is these days! ;) So I will TRY to write a brief-ish update tonight.
Celeriac. That weird, not-very-common, white root vegetable. Grated, raw. With some sort of vinegraitte-y mayo dressing. Two nights ago, I really wanted it! And an hour before that, I was minding my own business and SUDDENLY my mouth was flooded with the strongest flavour of roast parsnips. As strong as if I had a mouthful of it! Then I really wanted some. Of course we had neither. *sigh* But after the yearning for celeriac, I thought it a bit odd to have two such specific cravings so close together, when I really haven't been having any major cravings yet (unless you count Orangina and Starbursts - which were BLISS for a short while and then just a source of tummy aches after that!). So anyway, I looked up parsnips and celeriac online, to see if they had something in common which might be what my body is actually asking for. They are both high in potassium and some other good stuff, but interestingly, both were VERY high in manganese. So I figured it must be that! How weird! There is some manganese in my prenatal vitamin, but maybe I just needed more or something?
Anyway. I phoned Granny and told her about the celeriac. I asked her if she could keep an eye out for it in the supermarket, because I've had it at their house before, so I know she knows it. It's apparently not that easy to find, and it's also a bit out of season at the moment (as are parsnips, tsk!). Anyway, she phoned this morning to say she had found celeriac and was coming over! Bless her heart. The boys are STILL snotty but definitely just at the end of their clear-out now. I hope she won't catch anything from them. She didn't kiss them or anything, and washed her hands, so hopefully not.
Anyway, she brought a little tub of celeriac, grated and dressed by Grandoug that very morning! What lovely grandparents! She then took Arthur for a walk and I immediately dug into the tub with a fork, standing in the open door of the fridge, haha! I have been back to it several times today. It's SO good. But it's not EXACTLY as my craving wants it to be. Where my parents live, in France, their supermarket sells tubs of ready-grated and dressed celeriac. We have it a lot when we're over there, with a salad/baguette/cheese type lunch, and it's soooo good. It's exactly THAT celeriac that I want. I can't figure out what's different about it, from the homemade version, but something is. Anyway, the homemade version is doing me just fine right now! But I long to get over to France and eat my way through a few dozen tubs of celeriac, hehe!
Talking of which. The earliest we can actually go to France is the end of August, pfthth. Matthew and Neil don't have valid passports. I have a scan and a midwife appt in the way, and then my parents go away for a short while. After all that, it will be August 22nd at the earliest. We might go then, and we'll be sorting the passports out asap so that it is an option, but we aren't really thinking that far ahead just yet. I could be in a whooooole different place by then, with my pregnancy. I will be going on 16 weeks, which could make a lot of difference.
Today I am 12 weeks and 2 days! I forgot to say last entry, but there are only FIVE days till my nuchal scan!!! I am so excited!!!! I am sort of hoping to see improvement with the position of my placenta, but not really expecting that yet. It's only 2 weeks after the last scan, and I'm still so early on. I should think it will have moved significantly by the 21 week scan though.
I hope everything will be well with the tiny beany person. I am not feeling so many blips and flicks at the moment, or so often as I was, but then I am getting busier and more active again, and that makes it harder to notice this early on.
Yesterday - oh, I am SO proud of myself for yesterday!! And today, for that matter :) I think that the negative-ish comments here upset me much more than I realised (along with some stuff that Neil had said of the same type), because I really was feeling so depressed and unhappy and unconfident in myself. I think THAT was a result of hormones blowing things out of proportion for me, but that's kind of why you only say POSITIVE things to a pregnant hormonal person! ;) Negative things can feel catastrophic, even when they're not nearly as bad as all that. But anyway. Then, like I said last entry, I talked to my mum for over an hour on the phone, and she constantly reminded me of things that refuelled my confidence in myself (re. mothering and stuff). She said that yes, I did struggle with just having two little ones close together, but that I mustn't forget that I had shown signs of really getting it together in the months before I got pregnant again. Once I came out of the 6 months of depressing hormones after Matthew was born, I started making plans and taking action, to become the kind of mother I had always wanted to be. Plans that would enable me to have more kids and not fall apart (or the household either!) - hopefully! I started making meal plans and serving a meal to my boys and my husband every day. I improved the bedtime routine. I started working on getting the boys sleeping more independently. I was eventually finding that stuff so easy and enjoying it so much, that I felt confident enough to look into homeschooling. I have doubts in myself over that right now, but it's early days and I have a lot of stuff going on that would cloud my judgement over my abilities right now.
So I WAS doing well. It just IS hard work, having two kids who are only a year and a half apart. I also knew well before I got pregnant again that it would be DARN hard to have another with the same kind of age gap. I am not just now going, "Oh crap! It's going to be really hard! We should never have timed it this way! Help!!" I knew it would be. Hard enough to struggle and cry and beg thin air for help for many months on end, and then emerge blearily at the other end wondering a) how on earth we survived, and b) what on earth possessed us to do it in the first place! BUT, I know why. And even in the hard part, I wouldn't change the timing at all. If Neil does come around to having another baby, we are fairly likely to have another small gap. In fact, it was Neil's suggestion for #4 (just after we found out about #3), because he doesn't want to have several kids close in age and then a big gap - his family had that, and he wishes his youngest sister had had the childhood experience that he and his other siblings had, being closer together. And, personally, I LOVE small age gaps. Alllll the biggest blessings come as you get through the hard bits. And I don't even know the half of it, because I've only had more than one child for a year so far! All I know is, my kids will always be at the same kind of stage with play, activities, learning, interests, etc. They may or may not be buddies (if there are jealousy issues, which there haven't been so far), but basically two little brothers (or three!) so close in age will have so much in common, and pretty much built-in best friends.
I am so far LOVING the fact that there has already been six months of a personal, joyful, bubbling, fun relationship between my sons. Not parent-involved at all, but initiated by the boys, and enjoyed all day long. They are with each other all the time - if they do go to school then one will only be at school for a year before the other starts right behind him. It's the most incredibly fulfilling feeling to see my 2-year-old already have a playmate in his own little brother, even at such a young age! They play imaginatively together (well, Matthew doesn't QUITE catch on yet, but Arthur perseveres, bless him!), make each other laugh, do rough-and-tumble, all sorts of things. When I was Arthur's age, I didn't even have a sibling yet! Arthur has all this already. I don't think there was much wrong with the age gap *I* had, with my brother (almost 3 years), or any other age gap for that matter, but I DO SO LOVE the small age gap thing.
I love it mostly for my children's benefit, but also I am just putting in the hard work now for what I KNOW will be a hugely rewarding decision a few years down the line.
The boys were all naked before their bathtime the other evening, and they were standing at the sofa, looking through their books on the sofa cushions. I was flaked out on the carpet across the room behind them, and suddenly this wonderful warmth flushed across my heart, and I couldn't help smiling as I watched them. They looked so CUTE, those little round naked boy beans, little chubby bottoms and stumpy little legs, and their sturdy backs and little necks. Matthew's soft springy hair and Arthur's dark, curly hair, bent over books and busily swapping and flipping pages, Arthur chatting away to Matthew. I just suddenly filled with joy and pride over the fact that, there were my two tiny boys - still so young, only aged 2 and 1. And suddenly I was so excited to have baby #3, because I knew there would come a day where I would see a cute little line of THREE sturdy little bodies before bathtime, all lined up doing something busy together. I love having a little line of small children! My gosh they are hard work! But oh how wonderful to have brought three little people into the world, so close together! What fun they will have together! How exciting that they will have whole sections of their childhood experience where they are together in everything, because of their close age.
THAT, in not-so-much of a nutshell (!) is why I want to have my children so close together, and even in a difficult place right now, I STILL want to. And will again, no doubt. But I reserve the right to flail about in hormonal despair now and again during the process of achieving this wonderful goal! ;) I WILL need help, and more than I can get, no doubt. But there will be a way. Julie reminds me that I should remember God and that he gives me all I need. Since I spoke to Mummy, I keep on thinking, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength" over and over, and sometimes I don't believe it, but basically I KNOW it's true. No matter how hard it gets, it's still true. I just have to allow God to help me and step out in faith.
Soooo, the combination of these more positive things (plus your lovely supportive messages - thank you!!) ended up making the most ENORMOUS difference the very next day! I was so amazed. Neil was gone 12 hours and I was totally fine! I mean, the boys were fed, clothed and changed at the appropriate times, I got washed and dressed, and ate my meals when the boys did. I put Matthew down for a morning nap and made tissue paper flowers with Arthur (his request) - first time I've been up to doing crafts with him in AGES! Yay! I put the dishwasher on and unloaded it twice, put a tumble dryer load on, and a laundry load! I made spaghetti bolognese for dinner (one I had previously frozen though, much easier!), fed the boys before Neil even got home, and when Neil got through the door, I had just finished running the bath for the boys, and the microwave had JUST gone ting with Neil's reheated portion of dinner!
MAN oh man, I was so happy and proud of myself that day :) I CAN do it. I can.
I felt sick as anything yesterday, but a notable difference was that I seemed to have energy back yesterday - something that has been missing for many weeks. I can deal with the nausea pretty much, except when it gets really horrible, but the exhaustion is just overwhelming when it's there. I can't function at all with both in full swing. What a difference it made to have energy! I only REALLY noticed the change at the end of the day when I was running the bath. I realised I had forgotten the bubble bath and saw it on the shelf across the bathroom. It was only as I poured some in the bath water that I realised I had done a hop-skip-jump to get to the shelf! How funny - actual ENERGY!! :)
Today has been harder. Last night was not a good night's sleep. I couldn't sleep till 1am (even though I was all sensible and went to bed at darned 10.30pm! Tsk!), and then Matthew woke half-hourly from 4.15am, urrrgh! This is the 3rd morning running that he has done exactly that. I don't know what it is, but I hope he STOPS tonight! He refused to nap for both naps, but with a LOT of effort I got him to take a short nap late in the am and again late afternoon. I was exhausted from the effort though, and Arthur spent ages downstairs playing without me.
Also, yesterday - I forgot to say - Arthur refused his nap! He has done that a few times recently but I always enforce it and he ends up sleeping anyway. But then not going to sleep till almost TEN in the evening. So, it's time he dropped his nap :( I thought I would NEVER cope without that time to myself! Especially now. But yesterday I initiated Big Boy Quiet Time! He spent 20 minutes upstairs in his room, playing with cars quietly :) He did the same today, and both nights he was out like a light at bedtime. Anyway that is another thing I'm proud to have dealt with right now!
So, no breaks for me in the day any more. But it's okay. I made macaroni cheese tonight with salad. Oh my gosh that was sooooo hard to make. I felt so sick. I didn't know if I could see it through, but I did in the end. Neil ate his portion when he got home again :)
So I am doing TONS better. I know I may well still have some baaaaad days to come - they can't all be wonderful! But I just wanted to say all that about these last couple of days. I hope the nausea lifts soon. If it's like Matthew's pregnancy, it might be gone in a week, but more like 5 weeks if it's like Arthur's. We'll see! I'm looking forward to it, anyway!
Okay the laptop battery is about to die and I need to get some celeriac! So I will update again soon :)
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