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2007-09-24 - 10.55pm��previous entry��next entry
20 weeks, 1 day - comparison photos!
Finally took the "comparison" photo for 20 weeks! Well, only a day late, but anyway. It's in the gallery, but I wanted to post an entry too, to show all three from my three pregnancies at once!
Arthur:
Matthew:
Beanlet:
Everything is pretty much the same, isn't it?! Except that I wondered if my bump is evvver so slightly higher (and bigger?) than before, but that might be due to the fact that by baby #3 I am slumping my tired shoulders a lot more, and my breasts are definitely further south than they were before motherhood, haha! ;)
Neil has changed his mind completely on the baby's gender. He feels sure that it's another boy now, because when he looks at me, I just LOOK exactly as I did with the boys.
I weighed myself for 20 weeks, and I weighed 9st 2lbs. That puts my total gain so far at 11lbs. With Arthur at 20 weeks, I had gained 10lbs, and with Matthew it was 9.5lbs. I'm slightly disconcerted that I have gained 11lbs when I KNOW I am eating less and consuming fewer puddings and chocolates and stuff than the other two times! I am slightly less drawn to those things, and my appetite hasn't increased to the size that it had with the boys by now. I reckon that will be around the corner, but still! I put my 54lb weight gain (with both the boys!) down to the amount of fooood I ate, especially puds and chocs and all things sweet and fattening! This time I was wondering if I might gain less because I am really not doing those things yet. I AM eating chocolate and sometimes ice-cream, but really I am not that enthusiastic about puddings just yet. And I'm not eating the vast quantities that I was before. I was eating double breakfasts I think, with my other two pregnancies, and I am currently TRYING to eat a bigger breakfast in the mornings in the hope that it will give me energy for longer, or that it will prevent the weak slumps I sometimes get during the morning. But I am finding it really hard to eat more than my pre-pregnancy breakfasts. I am hungry and perfectly able to put away a good breakfast, but just nothing more than I always used to, so far.
So, yikes! More weight gain this time so far, even with less eating! It must be a genetic thing then, like the "experts" say. I will gain what I gain, so that's fine. I just was really uncomfortable being so heavy at the end of my pregnancies before, and I would rather not be EVEN HEAVIER this time!
I currently have NO BLEEDING whatsoever!!!! Wheee! I don't even have brown spotting! It's been almost a week! Yippee! I do have the occasional EWCM episode which is liiightly brown-stained, but I am not worrying about it. My activities are all as normal and I'm just so encouraged to have stopped bleeding at last, for the first time properly in 9 weeks! :)
I am feeling so hot these days. I mean that in the literal sense, not the suggestively parsnip-y sense! ;) Things are as lukewarm as always in that department - no parsnips so far this pregnancy. We had none at all during my pregnancy with Matthew, and only the once or twice at the very end with Arthur, simply to try and get him out! ;) So, nothing different there. I would say I am probably more.... interested though, than the other two times. If I hadn't been bleeding I believe some parsnips would have taken place by now! ;) But I am not leaping on Neil with joy at the fact that the bleeding has finally stopped or anything!
So, I am just feeling overheated a lot. It's always too warm, except when it's not (?!), and that's down to my hugely increased blood supply I think. That and hormones, or something!
I have a faint linea negra showing on my belly now. It never really went away between babies, and actually I'm one of those odd people who ALWAYS had a linea negra, however faint, since puberty. I don't know why! But anyway. So it's never going to be GONE. But I think it's a little more noticable at the moment.
My pubic bone is doing me in. I need to contact a midwife (since I don't really have one yet and appts don't start up properly for a long while yet), or the doctor about it. But I haven't had chance today. It's a nightmare to drag the kids along to the doctor's in any case (there's always a huge wait and they NEVER behave for long in the waiting room - Matthew in particular), and I just can't can't fathom coping with that right now. Last time, a couple of weeks ago, it was just too exhausting in the end, but this time I know I can't run about after them with the pain in my crotch! It really hurts. I was worried about the weekend being over with how I would manage to get about okay with the boys when I was on my own, but it's been okay today. It has hurt all day but I just have to keep going and keep things SLOW (walking and stuff), and just put up with it a bit really.
I am having a Braxton Hicks contraction! :)
Beanlet has started gently kicking my little boys in the knees as they breastfeed at bedtime! Their knees are usually what rest up against my bump while we lie tummy-to-tummy breastfeeding, so those are the bits of them that get little knocks. Neither of them notice at the moment, it seems. I love it though :) A little contact for Beanlet with his/her brothers!
My scan is 8 days away - one week tomorrow!!!!! I know it will pass so fast. I can hardly believe it's such a short time till we know Beanlet by name and think of him/her as a son or daughter, a brother or sister for the boys. One possibility will be instantly and permanently thrown out of our minds. It seems so BIG a deal suddenly and in some ways that makes me want to shy away from it and cling to the time I have left! I even wondered the other night about NOT finding out and keeping it a surprise. But I know I wouldn't be able to stand the waiting in a month or so! I would want to have that time to bond with my son or daughter, and to call them by name, and to buy pink if pink is needed (and ohhhh yes, I WILL be buying pink! ;) ), or make some more tiny baby boy nappies. The suspense would drive me crazy. I'd be anxious about any sort of "come-down" after the birth as a result, like the type of thing I get right after the big scan. When we find out at the scan, we aren't driven crazy by waiting any longer, and we can plan and prepare better, and bond more in advance. And any hope/thought/expectation of a baby of a certain sex is non-existant well before the birth - by the time the baby is born we are just longing to meet our baby boy who we've been waiting for by name for months! I love that. I DO sometimes wish I had it in me to wait and have the lovely surprise - it must be wonderful. But I doubt it's something we'll ever do, unless we have no choice because the baby WON'T reveal itself to us at the scan! I hope that doesn't happen this time! I have to say, this baby has been more evasive than the boys at previous scans so far, lying on its tummy and never giving us a good view of the right area, etc. The boys were almost EAGER to show us who they were from very early on, hehe! If this IS a boy, it will be our first modest boy ;)
Okay, it's getting late.
I'm eating a lot of juicy fruits at the moment - especially oranges. NOT a craving, but they taste sooooo good. I also really want a whole boxful of those ready-to-use icing decorations for cakes that you can buy, the hard piped flower thingies in different colours. A whole box. I could sit and munch through one right now. And also several other times earlier today! My "interests" (not really cravings as such) this pregnancy are often REALLY sugary sweets, not so much just bulky sweet puddings, ice-creams or chocolate. I will eat those if you want to put a plate of them in front of me (please do!), but it's nothing special. I keep on getting sudden longings for certain sweeties though, like the parma violets and these cake decorations, and also those pink sort of rubbery shrimp sweets, the ones that used to cost 1p when I was little! And the banana versions too. Sweets that I've barely given a second thought since my childhood, it's weird. Anyway, that is different from the other two pregnancies. But then it doesn't necessarily mean anything. With Matthew I CRAVED toxic fumes in the second half of my pregnancy, hehe!!! And that was DEFINITELY very different to Arthur's pregnancy, but I already knew Matthew was a boy by then.
Anyway. I will undoubtedly be waffling about all this kind of thing more and more as the scan approaches. It's beginning to drive me crazy with wanting to know whether my baby is a boy or a girl now, and I'm starting to do a lot more obsessive comparing and ambivalent rambling and so on! Roll on October 2nd!
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