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2007-06-01 - 11.25pm��previous entry��next entry
3 weeks, 4 days pregnant - can you believe it?!!
Thank you for allllllll the lovely messages and notes!!! I'm so bowled over :) Aisling, yes, I'm insane, haha! ;) I know it! Right now I'm happy insane, but I KNOW it will be no time before I have "Oh my gosh, what was I thinking?!" moments! I know they're coming because I wouldn't be normal if they didn't, I guess.
Well I don't really know what to write tonight. I am sooooooo tired out. Today has been a big day. I have been feeling desperate for some space and some quiet to let myself THINK about things and just allow the news to sink in a bit. But the boys really haven't given me any time today. Matthew is really miserable today for some reason. I still maintain their extra clingy/whiney behaviour has something to do with my pregnancy. I know I didn't know I was pregnant before when I first mentioned it, but it did make me think "Hmmm" at the time. I hope it doesn't last a long time! I think it's a mixture of things though. I need to fix their bedtimes, because I think maybe they (or Arthur, at least) are more tired than they should be lately. And Matthew just got tooth #5 and is about to get #6. I REALLY should update my other diary! But there's only about half enough energy to update one, and this one has the priority for me, at the moment. I am itching to update the other one though. Maybe I'll manage to over the weekend?
Thank goodness it's weekend! I can't imagine finding out on a Monday or Tuesday and feeling this knackered and having to do the week first before I really get any chance to stop and think and get extra rest, etc! I'm just so glad it's weekend, and Neil is home for a couple of days. I am going to bed the INSTANT I finish updating here. Suddenly I have gone from my crazy late nights of 2am (where I stay up so stupidly late because I just WANT to get some extra "me" time) to actually wanting to just get to bed. So weird for me! Mainly I am just really tired (and now I know why!), but also I am suddenly taking it seriously that I need to be more careful with my body. I know that my body will just not hold up if I don't get enough rest when I'm pregnant. Since I'm unlikely to be able to get anywhere near enough rest ANYWAY, because I have two tiny ones already, I need to be sensible about the time I can control. I'm not saying I'm likely to stick at this for long! But for now, at least I am eager to get to bed. I feel so much better for a longer time in bed, though I am still not getting to sleep till around midnight or later yet. I think I will get to sleep earlier as I get more used to being in bed earlier.
Matthew is waking a lot at night just now, and today he has cried a lot and tugged on his ear on the side that toothie #6 is coming in. He is also refusing naps, urgh. I should write this at arthursmummy, but you know. I am too tired to update two diaries tonight. Anyway, I think he is in the process of dropping one of his two naps. It's messing the whole schedule of the day up! Not that we have a schedule, but we had something predictable going on, and it's a bit thrown out of whack now. Both the boys are affected by that and they end up napping LATE in the afternoon and lately will NOT go to sleep at bedtime for an hour or more. Urgh.
So we need to fix some things, because I'm finding it exhausting already. And Matthew is miserable with all the in-between-ness of naps and so on. And teething. He has woken twice this evening already and he's only been asleep 2 hours in total! I could be in for a very broken night so I think I will go to bed after this.
What was I saying before? Oh yes, so the day has been somewhat demanding with the boys, and we didn't even go out! Neil took Arthur to the park for a quick after-dinner walk this evening. I didn't get time to wash and dress today, urgh. I am so relieved to get to the part of the day where I can just have some peace and quiet in the house, and let all my thoughts flow for an extended time.
I have a million beginnings of thoughts about so many things! I don't know whether to start writing about them or not. But they're not even complete thoughts yet, so they'll look very disjointed and random. Well, maybe I'll bullet point them for now, and at least they're out of my system a bit more then! It might even help my head feel in better order before sleep.
* I have had a tiny bit of brown spotting today, from this morning. I haven't noticed any at all this evening though, or late afternoon. I usually check my cervix through to 18dpo, regardless of spotting, but last night when I checked I found red blood so I think I am going to leave my cervix alone tonight.
* I am going to temp till 18dpo to "complete" my chart, like my other pregnancies! :) I like a nice full pregnancy chart! It always bugs me to see charts of those who stopped charting at like 10dpo when they got their positive HPT - I always want to see what happened with their temps after that, to compare mine with or something! So I will keep temping, just to record it. Hopefully no big scary dips, but I'll try my best to ignore those if they happen, unless accompanied by bleeding and cramping or something!
* I feel wonderfully neutral about the gender of this baby. I haven't got a vibe either way really, and I think most people when they hear I'm pregnant again will presume I'm hoping for a girl, given that I already have two boys. But you know? I would be so thrilled with a third boy! I think I said that a couple of months back - I wanted another boy so much that it was almost a preference over a girl. But I KNOW that if it's a girl I will be over the moon, because a girl is something NEW for me! I would love to have a daughter! One day I hope I will. But right now I think I would be so happy with another boy, OR a girl. I hope I am not just kidding myself because somewhere under the surface I DO have a longing for a girl and I'm trying to avoid getting disappointed or something? But I don't think that's there anywhere. I have had a name for a boy for a while now! I have been just presuming we'd have another boy the next time we had a baby, so I guess that's why. But Neil isn't so keen on the name. So no name yet!
* I do have a girl's name already too, but again, I don't think Neil will go for it. We haven't done any thinking about it together yet, so there are plenty of names for us to put on our shortlist yet!
* I have had some ligament pains today!! Last night, Arthur woke late in the evening and called for me, so I went to him. He rarely wakes now, and if he calls for me I will always go to him. He was half awake, saying his tummy felt sick, but then he farted and instantly fell back to sleep again, hehe! As I got up from the bed, I felt a slight sensation of a sharp pull up along the inside of my right hip. I instantly recognised the feeling as ligament pains from early on in my previous pregnancies, but it was such a whisper of a sensation and I was unconfident again, thinking that I could easily be wrong, so I thought no more of it. Today I have had quite a few similar pains, a little stronger today, especially when I get up from the floor bed, or if I make a sudden move in a different direction or something, stepping out to the side with my right leg, say. They are definitely pregnancy ligament pains, which is reassuring because they mean my uterus is already swelling and causing the ligaments around it to creak and twang a bit! ;) I will get a lot more of those, and not so mild either, if I remember rightly!
* I'm starting to get a little nervous about morning sickness looooming at me. I felt queasy from about 30 minutes before dinner tonight, over the whole meal time. I didn't really want to eat food or cook it, but that's what I DO (I'm Mummy/housewife around here!) so I did.
* I noticed while I was queasy that my nose was extra sensitive to every smell around. The various ingredients for my pasta sauce thingy were too strong for my nose and thus didn't make me feel great, even though I LIKE each ingredient and the combined result! I had to close the window while we were eating because I got a faint whiff of Indian food from down the road and it really turned my stomach. Mind you, I have always felt yeurghy over the smell of Indian food, for some reason. So maybe that's all it was?
* The thing that set the queasiness off was something so weird/simple. I was sitting next to Arthur on the sofa, and he was holding a DVD case for a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. He is just finishing getting his final two baby teeth, and chews his WHOLE hand a lot, absent-mindedly. It drives me crazy because then his hands are just wet with drool all the time, and well, YUCK! So he took his hand out of his mouth to say something to me about the DVD cover, and as he held the DVD case with the previously chewed hand, there was a drop of drool hanging off his little finger. My throat just CLOSED, like a gag reflex from just looking at it. That same closed throat thing happened a few days ago when I had a hair in my mouth.
I don't remember gagginess like this from my other two pregnancies, so it makes me VERY nervous that, at not even 4 weeks pregnant, I'm having this symptom. Like it is going to set me up for some butt-kicking morning sickness. I am anxious about a different experience this time, because both my previous pregnancies had IDENTICAL morning sickness symptoms. It felt the same, affected me at the same times of day, started at EXACTLY 5 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy, etc. It lasted a few weeks longer with Arthur than it did with Matthew, but otherwise it was the same exact experience. I think I will find it pretty hard when that kicks in, with looking after my little boys and changing two sets of nappies and making meals all days long, etc! I'm already a little nervous about how I'll manage. But I've done it before, so hopefully I will just get on and do it again, somehow. What I'm nervous about is that this time it will be WORSE. I have no idea what I'll do if that happens, seriously! It scares me. I also don't want to throw up at ALL. I am absolutely phobic about it, as it's a long running fear for me. I'm worried that this gagging is the start of something MUCH worse than last time.
* I am having a lot of bloating and wind and yucky tummy today. I know that's absolutely run-of-the-mill early pregnancy stuff though.
* Arthur thinks the new baby should be called, "Shaggy!" Only it HAS to be pronounced in a sort of deranged growling voice with lots of 'y's on the end! And then giggling, because clearly, it's an absurd suggestion! ;) But it's the only thing he'll suggest, hehe!
* Not weeing more than usual today, but I had the DARKEST wee to test with this morning, so I'm just naughty and obviously need to seriously increase my fluids! I have tried a bit this afternoon, but I have had so little time to do a thing for myself today that it hasn't worked much.
* My milk seems to be the same as usual so far. Arthur says it doesn't taste funny, or different, and it's all still there :) My breasts feel kind of smaller and empty this evening though, more so than usual, but then at least 100 small people have taken milk out of them so far these last 12 hours! ;)
* I plan to continue nursing both the boys through this pregnancy as I did with Arthur during Matthew's pregnancy. I am not eager for them to wean as a result of my pregnancy, but on the other hand, I DO only have two breasts, lol! I have been breastfeeding continually for 2 years and nearly 7 months now, and I have never weaned a child from the breast before so I know I will be so sad when the time eventually comes! I don't want Arthur to wean because I still love breastfeeding him, but I feel more relaxed than before about the idea of him weaning at some point during my pregnancy now. I'm not sure how I'd manage breastfeeding THREE children at once, once the new baby is here! I would do it if it turned out that way. At SOME point I am sure I will hit a place where it bugs the heck out of me to nurse Arthur for another millisecond. I've read that is normal when a mother is ready for her older toddler to wean and they are not quite on the same page yet. I did so want to let my little ones wean when THEY are ready, not for any other reason. And Arthur is ONLY 2 and a half. If he was my only child there would be no question about him breastfeeding for another couple of years if he REALLY wanted to. I would expect him to wean in that time, but not all kids do, so I'm open to that. But now there's Matthew, who I'm REALLY hoping does not self-wean during my pregnancy. I really want him to still be nursing after the new baby is born. I want to nurse my kidlets for 2 years at least, so I hope he doesn't want to wean before then, like when my milk all goes in a couple of months.
Arthur has happily nursed through a whole pregnancy before without even acknowledging anything being different, so I think that makes him fairly likely to do the same again. The big factor for him is comfort nursing. He DOES like his milk, but I think he is more a comfort nursing boy. He does drink GALLONS of my milk though ;)
Anyway, that is what I am setting out to do. Just continue as normal and hope for the best! We'll see if things become different, or unexpected, with the nursing (and my feelings on it) as the pregnancy progresses.
* We WILL be finding out the baby's sex asap! We saw both our boys lil bits on the nuchal scan (at 12-13 weeks) although we couldn't be 100% sure as it was so early and the scan was so fuzzy. Arthur's was actually pretty clear, and Matthew's less so, but Matthew's scan was a week earlier than Arthur's, gestationally speaking, and we'd seen what a baby's boy bits at that gestation looked like, so we did feel that we'd seen them on Matthew that early! We'll be looking with beady eyes at the nuchal scan this time! Although, maybe not. I'm sure we won't be able to help ourselves, but actually I sometimes wished I hadn't tried to see that early, as you REALLY can't be sure at that stage from seeing an ultrasound scan, and then you have an AGE to wait till the big scan to confirm/deny what you thought you saw!
Anyway, we'll be finding out for sure at the big scan (about 21-22 weeks here), if Beanlet co-operates!
* I'm having a slightly hard time using the name Beanlet. I think it's because I haven't formed an attachment quite yet. It won't take me long, I shouldn't think, but I am nervous thinking about getting attached to Beanlet enough to use a cute name with ease. In case I lose him/her. It's still sooooo possible. I'm praying NOT, but you know it's still out there as a possibility. I can't imagine how anyone can cope with losing a bean, even early on. Once you're attached.... I just don't even want to think about it. Thinking of my baby as "Beanlet" fills me with such a mix of feelings - instant warmth and joy and excitement, enough to bring a smile to my face automatically. But also a sort of clutchy-tummy feeling with a wave of cold anxiety. It's soooo early. Anything could happen. I can't control the outcome, but I can protect myself a little bit by not getting too attached. But I WANT to get attached and enjoy the very first moments of my tiniest one's existance! It's just scary to let myself embrace the whole thing and open myself up for pain if it all goes wrong. I hope it doesn't!
* I'm 3 weeks and 4 days pregnant today! I made a new ticker, which some of you guys have already mentioned seeing, and I'm so excited about it! But when I look at my tickers now, I just get overwhelmed with a sort of "Whoooooaaaah!!" surreal thing! Because looking at my tickers, it LOOKS for all the world as though I have three kids! Doesn't it?! Which, actually, I DO! Two beany boys and one Beanlet. Which is craaaaaaaazy insanely surreal. I just can't take it in at all, or persuade my brain to accept such information, right now! It just won't sink in. It's wonderful! But also ever so slightly scary. I look at my eldest child's age and he's like ONLY TWO!!!! And hmmm, am I nuts or what?! ;)
* Age gaps :) I like thinking about stuff like this - it's safe and statistical and stuff like that makes me tick ;) So, Matthew and Beanlet will be 20 months apart. Beanlet is due on the 11th of February, and Matthew will turn 20 months on the 14th. But I go past my due date so I'm sure he'll be 20 months by the time Beanlet arrives.
Arthur will have just turned exactly 3�, so that will be the gap between my eldest and my youngest. Wow.
What else? I know there was more I wanted to write but it's getting late and Neil's watching something kind of violent which is distracting my attention and I DON'T want to see that kind of thing! I think I will call it a night and go to bed. Hopefully I'll still be pregnant in the morning!
I am planning to pee on the single Clearblue test I found in the cupboard, tomorrow! I'm excited! I hope this bean is one that will stick around. I reeeeeally do. Hopefully my temp will stay encouraging too, as that will make things seem real!
I am going to make an appointment with my GP on Monday (to see her the same day, if she's working that day - she is part time as she has two little ones herself), because when I was in to see her a couple of months ago, I asked her how soon I should go to see her when I got pregnant. She said, "Oh, as soon as you know - as soon as you know!" So I guess they are busy in this area and it's best to book in before all the places are filled. I remember with Matthew I went in at 5 weeks pregnant and ONLY JUST got to be seen under my own local hospital! Thank goodness I was having a homebirth and didn't need to stress overly about which hospital I might or might not be attached to. The same is probably true this time, as I totally plan to give birth at home again (never again in a hospital, I hope!), but it is a weight off to know that I can go to my local hospital if it all goes wrong or something. So I'll go on Monday!
Monday is my "new week" day, by the way! With Arthur, I turned a new week of pregnancy every Friday. With Matthew it was Wednesday. Now it's Monday, this time! Also, it's a bit weird how my kids all seem to be due at a vaguely similar time of month - Arthur was due Nov 5th, Matthew, June 7th, and Beanlet is due Feb 11th. Getting a little later each time. Is that a cyclical thing, just a normal way for it to work out? I'm curious because I have seen the same thing among plenty of other mothers-of-more-than-one. Lots here at Diaryland even. Weird!
I am pregnant with Michelle again! So uncanny :) Seth and Arthur were due a few days apart, and she just got her positive HPT a week ago today! And of course I read her pregnancy diary with Ewan (her first), in those wistful days of reading zillions of Diaryland pregnancy diaries and longing for my turn! So obviously, I am pregnant because Michelle is ;) Praying for a sticky bean for her. She had a miscarriage before this bean.
Okay, that is all. Thanks again for the lovely congrats, everyone! I will be sure to update tomorrow with a Clearblue test photo, IF I don't somehow have my period by then, which I still can't imagine NOT happening, frankly! It's just too surreal! Surely my period will show anyway and it will all just have been a dream or something?! I felt exactly this way after my positive tests with the boys too. I don't get past the feeling till I pass 18dpo. It just won't fully sink in till then, somehow!
Urgh, I have watched WAY too much of Neil's horrible violent movie (at least he's got headphones on so I don't HEAR it) out of the corner of my eye while I have been trying to type this, and I'm so annoyed at myself that I didn't turn myself away from the screen a little, because I do NOT need extra reasons to have violent vivid dreams, darn it!!!! I always have some horribly vivid violent dreams when I'm pregnant. I am dreading them starting again. I hope I am blessed with the fabulous sex dreams this time, haha! I had those with Arthur's pregnancy but not a SINGLE one with Matthew's, much to my frustration, hehe! ;)
Okay, I'm going before I embarrass myself further! Back tomorrow. Thanks for the support girls! :)
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