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2009-02-27 - 10:18 p.m.��previous entry��next entry
21 weeks, 2 days - feeling kicks!
Thanks so much for all the lovely comments about the scan last week! I'm just so excited to be having my fourth baby boy!!! I haven't had a single moment of anything else, which is wonderful. He still does not have a name, and I know there's like almost half a pregnancy to go, but it's "late" for us to still have no name for him, hehe! I'm not actually feeling stressed about it at all. Right now I am still ALL about Noah Benjamin, but Neil is apparently not so much. Every few days he'll say, out of the blue, "How about Jonathan?" or "How about James?" and I say, "Umm.... no." ;) I like Jonathan, but we have a Nathan already, and there's just a Jo tacked onto the front there to make it different. There's nothing wrong with James per se, but it just doesn't do much for me and I like the names I'm choosing for my babies to leave me sort of sighing and clutching at my chest (in a healthsome manner, of course! ;) ). We did consider Jamie for Arthur, but it was REALLY clear at the scan that he was definitely not a Jamie. I remember a couple of people suggested Benedict (thanks for suggesting!), but I don't like the name really, although it is similar to Benjamin. I like Toby and Micah, but Neil isn't crazy about Toby at all, and Micah is the other most recent baby at church. I think if we have another son after this one (!!) I would personally be choosing between Toby and Micah. Neil really likes Micah but we both feel it's not THIS baby's name. I adore the meaning - "Who is like God?" Just those 4 words make me want to stop what I'm doing and praise him right away! So I love everything about the name. Next time, though! ;)
Well baby-boy-bean is getting much more wiggly and active in there! I am feeling kicks and bumps and movements all day long now, and especially during the evenings. Arthur felt the baby kick this week - before Neil even! I was so tired (I have been so tired for a few weeks now) and when Nathan went down for a nap one day early in the week (so 20 weeks and 5/6 days or something) I built the boys a HUGE railway with their wooden track and flaked out on the sofa while they played blissfully for ages. While I was reclining there, the little tiny one started to kick. Usually there aren't that many in a row so I can't call someone over and have them wait for the next kick - there usually isn't one, hence why Neil hadn't felt the baby up till this week! But this time I felt quite a few kicks and after 30 seconds or so they hadn't stopped, so I said, "Our tiny baby is kicking Mummy's tummy!" Arthur DROPPED his train and came running! I lifted my top over my tummy and he instantly laid his cheek on my bump, smiling excitedly. He's such a sweetie! Almost straight away, he got a direct kick to his cheek! He lifted his face in absolute awe, it was so precious!! He kept saying, "It kicked my cheek!" and then he laid his face back there again. He got a little pop to his chin this time, and that made him giggle. He was so excited to feel the baby kick, and he told Neil when he got home from work.
He's SO excited about my bump growing bigger. Literally every other day (or every day sometimes) he puts his hands on my tummy and does a sort of squeally excited sound, and then says, "Your tummy's getting BIGGER!!!" like it's the most exciting thing he's ever seen happen. He always says how the baby must be getting so much bigger than before, which is so cute when he says it every day with the same new excitement :) He calls other people's attention to it, usually Neil, saying, "Daddy! Mummy's tummy is getting BIGGER!!!! Come and seeee!" and he jumps up and down excitedly. Matthew doesn't appear to have taken much in about my pregnancy yet, though he does acknowledge that there's a baby in my tummy. He seems happy enough and busy doing other things most of the time, like it's not interesting enough to distract him right now, which is fine.
So Neil felt the baby kick last night, or it might have been the night before (21 weeks), I can't remember exactly. I was getting a few good kicks lying on the sofa, and called him over. The baby seemed to actually turn to his hand and kick it directly. I can't really explain how I feel it but I could tell that there was intent and purpose in the aim of the kicks - I just could feel the difference when the baby was kicking Neil's hand so specifically. Neil likes to feel the baby kick but also gets kind of squeamish (sigh) about the whole "alien being moving about in your body" thing that he has going on in his head. Oh well. *I'm* enjoying every little kick and wiggle! :)
I've also discovered these last few days that this baby likes to play poke-and-kick! I love this stage! One of my babies at least (I can't remember who, but not Arthur) had not much interest in that game, and the kicks back were a bit random so that I wasn't always sure if they were in response to my pokes or not. This baby is very responsive! I poke, there's a very short pause, and I get kicked - a quick sharp pop - in the exact same spot. I wait, poke again, and get a pause and then a kick in the same spot. One time a little hand reached out and bumped me where I had poked, lower down.
I forgot a few things last entry, but then I hadn't read the sonographer's report when I wrote the entry about the scan. The baby is measuring exactly on the 50th percentile for ALL measurements! This baby is definitely not Arthur-shaped, and not likely Nathan-shaped either. Arthur had short legs (2 weeks behind!) and a large head (1.5 weeks ahead) and his abdomen was 1 week ahead. Matthew was pretty much spot on his dates for legs, abdomen and head, though his head was a few days behind. Both of them are exactly that way to this day - it was an absolutely accurate prediction of their body shapes, so we had a good heads-up that they would be very different from each other in build before Matthew was even born. Nathan was a little ahead of dates for head, pretty much spot on for abdomen, and a little behind for his leggies, so we thought he must be a cross between the older boys, and maybe more like Arthur's build? He's still only tiny but so far seems to be a perfect mix of the two older boys in build.
I am therefore expecting this little one to be very like Matthew in build, and nothing like Arthur's build. So that's exciting! Matthew was so different, and I wonder if this baby will be the closest to Matthew in resemblence? I can't wait to see his little face and find out who he'll look most like!
Also, my placenta is HIGH and POSTERIOR! So, no anterior placenta for me after all. I guess this baby is just a much quieter one than I'm used to, so far, and it wasn't that I was having things muffled by an anterior placenta. I still find it so odd that it was SO many weeks later than usual that I felt movements. But oh well! I feeling them now, so that's fine!
I'm trying to think what else? I have had some moderate not-so-fun pubic bone pain since my last entry, pretty much RIGHT after that entry continuously. So that's a shame! But I get it every time. I'm just glad to have had the first 20 weeks without it! I don't always get that. Hopefully it's going to settle down again for a good while before coming back a bit at the end. It's pretty sore at the moment to walk and lie on my side. It's just a nasty clutching pain in my groin that radiates. It feels ever so familiar now. Everything does really, about pregnancy, and I LOVE that feeling! :)
Today is the first time I have really taken all of the boys out on my own whilst looking obviously pregnant. Until now I have been bundled up in a huge winter coat so nobody would have seen anyway, but today it was so mild and I forgot Nathan's coat so I wrapped mine around him in the pushchair. So my bump was WELL on display. As was my "Pregnant and Proud!" top! ;) I would not have worn that if I'd have known it would have been on display to the public, haha! I don't like attracting attention, and I didn't want anyone to think I'd worn it on purpose to show off or something! ;)
So, I walked down the high street with the tandem pushchair - Nathan and Matthew in it, and Arthur on the buggy board behind. Me and my little bumpy boy followed behind Arthur! :) People turned their heads alllll the way down the high street, and it made me ever so uncomfortable. I am anxious about encountering negativity, because I know I hate confrontation like that, and also I have always been super sensitive to other people being mean to me, especially face-to-face. I have no idea how I'll handle it! I'm anxious because I have heard that it's to be expected when you have 3 or 4 closely spaced children - the more children, the more comments, and the worse they can be. I so don't want that!!!! It's really bothering me right now. I don't know how I'll handle it and I'm worried that I'll just do as I did when bullied at school and CRY or something embarrassing like that! I don't want to respond inappropriately in front of my little ones either, especially if they hear negative comments (which would upset me all the more), and I want to stand up for myself too, you know?
Today I got lots of not-exactly-positive looks, especially when I was huffing and puffing with the pushchair laden with children and bags for the charity shop! Thankfully once we'd taken all the charity bags to the shop, it was surprisingly easy to push all 3 on the way back and we seemed to get a lot more interested looks and even some smiles. I just want to walk with my head down all the time, but how rubbish is that?!?! I should be PROUD to have all these little children and another on the way! And I am, truly. I just know that I'm in a teeny tiny minority and the rest of the world thinks I'm likely selfish, stupid or irresponsible, and I can't stand the idea of people thinking that of me or saying anything of the sort to me. I find it upsetting already without anyone having said anything!!! I really need to pray about this and find some peace from God about it, and have him equip me to deal with it effectively. That's the whole idea with trusting God with my womb and thus our family size and spacing of our children - that he'll provide ALL that we need to effectively manage the blessings he bestows upon us, including this kind of detail. I just sooooo don't want to get upset and flustered and shaky and tearful if anyone says something nasty to me when I'm out with the children, and the way I "am" is suggesting to me that this is how I would react. Bleh.
Anyway!
What else? Oh the baby was noted as cephalic (head down) at the scan. She was having the hardest time checking the face for a hare lip because the head was RIGHT down. She really ground that scan probe into my hip and pubic bone for like 15 minutes straight, trying to see. The baby's head was turned at a tricky angle and with it so low, she had to try to dig in under my pubic bone or into my hip, and then grind it round in the direction of the baby! Ow. Maybe that could account for some of the pubic bone pain I've had since?! I even had to have a pillow under my hips and roll onto my side slightly, with the bed tipped head down (!!!) to attempt to rotate the baby a little for a better view! It was not comfortable! But worth it for the lonnnng look at my tiny sweetie :)
I keep wondering if I feel hiccups lately, but then I stop still to check and it's not, or at least, if it was it was very short-lived. So I can't confirm having felt this baby hiccup yet. I know it will be soon! I love feeling hiccups and all these lovely things! I'm so excited about every little thing with this pregnancy! I'm eager to meet my little one but the one thing I'm NOT looking forward to is the process by which he ends up in my arms and not in my tummy! I MUST write Nathan's birth story for my diary, properly. I know I will get further detached from it the further along with this next pregnancy I get, and eventually if I leave it too late I'll probably get the two births confused in parts or something, which will be sad for me. I want to remember all the details of each birth as unique, even if they're not comfortable memories!
Well, there's probably loads more, but my mind has gone blank for now. OH! But I have had some seriously wacky hormones this past week. MUCH more settled this end of the week, but last weekend was just crazy. I have been more irritable and feeling tearful at the slightest things for a few weeks now, but Neil was poorly at the weekend with a migraine (he throws up with these), and I just did not manage well. I clung to my children for security (however daft that sounds!) - at least that's how it felt when they had gone to bed at the end of the day. They just kept me busy and the noise level helped me to block out Neil's throwing-uppy-ness, and so on. When they had all gone to sleep that evening I just fell apart and cried for like 2 hours straight! I missed them so painfully and looking at their toys and things just made me long for them, and I absolutely could not stop crying for anything. I had the WORST sinus headache all night that night, and into the next day as a result, urgh! The next couple of days were also "delicately balanced" (!!), hormonally, and I felt tearful and overwhelmed a lot, but it settled down in the week. This end of the week has been great - my energy is good even though I'm really tired (if that makes sense?!) with Nathan's multiple night-wakings and so on, and I'm spending all my time doing LOTS more housework than I've ever done, playing with little ones, disciplining little ones, keeping vital parts of the daily routine going (naps, nappies, meals, etc) and feeling good about it all. We are not getting out of the house much at all, but it's the most settled things have been for a long time. I have seen a LOT of advice for mothers of many very young little ones (especially when pregnant as well) to just STAY HOME as much as possible, because that's the only sane thing to do and it makes a huge difference to how frazzled both the mama and the children are. I'm finding it to be true, and very helpful advice! I wish the boys could get more run-out-in-the-open-air time every day, but that's the main drawback. If we had moved house by now, we'd have a big garden (we're going to be super picky about that part) for them to run in every day. They do get out in the garden but it's SO TINY now that we've sold the end piece to the neighbour! They have long long walks at the park with Daddy at the weekends, so that's something I suppose. Not ideal, but most definitely advice I'd pass on to any other mother-of-3 very small people with another on the way. Definitely. Probably one of the first pieces of advice, actually!
Anyway, we're getting into stuff that should go in my blog, so I'll stop for now. I will be due to put another belly pic in the gallery in just FIVE DAYS!!! It's going so fast! Right now I am going to go to bed. I have actually had 3 early nights this week! I'm so tired and sleepy in the evenings and I resist going to bed even so, because I just want to enjoy the quiet house for a few hours first, but then I'm just adding to the tiredness. This week I have had a rare burst (!) of early nights, and I'm so glad I did. It meant I really did not check online at all those few days, because evenings are my only online time really - I try not to use the computer at all in the day time when the boys are up (week days). I was still about as tired with the early nights as I had been before, so I'm just glad I wasn't making the sleep debt worse!
I'll try to update again soon! :)
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