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2009-04-04 - 11:39 p.m.��previous entry��next entry
26 weeks, 3 days! Nearly the end of my 2nd trimester!
I'm still here! I can't believe it has been a couple of weeks since I updated - so bad of me! :( I am not that motivated to write here like I used to be. I need to move to Blogger with this diary like I have with my arthursmummy one. Diaryland is so quiet now.
Well I'm doing fine! I can NOT believe that I only have FOUR DAYS to go till my 3rd trimester starts!!!!!! It's so surreal and I honestly can't get my head around it properly! I feel so busy and distracted from pregnancy all the time, and at the same time it's going by sooooooo fast.
I haven't even taken my belly picture for 26 weeks yet! I'd better get that sorted with Neil tomorrow, then it will just be 4 days late rather than completely missed out!
My next midwife appointment should be at 28 weeks - not long now! I need to phone and arrange it though. I'm going to ask if she can come to my house to do the appointment, because she suggested the possibility last time, and it would be soooo helpful. Right now, taking all 3 boys out to something like an appointment is kind of exhausting and stressful, and to have the option of her coming here would be wonderful in comparison! I hope she'll be happy to do that.
I'm really eager for someone to check on the baby's position, because I am having a hard time pinpointing it. I know it's not that relevant to anything this early on, but still, I'm curious and I want to know these things!
A couple of things are different from what I remember from my previous pregnancies:
I am bigger at 26 weeks than any of my other 26 week belly pictures. I know I may well take a picture tomorrow and put it up here and compare, and it will look pretty much the same as the other pregnancies at that stage, BUT I really do feel bigger, and Neil is commenting on it too. I stick out more. The baby seems to have had a big growth spurt since my last belly picture at 24 weeks, or maybe a couple of them! Just these last few days I have noticed a change in how big I feel (and look, according to Neil, and my protesting waistlines on maternity jeans that I was still wearing at 28 weeks in my previous pregnancy belly pics!), and just today and yesterday I have been really aware of how much stronger the baby's movements have suddenly become - "bigger" movements too.
It's hard to tell the baby's position because he is kicking all over the place like he has legs to the left, right, top and bottom! ;) Also, I am (unusually) having a hard time telling which type of limb just jabbed me. Normally I can clearly tell hand or foot, or even knee/elbow, long before now.
I actually wonder if I have more amniotic fluid this time? It's a wild guess, but when I recline and bare my tummy to enjoy watching and feeling the baby kick about and wiggle, it's just like a big round waterbed, seriously. Big kicks don't really show, and the whole belly just wobbles about like jelly. When I try to palpate the baby and feel the position or limbs near the surface, it's hard because I seem to be just squeezing huge pockets of fluid with a little baby part ballotting about somewhere in it! I am sure this isn't something I've felt with the other pregnancies I have had. I hope it's okay... I wish I had a midwife appointment sooner so that she could check the baby for me and see if I'm growing on target.
The baby's position is rarely (if ever) head down, and to be honest the amount of fluid I'm trying to feel through is making it hard to get a good feel for a head or bottom or ANYTHING for sure really. I do know that I often feel a head in my side or (a little more often now than before) down in my hip, so an oblique lie. One time I felt it up on my right side, high up, so breech that time. Maybe that accounts for the different/larger belly for the stage I'm at? Or maybe it's just extra evidence that I might have more fluid than usual, given that it would help the baby "float" (haha!) around into any old position he feels like for a while longer?! It makes me so extremely nervous that he's tangling himself into a dangerous mess with his umbilical cord. I know I shouldn't worry, but I can't help it! I think that's my biggest anxiety about the baby this time. Cord accidents happen, and with all his rolling and flipping and position-changing, I'm so nervous about it! I pray over him a lot that he'll be okay and that his cord will preserve his life, not take it! :S
Oh! I should just get a tape measure and measure my bump myself! Then I would have some idea! I think my tape measures are packed away with my sewing stuff though :(
Baby boy is very active a lot of the day and evening now. He is very strong and can do that sort of "Thumper" rabbit kick thing against the mattress when I lie on my side, that I remember so well from my other busy baby boys in there, hehe! Today was the first day that he has kicked me hard enough with "jabby" parts of himself for it to actually hurt my "skin" as he kicks, even when I'm walking about doing things! I get dull thuds and kicks to my cervix and bladder a lot, but lately he seems to be facing out and all the kicks are to my front or low down above my pubic bone. He also gets hiccups more clearly now. The other day his hiccups were like little sharp taps JUST above my pubic bone, and I was really happy about that because that makes it seem likely that he's head down if that's the location of his hiccups. But his other bouts of hiccups haven't been there since then, they've been all over the place, and not too easy to feel clearly because they seem lost in a huge bubble of fluid or something!
Anyway. I am not sure what I weigh, because I haven't weighed myself since just before 24 weeks, BUT just before I turned 26 weeks I suddenly changed shape in my face and outgrew a bunch of maternity jeans (that I normally still fit into later than this, yikes!). My face is more "weighty" now and it looks as though I am retaining water more. I feel that way too, sometimes, just heavier and puffy. I have no particular swelling in my hands or feet yet though, and my wedding ring is still fine! :) I am kind of uncomfortable "down below" this pregnancy, from pretty early on. I remember the same from the last two pregnancies, especially Nathan's. It's just that I'm sore a lot of the time and swollen all the time too. I regularly freak out that I'm getting varicosities there! But I remember doing exactly the same last pregnancy, and maybe the time before too, and I never had any, so that's my only reassurance right now!
This week I am newly breathless by mid-sentence, and at any exertion really. I haven't had the racy pulse with it until today when I just didn't sit down when I got breathless. I carried on standing up in the kitchen and trying to talk to Neil about something, and then I started to feel weak and weird, and checked my pulse and it was racing. So I had to come into the living room and lie on the sofa for a bit until I felt less breathless. It's exactly the same as my last pregnancy (and the one before) - last pregnancy they had me monitored at the hospital a couple of times because I had a racing pulse and breathlessness just sitting in the chair at a couple of antenatal appointments, and they were concerned about that. Of course, the effort of hauling little ones to those appointments was the main reason I felt so breathless (it really doesn't take much exertion to get me out of breath at this stage!), so I'm hoping that if I just lay low and don't take on basically ANYTHING now, out of the house, then I'll fare much better this time. I've stayed at home WAY more this pregnancy than any of my others, and it's made a big difference. I have had so much energy lately, and I've been using it on useful stuff like the housework and the children (!) instead of getting from place to place and loading and unloading small people! Those things alone sap my entire day's energy when I'm pregnant, so I realised it makes no sense to keep doing it!
I can't think what else suddenly. Matthew just woke from a bad dream about a big bumble bee (he was scared of one at the park today, poor love!) and now I've lost my train of thought after settling him. Oh but my stretch marks are back on the front of my bump now. They're visible properly (as purple/silvery lines) because they're fully stretched out now. Matthew expressed surprise at my "stipey" (stripey!) tummy the other day and wanted to examine and touch them carefully, with some concern! ;) I found that sweet because those particular stretch marks are actually courtesy of Matthew-Binks himself, not Arthur or Nathan! ;)
Still no name for this baby boy, but that's fine. I still have absolutely no choices other than Noah or Benjamin, and am aware that Neil isn't on the same page as far as that goes. But we've communicated about it and he knows where I stand. We're just not really thinking about it too much at the moment, because we have a zillion other things going on that are distracting us from naming our baby! Lately I've become re-attached to Benjamin in a big way though, and I had been leaning towards Noah for a long time before that. So who knows! I don't feel a pressure about it (yet!), so it's okay for now. I actually don't mind calling him "baby boy", although I've noticed that I NEVER refer to or think of him as Babydot any more. That seems like a name we used in the earlier stages of pregnancy, before we knew for sure he was a boy. Even though we don't have a name to take the place of "Babydot", we're really not using Babydot at all any more. So, for now he's just baby boy! :) And I like that at the moment!
Let's see.... I'm not really craving anything in particular at all. No vinegraitte cravings at all this pregnancy! ;) I like food, but not so that I MUST keep eating at all times! I do eat more than my fair share of chocolate-related items during the evening though, I will admit! Lately I really want fruit in the evenings, mainly apples. They are so crisp and yummy and juicy, and I could honestly eat 3 in a row. The only reason I don't is that I don't buy enough of them at once, and so we have enough for the boys to munch until the next supermarket delivery, and lately they've been really into eating apples every day so there aren't any left for me! I am also SUPER thirsty lately, just this week.
I feel very tired these last few days, just sleepy before I'm usually sleepy in the evenings, and if I stay up late (unwisely!) then I will find my head jerking up when I've nodded without realising it while surfing the internet! I neeevvvvver do that, pregnant or not, so it's unusual for me and a good indication that I'm much more in need of sleep than usual right now. Talking of which, it's getting pretty late so I should go to bed! It's Saturday night so I am in the blissful position of being able to lie in tomorrow as well as having done so this morning, with Neil home from work! Ahhh, sooo lovely to sleep!
As and when I finally get a 26-week belly picture, I will post it on the gallery and probably make a quick entry to say it's there. And if I find a tape measure and check the size of my bump, I'll update about that too! Otherwise I will try NOT to leave it 2 weeks this time! I can't believe my 2nd trimester is almost finished! The 3rd trimester is really the home stretch, and it's just unfathomable that I'm at that stage already!!! I need to plan much more for the birth this time, as I'm really not feeling comfortable about that part still! I also MUST MUST MUST write Nathan's birth story before much more time passes. I'm forgetting details already, and that makes me so sad. I don't want to get to having to write it after giving birth again, because I know I'll lose a lot of Nathan's birth in the muddle of birth-related memories! I will try to do that soon.
Thanks for the sweet comments on my 24 week belly pictures with the boys! I'm so pleased with those. I wish I had a belly photo taken with my little ones from my last two pregnancies, but oh well. I will definitely do it next time - hoping there's a next time! :) I'm thinking twin girls next time, what d'you reckon?! ;)
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