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2008-11-25 - 11:02 p.m.��previous entry��next entry
8 weeks pregnant - Arthur and Babydot
Yay yay yay, I'm 8 weeks pregnant!! Bye-bye 7 weeks! During the first trimester I am always so pleased to say goodbye to the previous week! I love to be another week further on, getting nearer to the "safe" zone, and also to relief from the constant nausea.
I listened with my doppler again this evening, and heard nice whooshy placenta sounds, but no heartbeat yet, of course. I can't wait till I hear it! I always planned to start really listening for it from 8-point-something weeks, since I have heard my other babies heartbeats at 9 weeks (and never tried sooner), so that week is finally here! Yay!
Also, something I have only just realised, I should be starting to feel movements in the not-too-distant future, which seems incredible to me, and makes me soooooooo excited!! Let's see, I felt proper flicks and pops from Arthur at 14 weeks, and weird shovey feelings from 11 weeks. With Matthew I felt definite movements from 11 weeks, and I think it was 10 weeks with Nathan? I am not sure, I'll have to re-check my diary. Thank goodness I write so long-windedly! ;) I am always glad of it once my memory has faded and I want to remember something! So, maybe I will be feeling Babydot wiggle in just 2 weeks time?!
Okay, so with Nathan I (annoyingly!) didn't write exactly when I started feeling movements for sure. I had a big gap writing entries because of feeling sick and stuff going on at home. But I wrote that at 8 weeks and 6 days, I felt a definite TAP on the inside of my cervix and wondered about it. The next time I updated I was 10 weeks and 4 days! Tsk! I wish I had made note of whether that panned out to be anything, or not! But at 10w4d, I had been feeling definite movements for a bit - maybe just before 10 weeks?? Ooooh that feels as close as next week, when I think of it that way! And hopefully I will be hearing the heartbeat by then too.
I know this will sound nuts, but I have been feeling what I'm sure are Braxton Hicks for two or three days now. I notice them most when I'm lying down on my back or side (I never really lie on my tummy though). I would probably never notice them except for how familiar a sensation they are from my recent pregnancies. That catches my attention and I focus on the sensation more closely to be sure. It's like a tennis ball that's getting more and more solid and pushing down somewhat on my cervix. It has all the rest of the usual sensations of a painless contraction, the slightly hot/cold feeling and the weird discomfort. If I push in a little bit and feel the very top of my womb that's juuuust palpable, it's usually hard when I feel that way, so I'm sure it's Braxton Hicks. I know I was 9 or 10 weeks when I started noticing them last time, so I'm not overly surprised about it.
My spotting is all gone. I'm not even having a trace of spotting, not for 4 days running now - yay! :)
I'm still feeling sick, but managing it as well as I can with eating. I have discovered that I have to eat PROPER food every time, not just the one item of food that "works" at the time, several times a day. I am on much more of an even keel with the nausea throughout the day, if I eat like that. I get up and eat breakfast, which is not too easy, and then I am always really nauseated by 10am (I'm "baseline nauseous" all day, but it gets really awful if I'm daft), if I haven't eaten a proper small meal by then. So, I eat toast, or leftovers from last night's dinner, or soup, or something. Then I need to eat lunch when the boys do (noon-ish), and I'm always nauseated by lunch time. My new policy (trial-and-error, fully tested!) is to always eat BEFORE the boys. Always. Otherwise I won't get chance to eat till way too far beyond my window, and I will also not stomach watching them eat and cleaning them up afterwards. So even if they're whining and begging for food, saying they're hunnngrrryyyy, etc, I still have to tell them to wait and sit and eat my own lunch at the table while they play in the other room! I felt rather heartless doing that the first few times, but it's survival, and it's worth doing - for them too!
So then, by 3pm I feel as sick as a dog if I haven't eaten yet again. So it's baked potato, soup, quiche, something "real meal" ish and proper. And then the boys eat at 5.30ish, by which time I feel grim again, so I must eat my portion before serving theirs, once again. Then Neil gets home and eats, and we get the boys ready for bed, and then it takes a while for them all to go to bed - we stagger their bedtimes now (too much havoc with the older two going to bed at the same time, plus Arthur seems to REALLY need the quality time without the other two boys and with our entire attention, so it works well). I put each boy to bed, because either I have the breasts, or else they just want Mummy anyway. By the time I've done Nathan and Matthew I feel SICK. Really. But I put Arthur to bed, and then greenly stagger around the kitchen, unable to bear a thing in the room but needing to hurry up and choose something "proper" to eat. Tonight I had fish finger sandwiches! I feel so much better if I eat properly six times a day. I can't manage anywhere near a normal portion, it's just that I need to eat like a proper meal each time, however small the portion.
I still seem to have bad days for morning sickness where it's hard to make it through the day even with the eating plan, and I can't seem to focus on much with the boys because of feeling so sick. On good days I can put the nausea more to the back of my mind and do all sorts of normal stuff with the boys - crafts, a bit of an outing, laundry, decluttering, etc. I long for more days like those! I feel so proud of myself at the end of them, and they're so productive! :)
I have such a lot to write, but it's after midnight (Nathan has woken 3 times this evening, but I wonder if he's finally teething (for real!) at last?? He still has NO teeth at 10.5 months old!), and I just can't write what I wanted to tonight.
I do want to finish with stuff about Arthur - his reaction to this pregnancy. I haven't written about ANY of this till now, mainly because I had a time where I felt vulnerable about sharing stuff that I felt anxious about or that might look like my kids were not doing well for the fact that I'm pregnant again.
Anyway. Right from the start, we did not plan to tell the boys for a while about the pregnancy. I talked to Arthur, casually, about babies and stuff, without letting on that I'm pregnant - this was on our special day out together just the two of us, when I had only just found out that I was pregnant. He told me that he did not want any more babies, because there would be "too many babies" and there would always be someone falling down and needing me to go to them (at the time, this was a constant thing with Nathan, who had just started cruising the furniture frequently and was falling and banging himself a lot!). I asked him if he didn't want more babies because it would mean he would not get enough attention from me. He said yes. I told him that whether we had any more babies or not, Mummy needed to fix that for him - to get Nathan napping without me having to stay AGES to settle him (pretty much done, yay!), and making sure Arthur had daily one-on-one time, ideally with both parents (done, yay!). I hoped that might make him feel less anxious about having more babies in the family.
Anyway, fast-forward a week-ish. The boys were pottering around in the living room, and the TV was on, and Neil and I were bustling about trying to prepare things for going to France, and chatting about this and that. We should know by now that Arthur ALWAYS has his ears open, even if it seems like he's absorbed in a game or even having a conversation with someone else! But no. *sigh* Neil asked me something about "Babydot" and Arthur straight-away asked what Babydot was. Neil looked at me, and then (to my dismay! I guess we should have communicated better about it beforehand) told Arthur that Babydot was the name that Mummy and Daddy were using for the tiny baby that is growing in Mummy's tummy. Arthur paused for a millisecond, got a funny expression on his face, and then brought the book he was holding up over his face, and he wouldn't look at us. When he did, he was smiling, but a weird not-happy smile, and he acted really pent-up and aggressive after that. I felt heartbroken for him, and very scared about how he would cope, and frustrated that he had been told this early when he wasn't ready - after our conversation too!! Poor Arthur. I was so worried. I just kept thinking, "What have we done to him?! Will he ever recover?!" etc.
I took him to a quiet place in the house later for a cuddle and a chat, and talked about the baby briefly, and that it would take so long for the baby to grow and be ready to be born, that we might as well not talk about it at all for a good long while. He said that was a good idea!
Then we went to France, and I started bleeding. Arthur had been behaving so pent-up and like he was struggling to deal with something, and we thought it was the news about Babydot, although there was a big upheaval with the travelling and being somewhere new with Nana and Grandy (he often goes a bit nutty in their presence for some reason!). So, the evening that the bleeding started, I felt SO SURE that I was miscarrying (after my sense of foreboding and all that) that I decided to tell him at bedtime that Babydot was no more. I honestly would not have told him that if I had even a scrap of hope for the pregnancy, but at that time I totally did not.
So, during our snuggle time in bed, I asked him if he was still having trouble with the idea of Babydot in my tummy. He said yes. I told him that God had shown me that Babydot had died (my way of telling him about the bleeding, without the graphics of it!). He was silent for a moment and then started to cry just a bit. He said, "Awww, but I wanted to see what Babydot looked like!" I cuddled him and told him that I did too (I felt quite emotional because I really felt that I had lost the baby!), and that I was sad about it, but God knew what was best for our family.
The next day he cheerfully bounded up to me and said, "I'm SO glad Babydot has died!" !!!! He seemed so relieved, and over the next few days (during which time I became pretty sure that Babydot had in fact NOT died!), he said it lots more times.
So we've just been very careful not to let on that I'm pregnant. We plan on waiting till I'm well past the halfway mark - maybe even till he's asking why I'm changing shape, or even guessing by looking at me! That's quite a long time, and a lot will change for him in that time. We're also praying continually for God to prepare him, and enable him to be happy and at peace with having a new sibling when it comes time to find out.
So, yesterday we were at the table eating lunch together. Arthur was munching on a sandwich next to me, and swinging his legs happily. It was quiet for those blissful first few minutes while everyone filled their tummies, lol! And then Arthur said, "Mummy? When will we have a baby girl?" I (honestly) nearly inhaled my tuna sandwich (my tastebuds LIKE!) the wrong way, and tried to remain as unaffected and composed as possible in my response! I said, as casually as possible, "What makes you ask that, Arthur?" And he said, swinging his legs still, "Well, it's just that we haven't had one for a while...."!!!
I reminded him that we have NEVER had a baby girl, and that all our babies so far have been baby BOYS. I asked him if he would like a baby girl, and he said (happily!!), "Yes!" I told him that we didn't know when that might happen (because honestly, I still think Babydot is a boy, and that I can't imagine ever being pregnant with a girl!), but God might bless us with a baby girl one day. We'd have to see. He nodded and munched. Then I said, "But God might choose to bless us with a baby BOY instead, of course..." and Arthur said, "Oh." :) We talked for a bit about baby girls and baby boys, saying that if we did have a baby girl, she would be his SISTER (he looked awed at such a concept, haha!), and not a BROTHER - to Arthur, all siblings are called brothers, I sometimes wonder if he sees that as an alternative word for sibling! ;) I told him that the baby girl would have THREE big brothers, and he gasped in more awe at the idea. I said that each of the boys would have brothers AND a sister (more awe).
But I told him we'd just have to see what God would choose to do, and when, to bless us. He seems happy with that. I asked if it was okay having brothers, and he said, "Oh yes! Because having brothers is my favourite thing!" Sweetie! :) So I assured him that it would be lovely to have another brother if that's what God chose, because it's so nice to have brothers already!
Then he continued eating his lunch and swinging his legs, and I watched them all eating hungrily for a moment in the quiet. Then I asked, "But Arthur.... I thought you didn't want any more babies?" And he said cheerfully, "Well, I've discovered that I do!" and went back to his sandwich.
It was just the BEST conversation I've had for a long time, and I can't even describe how relieved I felt, and overjoyed, and thankful to God! Pheeewwww! But I know he could have been just having a "good day" as far as these things go, so I'm not just going to relax and think that he's all fine and dandy about the pregnancy. We'll still wait for a good while before telling them.
He DID have a very funny day yesterday, as far as babies go! He was constantly squeezing and hugging Nathan, who LOVES being cuddled by Arthur and just completely adores him, but the cuddles were so frequent and intense that even Nathan was getting a bit frustrated and wanting to carry on playing or crawling, hehe! At one point I brought Nathan down from a nap, and he was all pink on one side of his face, and dopey, you know how babies are (deliciousness!). I sat down with him on my lap, and Arthur immediately whizzed over and squeezed him up in a big hug, pressing his cheek to Nathan's and closing his eyes for the full effect! ;) After a long cuddle, Arthur said, "He's all squishy from his sleep!" in such a mushy tone, hehe! And then in the afternoon, the boys were watching a children's TV programme where there happened to be a clip of a little boy (about 2 years old) with his new baby brother. The baby brother was crying in a bouncy chair and the little boy shook a rattle for him and distracted him, and then eventually the baby was asleep in the bouncy chair. The camera took long close-up shots, pausing at the baby's sleeping face, and limp hands, etc. Arthur sat watching it leaning on his elbows on the arm of the sofa with his chin cupped in his hands. He kept making these very broody little noises, like "Aww...." and "Mmm-hmm (little giggle), ahhhh!" and so on. And then during the close-ups, he kept turning to me, saying things like, "Aw Mummy, look at the little nose!.... Look at the tiny fingers!.... He's just like Nathan!" I said that Nathan was much bigger now, and he just said that he was KIND OF like Nathan, and sighed and awwed over the baby some more! I couldn't believe my ears! ;) It was so sweet and funny.
So I'm feeling uplifted about that subject, and able to write about it at last.
Okay Nathan has woken again and it's SO LATE, I'm so exhausted, so I must go to bed. I'll try to update again in the next few days, but I may not manage it.
Congratulations to Nicola on the birth of precious little Robert! Thanks "WP" for the tip off, but I had already read Nicola's news before I checked here. She's been the first place I check every time I am online, and there was no risk of me missing her news! I refresh her diary like a crazy woman lately! :)
Thank you for the guestbook messages and notes lately, I love to read them! Interesting thoughts about the gender... I strive to remain neutral (or biased towards a boy based on our history!) till further down the line! ;)
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