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2004-03-23 - 4.26pm��previous entry��next entry
7 weeks, 4 days - I'm okay!!
Oooh another few days since I updated! Sorry about that - I have not been in hospital or anything, thank goodness, but I have been feeling too sick to go on the computer. But here I am now! Thank you so much for the messages, it's so lovely to hear from people and see all your uplifting words! I am still no good at getting back to anyone, and I don't think I will be for a while so I'm sorry about that. I just feel too sick.
Well, today I am 7 weeks and 4 days pregnant. It's always nice to be anywhere after day 3 in the week because then I'm more than halfway through another week! I am finding the countdown helpful in dealing with feeling so nauseous.
My weekend was pretty rough. I still have not actually been sick, but I have felt like it, and have also had a few "issues". My poop (you really want to know this!) turned white, which I read is really serious and has to do with the liver, so I got worried. Neil wondered if I was slightly jaundiced as well. The whites of my eyes were very grey all weekend and by Monday morning we weren't sure if they might be a bit yellow. I read on my anti-sickness suppository leaflet that in rare cases they can cause changes in the eyes and jaundice, so I didn't take a dose on Sunday night or Monday morning, and Neil waited outside the doctor's surgery from 7.45am (bless him!) until they opened, to get me the first appointment available.
I just felt absolutely dreadful at the weekend. I was frightened, I felt so ill. It wasn't just nausea. Everything hurt, I was breathless just sitting upright. I felt like something had gone really really wrong in my body somewhere, and the weird symptoms (especially the poo - that really freaked me out) were making that feeling worse.
So anyway, we miraculously (and I do mean miraculously!) got an appointment with my very own fantastic doctor - he has been unavailable the last 5 appts I've had!!! And he was wonderful, as always. Neil came in with me, which I felt more secure with. We are really really close these days it seems. I can't be without him and I am overwhelmed by how much I love him. Just a side note, but a good one! :)
Anyway, the doctor looked at my eyes and said they don't look healthy but I am not jaundiced (phew!). He said sometimes jaundice can occur in pregnancy at any stage, just because, sort of. Nothing to freak out about anyway. He said to stay off the suppositories unless I can't do without them. He prodded my tummy and although it was generally tender, he ruled out any dodgy stuff like liver, gallbladder or bile duct issues. He said I should be getting my first appointment with a midwife for my antenatal care in the next week or so, therefore he didn't want to take a load of blood from me today, since they would do a lot of that on my first appointment with the midwife.
I told him I have been improving my intake slightly, and he was satisfied that I wasn't dehydrated at the time! :) Yay!!! He said I have lost a significant amount of weight, and that he's never seen me that thin, so the more I could manage to eat, the better. He recommended flat lemonade as well, since it is full of glucose. He said I did not need to go into hospital unless hydration became an issue, and so long as I keep up my fluids like I'm doing, I am okay to stay at home!!! Yaaaaaaay!!
I did get a prescription for some more suppositories, but I don't think I will use them because I haven't taken any since then and I am doing okay without them. But I have discovered another joy of pregnancy in this country - free prescriptions!!!!! I just tick the lil box that says I'm pregnant and sign my name, and there you have it, free druuuugs!! ;) I forgot about that. And I get free dental care when pregnant too, so I intend to make an appointment with my dentist as soon as the idea of someone poking around in my mouth doesn't make me gag.
I have filled in my certificate of exemption form, and my doctor signed it yesterday and now I just have to post it for a certificate of evidence that I'm pregnant and don't have to pay for any sort of health/dental care. So far it doesn't seem to have mattered that I don't have the certificate yet, because Neil just says, "Oh she's pregnant" and they tick the pregnant box for me and don't ask us to pay! :) I LOVE England! ;)
Did I mention lately that I LOVE being pregnant? Well I think it's time I did. I don't want to start getting all, "Ohhhh this is so sucky!" I love it. I am carrying a BABY!!! I feel rotten but who cares. I am so overjoyed to be pregnant. It's such a privilege!
We bought some digital scales (at last) yesterday so I can weigh myself. I am curious to find out if I will be weighed at antenatal appointments. When I did my midwifery training 8 years ago, they had just abolished that part of antenatal monitoring, and nobody bothered with weighing pregnant women any more. The midwives I was with told me there was no point - weight is just another number to stress about which is completely unnecessary and has no bearing on anything. I personally have to agree. What does it matter what a pregnant woman weighs from month to month?!! It's crazy why people make such a deal out of it. You eat. The baby is nourished and grows. You gain weight. The baby is born. You lose weight. Numbers should not matter at all. You don't need scales to tell you if you're gaining so-called "too much weight" (though I'm not sure if there even IS such a thing) or "too little weight". Looking in the mirror or taking a look at your diet will tell you that. So I doubt my weight will be monitored through my pregnancy if midwifery is still the same on that issue as when I trained, but I am curious to see what I weigh so I'll check my own occasionally I think. NOT to obsess over and count my total weight gain or worry about exceeding limits that should never be imposed in the first place, etc!!! Okay this is a rant isn't it? I will stop.
Anyway yesterday I weighed 7st 2lbs, or 102lbs, and I weighed 11lbs more when I found out I was pregnant. I'm sure I had put on a few more pounds with the huge appetite since then. So yeah I have lost a lot of weight in the last week or so. I am 5ft 3 (and a half) so this is WAY WAY WAY too little on me. All my bones stick out and my cheeks are sunken. Neil keeps looking at me like he's scared, and I know he's looking at some bone he never saw before, and it upsets me. He tries to say comforting things though, bless him. Oooh he just got home from work early! :)
Okay what else? My intake has improved soooo much and I could almost cry with relief, honestly. I have had to learn that I need to eat despite feeling sick. People have emailed me to tell me this even before I got into this state, but I guess I had to learn it for myself. Eating at the peak of nausea is the most unnatural thing I think I have ever had to do! It's horrible. But I do feel better for it. Now I am reaching the stage where if I feel sick, I know it's time to eat. It's like nausea has become a replacement for hunger, to trigger me to eat. Weeeeeird.
I feel queasy alllll the time, any time I am awake, and this varies from just feeling grim and motion sick, right up to feeling like I'm about to throw up. I really appreciate "just" feeling motion sick now! It's the best of a bad bunch of feelings.
I am off the fruit juice ice-cubes now, but they worked marvellously to get me back onto flavours and fluids. I have made a little progress with flat lemonade and now I'm having a bit of lucozade (it's got caffiene in it though, which isn't ideal), but they are sooooo sweet and yucky. I am so not into sweet things at ALL with this pregnancy, so I don't tolerate those too well.
I eat white bread, cream crackers, bread sticks, and plain crisps. I discovered plain crisps at the weekend. I was feeling super nauseous and I knew I needed to get something to eat fast, but couldn't bear the idea of bread or crackers or bread sticks. So I grabbed a bag of plain salted crisps and was AMAZED how easily they went down - AND reduced my nausea significantly. So I ate two more bags!!!!!! Woohoo! Yesterday I ate three bags of plain crisps too, and today I have had one so far. Neil has bought me a huge supply. Normally I wouldn't be happy with the idea of pigging out on so many crisps but right now I guess it doesn't matter. It's whatever goes in and does the trick, and for me that is crisps.
I am always queasy whilst eating but I can feel the food making a difference as I eat it, so I am trying really hard. Neil is so pleased with me and my mum says she is too. I am quite proud of myself for my perseverance, as I really am trying SO hard with my intake and it has been really difficult for me. Yay for me! :)
Last night I felt like eating a tomato. Not sliced or anything, just like an apple. So Neil got me one and I ate it. Then I had a mini-babybel cheese thingy with another bag of crisps. Later I wanted another tomato and another cheese but this time on crackers. I am noticing I need to eat about every hour to keep the nausea at bay the most efficiently. I never ever ever get hungry and I always feel sick and don't feel like eating any food, but like I say, I am really trying hard and I put food in as often as I can. It keeps the nausea more bearable.
Last night I went to bed and couldn't sleep for like an hour, so of course I started to feel grim again and had to get up at midnight for tomato soup and bread and butter! The tomato soup has always been very savoury (it's Heinz cream of) but last night it was so sweet and yucky, like someone stirred huge spoonfuls of sugar in. Yuck. I do NOT have a sweet tooth right now!
Today I got up and ate a BANANA!!! Yay!! I felt okay this morning, only a bit motion sick, so I started worrying that the baby was okay, but around 11am the nausea really kicked in, and for the first time it was a huge relief!!! How CRAZY is that for ME to say?! :)
Today I had tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce on toast for lunch. I felt like it. Well, sort of. I just reeeally didn't want anything else.
Well this entry is getting way too long-winded so I'll get onto something other than food now!
My breasts are hurting sooooo much the last couple of days. They get patches on them about the size of a penny which are hot and throb with pain. My nipples are a little more bumpy now and still puffier looking than normal. I am so excited about my breasts really making milk one day to feed a baby of mine!! It boggles my brain.
When I sneeze I get extremely painful ligament pains low down in my tummy. They hurt so much but I still like them in a way because they are so pregnant and normal :)
Last night I had my first two pregnant dreams. I dreamt that I had a miscarriage at 14 weeks. It was so vivid and horrible. I started bleeding red and a scan showed the baby had died. I can't remember what happened but I think I had a D&C when I would have been 15 weeks and 1 day pregnant. So horrible :( I woke up from that one and told Neil about it (he was getting up for work), then I fell back to sleep and had another dream. This time I was at a fertility clinic and I was pregnant. We had had help to get pregnant and this other couple at the clinic had too. But the clinic made a blunder and somehow I was carrying THEIR baby, but only just found out about halfway through the pregnancy, and their treatment had failed. They were kicking up a huge thing and wanting their baby back from us. I had bonded with what I felt was MY baby and I found it so distressing.
Then we had this scan done and the doctor told me something was wrong and he wanted to see me and my husband together to tell us. But Neil was at work and I begged the doctor to tell me, but he wouldn't, not till Neil was there. I went to find a phone to call Neil at work, and there were phones all over the walls, but most of them didn't have a receiver, or the buttons were missing, or there were huge queues or my money wouldn't go in. I was in tears with frustration. Anyway he turned up somehow, and the doctor told us the baby had a mermaid's tail instead of legs and that it was not a viable pregnancy. I wanted to keep my baby despite the tail, but the doctor said they did not allow babies with tails to live in this country (!!!). Meanwhile the other couple were constantly angrily banging on at us to give their baby back. I woke up all upset. I sounds just a silly dream but I found it so upsetting.
Urgh. I just hope my baby will be okay and this will be a normal healthy pregnancy.
What else can I update on? Bean is now about 1cm long and has arm and leg buds. The arm buds will begin to form fingers soon. Bean's eyes are easily recognisable, and the heart and liver are very large for the body-size at the moment. I am still scared to think too much about where Bean may be at with development, incase something goes wrong and that development isn't actually taking place because I am about to miscarry. I am anxious every time I feel something "leaking", incase it is red blood. I'm always scared to look down when I go to the toilet. But I think that is normal after the scare of a bleed this pregnancy, and knowing so many people who have had miscarriages at this stage of pregnancy. Plus the genuine risk I suppose. I just hope and pray we get past this stage safely and then I can breathe more easy.
I am still bleeding slightly, but still only brown and hardly at all now. I have a lot of CM as well lately.
My whole family is now very comfortable calling the baby, "Bean" which I really like! :) I thought it would just be a cute nickname but actually it has totally become our baby's name for the duration of pregnancy. Just looking at a tin of baked beans makes me feel all gooey and fond of my baby, because my baby is Bean, completely and entirely. The name has really stuck now and everyone is happy with it. My brother does keep referring to Bean as his niecew or his nephiece though! Hehe! Every day I talk to Bean and tell him/her to stay with me and grow healthy and strong. I couldn't bear to lose Bean. I can't explain the love I feel for this tiny little creature already. Bean is so precious to me.
Well it has taken me a while to write this mammoth entry, so it must be time to eat something again! I am tireder than usual these days too, which I put down to weight loss and lack of food before, but I think it's just pregnancy. I'm going to take a nap after I eat. I get dizzy and lightheaded if I don't sleep when I need it. But I LOVE that I'm pregnant, even the sucky parts (so far!). Thank you God for letting me be pregnant. Thank you God for my little Bean. Thank you for my wonderful husband who I love immensely. Thank you for my precious friends who support me. Thank you for being faithful and loving and good to me.
I will update again soon I hope! Just soooooooo happy to feel a bit more like myself again, with or without the big queaze! ;)
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