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2006-05-12 - 11.44am��previous entry��next entry
36 weeks, 2 days - midwife appointment!
Wow, I'm back just TWO days later, hehe! ;)
Thanks for the lovely messages, and Jemma, you're so sweet to offer help and a shoulder, etc :) By the way, I don't think my body is any "better" than yours at holding babies in - I admire yours for its no-nonsense efficiency at having a maximum weight capacity (very sensible of it!), lol! ;) *hugs*
Meg, we did think of anyone at church we might be able to ask for help during the birth, but we just haven't kept up with going very much and there's nobody we feel we are close enough to, for something this big. And Arthur doesn't really know people again. *sigh* But oh well. Just pray and pray that everything happens with perfect timing (and attendants!)!
I just wanted to update today because the midwife came round this morning. It was my midwife who left me in the lurch on Wednesday, and she brought a student midwife too. I like student midwives :) She gave me a vague "sorry we missed you on Wednesday" but that's it. Tsk. And she was equally not-that-inspiring-of-confidence today. She so nice though. I am still praying it won't be her at my homebirth!
My blood pressure was 112/65 - yay! Nice and normal for me. Lower than recent readings at the clinic, but then that makes sense, seeing as I'm not all stressed out from getting Arthur and I to the clinic and keeping him from running all over the place in the waiting area! I had no leukocytes in today's wee sample, and I didn't hear anything more about the one that was sent off to the lab last week, so I guess it wasn't an infection after all. I have no symptoms anyway so I was surprised at the possibility. I am good at getting UTI symptoms, even when there ISN'T any infection! Anyway the midwife said she had forgotten to check my results (tsk!) so she'll try to remember to look them up for me before my next appt.
I had no protein in my urine, but I did have ++ sugar! She asked me if I had had anything sweet to eat this morning and I had to admit to 3 chocolate digestives about an hour before she arrived! After they left, I looked at my notes and saw she had written, "Ate chocolate biscuits for breakfast, thus ++ sugar in urine" Grrr! I did NOT eat chocolate biscuits for breakfast!!! I wouldn't be so stupid with my body! I ate healthy raisin and almond granola with milk like I nearly always do now. It was 2 hours later when I had the biscuits, as Arthur was having his (healthier than mine!) snack and I felt like some choccy bics. Tsk. Anyway that bugged me, but it's not actually important.
I got on the scales before breakfast this morning and I have finally surpassed my maximum weight ever - at the very end of my pregnancy with Arthur. Back then I weighed 11 stone 5lbs, and today I weigh 11 stone 6lbs! Yikes! I have completely lost track of how many lbs that makes in total - I'll just have a count on my fingers and work it out!.... 39lbs, I think. I hope I don't get to a total gain of 50lbs. Somewhere in the 40s sounds okay to me though! Good old breastfeeding fuel! :) I try to remember to say that out loud whenever I slap the side of my now-rather-solid bottom or thigh - you know, in the same way farmers slap their cows and say good girl, hehe! It's milk fuel, and that's what I'm trying to remember to focus on!
Matthew's heart rate was normal and healthy. She didn't tell me how fast, but it sounded to me somewhere in the 120s. I was curious to see what she would measure my bump as this week, as she so obviously did it wrong last week. I made sure to measure myself carefully this morning before she arrived, and got exactly 36cm. Which, hmmm, because that's actually a little LESS than I measured myself last week. And also, it's the very first time I have measured myself exactly spot on for the number of weeks pregnant, instead of 2 weeks ahead. I also noticed my pubic bone was super easy to feel for the first time in ages. The bulge of the widest part of Matthew's head seems to be gone from above it today.
So the midwife measured me 33cm. Grrr! I told her I was a bit confused because I measured myself at 36cm just half an hour ago, and she just gave me some waffle about baby's position or something, which totally didn't answer my question. I said that after last week's measurement I checked when I got home and it was 36.5cm, not 32 like in my notes. She didn't answer that one either, but I bet she moaned to her student about me when they left - mothers who think they know better than the midwife, etc. She doesn't actually know that I have done some midwifery training and happen to know EXACTLY how to measure a pregnant uterus accurately, especially my own. So yeah.
But anyway, I wasn't too bothered in the end because I was busy being excited about the fact that when she felt Matthew's position, she said he is engaged!! Not fully engaged, but definitely "in there". That would explain the drop in measurement and the fact that the big hard bulge of head is now under my pubic bone, making the bone easier to feel for me when I measure. Yay! I wasn't really expecting him to be engaged any time soon because I read that it tends to happen much later in second or subsequent pregnancies, even not until labour has begun sometimes. So anyway, I'm excited that he's engaged!
Yesterday I did feel like I had pinched a nerve in one side of my pelvis at the back, every time I took a step. I did a lot yesterday and Arthur was THE biggest mischief-maker of all time so I know I over-exerted myself pulling him down from places he'd climbed, carrying him downstairs under one arm (plank-style!) wriggling and protesting when he had climbed the stairs and pushed his luck with me once too many times, etc!! Also I lifted a few planks of wood (small but still heavyish) from the car yesterday. And one time Arthur fell in the kitchen when he slipped up and I was in the living room when I heard a crash and then THAT cry that makes your heart miss a beat and you have no idea how on earth you physically managed to get to your child's side so fast! I discovered yesterday that I am somehow able to get up off the floor and sprint like a bump-free athlete, hehe! But I could well have pulled something then. It was just instinctive, and I felt soooo completely unpregnant, it was weird. But unless I'm doing some miracle-Mummy thing like that, I am heavy and moving carefully and gallumphing around, etc.
Ohhh I had something weird this morning. It's a bit gross. But anyway. I got up this morning and went to the loo for a wee. Then I went to put clean underwear on and put a pantyliner on (necessary these days). While I was standing there putting the pantyliner on my knickers, I seemed to lose some fluid from somewhere or other! There wasn't enough light to see, and I thought, how embarrassing, I've peed! But when I put the light on, the stuff on my pants and the floor wasn't wee. It was almost opaque and cloudy. There wasn't LOADS of it or anything, just maybe a couple of tablespoons or something, and in the end I just figured it was cervical fluid - but how weird to have a gush of cervical fluid! I haven't noticed any particularly large amounts of leaking since then, so I didn't bother mentioning it to the midwife. But I'll keep an eye on that.
The midwife didn't bring my homebirth pack either. She said she or another midwife would come next week with a "sister" - it sounded so important that I asked who the sister was and why she was coming! It turns out that she meant just a midwife from the community midwife team who is a G grade (and thus "sister" grade) as opposed to her F grade status. Someone more experienced - hoorah! Apparently she said a sister has to come to assess the house for homebirth. She said, "I have absolutely no clue what to look for - honestly, none whatsoever! - so the sister will do that next week" - yikes! She really doesn't inspire my confidence!
She said someone has to assess my home to make sure it's suitable for a homebirth, and to see the places I might deliver in, and to check that they'll have access to everything they need, etc. Which, hmmm. They didn't do that last time, and speaking of which, did she not notice in my notes that I had a planned homebirth LAST TIME, thus my home must be acceptable as a place to have my baby?! Also, I didn't like the idea that they had to come round and essentially run their fingers over dusty areas or something, hmming and wondering whether to give me their consent! I AM having my baby at home, thank you! It's as suitable a place as any, even if they say it's not in the end (which they won't, but I hate that they think they CAN say so). It's actually MY say over where I have my baby, not anyone else's. Tsk.
So I casually pointed out that Pat did my home assessment (not that it was any sort of assessment, but she did my home visits at the end of my pregnancy last time, and I know she is a senior community midwife) last time, and asked if she was still on the team. My midwife sounded surprised, and said that she was still on the team. She said she would try to get Pat to be the sister who comes with her next week :) Pat made things slightly difficult for us during my pregnancy last time over the homebirth plans, but it seemed to just be because she wasn't crazy about the idea of me having my first baby at home. She is otherwise very pro-homebirth though, and other midwives that I chatted to during my pregnancy said I had a great midwife for a homebirth when I told them who my midwife was. So that would be great if she comes next week! Also it may not be my actual midwife coming with the sister. But my midwife said it would have to be two of them, for some reason I can't fathom.
Anyway, they are bringing the birth pack next week instead. I asked when that might be and she said next Friday at 37 weeks. I said I turned 37 weeks on Wednesday and she said, "Oh" and decided they'd better come on the Wednesday instead then! I should hope so, since I will be able to have a homebirth any time from Wednesday and if they haven't come round with the birth pack yet....! So yay, next Wednesday - that's only 5 days! Five days till I reach term and can have my homebirth! They'll check me over again too, and I am hoping to have the opportunity to ask the more experienced midwife what she estimates Matthew's weight to be. I am always amazed at very experienced midwives, how they feel a baby through someone's tummy near the end of pregnancy and say they reckon it weighs such-and-such, and they are usually SO much more accurate than growth scans or anything! Last pregnancy Pat checked my bump at my 39 week appt and said she thought he was 7.5lbs, no less for sure. He was born just over a week later weighing just over 8lbs, and I read that babies gain approx. half a lb per week in the last four weeks of pregnancy, so she must have been very accurate in her estimation. I HOPE it's Pat again! If she can tell me what she thinks Matthew weighs, I will put a lot of faith in her estimation again, and I'm curious to know! If she says he's 8lbs already though, I'll panic slightly, hehe!
We need to do some serious work in the house before my next appointment. They will really be coming round thinking, "If we are called out to deliver this baby TONIGHT, is this house in a suitable state?" and it really ISN'T right now. I mean, it's manageable - you can really have a baby pretty much anywhere - but we should really sort out better access to the stairs, and tidy and declutter the living room and kitchen some more. And clean. We need a hygienic, clean kitchen and bathroom. Also, over the next week or two we MUST get everything finished that we need done by the time Matthew is here. Otherwise he'll arrive and we won't have everything in place for when I am suddenly on my own in the day with two tiny ones.
Okay Arthur is awake, and I have finished pretty much anyway, so I'll post this now, and update again soon!
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