Journal
Sign guestbook
Arthur's Mummy's Diary
Matthew's Belly Gallery
Nathan's Belly Gallery
Benjamin's Belly Gallery
My Fertility Friend Chart
2006-06-09 - 8.43pm��previous entry��next entry
40 weeks, 2 days pregnant - less crappy (I think!)
Yet another eveningly entry from me! It's crazy that it's only TWO days, but it actually feels like WEEKS since my due date! I never had two such long days, or at least it feels that way. So weird how time speeds up or slows down depending on what is going on.
You'll be glad to know I'm in a better mood this evening, so hopefully this won't be another crabby entry! :) But it has not been an easy day and there have been many more tears and sobbing episodes than yesterday, urgh.
Neil took the day off work, thank goodness, as I have no idea how I would have managed the day without him in the end. We found the Moses basket sheets - yay! I made the Moses basket up and put it in the cot bed, and now that is ALL ready for my sweet boy to sleep in when he arrives. My bed isn't ready for me to take him in bed with me though, if that's what I want to do - but the sticky heat is really putting me off the idea of skin-to-skin contact while I'm trying to sleep! I need that double bedguard on the bed, but Neil tried and tried to adjust it yesterday and it won't do what the instructions say so we are wondering if it's faulty. It's a really simple thing to do according to the instructions, but the parts aren't quite as they should be on the diagram and it won't adjust no matter what we do. So maybe we'll have to return it, urgh.
Bad bad baaaaaad news is the arseing washing machine. A really nice engineer man came round and thought it was just the drain hose that was bust, so he replaced it (at cost to us) and then it still didn't work, so he took the whole thing apart and found that something-or-other had burnt out and fried the motherboard. In other words, the machine is buggered. He can order a new motherboard but it will cost hundreds of � and the earliest he could repair it would be Wednesday (it's Friday). Which is an absolute no-go. I estimate we will hit crisis levels with our dirty laundry by the end of Saturday, so we can't possibly wait till the middle of next week - and that would be the case for any normal time, NOT a time when I am sure to give birth to a cloth nappy-wearing baby before the repair is to happen! I mean, could there even BE worse things to wash over the next week?! I hate to be gross about it, but c'mon - it's hot weather, we are going to have smellier, sweatier clothes than at any other time! Plus we are going to have a toddler's teething poo, a newborn's meconium (in various fetching shades of green/brown/yellow), blood, amniotic fluid, etc!!! I can't imagine any other time I would need a washing machine MORE! It's so annoying.
Sooo we asked the guy about washing machines in general and he said that if we were using cloth nappies for two children, we really ought to have a machine that was high quality instead of value-for-money, which is what we currently have. The highest quality machines cost the most money so we haven't ever considered one. But he said with the amount of washing we do and the heavy duty work the machine has to do with having little ones and cloth nappies, we would be looking at another potential repair problem within the next year. So we figured maybe we should just buy a new expensive machine with our non-existent money (otherwise known as a credit card *sigh*) and be done with it.
Neil spent a lot of the afternoon on the internet searching for machines that the guy recommended - two particular brands that should last us well no matter what we throw at them! We need somewhere that has the machine we want, and which will deliver to us immediately. But everywhere he phoned or contacted had no quick delivery times. The earliest dates were the middle of next week, and I started to feel completely despairing over it, because HONESTLY we will not manage without a washing machine until Monday, let alone the middle of the week. And that's without a baby, and without cloth nappies.
Basically the same thing happened as yesterday - I started to see no possible light at the end of the stressy tunnel, and got all despairing and stressed out, and Mummy tried to do the same thing as yesterday, asking me what I suggested (as in, "everybody else is making suggestions and being helpful - why can't you?!"). And my line of emotional rationality was already stretched sooooooo thin that I completely lost it in an instant, even raised my voice at everyone (except Arthur), kept shouting that I was forty bloody weeks pregnant and everyone should give me a break, and did lots of very undignified crying and sobbing. *sigh*
Mummy and Arthur played with playdough and Neil demonstrated for the fifty millionth time why he is the PERFECT husband for me, by calmly talking me through the options ahead of us, telling me that each and every one of them was manageable somehow, and that everything would be okay. He took complete control and told me exactly what he was going to do about it, and wouldn't let me have any more say in it. By that point though, ANYTHING would have kept me crying (like, "But, but.... ohh there's a piece of old toast on the floooor - waaaah!!") Everything he was saying to me made sense and I had nothing to be crying about, but I don't know, my emotions were on a roll or something! I just said, "But Arthur needs his teeeea!" and wailed and sobbed. He told me he would give Arthur his tea and that I should go and have a shower and not worry about anything else any more. He held me for like 10 minutes straight while I cried, and didn't try to talk sense into me or anything. He is just the sweetest man :)
So he made Arthur's tea and Mummy and I hugged and cried and told each other we were sorry and that we love each other. What a soggy mess of emotions these last two days!! Mummy keeps feeling like she's let me down by getting all aggravated by my moods, but I wish she wouldn't. We both agree that we are just SO similar, we always end up rubbing each other up the wrong way when we've been together all day every day for several days! But I love my Mummy. She has been wonderful help to me with Arthur!
Anyway so it all settled down. Neil said that the only thing left to do would be to wait till Arthur was asleep for the night, and go to Comet or Curry's, both of which are open till 8pm, and see if he could purchase a washing machine of the right quality there and then, and literally hump it into the back of the car and bring it home! I got tearful about the reasons that wasn't practical, etc, but he said I wasn't to think about it and that was that. He would manage it somehow. So, as I write this, Neil is out at those shops now, looking for a washing machine to bring home! I don't know how he'll get on though. We need something pretty specific for our needs, and I can't fathom how he'll physically manage to move it into the car or into our house for that matter. And then what will happen to the other one that's broken?! But I'm not to think about it.
I took a shower after Mummy and I made up, and decided to check my cervix, and felt something a bit different to normal. I can feel the edge of my cervix as usual, soft and pretty thinned out, and still quite high up, but the difference was that I hadn't realized before that the opening of it seems to be STRAIGHT ahead rather than at the front or back. This is described as "midline" and is a fairly favourable position for the start of labour, though it still needs to be anterior and low for birth itself. Anyway, I have no idea how long it has been there because I hadn't ever thought to check midline till today! At the midline, I can feel Matthew's head clear as day, nothing like what I thought was his head before (unless there was mucus plug in the way before and there isn't now, or something). It's harder and bonier than even my forehead is! It felt so strange to touch something that solid in there! I could sweep my finger across his little bony head about a centimetre each way to the sides, but I couldn't reach high enough to see if it was palpable any further, as the sides curved upwards. There was no cervix covering the part I DID feel, so I must be at least 2cm dilated at the moment. I couldn't actually feel the sides of my cervix around his head at all. I wish it was lower so I could have felt more! It was so interesting to feel his head like that! As I stroked that little window of his head, he wiggled and squirmed a bit, which was lovely! I didn't continue for long because I didn't know if the wiggling and squirming was his way of showing distress at having his head poked! I could feel clearly enough to try and feel a membrane over his head, and I am pretty sure I felt one - which of course SHOULD be there as my waters haven't broken yet! It wasn't bulging or cushiony with waters though, just flat over his hard little head! I'm glad to find his head so firmly pressed onto my cervix though - that will help things along nicely!
I have noticed today and yesterday that my discharge (of which there is still plenty, though MUCH less mucousy today) has a different smell. It's so unusual and it keeps being noticable to me when I go to the loo. I told Neil about it this evening and he asked what it smelled like. I said I didn't know, it was an unusual smell that wasn't bad in any way, but I just didn't know how to describe it. He said, "Does it smell like ferns and forests?"!!! What a strange thing to suggest! But weirdly enough, that didn't seem a BAD description of what I could smell, though I wasn't entirely sure what ferns and forests might smell like, lol! I guess it was sort of like an extremely dilute fabric softner smell, the plant-scented type. When I paused and said, "Hmmm, yes, that might be it" Neil looked worried and asked me if I was sure my waters hadn't broken. I think I would know though, surely?! He said that is exactly how he remembers Arthur smelling when he was born and still all birth-fluidy. At the time he had remembered the NCT antenatal teacher telling our class that newborn babies smell "forest fresh" or "like freshly laundered sheets that have been out in fresh country air to dry"!! He said he knew what she meant the instant he caught the light scent of Arthur's skin as he was lifted onto me after he was born. The NCT teacher said it was the mild scent of amniotic fluid, so Neil is worried that my waters have leaked or something. But I'm sure they can't leak without me knowing it! I would have noticed continual leaking or a flow, and at the very least I would feel a difference when I lie down, but none of that has happened so I'm sure they haven't broken. Interesting about the smell though. I'm not sure why that should be.
Arthur and Nana did water play today, during the hottest part of the day. We lay the big mat down in the living room and edged it with towels, and stripped him off and he played with a huge tubful of water and a million containers, with Nana :) He loved it. I sat on the sofa and watched them, and he played happily for maybe an hour. During that time I started to feel uncomfortable and.... slightly weird, I can't describe it too well. Unsettled, sort of, in my body somewhere. I had a moment where I felt VERY periody and yucky, crampy in my back and front and just like my insides were feeling hot and yucky and bothered. The moment passed after a bit and I just felt over-warm and a bit crampy. A while later I had the same feeling again, and when I had another feeling like it after about 10 or 15 more minutes, I put my hand on my tummy and found that it was all hard and contracting with that yucky crampy feeling. I also just felt so weirdly unsettled in myself - it's too hard to explain in properly. Mummy asked me if I wanted to go up and have a lie down, and I said, "I don't know" because that's how it made me feel. Like I was uncomfy and felt so weird and like my body was about to "do" something, that I didn't know what to do with myself. I had a few more moments like that over the time they were clearing away and moving onto the next activity, and then I got up and things started to feel more normal. I continued to feel crampy in my back and front in general though, and have had the odd crampy moment since, but nothing like before. I'm not sure what that was, but it felt to me like something "different" that made me almost get excited! It definitely gave me a "something's happening!" moment, even if it faded out in the end. I didn't even want to tell anybody how I was feeling until it passed altogether, because I wanted to wait till my body was more sure of what it was doing before I let anyone know that something was going on. But anyway, it stopped, so nothing is going on now!
Last night I couldn't eat my dinner. I ate sooooo late though, and just made myself a light salad and stuff which I REALLY wanted when I was making it, and even nibbled on some salad while I was setting it all out. But the moment I tried to eat anything, I felt sick to my stomach and even felt gaggy as I tried to swallow things. Weird. I tried again a bit later and the same thing happened. I managed to nibble a few bits down after an hour or so, but in the end I figured if my body was saying NOT to eat, I should go with it at this stage. Who knows when I'll be in labour, and my body will know what it wants for that, so I would do best to listen to it. I ate fine today though :)
Sooo the 9th has pretty much been crossed off the list, as there are only a few hours of it left now! I love this because it's the one everybody else predicted for me, and I'm glad to have proven them wrong, haha! ;) Except hmmm, it would be nice NOT to be still waiting! This morning I checked the 5 day weather forecast and saw the usual 80 degree temps for the next 4 days, and then freaked out when I saw 90s for Tuesday next week! Noooooooo! It's just going to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and no sign of rain or anything that might break the humidity, etc. Now, I know that if the temperature is in the 90s, I can't keep the house cooler than like 84 degrees. Which is WAAAAY unsuitable for a newborn baby. So I phoned my lovely friend Katie from church, who just had her baby 6 days ago, and who also had her little boy in late June, so she would probably have some good advice for me! She and her husband were so sweet - they put me on speakerphone so they could both talk to me at once, and I could hear Bethany in the background :) They said her cord stump fell off yesterday and she is doing just fine. It is so weird to me that Matthew was actually due BEFORE Bethany and yet there she is losing her cord stump and getting on with life in the big wide world, while Matthew pedals his little feet around in my sides and has never breathed air yet! Such a surreal thought.
Anyway they have an old house which is naturally cool in the summer, and ours is modern and WELL insulated, so that makes our situations different. I am going to ask the advice of the midwives and health visitors, because I'm starting to worry about keeping Matthew safe, temperature-wise. I am buying a couple of accurate room thermometers at eBay to put in any room Matthew might be sleeping in. We only have those crappy ones so far that just say, "too hot" or "too cold", etc. Or ones that fade in and out of set figures with 3 degrees difference on each one, so you can never tell exactly what the temperature IS in the room, just vaguely whereabouts it is and whether it's vaguely too warm for a baby or not. Last summer, our "too hot, too cold, just right" baby thermometer spent weeks on end right up at the far end of "too hot", day and night. We just can't get our house cool in the hot weather, even at night when it's not quite so hot.
OoOoOoOooohh Neil is home WITH A WASHING MACHINE in the back of the car!!!!!! How exciting! I'm going to see! :)
It's a good one! :) He has managed to get it in the house, as he paid Curry's a �10 deposit and they lent him a trolley thingy to shift it with, and helped him get it in the back of our car! Yay! He has got it into the kitchen and moved the old one out onto the driveway, but he can't get it into the back of the car without someone's help, and there's a World Cup match starting now so he refuses to bother the neighbours for help! He said it can stay on the driveway overnight and we'll ask my brother if he'd mind if Neil brought him over to help just for half an hour tomorrow morning or something. The new washing machine is in the kitchen and I think Neil is just straightening out all the furniture he had to move to get it there - he is SO wonderful!!!!! :) He plumbed the last one in himself, so he feels confident about doing the same with this one. I can't believe we'll have a working washing machine the same DAY that the engineer told us our other one was bust and the whole situation seemed overwhelmingly despairing! I'm soooo relieved! Or at least, I will be when those pooey nappies are finally washing themselves clean in the lovely new machine tonight :) Poor Neil though - he's such a wonder man. His arms are tired out and he's exhausted, and I wish that didn't have to be so for him, because he might need his strength sooner than he can recover. I am so in awe of him this evening :)
Arthur has been asleep since 6.30pm, and we are increasing the amount of normal background sound in the house during the evenings, to try and "condition" him a bit for when the house is full of people and I'm giving birth! But he isn't waking, yay! He slept through from bedtime to his normal 6am last night (well, 5.45am but he isn't allowed up till 6), and his bedtimes are currently nice and early - he is always asleep by 7.30pm and these days when Neil is home, we often have him in bed by 6.30 and he's asleep before 7. Which is wonderful because he's so little and little ones do seem to need early bedtimes. I can still REMEMBER my bedtime being 6.30/7pm when I was little! Also it gives us a lovely long evening now that Arthur isn't waking much. It's wonderful to have him sleeping through the night more. He still wakes at night sometimes but is quick to settle with Neil next to him, and I would say he now sleeps through at least half of the time, which is just incredible compared to the previous 18 months of his life! He is 19 months old today, so my boys will be a full 19 months apart at least now :)
I really want to write in my other diary, more about Arthur, like I've been starting to in this diary - I'd much rather write his news there and my non-pregnancy-related thoughts too, but I just don't have time or energy to do more than one thing online usually, so it's this diary that wins out! I have photos of Arthur from this week though, with Nana :) I need to post them soon in the other diary, before they get eclipsed by a zillion photos of life after Matthew's arrival!
I have decided that I want a birthing area set up both upstairs AND downstairs. Until now, I had only ever considered giving birth downstairs in the living room. That's what I wanted last time too. But I am beginning to realize that it's not going to be practical if it's daytime, because the living room is our ONLY room in the house during the day to be in. It's Arthur's only place to be. All his toys are there, and he is so busy and energetic downstairs at every second of the day! I could labour down there with him for maybe early labour or something, but then I am sure I would need to retreat somewhere with more space and quiet. He can't go out for HOURS on end to give me space, and at the moment, the weather is too hot for him to go out of the house at ALL, seriously. Neil took him out for a walk at 8 this morning because it was the only time of day vaguely cool enough for Arthur to be out. It really has been that hot. Oh for rainy days again! At least you can go for a walk on a rainy day, all waterproofed up! When it's hot, you just can't take a little child out. It's too much for them, and for whoever is with them too. So he can't go out at all in the day at the moment, and that means I will have no space at all downstairs if I'm in labour when he's awake.
So I want to prepare the main bedroom (the bigger of the two) for a potential place to labour and give birth in. But also have the same plan for the living room, depending on the time of day I'm in labour and how I feel and so on. I will possibly even need some sort of prepared area in the spare bedroom too, in case Arthur needs to nap in the main bedroom or something, or it gets to bedtime for Arthur and I don't want to go downstairs. So long as I have all my options laid out ready, I will be happy! I let my mum know all this today, so she'll help me have it all ready for when the time comes. I also asked her if she could take Arthur somewhere else to occupy him if I do end up having any internal examinations or if I get to my midwife appt on Monday (40w5d) and decide to accept their offer of a sweep. I know those things hurt me so I don't want Arthur to see me normal one second, then for someone to "do" something to me and suddenly I'm in obvious pain. I remember from last time it hurt so much that I couldn't hide how bad it felt! I don't want Arthur to see that in case he is upset by it, so Mummy will take him for a quick walk or a story upstairs or something if that has to happen at any point.
I am still desperately hoping not to make it to my midwife appointment on Monday, but I have to say, if I DO, I know I will probably give in and accept the sweep. I have never been 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant before, and I think it will be something I do not deal with too well if it happens! So I think I'll be willing to try anything come Monday, if I still have no signs of labour. Not that I WANT a sweep, but honestly, I don't think I'll care by Monday. My dad comes back from France tomorrow night overnight, and so he'll be here again from Sunday. Then my parents are meant to return to France after seeing their newest grandson arrive and settle in with his Mummy and Daddy and big brother, on WEDNESDAY!!!! So I am starting to freak out, because Wednesday is starting to feel awfully close, and Matthew still shows no signs of coming out yet! Mummy says she'll just stay longer if he hasn't come, but it still stresses me out. I'm sure I'll be ready to accept the sweep on Monday if nothing has happened. Urgh.
Okay I think I will finish now and go and check on my marvellous husband! My back aches like crazy, but not in any exciting place like low down (!!) - more up under my shoulder blades, which I think is tension or crying hard or something?? But otherwise I'm feeling fine, and not doing too badly mood/emotion-wise, despite how it sounds from the rest of the day! I'm just soooo eager to have Matthew now. This day last pregnancy I had awful period pain all day without a break, and by evening I was contracting regularly. That lasted the whole night, every 10 minutes exactly, and I got no sleep at all. The next day (40w3d), I was in active labour, and Arthur would have been born that night if he hadn't turned and stuff. He was born the following morning at 40w4d. So I felt very pfthth when I woke this morning to a calm uterus and zero period pain! I am kind of excited about June 10th though. It has always been my favourite date (to look at, not to wait for!) from the start - so much prettier written down than any of the others, hehe! It's such a nice round number to be born on, and I just like it. It seems like a good day to be born. And I know Meg would agree! ;) I hope he is born on June 10th. Then I only have one more day to wait! Come soon little boy! Mummy is getting kind of desperate!!
Recent entries.....
Babies 7 and 8! :) - 2016-01-10
Babies 6 and 7! - 2013-02-17
Baby #5 !! - 2010-04-03
Nearly 3 months postpartum! - 2009-10-05
6 weeks old already! - 2009-08-25