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2006-06-11 - 11.14pm��previous entry��next entry
40 weeks, 4 days - never been this pregnant before!
Sorry I'm later than usual with this entry! Nooo, there is nothing happening. *sigh* I am still here and have no signs of labour yet. I was so sure I would have Matthew LAST weekend, it seems really strange that another weekend has come to an end and he's STILL not here!
I do feel sort of proud that I can now say, "I have never been this pregnant before!" ;) Arthur had been born by this time in my last pregnancy, so I'm on uncharted territory now, hehe!
I am feeling fine. Today has been horribly hot and humid, but it has somehow been more manageable than other days. Mummy hasn't been here today, and we've had a quiet day just the three of us (and the little tiny one in there, of course!). This has meant that we've basically felt free to be a lil nudie family all day, what with the heat, hehehe! The weather is soooo much more manageable without clothes. Arthur has a little bit of heat rash around his neck - he never does well with hot sticky weather - so it has been nice for him to be free of clothes again. I was relieved to join him today! Okay so I wore knickers, but there wasn't really much point in any other clothes today. We've had fans on and the combination has made the heat more manageable.
Tomorrow is forecast a degree or so hotter, urgh. And Neil is back at work, so Mummy is coming round again. I am so happy to have given her a day for herself. Daddy is back in England and they spent the day together, and moved their things back to my grandparents' house where they'll stay until they are meant to go back to France on Wednesday. Except Mummy says that if Matthew isn't here by then, Daddy will go back again and she will stay on some more, and go back to my brother's place. I feel bad that everyone is hanging around being somewhat inconvenienced by the timing of things! But oh well, it can't be helped. I'm just relieved that she won't leave me to it once Wednesday arrives! I do worry a bit about if he comes tonight or tomorrow, and then Mummy feels okay about going on Wednesday as normal, because she feels she's seen him arrive and that. I am still desperately hoping for some help for a few days at least, after the birth. But I don't want to ask too much of my parents or anything. We have no other help around at all though....
Neil feels so weird about going back to work tomorrow! He says he can hardly bear to face his work colleagues AGAIN when everyone has been expecting him to be off on paternity leave for like a week or something! He says they won't believe it when he walks in again tomorrow! He is staying home till 10am though, because Mummy can't get here till about that time and the midwife will come tomorrow morning at some point. I need someone here with me when she turns up, because she'll offer me a sweep (which I've decided to accept) and I will need someone to occupy Arthur while I have that done. If Mummy hasn't arrived yet, I will be a bit stuck! So Neil is staying till she gets here. Work are being so wonderful and flexible for him, and they are happy for him to take bits of days as he needs them, out of his holiday time. It sucks that his holiday time is being eaten up, but it turns out that he has only used 2.5 days of it so far and he has lots left, so that's okay :)
Matthew has become weirdly active. So much so that it's really out of character for him, and I know an active baby is a GOOD thing, but I have worried about him all the same. I know it's QUIET babies that you have to worry about. But I get paranoid that he's thrashing about because he's tangled tightly in his cord or something. Last night his movements were so enormous and vigorous that he was hurting me, and my tummy was morphing into the weirdest shapes with hard shifts and changes every couple of seconds as he thrashed his whole body about at once! It really didn't seem right to me, especially for Matthew. Arthur used to move like that quite a lot, and it was pretty normal for him, but Matthew has NEVER done so. Last night he started moving vigorously while I was writing yesterday's diary entry, and he continued for over two hours!!! We ate our dinner from trays on our laps yesterday, just relaxing in front of some comedy on TV, and I couldn't hold the tray safely on my lap for how hard Matthew was writhing and pushing. It really worried me. Neil got the doppler out to reassure me. I haven't used that for months! But we listened to Matthew last night for a few minutes, and his heartrate was SUPER fast for him. Not abnormally fast though, just very fast for how it normally is. There were no decelerations or anything, and I waited till he had a quieter patch and listened again for a few more minutes, and it was a little slower, but again there were no decelerations, so I guess he was fine. I found his umbilical cord pulse clearly with the doppler and that was fine too. So I guess he was just having a manic exercise session! Strange thing to do at this stage of pregnancy though! I heard that babies are usually noticably quieter just before labour, so it's odd that he's suddenly more active than ever before. This evening he has had the same energetic movements at the same time as last night, but a little less vigorous I think. Still out of character for Matthew, but otherwise he seems fine.
This morning when I woke up, I immediately noticed I felt crampy and periody. I thought, "Yay!" but it didn't last. I got up a bit earlier than normal because I was getting what felt like crampy waves that felt a bit uncomfortable for lying down with, but it didn't continue much after I got up. I still felt kind of periody and crampy in my lower back, but that was it, and that faded off too after a while.
It's Neil's mum's birthday today. She has insisted all along that Matthew would come on her birthday, because it was also HER mother's birthday, and therefore a "family thing", so he was sure to come that day. For some reason that irked me! Mind you, I am just like that in personality - I guess it's a rebellious streak or something?! I hate to hear people tell me what's what when I like to think I know better! ;) So even though I am DESPERATE to have my baby asap, I did have this silly thought in the back of my mind all day - "he mustn't come today - I don't want Grandma to be right!" And he hasn't, so I'm childishly relieved. BUT I would really like to go into labour now please! He won't be here on the 11th now, as there's too little of it left, so how's about the 12th?! Pretty please?! It would be soooo nice to have my midwife turn up tomorrow to find me in early labour, and therefore NOT have to bother mentioning the sweep and inevitable consultant appt to talk about induction, urgh.
But I will take the sweep if there are no signs of anything by the time they get here. I am not thrilled by the prospect of how much PAIN it will most definitely cause me - I always find internals so horribly painful, but a sweep is more aggressive than a normal internal :( But, I will honestly take ANYTHING that isn't actual drug-based intervention right now, if it has a chance of getting labour started sooner rather than later. I know it will only work if my cervix is ready, so obviously it might lead to absolutely NOTHING except a painful procedure at the time. But if my cervix IS ready enough, then it could just work. I know I could/will (??) probably go into labour naturally in the next couple of days anyway. But I keep on thinking that and it keeps on not happening. If I have a sweep and go into labour in the next 48 hours or so, I guess I'll never know if it was going to happen naturally anyway, or if the sweep helped. But at this stage I will take that chance! I just want to have my baby, and not having my parents' going-home timing hanging over my head. The sooner he can be born, the better for my stress levels! But I know he will still only come when he's ready, and actually, that's fine with me (even though I've just said all that!). I have had a quiet word with him today, explaining that I don't mind him staying in there longer if he wants to, but it would be a good idea if he would choose to come out soon because otherwise people are going to start talking about ways to GET him out, and it will be MUCH nicer for him if he comes out gently on his own terms! I hope he heard and understood! ;)
I see a break in the weather on the forecast!!!! Yay! Not until Thursday though, but whoooppeeeee all the same!!! Looks like we'll have thunder and stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday and then cooler temperatures from Thursday :) I HOPE Matthew isn't waiting for the cooler weather all the same (though it is a lovely thought that he might be being so considerate!), because it's toooo long to wait! I'll be over 41 weeks by then and I so don't want to be that pregnant!
I am back to having normal Braxton Hicks contractions today. I don't know why my womb was so weirdly quiet yesterday, it just was. Today is normal again. I am having plenty of them and they are pretty strong. Painless, though. Nothing to get excited about!
Two things have been different today though. One is how sleeeepy I have been. I normally want to get things done, or at least be on the computer or watching something on TV if I am too tired for anything else. But today I have just felt soooo comfy and drowsy, like I took something to help me sleep. Maybe it is the weather though? Every opportunity I got, I have retired to bed and read Little House on the Prairie books. I never want to lie down and read - EVER! Not for my whole pregnancy - I just want to be getting things done or something. Or making use of a precious free moment. Lying down or reading feels like time wasted (I know it ISN'T, but it has always felt that way). Today has felt so different. I even had to come upstairs for a nap by 5pm, as I was finding it hard to keep awake on the sofa downstairs while Arthur had his tea. Once up in bed though, I got restless legs and couldn't relax enough to sleep. But anyway, that has been different for me today.
The other thing that is REALLY weird and different today is that Arthur does not like my milk all of a sudden. He has wanted to nurse just as much as usual (frequently throughout the day and for his nap and bedtime), but pretty much every single time he tries, he just takes a couple of sucks and then pulls off with a disgusted look on his face! He looks up and me and shakes his head with his tongue out, saying, "Ur-yur-yur!" which is his "word" for "ugh!" that he uses when he tastes something he doesn't like, or has a hair in his mouth or something. The first time I was surprised, but I figured he had a hair in his mouth, so I checked and when he didn't, I offered him the other breast. He eagerly took it, but pulled off seconds later with the same response. After the whole morning like this, he would come to me for milk and I'd ask him, "Do you want some milk?", and he'd just look at me with an "ugh" expression and shake his head, like something was very wrong with my milk today! So odd. I can't help but think there has to be SOMETHING there to do with labour on the way. It's too uncanny otherwise. My milk has had lots of changes since the beginning of my pregnancy - it has waned, gone salty, changed taste in various ways, dried up COMPLETELY, and become colostrum (from 28 weeks). Arthur never once batted an eyelid. So it's really weird now that he should have such a reaction, when I can't see any changes myself. I can express colostrum as usual, though it is now the more golden stuff rather than clear. I tried washing my breasts in case it was something on them that he didn't like the taste of or something like that, but it didn't make a difference. I wonder what it means? It can't be random nothingness though. Hmmm...
Last night I FINALLY did some baking - at 10.30pm!!! I made a banana cake. The hot weather has made the bananas way too ripe much more quickly than we'd been able to eat them, so I used them for another banana loaf cake. I was up till midnight baking! But at least I finally got to satisfy the baking urge. The weird thing is, because banana cake wasn't the thing I felt like baking, it still feels like my urge isn't satisfied yet. I want/need to bake ginger snap cookies and chocolate muffins. If I'm not in labour tomorrow I plan to do them then! Mummy says I mustn't, she says it's too much to embark on when I'm this pregnant and it's this hot. But I am beginning to feel so desperate to bake them that I almost wonder if it's THAT which is holding up my labour, hehehe! So I hope I get chance to bake yet :) How we'll ever eat through them all is another matter!
The main bedroom still needs clearing as a potential birthing place, but if it all started happening, it IS feasible now to just push things aside to make the space - we have managed to clear nearly all of it now. Downstairs is looking tidier, but things will still have to be moved a bit and picked up when I actually go into labour and need the space. But it shouldn't be too hard to do when it comes to it. The kitchen is in a bit of a state, and tonight I started marking out the fittings for the nappy shelves above the tumble dryer, on the wall. They still need to be drilled in and fitted properly though, so I am not sure if we'll get it done in time, especially with Neil back to work tomorrow. We'd intended to get it done today but it has just been so hot and sleepy.
Okay I think that's it for tonight. Matthew is actually KICKING in there - I can't fathom how, as he has absolutely no room to kick at all! It's quite uncomfy. I haven't checked my cervix today, but I'm not feeling that bothered to. I guess I'll find out more about that part of me tomorrow! I'll update about my midwife appointment, or sooner if there's any news! I was thinking, I would probably like to update even in the middle of the night if labour started. It feels weird though, because anyone who reads this and lives in England will sleep through all my updates and stuff if that happens! But I really want to update as soon as I know things are really happening, because if I leave it till later, I may not get chance to update at all. I think if I do update in labour, it will be a pretty short entry, just to let you guys know something is happening at last!
Anyway, I'll update again tomorrow, whatever happens. Hope NOT to be back with the usual evening update though! Thank you so much for the sweet messages again! You guys say such uplifting things and it really makes my day to find the notes you leave! Thank you!!! xxx
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