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2006-06-07 - 9.17pm��previous entry��next entry
40 weeks pregnant - it's my due date TODAY!!!
Hello. Yes, it's the evening again, and yes, I am STILL pregnant! No due-date baby for me. But today is exciting all the same because it actually IS my due date today!!!! :) It's that magical date that has been the focal point for allll these months, and it's finally here! June 7th 2006. But Matthew is perfectly happy inside, and today I have absolutely no signs of labour whatsoever, tsk! Thank you so much for the sweet messages to say Happy Due Date! They made me smile when I read them :) Thank you!
Because I've actually reached my due date, I put another picture in the belly gallery tonight for 40 weeks. I HOPE it's the last one I'll put in there! I would take another at 41 weeks but I reeeally hope I will have no bump to photograph by 41 weeks! Anyway, there it is. I feel huge. I AM huge! I am just sooooo pregnant. You can't really get more pregnant than this.
I checked my cervix after my shower today and I could only just feel the edge, as usual. No changes there, but oh well. More and more, I am thinking the timing of my labour is going to be identical to last time, just as this whole pregnancy has been really. Which bugs me! But at least that would only give me 2 or 3 days to wait now. I hope and pray that Matthew doesn't come LATER than Arthur did! That would just be so difficult to deal with, and my parents would basically disappear back to France right after I had the baby. I sooooooooooooooo need to have Matthew soon! Tomorrow marks the halfway point in my parents' visit. I need them around to help for as long as possible after the birth, and that window is now starting to close ALREADY. I can't believe it. PLEASE come soon Matthew!
We did consider having sex tonight to try and help things along, but I would almost rather drink Castor Oil than have sex, it's such a repulsive thought to me these days! Pregnancy and breastfeeding always seem to completely eradicate my parsnip drive. Plus, OW, at the end of pregnancy. So, no parsnips. We tried that last pregnancy at around this stage and it didn't appear to do anything, so I don't think we'll bother this time! I have bounced on my birth ball a bit today, but I didn't yesterday. Anyway, nothing is going to do much until labour just "decides" to start, so I'll just have to wait. I AM getting a lot more mucousy discharge than even yesterday or the previous days, but that's the only thing different today.
Last night I was actually wondering if things might start happening. I had a lot of period pain yesterday and some mildly painful contractions, and a lot of strong BHs. Then after I wrote last night's diary entry, I had some cramps and diarrhoea, which I heard is a GOOD sign of impending labour. Then I went to bed and absolutely NOTHING happened! Every morning I seem to wake up with such a completely calm womb, it's crazy! Even if I'd felt crampy at bedtime or something, I always feel totally fine with no signs at all by the morning. Tsk.
Today I had that first moment of genuine, "Oh my gosh, I honestly don't think I am ever going to give birth!" I think I had that same feeling around this stage last pregnancy too. I know it sounds a silly thing to think, because OBVIOUSLY I'm going to give birth eventually! But I do get these moments when I genuinely do not believe it will actually happen. I get a flash image in my mind of me being a front page headline - the woman who never gave birth and stayed pregnant for ever! I sometimes can't actually believe my body will go into labour. Like I can't imagine my now-quiet uterus will ever begin contracting regularly and get this baby out of me! It just seems like an impossibility. How can something so relaxed start to just DO that from nowhere?! But at least this time I know my body has done it once, and even after I felt this way about it. So it will again. I know it in my head, but sometimes I can't actually believe it all the same.
Matthew feels very low today. He has been squiggling about a lot and turning his head this way and that, and it has REALLY been grinding and hurting down there. I have to wince every time he does it, it just hurts so sharply and painfully.
Today and yesterday (today even more so though) I have noticed something weird - I seem to have a lot more saliva production than normal! Weird thing. It's quite metallic tasting which would probably bother me normally, but right now it seems to be scratching my chemical cravings itch, as I LOVE the taste in my mouth! It's similar to bath water with bubbles in it - did you ever suck on a facecloth that you soaked in the bath when you were little? There's just a specific taste to it, and I have been craving that for a long while now. Sometimes I HAVE given in and sucked and chewed on a wet facecloth for a while. I could have carried on for hours, but my jaw started to get tired and achy, hehe! Today when I had my shower, there was that lovely bathwatery smell to the water and I honestly had to use a lot of willpower to stop myself from DRINKING the stuff! Wet laundry is the same. Mmmm.... It's so hot and muggy today, and it's going to get more so over the next few days - urgh! BUT, it means we've had the windows open and wonderful WONDERFUL smells have been floating in!! The most wonderful of those smells so far have been creosote and firelighters! People seem to be having lots of barbeques, and it's not so much the barbeque smell that gets me, as the smell of newly lit firelighters right at the beginning to get the barbeque going! They have such a horrible chemical choking smell, but right now I am just dragging in deep long sniffs as the air carries the smell through my window! That is one of the few little things that has been different to last pregnancy, this chemical craving thing. But it has been so lovely! :)
Today has been a really productive day! Neil was home from work to search the loft for those fittings for the cot bed, and he ended up clearing out the loft of junk and making two trips to the rubbish tip with carloads full of old carpets and boxes and bath panels (!!) and stuff. So that is a great bonus! Plus, late in the afternoon he finally FOUND the fittings - yay!!! We spent a while putting the cot bed together, and now it's up and almost ready in the spare bedroom, pushed up against the spare bed which I am currently sleeping in. It is much bigger than I remember it - we had it set up for a few months but Arthur never used it. I plan to use it at first to lay the Moses basket in so that Arthur can't get at it, when Matthew is napping or sleeping without me next to him. That way we can play it by ear, and if I end up taking Matthew into bed with me and it works out great and we end up co-sleeping, then we can put the cot bed back in the loft and continue as we have since we had Arthur. But if he is happy in the Moses basket for naps and sleep, and seems happy to settle without being next to me, then I guess we'll move him straight from the Moses basket to the cot bed once he outgrows it, and he'll stay there. I have no idea how it will go. Part of me can't help wondering if my boys will be practically identical, with the pregnancies being so much the same! I know it doesn't necessarily work that way, but I can't help wondering all the same! If they are the same in everything, I am slightly anxious (to say the least!) about the sleep issues to come! It has been so incredibly hard with Arthur's sleep these last nearly-19 months.
Anyway, so the cot bed is set up. I washed the mattress cover today and it's drying downstairs, so when that's finished I can zip it round the mattress and make the cot up properly. And then I need to make up the Moses basket properly with all its bedding, which is all clean at least. THEN we are ready. Oh, except I want the double bedguard on the bed for when I take Matthew into bed with me to breastfeed in the night or whatever. But we're nearly there!
One thing we haven't done yet is build the shelves in the kitchen to hold the nappy stash for both our boys. I had completely forgotten about it until I read Megan's message asking for a photo of the nappies on those shelves!! Thank you for reminding me, Megan! We really need to get that done or else we'll be awash with a zillion nappies of all different sizes and no sense of order to them whatsoever! I don't know if we'll get it done before Matthew is born now though. It depends when he comes. Neil could do it at the weekend, but I HOPE he'll be on his way or here before then!
I have new stretch marks over the past week. My belly has a LOT of them on now, all around my tummy button, but mostly underneath it. Those were just a few tiny thin faded ones that started out in the last week of my pregnancy with Arthur and went no further. This pregnancy, those same ones have got a lot bigger (though not red/raw thankfully!) and cover much more of an area. The new ones are all above the tummy button and this week I am noticing that they are starting to reach further by a couple of cms or so. Matthew, Mummy's tummy is STRETCHING!!! Please come out!! The new stretch marks really itch this week. I am really eager to give my skin a break by HAVING A BABY ALREADY!!! *sigh*
Another new thing this week is the way I'm moving about. So many times in the last trimester, I have said, "Oh, now I'm REALLY having trouble walking about!" and so on. But nothing compares to the last couple of days. Today in particular, I am just unable to walk in a normal way. I have no choice but to waddle so exaggeratedly, and the small of my back aches with how much I have to walk with my bump sticking forward to keep my balance. It's harder than ever to get up from any position, even sitting on a chair, and Neil has to pull me up from lying down to breastfeed Arthur every single night. I can't get myself up from the floor bed at ALL. If I try, I get the most agonising ligament pain EVER and end up waking Arthur with how much I'm writhing and stuff from how it hurts! I also get bad cramp in my hip when I try to get up from lying on my side without rolling onto my hands and knees first (which I can't do if Arthur is sleeping in my way!). My left ankle has been hurting like I have sprained it, for a few days now. I haven't sprained it, but I guess it's just really annoyed at how much weight it's carrying or something. Or just for some pregnant reason that I can't think of. Both my ankles and calves hurt, but that ankle is particularly annoyed right now!
I can't wait to get some of the strain off my body again. I almost wrote that I couldn't wait to not be pregnant and have my body back again, but I realized as I started typing it that I REALLY don't feel that way. I LOVE being pregnant, even at the end, and even with all the physically difficult parts. I am ready for it to finish at the end, but only because I so want to meet my baby, not because I am fed up of being pregnant! I miss pregnancy within weeks of giving birth, so much that I get wistful about doing it again! I just love pregnancy. And the line "I just want my body back", which I've heard soooo many pregnant women utter, does not apply to me, because I don't ever feel like I've LOST my body to pregnancy in the first place. It's just my body as usual, but doing something amazing and wonderful! I don't love my body any less when I'm pregnant, or think it's ugly or wish it was "normal" again. I think the pregnant body is about the most beautiful a body can be - I have always felt that way about it, even from my teens. My body is changing. It is getting a little older, and its skin isn't so taut or mark-free as it used to be. But I am so proud of those changes! I wear them with pride! I love how I sag a little where my belly has housed two beautiful children, and where my breasts have made milk that has given me some of the most precious moments with my little boy that anything else in life can possibly ever compare with. There will come a time when I only have distant memories of those cherished moments, of pregnancy and breastfeeding. I'm actually GLAD that my body will bear witness to those times and remind me fondly every time I see myself in the mirror.
Where my body actually hurts and feels like it is being overstrained, I start wishing that I could finish being pregnant so that the strain is off my body again. But that is all! I am so blessed. I have done 40 weeks of a wonderful healthy pregnancy! I'm almost done! I am so thankful for these 40 weeks and for how precious the experience has been. I would do it all again in a heartbeat (and hopefully WILL in a couple of years!). I will miss it like crazy and I don't really want it to be over, even now. But I AM ready to meet my new baby boy! I hope it will be soon. I will be sure to update if anything happens, but yeah, I'll probably be writing another run-of-the-mill entry tomorrow evening as usual!
Happy Due Date to me! :) I feel a bit celebratory about it somehow. We ate pizza tonight which is a nice treat, so maybe that's part of the feeling?! So tomorrow is June 8th and that would be a nice birthday to have. Come on Matthew, pick a date, any date, just ON OR BEFORE the weekend, okay lil man?! Neil is back to work tomorrow and that gives me a huge sinking feeling, because I am not coping any more without a good lie-in in the mornings. I can't sleep till so late each night and then I am restless during the night. My body sleeps best during the actual morning in the daytime, and I am noticing that when I get that lie-in, my day is absolutely transformed. I have energy, I feel almost normal, and I can cope with things. Without the lie-in, ie when Neil has to go to work, I physically and emotionally don't manage to deal with the demands of the day, EVEN with my mum here to help me. It seems crazy that I can't, but I really can't. Neil said if I struggle too much tomorrow then he'll take Friday off work. They are wonderfully sympathetic at work so that's great, and Neil would not give them a choice in the matter if I was not able to manage, even with Mummy's help. It's his holiday time though, that's the only down-side. I just WISH I would hurry up and give birth, then we wouldn't have to be faffing around with me not coping in the daytimes and Neil having to take precious holiday time off work! So frustrating! Anyway. Mummy will be here tomorrow as usual, but I am not sure what to do with Arthur tomorrow. He needs outings, and today has been too hot for him. He and Nana went out for a walk as usual, but Arthur got too hot and we don't want to put him through that again tomorrow. It really is oppressively hot in the daytime at the moment, and not suitable for walking a little one out in it. Arthur is not a hot weather person, like me. So I am not sure what we can do for him while it's this hot and horrible. Anyway, we'll see. I hope I have a baby tomorrow, or tomorrow night at least! I'll keep you guys posted! :)
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