Over a week since I updated last - whoops! I have all sorts of news, but unfortunately have started this post rather late (isn't that unusual?!), so I am not sure how much of it I'll manage to churn out before I absolutely MUST go to bed! I'll get started!
Continuing weirdness with the morning sickness that went away completely - it's back! Bleurgh! I have no idea why it went, or why it's back, but it's WELL AND TRULY back, just as bad as before. It faded out like I described last time I updated, exactly as it always has before in my other pregnancies when it is finally finished. I did have a bad cold, and it seemed to go with that. As soon as I was almost over my cold, I noticed queasiness setting in again. I thought maybe it was a "bad" day as they used to be, so that with the morning sickness almost gone it felt like a little mild queasiness at my old "peak" times of day. The next day I had mild queasiness for most of the day. The day after, my old peak time of day was more than queasiness, but the rest of the day I was still just queasy. And right after that I was back to the old horrible nausea that prevents me doing stuff, ugh! I was admittedly really really bummed at first, because I honestly thought it was gone! And it was disappointing to get it back full force. But I adjusted pretty quickly. After all, I had a week off! That's never happened to me before in a pregnancy, so I'll take it! :) And now that I'm this close to my 2nd trimester, SURELY the weeks are few before I'll feel better anyway? I hope so!
I had my first midwife appointment last week, at 10 weeks and 4 days! :) I love appointments! :) It being the booking appointment, it was LONG because there's the whole medical history questionnaire to go through, and then the previous maternity history too, and let me tell you, I am taking up quite a bit of time now with four pregnancies, labours, births, and postnatal periods to recount in detail! :) That is one of the main reasons why I LOVE booking appointments though. I just love to talk about my pregnancies and births, and my little ones!!! *blissful sigh*
I had a ton of blood taken for the usual screens and tests, and my urine sample was perfect. My blood pressure was 100/60, which is absolutely what I expected it to be. It's almost always that exact reading on my first couple of antenatal appointments! ;) Last pregnancy it did go lower, and I was very tired and had dizzy spells around that time, and the midwife said that was why. This pregnancy I am also having some dizzy spells and feeling breathless at times, so I presume I am having some low blood pressure again. My blood pressure is low in general, and a little lower still when I'm pregnant, so I'm not awfully surprised. I do need to drink more fluids though, because that could be part of it, and I am just not able to drink enough when I am morning sick :( Especially now the weather has gone all hot and summery.
The midwife I saw was Carol - the same one who came round to do my 40 week check on the day I went into labour with Benjamin. I AM writing my birth story! You'll read about that very soon, I promise! ;) So far I have written long-windedly up until 6.30pm on the day he was born, and he was born at 7.30pm, so take heart! I may finish soon, lol! ;) Anyway, I had had a show by the time she arrived and when she heard about it she told me she would be sure to see me later. Sure enough, she was with me for most of my short labour, and then in the last hour she finished her shift and another (lovely!) midwife came instead. I didn't click wonderfully with Carol, so I was happy about that, but she is still a lovely midwife so it was nice to see her again! She sounded surprised to see me "already", and told her student with some fanfare that I was back for number five! Everyone seems to be reacting like it's a big deal that I already have four, and especially when they hear their ages, and the fact that they're all boys. "Hoping for a girl this time??..." is the question I hear ALL THE TIME, and what do I say to that?! I usually say that a girl would be lovely, but I love having boys so I will be thrilled with another. "When are you going to stop?!!" is the other one I keep on hearing, and also the midwife asked me, "Was it a surprise?" I said noooo (in a sort of "don't be daft!" tone!) and told her that I am very lucky (wish I had said blessed instead though, tsk) that my body is ready to conceive around the 9 month mark postpartum, so that is when I do. I told her we don't prevent pregnancies. She and the student looked to me like they would have both loved to roll their eyes or exchange some sort of glance, but they didn't, which I have to say I am glad of! They also were overly wow-y when we got to the questions about breastfeeding with the other boys. I had to say how long I had breastfed for, and so Arthur is 4 years, Matthew will be too (he is 4 in two weeks - whaaaaat?!?! - and still very occasionally breastfeeding at bedtime), Nathan self-weaned at 16 months, and Benjamin is obviously still breastfeeding at 10 months. I am NOT supermummy just because I breastfeed for years! It's both lovely and slightly uncomfortable when people OVERLY wow about it! I just do what I think is best for them (THEM, not me), and also happen to love it. I think I mentioned here years ago now that I had a little sort of goal or dream - I would love to breastfeed without a break for a decade. I don't even know why, and it's a pointless goal! It's not a huge thing for me, so it doesn't drive me at all, but there it is. If Benjamin does not self-wean while I am pregnant, hopefully I will get somewhere near to 8 years (it'll be 6 straight years in November) even with no more babies after this one. I just LOVE breastfeeding!!! :D
Okay, getting off track!
So my appointment went well. It was just blood tests and questions - no dopplers or palpating my tummy or anything like that (too early apparently, haha!). My next midwife appointment is after my scan, at 16 weeks, and I booked it with the midwife last week. It's June 25th. My scan is getting closer - NEXT WEEEEEEEEEK!!! I can't wait to see my little one! It's on Thursday. We can't figure out childcare, so we'll have to take the three littlest with us. They don't like you to bring children, and ours MIGHT not behave, but we'll keep them in the tandem pushchair or in arms and give them a snack to work on, and hopefully it'll be okay. The rooms are tiny so I hope we fit in! :S Usually my grandparents offer to watch them for a scan, but they have been STONE COLD silent since finding out about the pregnancy. Granny phoned me last week in her normal cheerful and chatty way, but did not mention the baby or ask me anything about my pregnancy or how I was feeling at ALL. It was like she had forgotten I was pregnant (and she never forgets things like that). Grandoug still hasn't spoken to me since before I told Granny over the phone. So we were not about to ask them.
Since making that decision though, last night Granny phoned me out of the blue as though nothing had happened at all! She straight away asked how I was feeling, and how the morning sickness was going, and when was the baby due again? And so on! I was a bit stunned, but SO relieved and happy that she has come around. Mummy said she would, and I'm just so glad. It was weighing on me more than I realised. I still haven't talked to Grandoug, but oh well. Hopefully soon. But I wouldn't ask them to watch the boys. The scan happens to fall in half term, and our church runs a kids' club on two afternoons that week (Arthur LOVES these!) for primary school age children. It's a bit fiddly because my scan is at 1.50pm and Kids' Club starts at 2pm! :S I tried to rearrange the scan (because there is NO WAY I am letting Arthur miss Kids' Club, not even a bit of it!), but they are fully booked and can't change a thing. Soooo I am trying to figure out either dropping him off REALLY early (checking to see if that's okay and who will be there), OR seeing if I can drop him at the home of another kid who is going, and see if they would mind taking Arthur along with them? We'll just have to take the other three. I am glad I have a doppler, because I would be so nervous otherwise, of having three little kiddies in the scan room and then finding out the I had lost the baby or something horrible like that. I would not want to have little ones to deal with while we receive that news, so I will be using my doppler on the morning of the scan to just check on Cornflake for reassurance!
I am SURE there is only one baby in there now. My uterus comes up to halfway or just a bit over, between my pubic bone and my tummy button (still fairly flat though), which is about right for 10-11 weeks, comparing my other pregnancies with this one. If it was twins then I am sure I would be growing much bigger than that by now. I can now hear Cornflake's heartbeat loud and clear the instant I turn the doppler on - no searching any more! And even if I angle it all over the place, there is only one heartbeat in there! ;) I can't wait to see my tiny little new baby person! Cornflake is now just over 4cm long from head to bottom!!! Amazing! I know that is still so tiny, but when I hold my fingers up that distance apart and then picture the shape of a fetus within them (and add legs!), it's just amazing to me. Cornflake has grown soooo much already! In such a short time since conception, really. And looks totally human-baby-like.
Last week, from about 10w2d or 10w3d, I have had times every day where I have a sort of suspicious "awareness" feeling. I stop and wait, but I feel nothing, so I just think I was "feeling things". But since it's something that I'm noticing daily, I am thinking maybe not. Every time it happens, it's like the tiniest possible squirming sensation low down around pubic bone level or a touch higher. The instant it distracts me, I stop whatever I'm doing and go very still and wait, to see if I feel any movement. But nothing more happens. I have been VERY suspicious that it IS Cornflake moving that is giving me that sensation, but I have not been able to actually say I have felt the baby move as such. Yesterday and the day before, I had several times each of those days where it happened, and I was SO SURE I felt movement that I would lie on my tummy or back and wait - almost hold my breath! - for something more to confirm what I could have sworn I'd felt! But nope.
This afternoon I was feeling sick and exhausted, and Neil took the boys out to the park (all four!) for their regular outing. I lay on my bed on my tummy just resting, and suddenly for a split second I felt like a little something with the most featherlight touch just swiped across the inside of my skin just to the side of my pubic bone on the left. I froze and waited. Nothing! After a while I started to doubt that it was Cornflake because maybe that was sort of low and to the side a bit for baby movements? I don't know. But I still remember the sensation, and I do think now that it might have been Cornflake. Anyway, after a bit I was lying on my back, and starting to doze off when - again very suddenly - there was an odd sort of "flumple" feeling just about a centimetre above my pubic bone. It only lasted a split second again, but it felt a bit like the ripple of a waterbed if you push it and then let go suddenly. But it was so quick that by the time I went still to wait for something more, it wasn't even there any more and nothing else happened!
This evening I was checking blogs lying on my side on the sofa with my laptop on the edge of the sofa, and suddenly felt a definite squirm!! It was tiny, and fast as a flash again, but a clear "shifting" feeling, like a very tiny somebody squirming or shifting position for a moment. I am now absolutely sure that I am feeling Cornflake move! No actual taps or pokes yet (I was getting those with Matthew from 10 weeks, but then he WAS the boy who shifted my butt on the computer chair with a kick to my hip at 17 - SEVENTEEN! - weeks, and remains that kind of child to this day, lol!).
So I am very excited!!!! It's so wonderful and indescribably lovely to be feeling a precious newly created little person move about inside me again! The wonder NEVER gets old - as I think I have said before! And I honestly think I feel more and more in awe and in particular, THANKFUL, each pregnancy as I feel these amazing sensations. I adore pregnancy for the gift of being able to feel my baby move inside me. So precious! I'm so so so thankful to be here again, and just blissful every time I feel a squirm or a "flumple" low low down - I have felt several of these sensations this evening since the first one I described above! Yay! :) My bond with my unborn child INSTANTLY makes a huge leap when I start to really feel them move and touch me - make contact with me so I can feel them there. That first sensation FLOODED me with fresh new love for my tiny one, and made me all the more eager to meet him!
Well, that is my main news! I did have a weird time over the last few days - particularly the weekend - because I was 10 weeks and 6 days on Sunday, and ever since Nathan's pregnancy.... That is the gestation where I suddenly and inexplicably started to bleed (I honestly feel that haemmorrhage is a better description, if I sit on the toilet and hear a continuous weeing sound, and it's blood). I know it was just Nathan's pregnancy, but I remember feeling sort of weird and anxious around that time in Benjamin's pregnancy. Of course nothing happened! But the same gestation has had me feeling odd and uneasy this time too. It was so incredibly scary, and affected me more than I think I realised at the time. Horrid! Anyway! Not something to dwell on! I am still praying for a pregnancy with no bleeding, and it still amazes me that I'm 11 weeks pregnant with not a spot of bleeding this whole time!!!! Never experienced anything like that before, and it's sooo nice! :)
The boys got to hear Cornflake's heart beating last week. I found Matthew with his T-shirt up and my doppler held to his little torso, very seriously listening for the baby in his tummy! I asked if they wanted to hear our baby in my tummy, and was really pleased that as soon as the doppler was on, the heartbeat was there loud and clear instantly. They were all so thrilled, and Benjamin went very quiet listening to the new sounds. Arthur wouldn't let me turn it off for five minutes! He had a big smile on and said he could listen to it for ages, bless his heart! I discovered for the first time that I have quite a wiggler in there! There were only a couple of those little "whomp" sounds that indicate a limb moving under the doppler, but several times the little one completely disappeared from under the doppler and I had to do some searching to relocate him! :)
Okay it's LATE because Benjamin woke for a feed, and now I must go to bed! Glad to have managed to fit all my news in though! Hopefully I will update again much sooner next time. SIX days to go until my 2nd trimester starts!!!!! Wheeeeee!! That's so soon! :) Oh and I need to start answering comments in the comments section, I think, because I keep meaning to answer a question or comment on something that somebody has said, in my next post, but then I forget! :S So I will try to reply to comments occasionally and keep up with it better that way! :) Thank you for the comments! I am loving getting them! xxx
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Sunday, 16 May 2010
9 weeks, 6 days - morning sickness???!
Folks, I am sitting here at 9.15pm rejoicing over a bowl of shredded wheat in MILK!!!! At 9w6d!!!!
Okay, so for much of this past week, I have had the odd hint that my morning sickness wasn't QUITE as bad as it was last week. I totally denied it and put it out of my head. You know how it is - allow yourself to think that it might be improving, and get your just desserts the next morning! :S Little things though, like instead of having to grimly sip tiny bits of water (and feel horrible for it!), I am finding that I can take a few good gulps of water without really thinking about it, even if I feel a bit yuckier for it - that's still a big improvement. But then on.... trying to think which day it was.... Thursday (it's Sunday today), I had a surprisingly good day. The nausea kicked in at the start of the day as it normally does, and got worse throughout the day as usual, BUT it was very very mild to start with and so as it got worse, it really only got to just plain nausea, rather than HORRIBLE all-consuming nausea, by late afternoon! It was SO much better than I was used to that I was able to put together (from scratch! Including yeast, which I personally think smells more gross than anything!) a homemade pizza to surprise the boys when they got home from the park! It's been so long since I have actually cooked anything decent, and I've been feeling bad that Neil is doing so much meal-prep and cooking while he's out of work. It was nice to do that! In the evening I did feel pretty sick, but still, it was a good day!
The next day (Friday) I felt nearer to my usual level of nausea - blech! Saturday, I woke up with a horrid cold and Benjamin (and eventually Nathan) were feverish and sad and tired, so it wasn't a usual day. BUT, my nausea was quite mild for what I was used to. I noticed in hindsight at the end of the day that I had eaten breakfast and then with all of Benjamin's unwellness I hadn't eaten again for over 3 hours (nearly 4!) and hadn't noticed!!! Now, usually I eat breakfast and then within 20 minutes I'm so green that I have to stagger back to the kitchen and find food whilst not being able to bear looking at it (a tricky combination!). And so on every 20-40 minutes till I fall asleep at bedtime. If I go an hour or more, I get so nauseated that I start to panic because I CAN'T get near food to choose something I might try to eat, so I don't know how to stop the cycle. In other words, I've gone too far. Every day for 5+ weeks I have had to make sure I nibble or eat within every hour or else I am done for. I have been done for a fair few times though! ;) And it's hard to force myself to eat once I get to that stage, but if I keep at it then eventually I start to feel better.
Anyway, the point is - THREE PLUS HOURS!!!! And I didn't even notice!!! That really made me ever so slightly hopeful last night! :)
Today, my cold is kicking my butt in an extreme manner, and I have just had to go to bed with it for some of the day. I'm so achy and stuffed up and streaming and throaty and exhausted on top of the usual pregnancy exhaustion, so I got to thinking that mayyybe yesterday was just a better day because my cold symptoms were distracting me or something?! Is that even possible?! Well, today I had to go back to bed without having breakfast for most of the morning, I just felt terrible. Neil has the cold too (he's the source!) but is doing better today, and hasn't been so whacked over the head with it as I seem to be. I'm SO glad he's home right now! Phew.
Anyway, when I got up again I had some breakfast, and realised I was not even slightly queasy. I bumbled about feeling rotten and snuggling little boys, and then they had lunch. I rested on the sofa while they ate, and then some more time passed, and I was going to put Benjamin to bed for his afternoon nap when I realised I hadn't eaten lunch. So I grabbed an apple because my head was stuffed up and I just wanted something cold and juicy. Then I put him to bed. After THAT we were getting the boys ready to go out for a walk with Neil, and suddenly I realised that I did not feel nauseous. Not one bit! I searched and searched for a bit of quease, but found none!!!!! This was more than 3 hours after breakfast, and at least an hour after my apple! I hadn't had ANY nausea yet for the whole day! I still didn't want to get my hopes up, so continued to put it down to cold symptoms being more of a focus right now, and perhaps when those let up in a couple of days I would feel yucky again. I just felt grateful for the cold so that I didn't have such a focus on feeling sick, at the time!
Well then a couple more hours passed, during which time Benjamin woke up too early and was very cross with me for trying to resettle him, and threw his Very First Real Big-Boy Tantrum Ever on the living room floor (he's only 10 months old!!!), and after he calmed down I let him breastfeed for a long time, and then the boys got home from their walk. Then we ate dinner, around which time I noticed evvver such a slight feeling of queasiness. I ate okay except for not really feeling up to a big meal with how rotten I was feeling, and then it was only at about 5.30pm (we eat early!) that I started to notice a general queasy feeling just sitting on me. But it was ever so mild. I put Benjamin to bed without the queasy feeling being bad enough to bother me, and tucked the boys in, chatted with Arthur for a bit and snuggled him in his bed, and then came downstairs feeling OKAY!!! Still that background queasiness, but wow! For me, by this time of day, that's amazing and definitely very different to usual. I ate some chocolate!!!! Wheee! :)
Then after an hour I felt a bit more queasy, probably getting on towards actual mild nausea, so I heated up some Covent Garden Soup (those ones I mentioned before which have been great lately for my nausea) and ate that. While I was eating it, I really started to think that my morning sickness IS ACTUALLY GOING AWAY! But so early?!?! I usually feel sick till 13/14 weeks, and Nathan's went to 16 weeks, and Arthur's to 18 weeks (or was it Benjamin to 16 weeks?? I can't remember!). Matthew was the lovely surprise feeling better at 12 weeks! But in Week 9?!?!?! So right away, once I was really letting myself believe that the morning sickness might actually be going, I started to worry about WHY. I haven't listened with the doppler this week, so as soon as I finished my soup I whipped it out. For ages and ages I looked everywhere at every angle, and was starting to freak out a bit, getting all sorts of mental images of seeing a tiny baby with no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and things like that. I started to think, "Please, please let me find it!..." Eventually I decided to try an inch higher than my bikini line (where I've found it all the other times) in case my womb has just grown more than I thought recently, and PHEW, there it was! :D Beating at 180 beats per minute, and sounding good and fine! Soooo relieved!
I do still have ever such mild "background" queasiness, but as soon as that started to pick up a little, I just went to find something to eat. I realised that I could probably test it by trying to eat something I haven't been able to face since the very start of my morning sickness. I haven't been able to eat cereal with milk on it at all - though I tried at first. I can't get more than a couple of mouthfuls into it before I have to stop for the nausea getting overwhelming, and then it takes an hour or two to ease back to the normal level of nausea. Yuck! So I was really excited to pull out the shredded wheat, sprinkle some SUGAR on (another no-no!), and drench it with milk! I just finished it, and loved every bite! :) So now I feel much more convinced that for some reason or other, my morning sickness really IS coming to an end before 10 weeks has even arrived! Wow. I just can't believe it! I'm so thankful! And don't really understand it, but yeah, soooo thankful! :)
And now that I'm beginning to return to somewhere near normal fluid intake (although I have a cold, plus a poorly baby permanently attached to a breast), the frequent weeing is REALLY kicking in! I was wondering why I really hadn't noticed that symptom at all. Now I am getting it! Last night I resettled Benjamin (in the evening) and went for a wee, and then back to the laptop. I read blogs for about 10 or 15 minutes and Benjamin fussed again (wind) so I burped him and put him back down, and lo and behold, I had to pee again! Craziness - for me, anyway! I also had to get up at 2am to go, even though I went right before bed. Today I am having to go fairly frequently, and I REALLY like it! It makes me feel happy and pregnant to have to keep nipping to the loo for a wee! :) I think that as well as the fluids increasing a bit, my womb is also growing big enough now to squash my bladder much more than it has been. In fact if I recall, between 10 and 12 weeks can get rather uncomfortable and even crampy in that department, as it runs out of room in my pelvis before it pops up.
Now, my nausea has been fluctuating from day to day, so if this is a "good day", I could feel a fair bit queasier tomorrow. But even so, it should be a lot less than my bad days used to be! I really hope this is IT!
So TWO weird differences from all four of my other pregnancies this time: Different morning sickness (starting a week early, tailing off WEEKS earlier than usual), and NO bleeding! My brother is starting to think it's because it's a "different sort of baby!" ;) I still can't bring myself to think that it could ever really be possible that I might be pregnant with an actual girl, hehe!
My SIL had her big scan on Friday, and found out she's having a girl! Which adds to the whole "we'll be having a boy then!" feeling for me, because it does seem that our siblings have the girls and we have the boys! ;) I do have one scrummy little nephew though - but four nieces now! My brother's little girl turned 3 yesterday and she is so girly! She just wants a dress that's pretty, and ballet shoes, and anything pink or sparkly! My mum bought her a dress, and for weeks we would talk about it on the phone, and I would say how lucky she is to go shopping for girly party dresses (how I would LOVE that! I'm very girly myself, you know!). Then Bennie told me that Thea can never have too many hair clips (she loves them) - the more sparkly the better, so I have had the JOY and privilege of browsing through racks and racks of hair clips for little girls - pink ones, purple ones, smiley ones, sparkly ones, butterfly ones - ooooh the choice is endless! It really brought home how I never see, do, or buy anything girly at all, with alllll my little boys! I am so glad to have nieces to legitimately browse through girly things for, but I admit, it isn't quite the same as your OWN baby girl.
I know I said (and I stick by it!) that I would LOVE a fifth precious baby boy! I DO love boys, and would be glad to have eight boys and no girls! I would never prefer having a girl over a boy to the point where I'd try to "swing it" so that we conceive a girl instead. But ohhhh the truth is, how I would love to have a daughter! I know they are a whole different kettle of fish to boys, and can be harder work apparently! But I don't care. I would love to have a daughter! I am such a girly type. I would love to buy pink! And dresses! And flowery stuff! And do her hair! And on and on (really, pretty much ad infinitum). My heart will NOT sink when (if??) we see those ever present boy bits flashing at us at the scan. We already know his name and we love him, and we WANT him! I want to burst with pride and joy thinking of my FIVE little boys, and the fun they'll have, and the snuggles I will get, and how very cute a tiny little boy is when he's wearing denim dungarees with cars embroidered on the front and taking sweet little stumpy toddly steps! I am LONGING for that particular baby boy, and the likelihood is that we'll meet him in December. But, totally aside from that feeling.... I would so like a little girl as well! :)
Well, whoever this sweet little person is, he/she is currently known as Cornflake (Arthur's choice). Oh! I never did give detail on how we told them! We told them after dinner one evening, a couple of weeks ago. They had been busily playing imaginary games all afternoon, and the one they were called away from at dinner time was Pretend Christmas. All three older boys were playing as they usually do - they play together all the time and enjoy each other so much! :) So they had been wrapping each other presents in playsilks, and were about to play Christmas Morning and be all excited. It gave me the idea to tell them about the baby, and tie it into Christmas, because Cornflake is due so soon before Christmas. So while they ate, Neil and I snuck little bits of conversation about how best to tell them, in between supervising the meal. That one just happened to be a meal just for the boys, though we usually eat all together as a family probably 6 days a week. While they ate, I prepared clues, since that's how we decided we'd tell them!
When they came out from eating, we played Christmas Morning with them and they opened all their presents and so on. After they finished, I told them that we had some news about something that was going to happen right before Christmas this year! They were all interested, and Arthur was especially intrigued, and hopped about eager to hear. I told them I had some clues to show them. They weren't the best because they had to be thought of and put together really quickly, but it went down a treat all the same! The first clue was that I handed Arthur one of their teddies wrapped in a while terry towel, and laid it in his arms. They looked at it, clueless. So I asked if they wanted another clue. They were excited and said yes! So I pointed to our button numbers up on the wall, and put my finger under the number 5 (bit cryptic for little ones, I know, hehe!). Arthur said, "Five??!" in a confused way. So I gave them clue number three: I went to the blackboard and let them each choose a colour because I told them I was going to draw each of them on the board. I drew stick figures with smiley faces - Arthur first, then Matthew next to him, a bit smaller. Then Nathan, a bit smaller still, and then Benjamin even smaller. I wrote "4" underneath them. Then I wrote "+" next to their line, and drew a baby with "1" underneath it, and then wrote "=5". I stopped to look at them, and you could see their little cogs turning, hehe! That one seemed really obvious to me, I was sure they'd get it, but they were staring at it with furrowed brows. I know probably only Arthur would understand it though.
So I stood up and asked if they needed one more clue, and they said yes, still looking at the blackboard. So I let my button and zip down a bit on my jeans, stood sideways on and said, "What shape is Mummy's tummy?" Arthur took one look at my tummy and said, "Big... BABY!!!!" The dots in the middle represent about 0.24 seconds where his eyes shot into wide-as-saucers mode as he got it! :) He yelled, "BABY!!!!" at the top of his voice and started jumping up and down squealing and shouting, "It's a BABY in Mummy's tummy, A BABY, A BABY!!!" Matthew and Nathan started jumping up and down about 2 seconds after Arthur did and shouting similar things. I could see that Arthur and Matthew really did get it, and were very excited! But it was so sweet to see Nathan joining in with his brothers as he always does, hugely excited and shouting, "A baby inna tummy! A baby inna tummy!" with great glee, but he obviously didn't have a CLUE as to the reality of the situation, lol! ;) Sweet little boy! :) Neil took photos which came out blurry (such a shame! I hoped he would take video, but apparently not), and Benjamin sat on Neil's lap shrieking and clapping with joy and excitement as he watched his brothers. It was the sweetest picture, and I WISH I had it captured for prosperity, but alas I don't! :( Still, it will stay in my memory for ever all the same :)
Once they stopped jumping, and caught their breath (they kept it up for a while!), Arthur and Matthew started to ask soooo many questions for the next hour before bed - these were mostly from Arthur, but some from Matthew: "How long has the baby been in your tummy? Since MARCH?!!! Why didn't you tell us?!?! Can we call it Cornflake?! Can we call it Crumb?! Can we call it (insert any one of fifty million increasingly silly other choices - Matthew and Arthur alternated these for quite some time!)?! How big is your baby now? Is it this big? Is it this big? Is it this big? (repeat same question with different hand shapes for a long time) Is the baby going to die? How do you know? Will it be born at Christmas? Which date in December? (arranges and re-arranges calender) This one? This one? This one? (this goes on for a while) What if it's late though? What if it's later than Christmas? How do you know? But Matthew was late, so what if THIS baby is late like Matthew was? Can I hear the baby's heart beating? Here? Here? Here? (various ear-to-my-tummy poses) Shoosh boys, I'm trying to hear the baby's heartbeat!... Why wouldn't I be able to hear it? When can I? Will I be six when the baby is born? Will Matthew be 4? Will Nathey be 2? Will Benji be one? Will you have the baby in our house? Remember when you had Nathan in the hospital? Will you do that? When will we know?! Will Heather come and see us? Will you make lots of noise? (followed by much cheerful reminiscing from Arthur about Benjamin's homebirth) Are we really calling it Cornflake?! When will we know it's REAL name? Can we come to the scan?! Why not?! Will you see the willy? Yes, but it'll probably have a willy - will you get a picture of it to show us? Why not?! Can we see that picture though? Oh good!.... I can't WAIT till December!!!" :)
They are so happy and excited, and Arthur is joyfully telling people that we run into: "Did you know that my Mummy has a baby due in December?!" He sounds so proud and pleased, and that makes me soooooooo happy, because you know, he's the eldest of soon-to-be FIVE children, and he's only FIVE himself! I have actually had insensitive people tell me in the past (when we only had 3 I think!), "Poor Arthur!" or "Your poor kids!" because they see it as some huge burden we're putting on them, especially Arthur, being the eldest and still so young. Well I am here to tell the world that he is so very excited! He loves his role as biggest brother, and he's one blessed little boy with endless playmates who look up to him and adore him. Every year another little boy develops enough skills to suddenly be able to play cars and trains with the rest of them, and he LOVES being in charge of that kind of game! ;) He is also joyfully affectionate with his baby or toddler brothers, and finds them cute and cuddly. He gets excited about their milestones, and looks forward to ones that mean they can get more involved in playing with him. He will happily entertain a sad baby brother if I ask him to for 5 minutes if I'm tied up, and usually that results in a happy and giggly baby brother, and a proud and victorious Arthur who is enjoying playing with the little one! I think it's proof positive that it's GOOD for him, our expanding family with close age-gaps, if we tell him yet another baby is coming and he rejoices so VERY much! :) And I can't tell you how happy that makes me! I do have my moments of not knowing what we're doing and worrying and guilt-tripping that we're messing them (particularly Arthur) up! But it's good to have feedback like this from him!
Well I think I will finish this post for now. Oh except that tomorrow I am TEN WEEKS pregnant!!! Double figures! A quarter of the way there! :D I have not forgotten about a belly gallery! Usually I take a photo at 5 weeks (to compare) and then at 10 weeks. Then 14 weeks, and then fortnightly from then on. I have taken a 5 week photo, but not made a gallery yet. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to get Neil to take a photo and then once it's uploaded I'll make a "Belly Gallery" post with both of them! :)
And as of tomorrow, Cornflake is no longer an embryo. He'll be in the final stage of embryonic development (Stage 23), and then officially a FETUS from that point on! Yay! :) Cornflake looks like a little human being, about an inch long. The tail is almost gone, ears and eyes are not quite in the right place but will be soon, and the fingers are separate and the hands can grasp across the body. All the internal organs are in place and the critical period for their development has finished, though they'll still be continuing to develop and grow. Tongue development has just finished. Baby teeth are at cap level, and adult teeth are beginning to form high up in the jaw. The eyes are partly closed, and the gonads are now recognisable as either testes or ovaries (inside the body though). Genitals are beginning to form, and the muscles are getting stronger. The baby can make all sorts of spontaneous movements, and around this time the first brain waves can be detected! My little one is being knit together so amazingly by my wonderful Father God! I can't wait to meet Cornflake, but ohhh how I enjoy "growing" him (her?) in the mean time! :)
Okay, so for much of this past week, I have had the odd hint that my morning sickness wasn't QUITE as bad as it was last week. I totally denied it and put it out of my head. You know how it is - allow yourself to think that it might be improving, and get your just desserts the next morning! :S Little things though, like instead of having to grimly sip tiny bits of water (and feel horrible for it!), I am finding that I can take a few good gulps of water without really thinking about it, even if I feel a bit yuckier for it - that's still a big improvement. But then on.... trying to think which day it was.... Thursday (it's Sunday today), I had a surprisingly good day. The nausea kicked in at the start of the day as it normally does, and got worse throughout the day as usual, BUT it was very very mild to start with and so as it got worse, it really only got to just plain nausea, rather than HORRIBLE all-consuming nausea, by late afternoon! It was SO much better than I was used to that I was able to put together (from scratch! Including yeast, which I personally think smells more gross than anything!) a homemade pizza to surprise the boys when they got home from the park! It's been so long since I have actually cooked anything decent, and I've been feeling bad that Neil is doing so much meal-prep and cooking while he's out of work. It was nice to do that! In the evening I did feel pretty sick, but still, it was a good day!
The next day (Friday) I felt nearer to my usual level of nausea - blech! Saturday, I woke up with a horrid cold and Benjamin (and eventually Nathan) were feverish and sad and tired, so it wasn't a usual day. BUT, my nausea was quite mild for what I was used to. I noticed in hindsight at the end of the day that I had eaten breakfast and then with all of Benjamin's unwellness I hadn't eaten again for over 3 hours (nearly 4!) and hadn't noticed!!! Now, usually I eat breakfast and then within 20 minutes I'm so green that I have to stagger back to the kitchen and find food whilst not being able to bear looking at it (a tricky combination!). And so on every 20-40 minutes till I fall asleep at bedtime. If I go an hour or more, I get so nauseated that I start to panic because I CAN'T get near food to choose something I might try to eat, so I don't know how to stop the cycle. In other words, I've gone too far. Every day for 5+ weeks I have had to make sure I nibble or eat within every hour or else I am done for. I have been done for a fair few times though! ;) And it's hard to force myself to eat once I get to that stage, but if I keep at it then eventually I start to feel better.
Anyway, the point is - THREE PLUS HOURS!!!! And I didn't even notice!!! That really made me ever so slightly hopeful last night! :)
Today, my cold is kicking my butt in an extreme manner, and I have just had to go to bed with it for some of the day. I'm so achy and stuffed up and streaming and throaty and exhausted on top of the usual pregnancy exhaustion, so I got to thinking that mayyybe yesterday was just a better day because my cold symptoms were distracting me or something?! Is that even possible?! Well, today I had to go back to bed without having breakfast for most of the morning, I just felt terrible. Neil has the cold too (he's the source!) but is doing better today, and hasn't been so whacked over the head with it as I seem to be. I'm SO glad he's home right now! Phew.
Anyway, when I got up again I had some breakfast, and realised I was not even slightly queasy. I bumbled about feeling rotten and snuggling little boys, and then they had lunch. I rested on the sofa while they ate, and then some more time passed, and I was going to put Benjamin to bed for his afternoon nap when I realised I hadn't eaten lunch. So I grabbed an apple because my head was stuffed up and I just wanted something cold and juicy. Then I put him to bed. After THAT we were getting the boys ready to go out for a walk with Neil, and suddenly I realised that I did not feel nauseous. Not one bit! I searched and searched for a bit of quease, but found none!!!!! This was more than 3 hours after breakfast, and at least an hour after my apple! I hadn't had ANY nausea yet for the whole day! I still didn't want to get my hopes up, so continued to put it down to cold symptoms being more of a focus right now, and perhaps when those let up in a couple of days I would feel yucky again. I just felt grateful for the cold so that I didn't have such a focus on feeling sick, at the time!
Well then a couple more hours passed, during which time Benjamin woke up too early and was very cross with me for trying to resettle him, and threw his Very First Real Big-Boy Tantrum Ever on the living room floor (he's only 10 months old!!!), and after he calmed down I let him breastfeed for a long time, and then the boys got home from their walk. Then we ate dinner, around which time I noticed evvver such a slight feeling of queasiness. I ate okay except for not really feeling up to a big meal with how rotten I was feeling, and then it was only at about 5.30pm (we eat early!) that I started to notice a general queasy feeling just sitting on me. But it was ever so mild. I put Benjamin to bed without the queasy feeling being bad enough to bother me, and tucked the boys in, chatted with Arthur for a bit and snuggled him in his bed, and then came downstairs feeling OKAY!!! Still that background queasiness, but wow! For me, by this time of day, that's amazing and definitely very different to usual. I ate some chocolate!!!! Wheee! :)
Then after an hour I felt a bit more queasy, probably getting on towards actual mild nausea, so I heated up some Covent Garden Soup (those ones I mentioned before which have been great lately for my nausea) and ate that. While I was eating it, I really started to think that my morning sickness IS ACTUALLY GOING AWAY! But so early?!?! I usually feel sick till 13/14 weeks, and Nathan's went to 16 weeks, and Arthur's to 18 weeks (or was it Benjamin to 16 weeks?? I can't remember!). Matthew was the lovely surprise feeling better at 12 weeks! But in Week 9?!?!?! So right away, once I was really letting myself believe that the morning sickness might actually be going, I started to worry about WHY. I haven't listened with the doppler this week, so as soon as I finished my soup I whipped it out. For ages and ages I looked everywhere at every angle, and was starting to freak out a bit, getting all sorts of mental images of seeing a tiny baby with no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and things like that. I started to think, "Please, please let me find it!..." Eventually I decided to try an inch higher than my bikini line (where I've found it all the other times) in case my womb has just grown more than I thought recently, and PHEW, there it was! :D Beating at 180 beats per minute, and sounding good and fine! Soooo relieved!
I do still have ever such mild "background" queasiness, but as soon as that started to pick up a little, I just went to find something to eat. I realised that I could probably test it by trying to eat something I haven't been able to face since the very start of my morning sickness. I haven't been able to eat cereal with milk on it at all - though I tried at first. I can't get more than a couple of mouthfuls into it before I have to stop for the nausea getting overwhelming, and then it takes an hour or two to ease back to the normal level of nausea. Yuck! So I was really excited to pull out the shredded wheat, sprinkle some SUGAR on (another no-no!), and drench it with milk! I just finished it, and loved every bite! :) So now I feel much more convinced that for some reason or other, my morning sickness really IS coming to an end before 10 weeks has even arrived! Wow. I just can't believe it! I'm so thankful! And don't really understand it, but yeah, soooo thankful! :)
And now that I'm beginning to return to somewhere near normal fluid intake (although I have a cold, plus a poorly baby permanently attached to a breast), the frequent weeing is REALLY kicking in! I was wondering why I really hadn't noticed that symptom at all. Now I am getting it! Last night I resettled Benjamin (in the evening) and went for a wee, and then back to the laptop. I read blogs for about 10 or 15 minutes and Benjamin fussed again (wind) so I burped him and put him back down, and lo and behold, I had to pee again! Craziness - for me, anyway! I also had to get up at 2am to go, even though I went right before bed. Today I am having to go fairly frequently, and I REALLY like it! It makes me feel happy and pregnant to have to keep nipping to the loo for a wee! :) I think that as well as the fluids increasing a bit, my womb is also growing big enough now to squash my bladder much more than it has been. In fact if I recall, between 10 and 12 weeks can get rather uncomfortable and even crampy in that department, as it runs out of room in my pelvis before it pops up.
Now, my nausea has been fluctuating from day to day, so if this is a "good day", I could feel a fair bit queasier tomorrow. But even so, it should be a lot less than my bad days used to be! I really hope this is IT!
So TWO weird differences from all four of my other pregnancies this time: Different morning sickness (starting a week early, tailing off WEEKS earlier than usual), and NO bleeding! My brother is starting to think it's because it's a "different sort of baby!" ;) I still can't bring myself to think that it could ever really be possible that I might be pregnant with an actual girl, hehe!
My SIL had her big scan on Friday, and found out she's having a girl! Which adds to the whole "we'll be having a boy then!" feeling for me, because it does seem that our siblings have the girls and we have the boys! ;) I do have one scrummy little nephew though - but four nieces now! My brother's little girl turned 3 yesterday and she is so girly! She just wants a dress that's pretty, and ballet shoes, and anything pink or sparkly! My mum bought her a dress, and for weeks we would talk about it on the phone, and I would say how lucky she is to go shopping for girly party dresses (how I would LOVE that! I'm very girly myself, you know!). Then Bennie told me that Thea can never have too many hair clips (she loves them) - the more sparkly the better, so I have had the JOY and privilege of browsing through racks and racks of hair clips for little girls - pink ones, purple ones, smiley ones, sparkly ones, butterfly ones - ooooh the choice is endless! It really brought home how I never see, do, or buy anything girly at all, with alllll my little boys! I am so glad to have nieces to legitimately browse through girly things for, but I admit, it isn't quite the same as your OWN baby girl.
I know I said (and I stick by it!) that I would LOVE a fifth precious baby boy! I DO love boys, and would be glad to have eight boys and no girls! I would never prefer having a girl over a boy to the point where I'd try to "swing it" so that we conceive a girl instead. But ohhhh the truth is, how I would love to have a daughter! I know they are a whole different kettle of fish to boys, and can be harder work apparently! But I don't care. I would love to have a daughter! I am such a girly type. I would love to buy pink! And dresses! And flowery stuff! And do her hair! And on and on (really, pretty much ad infinitum). My heart will NOT sink when (if??) we see those ever present boy bits flashing at us at the scan. We already know his name and we love him, and we WANT him! I want to burst with pride and joy thinking of my FIVE little boys, and the fun they'll have, and the snuggles I will get, and how very cute a tiny little boy is when he's wearing denim dungarees with cars embroidered on the front and taking sweet little stumpy toddly steps! I am LONGING for that particular baby boy, and the likelihood is that we'll meet him in December. But, totally aside from that feeling.... I would so like a little girl as well! :)
Well, whoever this sweet little person is, he/she is currently known as Cornflake (Arthur's choice). Oh! I never did give detail on how we told them! We told them after dinner one evening, a couple of weeks ago. They had been busily playing imaginary games all afternoon, and the one they were called away from at dinner time was Pretend Christmas. All three older boys were playing as they usually do - they play together all the time and enjoy each other so much! :) So they had been wrapping each other presents in playsilks, and were about to play Christmas Morning and be all excited. It gave me the idea to tell them about the baby, and tie it into Christmas, because Cornflake is due so soon before Christmas. So while they ate, Neil and I snuck little bits of conversation about how best to tell them, in between supervising the meal. That one just happened to be a meal just for the boys, though we usually eat all together as a family probably 6 days a week. While they ate, I prepared clues, since that's how we decided we'd tell them!
When they came out from eating, we played Christmas Morning with them and they opened all their presents and so on. After they finished, I told them that we had some news about something that was going to happen right before Christmas this year! They were all interested, and Arthur was especially intrigued, and hopped about eager to hear. I told them I had some clues to show them. They weren't the best because they had to be thought of and put together really quickly, but it went down a treat all the same! The first clue was that I handed Arthur one of their teddies wrapped in a while terry towel, and laid it in his arms. They looked at it, clueless. So I asked if they wanted another clue. They were excited and said yes! So I pointed to our button numbers up on the wall, and put my finger under the number 5 (bit cryptic for little ones, I know, hehe!). Arthur said, "Five??!" in a confused way. So I gave them clue number three: I went to the blackboard and let them each choose a colour because I told them I was going to draw each of them on the board. I drew stick figures with smiley faces - Arthur first, then Matthew next to him, a bit smaller. Then Nathan, a bit smaller still, and then Benjamin even smaller. I wrote "4" underneath them. Then I wrote "+" next to their line, and drew a baby with "1" underneath it, and then wrote "=5". I stopped to look at them, and you could see their little cogs turning, hehe! That one seemed really obvious to me, I was sure they'd get it, but they were staring at it with furrowed brows. I know probably only Arthur would understand it though.
So I stood up and asked if they needed one more clue, and they said yes, still looking at the blackboard. So I let my button and zip down a bit on my jeans, stood sideways on and said, "What shape is Mummy's tummy?" Arthur took one look at my tummy and said, "Big... BABY!!!!" The dots in the middle represent about 0.24 seconds where his eyes shot into wide-as-saucers mode as he got it! :) He yelled, "BABY!!!!" at the top of his voice and started jumping up and down squealing and shouting, "It's a BABY in Mummy's tummy, A BABY, A BABY!!!" Matthew and Nathan started jumping up and down about 2 seconds after Arthur did and shouting similar things. I could see that Arthur and Matthew really did get it, and were very excited! But it was so sweet to see Nathan joining in with his brothers as he always does, hugely excited and shouting, "A baby inna tummy! A baby inna tummy!" with great glee, but he obviously didn't have a CLUE as to the reality of the situation, lol! ;) Sweet little boy! :) Neil took photos which came out blurry (such a shame! I hoped he would take video, but apparently not), and Benjamin sat on Neil's lap shrieking and clapping with joy and excitement as he watched his brothers. It was the sweetest picture, and I WISH I had it captured for prosperity, but alas I don't! :( Still, it will stay in my memory for ever all the same :)
Once they stopped jumping, and caught their breath (they kept it up for a while!), Arthur and Matthew started to ask soooo many questions for the next hour before bed - these were mostly from Arthur, but some from Matthew: "How long has the baby been in your tummy? Since MARCH?!!! Why didn't you tell us?!?! Can we call it Cornflake?! Can we call it Crumb?! Can we call it (insert any one of fifty million increasingly silly other choices - Matthew and Arthur alternated these for quite some time!)?! How big is your baby now? Is it this big? Is it this big? Is it this big? (repeat same question with different hand shapes for a long time) Is the baby going to die? How do you know? Will it be born at Christmas? Which date in December? (arranges and re-arranges calender) This one? This one? This one? (this goes on for a while) What if it's late though? What if it's later than Christmas? How do you know? But Matthew was late, so what if THIS baby is late like Matthew was? Can I hear the baby's heart beating? Here? Here? Here? (various ear-to-my-tummy poses) Shoosh boys, I'm trying to hear the baby's heartbeat!... Why wouldn't I be able to hear it? When can I? Will I be six when the baby is born? Will Matthew be 4? Will Nathey be 2? Will Benji be one? Will you have the baby in our house? Remember when you had Nathan in the hospital? Will you do that? When will we know?! Will Heather come and see us? Will you make lots of noise? (followed by much cheerful reminiscing from Arthur about Benjamin's homebirth) Are we really calling it Cornflake?! When will we know it's REAL name? Can we come to the scan?! Why not?! Will you see the willy? Yes, but it'll probably have a willy - will you get a picture of it to show us? Why not?! Can we see that picture though? Oh good!.... I can't WAIT till December!!!" :)
They are so happy and excited, and Arthur is joyfully telling people that we run into: "Did you know that my Mummy has a baby due in December?!" He sounds so proud and pleased, and that makes me soooooooo happy, because you know, he's the eldest of soon-to-be FIVE children, and he's only FIVE himself! I have actually had insensitive people tell me in the past (when we only had 3 I think!), "Poor Arthur!" or "Your poor kids!" because they see it as some huge burden we're putting on them, especially Arthur, being the eldest and still so young. Well I am here to tell the world that he is so very excited! He loves his role as biggest brother, and he's one blessed little boy with endless playmates who look up to him and adore him. Every year another little boy develops enough skills to suddenly be able to play cars and trains with the rest of them, and he LOVES being in charge of that kind of game! ;) He is also joyfully affectionate with his baby or toddler brothers, and finds them cute and cuddly. He gets excited about their milestones, and looks forward to ones that mean they can get more involved in playing with him. He will happily entertain a sad baby brother if I ask him to for 5 minutes if I'm tied up, and usually that results in a happy and giggly baby brother, and a proud and victorious Arthur who is enjoying playing with the little one! I think it's proof positive that it's GOOD for him, our expanding family with close age-gaps, if we tell him yet another baby is coming and he rejoices so VERY much! :) And I can't tell you how happy that makes me! I do have my moments of not knowing what we're doing and worrying and guilt-tripping that we're messing them (particularly Arthur) up! But it's good to have feedback like this from him!
Well I think I will finish this post for now. Oh except that tomorrow I am TEN WEEKS pregnant!!! Double figures! A quarter of the way there! :D I have not forgotten about a belly gallery! Usually I take a photo at 5 weeks (to compare) and then at 10 weeks. Then 14 weeks, and then fortnightly from then on. I have taken a 5 week photo, but not made a gallery yet. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to get Neil to take a photo and then once it's uploaded I'll make a "Belly Gallery" post with both of them! :)
And as of tomorrow, Cornflake is no longer an embryo. He'll be in the final stage of embryonic development (Stage 23), and then officially a FETUS from that point on! Yay! :) Cornflake looks like a little human being, about an inch long. The tail is almost gone, ears and eyes are not quite in the right place but will be soon, and the fingers are separate and the hands can grasp across the body. All the internal organs are in place and the critical period for their development has finished, though they'll still be continuing to develop and grow. Tongue development has just finished. Baby teeth are at cap level, and adult teeth are beginning to form high up in the jaw. The eyes are partly closed, and the gonads are now recognisable as either testes or ovaries (inside the body though). Genitals are beginning to form, and the muscles are getting stronger. The baby can make all sorts of spontaneous movements, and around this time the first brain waves can be detected! My little one is being knit together so amazingly by my wonderful Father God! I can't wait to meet Cornflake, but ohhh how I enjoy "growing" him (her?) in the mean time! :)
Saturday, 8 May 2010
8 weeks, 5 days
It's been way too long since I updated here! Right after I wrote the last post, our internet cut out for 36 hours (very annoying!) and then only a couple of days later it went again for FOUR DAYS straight!! Aaargh! I was so annoyed about that, but it has relieved me of my Farmville addiction at Facebook, so it was probably God-ordained! ;) I have since discovered that looking at any Farmville images makes me nauseated - seriously! - such is my association with playing it while morning sick in the evenings! So I don't think I will actually be able to play it again without feeling sick, even when I'm well past morning sickness. I STILL can't play Zoo Tycoon - even the NAME makes me feel sick, typing it! - which I played a lot in the first couple of weeks when morning sick with Arthur! Yeeears ago. These associations hang in there, so I think Farmville is history for me.
Anyway! That was totally not relevant to my blog!
Thank you so so much for the many sweet comments on my last post! I can't tell you how much I appreciated hearing from you ladies, and knowing that you are checking in and happy for me! :) I do think Facebook affects my blogs (both of them) because I have definitely seen fewer comments since really getting into Facebook. That will be my own fault for going crazy posting photos and stuff there! When I post them at my blog, I don't really get comments any more, but I do get some at Facebook, so yes, I think that has affected my blogs :( Viks, THANK YOU for the sweet idea of a nappy cake!! Never mind that nobody helped out, it's the thought that counts and even knowing it now make me feel special! :) xxx
Well, as usual it is late and I am tired and nauseous, so I really should get on with writing what I want to write! :)
I can't remember all the stuff I was saving up to write when we were offline last week! Tsk! I will have to just start writing about what I CAN remember and go from thre!
At 8 weeks and 1 day, Neil went to bed early with a bad headache. I had no internet and no hubby around, and felt bored! I folded about 50,000 loads of laundry (only slightly exaggerating) and then thought mayyybe I could dust off my doppler in preparation for later in the week! :) I was glad Neil was in bed because I felt sort of silly getting it out so early! I had no intention of finding a heartbeat because it was so early, but I wanted to know if my womb was high enough to even hear placenta sounds yet. So I changed the battery and checked it was still working. I felt really fond of my doppler, getting it out after all these pregnancies! I have used that same doppler to listen to all FIVE of my sweet little ones, and it is really on its last legs. I have to wiggle the battery in its "socket" for a good few minutes before it will "catch" and the unit will work. In order to switch it off after I've finished using it, I have to disconnect the battery. It has been that way since Matthew's pregnancy, and for a while I would forget to disconnect it and the battery would be flat the next time I went to use it, but I am well used to that now and never leave it connected! :)
Anyway - goodness I'm rambling tonight! And tonight is NOT a night for rambling - I need to go to bed!
So I found some nice whooshy sounds of my own pulse, and was enjoying listening to that, thinking ahead of the end of the week when I might actually be able to hear my little sweetie's heartbeat with it! I had headphones plugged into the doppler so that I didn't wake anyone up, and that might have helped, because I was just about to put it away when I thought I could hear something fast and rhythmic EVER SO faintly in the background. If I moved the doppler even a millimetre in any direction it disappeared. The baby was only 10mm long at that stage (never mind what the size of the TINY heart must have been!), so that is probably why. After some careful angling I was able to hear my tiny little baby's heartbeat clearly enough to count it, for the first time!!! I was so amazed - at 8 weeks and 1 day! It's only when our internet came back on that I searched my older entries at my pregnancy diary and found that I had actually heard Nathan's heart beating for the first time at exactly the same gestation, 8w1d. I didn't remember that. I always though they were all around 9 weeks, and Benjamin was the earliest at 8w5d (which actually, according to my blog, turned out to be 8w4d - so much for my memory, hey?!). The heartbeat sounds were so faint that I didn't think they would be audible enough on a video taken with my not-very-good little handheld camera with video capabilities. It takes even worse videos than my old camera did! :S Anyway, so I didn't take a video. I did count the heartrate - 174 beats per minute, about right for that gestation! :) Funnily enough, Nathan's heartrate was exactly that at the same exact gestation! It's too early for that old wives' tale, before anyone suggests it! That's for later in pregnancy (though it hasn't proved true at all for my boys) - up until 10 weeks the heartrate increases like a rev from the slow 60bpm that it starts out at, up to about 180 or more. There's a specific heartrate (average) for each gestational DAY up till 10 weeks! Amazing! Then it slows down considerably and varies hugely from baby to baby after that. So right now, my little one is spot on! :)
The next day, 8w2d, Neil was better and I got the doppler out in the evening to let him hear the heartbeat. But I combed every square mm of my womb (or so it felt!) for a long time and the tiny pickle was being elusive, so I gave up. The NEXT day (8w3d) I got the doppler out again and found the heartbeat with no trouble. It sounded clearer, though still pretty faint and tiny. Neil enjoyed hearing it, and I enjoyed seeing him listen to it! :) Because it was a little stronger, I took a video of it. It's uploading at onetruemedia right now, but when it is finished I will clip it (it's long!) and post it here - hopefully in time for me to do it before I finish this post and go to bed tonight. It still sounds distant, and I hope you guys will be able to hear it! You can hear my whooshy placenta sounds and the baby's heartbeat is much fainter, but very fast. I counted it again and it was 174 again!
The clip is ready, so here it is! I know I will cave and post it at Facebook as well anyway. *sigh* I can't help it! I like to keep special things for my blog audience only, but I want everyone to hear it - it's SUCH a precious sound to my ears! :) In the clip, you hear my placenta at first, and then I go looking for the little one. At first it's ever so faint - I'm not sure if you'll hear it (unless your volume is RIGHT UP, lol!), but it does get easier to hear in the last 10 seconds of the clip if that helps:
It's SO lovely to have heard it already! I'm so glad! And the first time I heard it felt like a real turning point for me. Now I have made actual "contact" with that little baby, and it's more than just an IDEA to me - hoping that it's alive and well - for the first time I really felt like I have FIVE children. I mean, I have seven more months before the reality of having FIVE children really kicks in, hehe! But yeah, it was a nice moment! :) I'm loving the number 5 lately, everywhere I see it, it gives me a warm glow and a smile! I think it's my favourite number right now! :)
What other news? There must be loads!
I'm still morning sick as usual but I think either it is slightly easing as I get near to 9 weeks, OR I am just becoming used to it and it's not so all-consuming? I think? I can't remember if this happens every pregnancy around this stage, but it rings a bell anyway. The nausea seems just as bad, feeling-wise, and it's no less severe if I let myself get too hungry, and I don't think I have any windows without it in my waking hours, but somehow it doesn't seem so awful as during 6 weeks and 7 weeks. Those are always two AWFUL weeks to deal with, every time I am pregnant, so maybe there's just a period of adjustment to the awfulness of the nausea and two or three weeks is what it takes to settle down to existing with the level of nausea always with me? I don't know. Anyway. Another thing I have discovered since my last entry is READY MEALS. I can't think why I didn't consider that before now! Hang the freezer meals - READY MEALS is what I need! Shop-bought, balanced and nutritious ready meals in single portions. We started buying a small variety of Tesco or Sainsbury's ready meals, like cottage pie, shepherd's pie, lasagne, chicken pie, chicken pasta bake, etc. And Covent Garden Fresh Soups!!! In those cardboard cartons! Well, only two flavours suit me right now (leek and potato, and winter vegetable) but I can heat up a teacupful of soup and eat it, and it not only gives me fluids, but REALLY good nourishment, and it knocks my nausea on the head too. I actually enjoy eating those soups - they taste delicious and hearty and comforting, and for my personal taste, they have the balance exactly right - not too salty, seasoned, bland, thick, thin, etc. JUST right. Yum! :) I put a ready meal in the oven for 30 mins (oh for the day when we had a microwave - these would be ready in 5-7 minutes and 30 mins is horrible when I feel sick!!) at lunch time and eat that, and a "proper" meal really helps a lot with the nausea - waaaay better than a sandwich or nibbles or something. I do have to eat pretty much hourly or even more frequently throughout the day, because I feel nauseous all the time and about 20 minutes after I eat it really starts to accelerate in intensity. By one hour I am feeling too sick to look at food usually, so sooner is better if I can manage to eat something. Sometimes I get fed up having to eat so often because I'm often NOT HUNGRY yet! ;)
These last two days I have noticed a new change in my appetite. The nausea is the same but I am often stomach-scrunchingly hungry underneath it. I woke twice in the night last night when Benjamin was still asleep (a first! He wakes often and I am totally unconscious unless he wakes me!) purely because of hunger pains, and I was worried my tummy would wake him as he was sleeping by my side and it was grinding so loudly that it echoed in the still of the room!! I am also needing to eat about double for breakfast compared to what I have been eating up to a few days ago. It just doesn't fill me so I eat a couple more slices of toast till I feel more satisfied!
I am not really having any sort of frequent peeing that is typical of early pregnancy and haven't noticed anything like it so far this pregnancy. Some days I only go twice from waking to bedtime, but it is because I am REALLY not getting enough fluids. I would say that some days I get a glass of fluids for the whole day at best. Fluids are always my biggest hurdle with morning sickness. I am so glad to find these soups because it's extra fluid. I can stomach apples fine, so I eat those a lot. Juice and water = yeuurrgh, though I deal better with sipping water if it has ice in it. This week I discovered by chance that ice-cream slips down ever so nicely, so long as it's NOT chocolate or anything fancy. Basic vanilla (real dairy) or strawberry is going down best, and that is extra calcium and fluid, so I'm happy to eat ice-cream once or twice a day right now. I was getting concerned about my calcium intake, especially since I am breastfeeding a hungry 9-month-old at the same time as being pregnant and having my own calcium needs! Benjamin eats pretty well but he self-feeds everything, and definitely still needs the majority of his intake to be breastmilk. My milk supply is holding up fine so far, but Benjamin is very clingy this week and spends a lot of time each day sprawled on my front in the living room breastfeeding. He has some eczema at the moment and STILL no teeth, so who knows, maybe it's one of those things bothering him? Matthew is still breastfeeding once or twice a week at bedtime (when I am in to tuck them in before he falls asleep - he goes off fast!) and tells me the milky still tastes the same, so it can't be the taste changing.
Anyway! Calcium! I really wasn't eating ANY sources of calcium up to last week, and started to be concerned about that. So I am now eating ready meals, many of which have cheese in, or cream or milk in the sauce. I am sipping a very small glass of milk with breakfast (milk doesn't sit well since I've been feeling sick!) and another if I can manage it later in the day. I am eating more things with cheese (tortellini - is that the name? Pasta filled with cheese/spinach, etc, anyway! With grated cheese over it or something), and the soups have added milk or cream too. Ice-cream is a good source, and I am eating a cupful of dry Cheerios a couple of times a day because I can just about stomach them and they have added calcium. I take my prenatal vitamin before bed most nights (occasionally I feel too sick to swallow it down) and that has added calcium too. So hopefully that is good enough? Much better than before anyway!
What else?
My uterus! I have been poking about for it since about 7 weeks, wondering when I would feel the top of it poking up above my pubic bone. I thought I could usually feel something around 8 weeks, so I was expectant, but sort of surprised that I didn't feel it. By 8.5 weeks I was wondering when I WOULD feel it, and thinking that the twin possibility was definitely out! ;) And one night at bedtime I was trying to feel it again and getting annoyed with some sort of distended loop of bowel (!!) or something getting in my way right across my lower abdomen at my bikini line. Took me a while to realise IT'S MY WOMB! Yikes! Not as firm as I remember it, but still solid enough, and to be honest I have a MUCH baggier, softer tummy between it and my hand than the other times! :S My skin/tissue which stretched last pregnancy doesn't seem to have recovered its elasticity this time too well! Never mind, it's a bit late now, lol! ;) It is starting to fill out more, and I have to admit that when I let it awwwwlll hang out, so to speak (!), much as I'm sure most of it is some serious bloating, I do have a rather rounded "bump"! It's a soft bump though - appearances can be misleading! ;)
My actual womb is high but "flat", like it usually it in the first few weeks that I can feel it. It doesn't protrude OUT, but lies quite high. I can feel the top of it clearly now that I have realised what it is, haha! When I lie down to feel it, the top of my womb is HALFWAY between my pubic bone and my tummy button! Flat though. But HALFWAY! When I discovered this, we had no internet access, and Neil was going quite frantic about it because he NEEDED me to be able to go online and search my pregnancy diary to find out if that was my norm in previous pregnancies! ;) I admit I was itching to do so as well. When we finally got back online, I did just that, and am not sure how to call it really. It could be within my norm - at 8-9 weeks the top of my (flat, not protruding) womb is usually 3 inches above my pubic bone and 5 inches below my tummy button (the sum total distance being 8 inches I presume! ;) ) So, that's pretty high, and while it is definitely NOT 5 inches below my tummy button this time, it's only an inch or so out, so it could still be within my norm for this stage. On the other hand, at TEN weeks I updated during a couple of my pregnancies to say that my (still flat, not protruding) womb was now halfway between my pubic bone and my tummy button, so hmmm... Of course it might just be something to do with it being my 5th pregnancy? I don't know. I guess if I AM carrying twins then it will quickly become apparent in the next couple of weeks, as growth should be quite accelerated in that kind of window.
Oh I have SO MUCH MORE to say!!! But it's really late because Benjamin woke twice while I was writing this, and I will HAVE to go to bed. We told the boys tonight about the new baby! I want SO MUCH to write lots of detail about that, and I will, but I can't tonight :( The baby is now to be known as Cornflake until we have the big scan! :) It was Arthur's suggestion a few weeks ago before he knew I was pregnant, for the next time I had a baby in my tummy. He is thrilled that I've remembered it and that we are using it! :) For tonight though (and I will update again soon), I am beyond thrilled that Matthew and Arthur are happy and excited (like Disneyland, seriously) to be having a new baby brother or sister. Nathan is joining in with their excitement but I'm sure he doesn't really understand yet! ;) Benjamin is happy and squealing and laughing because his brothers are! So we have a happy little bunch who are REALLY looking forward to Christmas this year! :)
Anyway! That was totally not relevant to my blog!
Thank you so so much for the many sweet comments on my last post! I can't tell you how much I appreciated hearing from you ladies, and knowing that you are checking in and happy for me! :) I do think Facebook affects my blogs (both of them) because I have definitely seen fewer comments since really getting into Facebook. That will be my own fault for going crazy posting photos and stuff there! When I post them at my blog, I don't really get comments any more, but I do get some at Facebook, so yes, I think that has affected my blogs :( Viks, THANK YOU for the sweet idea of a nappy cake!! Never mind that nobody helped out, it's the thought that counts and even knowing it now make me feel special! :) xxx
Well, as usual it is late and I am tired and nauseous, so I really should get on with writing what I want to write! :)
I can't remember all the stuff I was saving up to write when we were offline last week! Tsk! I will have to just start writing about what I CAN remember and go from thre!
At 8 weeks and 1 day, Neil went to bed early with a bad headache. I had no internet and no hubby around, and felt bored! I folded about 50,000 loads of laundry (only slightly exaggerating) and then thought mayyybe I could dust off my doppler in preparation for later in the week! :) I was glad Neil was in bed because I felt sort of silly getting it out so early! I had no intention of finding a heartbeat because it was so early, but I wanted to know if my womb was high enough to even hear placenta sounds yet. So I changed the battery and checked it was still working. I felt really fond of my doppler, getting it out after all these pregnancies! I have used that same doppler to listen to all FIVE of my sweet little ones, and it is really on its last legs. I have to wiggle the battery in its "socket" for a good few minutes before it will "catch" and the unit will work. In order to switch it off after I've finished using it, I have to disconnect the battery. It has been that way since Matthew's pregnancy, and for a while I would forget to disconnect it and the battery would be flat the next time I went to use it, but I am well used to that now and never leave it connected! :)
Anyway - goodness I'm rambling tonight! And tonight is NOT a night for rambling - I need to go to bed!
So I found some nice whooshy sounds of my own pulse, and was enjoying listening to that, thinking ahead of the end of the week when I might actually be able to hear my little sweetie's heartbeat with it! I had headphones plugged into the doppler so that I didn't wake anyone up, and that might have helped, because I was just about to put it away when I thought I could hear something fast and rhythmic EVER SO faintly in the background. If I moved the doppler even a millimetre in any direction it disappeared. The baby was only 10mm long at that stage (never mind what the size of the TINY heart must have been!), so that is probably why. After some careful angling I was able to hear my tiny little baby's heartbeat clearly enough to count it, for the first time!!! I was so amazed - at 8 weeks and 1 day! It's only when our internet came back on that I searched my older entries at my pregnancy diary and found that I had actually heard Nathan's heart beating for the first time at exactly the same gestation, 8w1d. I didn't remember that. I always though they were all around 9 weeks, and Benjamin was the earliest at 8w5d (which actually, according to my blog, turned out to be 8w4d - so much for my memory, hey?!). The heartbeat sounds were so faint that I didn't think they would be audible enough on a video taken with my not-very-good little handheld camera with video capabilities. It takes even worse videos than my old camera did! :S Anyway, so I didn't take a video. I did count the heartrate - 174 beats per minute, about right for that gestation! :) Funnily enough, Nathan's heartrate was exactly that at the same exact gestation! It's too early for that old wives' tale, before anyone suggests it! That's for later in pregnancy (though it hasn't proved true at all for my boys) - up until 10 weeks the heartrate increases like a rev from the slow 60bpm that it starts out at, up to about 180 or more. There's a specific heartrate (average) for each gestational DAY up till 10 weeks! Amazing! Then it slows down considerably and varies hugely from baby to baby after that. So right now, my little one is spot on! :)
The next day, 8w2d, Neil was better and I got the doppler out in the evening to let him hear the heartbeat. But I combed every square mm of my womb (or so it felt!) for a long time and the tiny pickle was being elusive, so I gave up. The NEXT day (8w3d) I got the doppler out again and found the heartbeat with no trouble. It sounded clearer, though still pretty faint and tiny. Neil enjoyed hearing it, and I enjoyed seeing him listen to it! :) Because it was a little stronger, I took a video of it. It's uploading at onetruemedia right now, but when it is finished I will clip it (it's long!) and post it here - hopefully in time for me to do it before I finish this post and go to bed tonight. It still sounds distant, and I hope you guys will be able to hear it! You can hear my whooshy placenta sounds and the baby's heartbeat is much fainter, but very fast. I counted it again and it was 174 again!
The clip is ready, so here it is! I know I will cave and post it at Facebook as well anyway. *sigh* I can't help it! I like to keep special things for my blog audience only, but I want everyone to hear it - it's SUCH a precious sound to my ears! :) In the clip, you hear my placenta at first, and then I go looking for the little one. At first it's ever so faint - I'm not sure if you'll hear it (unless your volume is RIGHT UP, lol!), but it does get easier to hear in the last 10 seconds of the clip if that helps:
It's SO lovely to have heard it already! I'm so glad! And the first time I heard it felt like a real turning point for me. Now I have made actual "contact" with that little baby, and it's more than just an IDEA to me - hoping that it's alive and well - for the first time I really felt like I have FIVE children. I mean, I have seven more months before the reality of having FIVE children really kicks in, hehe! But yeah, it was a nice moment! :) I'm loving the number 5 lately, everywhere I see it, it gives me a warm glow and a smile! I think it's my favourite number right now! :)
What other news? There must be loads!
I'm still morning sick as usual but I think either it is slightly easing as I get near to 9 weeks, OR I am just becoming used to it and it's not so all-consuming? I think? I can't remember if this happens every pregnancy around this stage, but it rings a bell anyway. The nausea seems just as bad, feeling-wise, and it's no less severe if I let myself get too hungry, and I don't think I have any windows without it in my waking hours, but somehow it doesn't seem so awful as during 6 weeks and 7 weeks. Those are always two AWFUL weeks to deal with, every time I am pregnant, so maybe there's just a period of adjustment to the awfulness of the nausea and two or three weeks is what it takes to settle down to existing with the level of nausea always with me? I don't know. Anyway. Another thing I have discovered since my last entry is READY MEALS. I can't think why I didn't consider that before now! Hang the freezer meals - READY MEALS is what I need! Shop-bought, balanced and nutritious ready meals in single portions. We started buying a small variety of Tesco or Sainsbury's ready meals, like cottage pie, shepherd's pie, lasagne, chicken pie, chicken pasta bake, etc. And Covent Garden Fresh Soups!!! In those cardboard cartons! Well, only two flavours suit me right now (leek and potato, and winter vegetable) but I can heat up a teacupful of soup and eat it, and it not only gives me fluids, but REALLY good nourishment, and it knocks my nausea on the head too. I actually enjoy eating those soups - they taste delicious and hearty and comforting, and for my personal taste, they have the balance exactly right - not too salty, seasoned, bland, thick, thin, etc. JUST right. Yum! :) I put a ready meal in the oven for 30 mins (oh for the day when we had a microwave - these would be ready in 5-7 minutes and 30 mins is horrible when I feel sick!!) at lunch time and eat that, and a "proper" meal really helps a lot with the nausea - waaaay better than a sandwich or nibbles or something. I do have to eat pretty much hourly or even more frequently throughout the day, because I feel nauseous all the time and about 20 minutes after I eat it really starts to accelerate in intensity. By one hour I am feeling too sick to look at food usually, so sooner is better if I can manage to eat something. Sometimes I get fed up having to eat so often because I'm often NOT HUNGRY yet! ;)
These last two days I have noticed a new change in my appetite. The nausea is the same but I am often stomach-scrunchingly hungry underneath it. I woke twice in the night last night when Benjamin was still asleep (a first! He wakes often and I am totally unconscious unless he wakes me!) purely because of hunger pains, and I was worried my tummy would wake him as he was sleeping by my side and it was grinding so loudly that it echoed in the still of the room!! I am also needing to eat about double for breakfast compared to what I have been eating up to a few days ago. It just doesn't fill me so I eat a couple more slices of toast till I feel more satisfied!
I am not really having any sort of frequent peeing that is typical of early pregnancy and haven't noticed anything like it so far this pregnancy. Some days I only go twice from waking to bedtime, but it is because I am REALLY not getting enough fluids. I would say that some days I get a glass of fluids for the whole day at best. Fluids are always my biggest hurdle with morning sickness. I am so glad to find these soups because it's extra fluid. I can stomach apples fine, so I eat those a lot. Juice and water = yeuurrgh, though I deal better with sipping water if it has ice in it. This week I discovered by chance that ice-cream slips down ever so nicely, so long as it's NOT chocolate or anything fancy. Basic vanilla (real dairy) or strawberry is going down best, and that is extra calcium and fluid, so I'm happy to eat ice-cream once or twice a day right now. I was getting concerned about my calcium intake, especially since I am breastfeeding a hungry 9-month-old at the same time as being pregnant and having my own calcium needs! Benjamin eats pretty well but he self-feeds everything, and definitely still needs the majority of his intake to be breastmilk. My milk supply is holding up fine so far, but Benjamin is very clingy this week and spends a lot of time each day sprawled on my front in the living room breastfeeding. He has some eczema at the moment and STILL no teeth, so who knows, maybe it's one of those things bothering him? Matthew is still breastfeeding once or twice a week at bedtime (when I am in to tuck them in before he falls asleep - he goes off fast!) and tells me the milky still tastes the same, so it can't be the taste changing.
Anyway! Calcium! I really wasn't eating ANY sources of calcium up to last week, and started to be concerned about that. So I am now eating ready meals, many of which have cheese in, or cream or milk in the sauce. I am sipping a very small glass of milk with breakfast (milk doesn't sit well since I've been feeling sick!) and another if I can manage it later in the day. I am eating more things with cheese (tortellini - is that the name? Pasta filled with cheese/spinach, etc, anyway! With grated cheese over it or something), and the soups have added milk or cream too. Ice-cream is a good source, and I am eating a cupful of dry Cheerios a couple of times a day because I can just about stomach them and they have added calcium. I take my prenatal vitamin before bed most nights (occasionally I feel too sick to swallow it down) and that has added calcium too. So hopefully that is good enough? Much better than before anyway!
What else?
My uterus! I have been poking about for it since about 7 weeks, wondering when I would feel the top of it poking up above my pubic bone. I thought I could usually feel something around 8 weeks, so I was expectant, but sort of surprised that I didn't feel it. By 8.5 weeks I was wondering when I WOULD feel it, and thinking that the twin possibility was definitely out! ;) And one night at bedtime I was trying to feel it again and getting annoyed with some sort of distended loop of bowel (!!) or something getting in my way right across my lower abdomen at my bikini line. Took me a while to realise IT'S MY WOMB! Yikes! Not as firm as I remember it, but still solid enough, and to be honest I have a MUCH baggier, softer tummy between it and my hand than the other times! :S My skin/tissue which stretched last pregnancy doesn't seem to have recovered its elasticity this time too well! Never mind, it's a bit late now, lol! ;) It is starting to fill out more, and I have to admit that when I let it awwwwlll hang out, so to speak (!), much as I'm sure most of it is some serious bloating, I do have a rather rounded "bump"! It's a soft bump though - appearances can be misleading! ;)
My actual womb is high but "flat", like it usually it in the first few weeks that I can feel it. It doesn't protrude OUT, but lies quite high. I can feel the top of it clearly now that I have realised what it is, haha! When I lie down to feel it, the top of my womb is HALFWAY between my pubic bone and my tummy button! Flat though. But HALFWAY! When I discovered this, we had no internet access, and Neil was going quite frantic about it because he NEEDED me to be able to go online and search my pregnancy diary to find out if that was my norm in previous pregnancies! ;) I admit I was itching to do so as well. When we finally got back online, I did just that, and am not sure how to call it really. It could be within my norm - at 8-9 weeks the top of my (flat, not protruding) womb is usually 3 inches above my pubic bone and 5 inches below my tummy button (the sum total distance being 8 inches I presume! ;) ) So, that's pretty high, and while it is definitely NOT 5 inches below my tummy button this time, it's only an inch or so out, so it could still be within my norm for this stage. On the other hand, at TEN weeks I updated during a couple of my pregnancies to say that my (still flat, not protruding) womb was now halfway between my pubic bone and my tummy button, so hmmm... Of course it might just be something to do with it being my 5th pregnancy? I don't know. I guess if I AM carrying twins then it will quickly become apparent in the next couple of weeks, as growth should be quite accelerated in that kind of window.
Oh I have SO MUCH MORE to say!!! But it's really late because Benjamin woke twice while I was writing this, and I will HAVE to go to bed. We told the boys tonight about the new baby! I want SO MUCH to write lots of detail about that, and I will, but I can't tonight :( The baby is now to be known as Cornflake until we have the big scan! :) It was Arthur's suggestion a few weeks ago before he knew I was pregnant, for the next time I had a baby in my tummy. He is thrilled that I've remembered it and that we are using it! :) For tonight though (and I will update again soon), I am beyond thrilled that Matthew and Arthur are happy and excited (like Disneyland, seriously) to be having a new baby brother or sister. Nathan is joining in with their excitement but I'm sure he doesn't really understand yet! ;) Benjamin is happy and squealing and laughing because his brothers are! So we have a happy little bunch who are REALLY looking forward to Christmas this year! :)
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
7 weeks, 2 days - bleurrrrgh!
Urrghhh, I feel soooooooo sick! Which is pretty much my exact wording (probably!) for all the "7 weeks" diary entries from my previous pregnancies! ;) But I really really really do. I am feeling a bit fed up of feeling so sick all the time, but NOT fed up of being pregnant. I love growing new tiny persons! :)
I am so looking forward to reaching the end of 7 weeks (I will reach my half-week point at the end of the day tomorrow, yay!) and heading into 8 weeks! Six and seven weeks are grim really, and very early on too. Eight weeks is still so nauseating and yucky, BUT it's exciting because before the week is over I start listening for the baby's heartbeat with my doppler!! :) I can't WAIT to hear that sweet sound! I didn't search earlier than 9 weeks exactly with my older three, but I searched at 8 weeks and 5 days with Benjamin, and there it was! I'll probably start around the same time this time. Only just over a week to goooo! :D
A couple of days ago I got my package from the hospital with all the usual information and also the date for my booking appointment with the midwife, and my 12 week scan! I love getting this particular package in the post each time! :) They send quite a thick booklet with alllll the information about the various tests and so on, and the hospital, what to expect, etc - all related to my local hospital. I have noticed over the years/babies (!) that they change the design on the front cover pretty much annually. The first one I had was 2004/2005 (Arthur), then they had a new design for 2005/2006 (Matthew), then I guess I must have missed one before the 2007/2008 one for Nathan. Benjamin's was a new design again for 2008/2009. It's always a really gorgeous photo of a newborn baby, taken at the hospital. I have kept all the booklets from my previous pregnancies, so I remember the photos on the front from my other pregnancies. Guess what the photo on the front is for 2010/2011? Yes, that's right! Newborn identical twin girls. I am not kidding! Every year it's a single newborn baby on the front, except THIS year! Uncanny.... I showed it to Neil with a chuckle, and he smiled, unsurprised, and said, "Hmmm!" Now, I really do LIKELY have one boy in there this time, but both Neil and I have seen and heard of craaaazy numbers of girl twins just since finding out I am pregnant. Before that even, but since conception. Anyway, it's a funny coincidence if nothing else!
So my booking appointment with the midwife is May 21st at 10.10am. That one should last a good while (but be fun!) because I have to go through a detailed history of my previous pregnancies and births! I love that part! :) I also have to have blood taken. Fun.
My scan will be June 3rd at 1.50pm! Yay! I will be 12 weeks and 3 days pregnant. They offer this scan specifically between 11 weeks and 5 days, and 13 weeks and 6 days. This is the "dating" scan, and also the nuchal test scan if we want to have that done. But we won't. They have changed it from just measuring the baby's nuchal fold to doing that AND me having a blood test. Benjamin's pregnancy was the first one I'd had since this change, and I said no to the test because it matters not a jot whether our baby has Down Syndrome or not. I do not want an extra blood test for something that isn't relevant to us! So we'll refuse that this time too, and as I recall, that makes for a very quick scan. I think it was only about 5 minutes long last time, which was a tad disappointing! We did see VERY clearly that Benjamin was a boy at the 12 week scan. It was the first time I had heard of the "angle of the dangle" theory (!!) with the genital tubercle (only accurate after 12 weeks and before 14 or 15 weeks apparently), and we happened to get a very good "nub shot" in the picture we were given, and he was a very obvious boy by the angle! ;) So I think I may have a good chance of seeing what this baby is in just 5 weeks, with that theory, if we get a good view like last time! 12 weeks and 3 days is just in the right window too! :) After all the scrutinizing I did last time and all the gallery images I browsed through, I pretty much know exactly what I'm looking for with either gender, and should hopefully be able to spot it at a glance if there is a good profile of the baby.
Well I am feeling sick enough to need to draw this to a close now, so I will quickly try to remember anything else I wanted to say.... Still no bleeding of any sort! :) I'm dizzy a lot at the moment, and INSANELY exhausted, seriously. I slept half the morning today, did nothing strenous whatsoever after I got up, and then took Benjamin for his second round of immunisations this afternoon, and was shaky and grey with exhaustion for the rest of the afternoon. The slightest thing just exhausts me! I wonder how much of that is normal? I know from experience that the first trimester is exhausting, but I feel pretty sure that this is NOT my norm. I wondered if maybe it is my diet - in that I'm not eating as much or as well as I normally do due to the constant nausea, but even so, that has been the case every pregnancy so it can't be that. Or maybe that I'm still breastfeeding on demand day and night? But this is my fourth (!!) pregnancy breastfeeding, and my 3rd tandem nursing - wow! :) When I was pregnant with Benjamin I was TRIandum nursing for the first trimester, and I still don't remember feeling as exhausted as I do now. So it can't be that. My mum wonders if it's my blood pressure being low or something? It could easily be - my blood pressure is nice and low in general, and in the first half of my pregnancies (or most of them, sometimes) it goes even lower. So it could be that. I should get my sphyg out and check, but I keep not getting round to it. Of course I have googled and discovered that the main early symptom that twin mothers have which is different from a singleton pregnancy is the extreme level of exhaustion. Hmmm. But I am (honestly!) trying not to think about that, because it's more realistic to think of another boy on the way! ;)
Oh, I caved and told my grandparents last week. So now everyone knows. I wanted to leave it a LONG time before telling them, because I knew they were not going to be happy and would worry for us. But it became something that hung over me, and eventually I figured it would be best to just get it out of the way, so I did. I phoned Granny on a day when I knew they had had GOOD news (they often have little things to complain about, and it's never a good idea to say, "We're having a baby!" when something has gone wrong for them in the last 48 hours or so!), and when she asked how I was, I told her that I wasn't feeling very well. She sounded concerned and asked what was wrong. I told her nothing was wrong, but I wasn't feeling well because I was expecting a baby. There was a VERY cold silence, and then she said in a rather cross tone, "Where are you going to put it?" I said (cheerfully!) that we needed to move, and she said crossly, "You said that last time!" I just tried to say everything as cheerfully and calmly as possible, so that she might be reassured?! But anyway. It was no fun. She did not say the word "congratulations" once, or anything close to it. It was way worse than last time I announced a pregnancy, but even so, I had wanted to tell Granny and not Grandoug first, because he would just have been more negative, and said, "Oh Alice, you're not, are you?!" and generally huffed about negatively while I tried to tell him due dates and stuff. I knew Granny wouldn't be pleased as such, but at least she would probably conceal actual "what a stupid thing to go and do!" type phrases while I talked to her about it!
Ugh. I love my grandparents though. They love me and worry for me. They are very anti-Christian and Jesus angers them. They mock Christianity. So they don't understand trusting God at all, or anything related to it. They have no idea how we'll cope. I have no idea either, but I know we WILL because these children are given to us by God, along with everything we need to raise them and provide for them according to His will! That is His promise to us, and I trust Him completely to provide for our needs, and equip us for the task. So, my grandparents can't even understand the language I'm talking in if I start saying things like that, let alone the concept.
I told Granny that we couldn't go and buy a new home right now because of Neil's situation, but he was hoping to have something soon that he could show the bank to enable us to get a mortgage. She snapped, "It's called an INCOME." :S She is never like that. I think she was just cross that we'd gone and done something that irresponsible or daft. Or something like that. I talked cheerfully for a while longer and after a while she sighed and said, "So, when is IT going to happen then?" ??!?!?! What kind of question is that?! I was hurt by that one. I told her December 13th, and she commented on a cold weather baby. *sigh* She just was NOT in the mood to be happy about any part of it. She said after that how she was glad to "hear my news" but that she had to go now because she had lots to do. I'm sure she then told Grandoug the second she was off the phone, but he hasn't been in touch with me since. I phoned my mum right after that, and she was surprisingly supportive of me, even though she hadn't responded brilliantly only a couple of weeks before when we told her the news. She asked if I was okay, and I was. I sort of laughed it off really because... I don't know actually. But it seemed lighthearted at the time, and not a big deal. Since then it has started to bother me a little more, especially the fact that they have not been in touch after it has sunk in a bit, to actually congratulate us. But they have visitors over from the States right now, and are actually staying with my parents for a week or so at the moment, so I guess they have been busy and preoccupied with their visitors and travelling to my parents'. Maybe I will speak to them while they are there, and they'll be more positive?
I have just felt a bit deflated recently about what I was warned about coming true - where people stop celebrating with you after the fourth baby, or even earlier in some cases. We got a plethora of new baby cards after we had Arthur, dozens and dozens and dozens. We ran out of places to display them! And the same again after we had Matthew. Considerably fewer after Nathan. And five. FIVE - count 'em on one hand - after Benjamin. He's still a miraculous and wonderful new little person!!! Why won't people see that and be happy and celebrate?!?! It really hurt my feelings! I know I need thicker skin, especially with the direction we're heading in (5+ children territory, lol!), but it really did hurt. Benjamin had no concept and didn't care a jot, but I felt hurt on his behalf all the same. It's not so much the number of cards as the incredible contrast between the first couple of new babies and the latest one. I notice (no digs, just a rather depressing observation) that for my first 3 pregnancies I had a LOT of comments and feedback from most of my diary entries, no matter how waffly and boring they were (hehe!), at my pregnancy diary. During Benjamin's pregnancy, a LOT less. Plenty of friendly and happy comments, but really noticably less than the other times. People mostly popped along in greater numbers like the old days to say something when there was significant news to warrant a comment, like a scan or a heartbeat, or a major issue or something. This time I have basically 2 cheerleaders here (love you girls!) and a handful of busy-but-excited-and-supportive mamas, and an Annie (xxx), occasionally commenting. Lots of entries have no comments, and sometimes I only find spam in the comment box! That is really uplifting, I can tell you! ;) I know I'm very boring in the first trimester, but I was the first few times too... It's just the stark contrast again. I also think that many of the commenters from my first few pregnancies were other mothers who were going through pregnancies/new motherhood at the same time as me, so maybe it was more relevant and interesting to visit my diary and comment back then. Obviously I am continuing to have babies now, and they aren't, and pregnancy is probably seeming quite a long way in the past now to some, so I wondered if the lack of "relevance" is a reason why they are no longer visiting or commenting.
Now, reading that back, it seems like I am stirring up complaints, but I had no intention of doing so. I just see it as an across-the-board thing where a 5th pregnancy is no longer a cause for excitement or joy or celebration, or even INTEREST, like the first two or three were. It's something that other mothers-of-many told me to expect, as far back as a few pregnancies ago. So I was not caught by surprise, but I AM disappointed and sad about the reality of it being played out. Also, where is this spam-in-language-I-can't-even-read coming from?! I'm deleting it as I find it, but still, it's annoying me! :S
I emailed my sweet and lovely doula, Heather, last night. She has booked me in, and told me that another lady has enquired for December - due on the 3rd. She has told the lady that she will be happy to take her on but that she will be second priority because she already has a booking! Yay, that's ME!!!! :D I was second priority last time, and it unnerved me a lot when July rolled around, so I'm reeeally pleased to be first priority this time! :) Anyway, I am (fanfare!!) in the process of writing Benjamin's birth story (more than halfway there now, yay!) and have lost the notes that Heather wrote. So I emailed her for another copy, and she emailed me back with them this morning! :) I had told her about my grandparents' reaction, and she wrote me SUCH a lovely email today about it. She was so encouraging and told me it's not the world that's normal and I'm insane, it's ME that's normal, and society isn't! ;) She sees babies as blessings from the Lord as well, and she told me to have as much joy as I could muster, reminded me how thrilled and joyful SHE is for me, and said I should keep reading 'Above Rubies' for encouragement :) So that was really uplifting to me after feeling a bit deflated for a week or two now. I AM so happy and cheerful about my pregnancy but I feel like I am sort of trying to hold up everyone else's good feelings about it with my own cheerfulness. And on a tired and nauseous day (after many in a row), it sometimes feels a bit much to be dragging everyone along reluctantly, trying to keep them in a celebratory vibe over this sweet new baby when it's just not coming naturally to them. That's probably a really skewed perspective but it's just how it feels today.
Agh, I said I would go ages ago because of naaauuusea but I didn't, and now I feel too green to move :( I will have to find something I can bear nibbling, and then I should feel better enough to brush my teeth and go to bed.
Sorry if this has been a bit pfthth, and PLEASE don't get defensive about the whole comments thing. I'm too tired right now to attempt to explain my innocence (really!) on that but please just don't take it the wrong way and think I'm whining about not getting comments from people any more, or angling for more of them. I DO want more comments please! ;) See, I'm not angling at all - I will be quite up-front if I need to, hehe! Comments = love, and I could do with some more right now, so even when I'm boring I would so appreciate more comments on this equally precious journey to the last four. I was just making an observation and feeling in a depressed mood about it, earlier, that's all.
Okay I am going to try to eat something and go to bed. I'll update again soon, hopefully. Oh! I meant to see what the baby's development is like now, but I haven't, and it will have to wait now. I'm sure it's amazing! :) My sweet little pip! I love that tiny poppet!
I am so looking forward to reaching the end of 7 weeks (I will reach my half-week point at the end of the day tomorrow, yay!) and heading into 8 weeks! Six and seven weeks are grim really, and very early on too. Eight weeks is still so nauseating and yucky, BUT it's exciting because before the week is over I start listening for the baby's heartbeat with my doppler!! :) I can't WAIT to hear that sweet sound! I didn't search earlier than 9 weeks exactly with my older three, but I searched at 8 weeks and 5 days with Benjamin, and there it was! I'll probably start around the same time this time. Only just over a week to goooo! :D
A couple of days ago I got my package from the hospital with all the usual information and also the date for my booking appointment with the midwife, and my 12 week scan! I love getting this particular package in the post each time! :) They send quite a thick booklet with alllll the information about the various tests and so on, and the hospital, what to expect, etc - all related to my local hospital. I have noticed over the years/babies (!) that they change the design on the front cover pretty much annually. The first one I had was 2004/2005 (Arthur), then they had a new design for 2005/2006 (Matthew), then I guess I must have missed one before the 2007/2008 one for Nathan. Benjamin's was a new design again for 2008/2009. It's always a really gorgeous photo of a newborn baby, taken at the hospital. I have kept all the booklets from my previous pregnancies, so I remember the photos on the front from my other pregnancies. Guess what the photo on the front is for 2010/2011? Yes, that's right! Newborn identical twin girls. I am not kidding! Every year it's a single newborn baby on the front, except THIS year! Uncanny.... I showed it to Neil with a chuckle, and he smiled, unsurprised, and said, "Hmmm!" Now, I really do LIKELY have one boy in there this time, but both Neil and I have seen and heard of craaaazy numbers of girl twins just since finding out I am pregnant. Before that even, but since conception. Anyway, it's a funny coincidence if nothing else!
So my booking appointment with the midwife is May 21st at 10.10am. That one should last a good while (but be fun!) because I have to go through a detailed history of my previous pregnancies and births! I love that part! :) I also have to have blood taken. Fun.
My scan will be June 3rd at 1.50pm! Yay! I will be 12 weeks and 3 days pregnant. They offer this scan specifically between 11 weeks and 5 days, and 13 weeks and 6 days. This is the "dating" scan, and also the nuchal test scan if we want to have that done. But we won't. They have changed it from just measuring the baby's nuchal fold to doing that AND me having a blood test. Benjamin's pregnancy was the first one I'd had since this change, and I said no to the test because it matters not a jot whether our baby has Down Syndrome or not. I do not want an extra blood test for something that isn't relevant to us! So we'll refuse that this time too, and as I recall, that makes for a very quick scan. I think it was only about 5 minutes long last time, which was a tad disappointing! We did see VERY clearly that Benjamin was a boy at the 12 week scan. It was the first time I had heard of the "angle of the dangle" theory (!!) with the genital tubercle (only accurate after 12 weeks and before 14 or 15 weeks apparently), and we happened to get a very good "nub shot" in the picture we were given, and he was a very obvious boy by the angle! ;) So I think I may have a good chance of seeing what this baby is in just 5 weeks, with that theory, if we get a good view like last time! 12 weeks and 3 days is just in the right window too! :) After all the scrutinizing I did last time and all the gallery images I browsed through, I pretty much know exactly what I'm looking for with either gender, and should hopefully be able to spot it at a glance if there is a good profile of the baby.
Well I am feeling sick enough to need to draw this to a close now, so I will quickly try to remember anything else I wanted to say.... Still no bleeding of any sort! :) I'm dizzy a lot at the moment, and INSANELY exhausted, seriously. I slept half the morning today, did nothing strenous whatsoever after I got up, and then took Benjamin for his second round of immunisations this afternoon, and was shaky and grey with exhaustion for the rest of the afternoon. The slightest thing just exhausts me! I wonder how much of that is normal? I know from experience that the first trimester is exhausting, but I feel pretty sure that this is NOT my norm. I wondered if maybe it is my diet - in that I'm not eating as much or as well as I normally do due to the constant nausea, but even so, that has been the case every pregnancy so it can't be that. Or maybe that I'm still breastfeeding on demand day and night? But this is my fourth (!!) pregnancy breastfeeding, and my 3rd tandem nursing - wow! :) When I was pregnant with Benjamin I was TRIandum nursing for the first trimester, and I still don't remember feeling as exhausted as I do now. So it can't be that. My mum wonders if it's my blood pressure being low or something? It could easily be - my blood pressure is nice and low in general, and in the first half of my pregnancies (or most of them, sometimes) it goes even lower. So it could be that. I should get my sphyg out and check, but I keep not getting round to it. Of course I have googled and discovered that the main early symptom that twin mothers have which is different from a singleton pregnancy is the extreme level of exhaustion. Hmmm. But I am (honestly!) trying not to think about that, because it's more realistic to think of another boy on the way! ;)
Oh, I caved and told my grandparents last week. So now everyone knows. I wanted to leave it a LONG time before telling them, because I knew they were not going to be happy and would worry for us. But it became something that hung over me, and eventually I figured it would be best to just get it out of the way, so I did. I phoned Granny on a day when I knew they had had GOOD news (they often have little things to complain about, and it's never a good idea to say, "We're having a baby!" when something has gone wrong for them in the last 48 hours or so!), and when she asked how I was, I told her that I wasn't feeling very well. She sounded concerned and asked what was wrong. I told her nothing was wrong, but I wasn't feeling well because I was expecting a baby. There was a VERY cold silence, and then she said in a rather cross tone, "Where are you going to put it?" I said (cheerfully!) that we needed to move, and she said crossly, "You said that last time!" I just tried to say everything as cheerfully and calmly as possible, so that she might be reassured?! But anyway. It was no fun. She did not say the word "congratulations" once, or anything close to it. It was way worse than last time I announced a pregnancy, but even so, I had wanted to tell Granny and not Grandoug first, because he would just have been more negative, and said, "Oh Alice, you're not, are you?!" and generally huffed about negatively while I tried to tell him due dates and stuff. I knew Granny wouldn't be pleased as such, but at least she would probably conceal actual "what a stupid thing to go and do!" type phrases while I talked to her about it!
Ugh. I love my grandparents though. They love me and worry for me. They are very anti-Christian and Jesus angers them. They mock Christianity. So they don't understand trusting God at all, or anything related to it. They have no idea how we'll cope. I have no idea either, but I know we WILL because these children are given to us by God, along with everything we need to raise them and provide for them according to His will! That is His promise to us, and I trust Him completely to provide for our needs, and equip us for the task. So, my grandparents can't even understand the language I'm talking in if I start saying things like that, let alone the concept.
I told Granny that we couldn't go and buy a new home right now because of Neil's situation, but he was hoping to have something soon that he could show the bank to enable us to get a mortgage. She snapped, "It's called an INCOME." :S She is never like that. I think she was just cross that we'd gone and done something that irresponsible or daft. Or something like that. I talked cheerfully for a while longer and after a while she sighed and said, "So, when is IT going to happen then?" ??!?!?! What kind of question is that?! I was hurt by that one. I told her December 13th, and she commented on a cold weather baby. *sigh* She just was NOT in the mood to be happy about any part of it. She said after that how she was glad to "hear my news" but that she had to go now because she had lots to do. I'm sure she then told Grandoug the second she was off the phone, but he hasn't been in touch with me since. I phoned my mum right after that, and she was surprisingly supportive of me, even though she hadn't responded brilliantly only a couple of weeks before when we told her the news. She asked if I was okay, and I was. I sort of laughed it off really because... I don't know actually. But it seemed lighthearted at the time, and not a big deal. Since then it has started to bother me a little more, especially the fact that they have not been in touch after it has sunk in a bit, to actually congratulate us. But they have visitors over from the States right now, and are actually staying with my parents for a week or so at the moment, so I guess they have been busy and preoccupied with their visitors and travelling to my parents'. Maybe I will speak to them while they are there, and they'll be more positive?
I have just felt a bit deflated recently about what I was warned about coming true - where people stop celebrating with you after the fourth baby, or even earlier in some cases. We got a plethora of new baby cards after we had Arthur, dozens and dozens and dozens. We ran out of places to display them! And the same again after we had Matthew. Considerably fewer after Nathan. And five. FIVE - count 'em on one hand - after Benjamin. He's still a miraculous and wonderful new little person!!! Why won't people see that and be happy and celebrate?!?! It really hurt my feelings! I know I need thicker skin, especially with the direction we're heading in (5+ children territory, lol!), but it really did hurt. Benjamin had no concept and didn't care a jot, but I felt hurt on his behalf all the same. It's not so much the number of cards as the incredible contrast between the first couple of new babies and the latest one. I notice (no digs, just a rather depressing observation) that for my first 3 pregnancies I had a LOT of comments and feedback from most of my diary entries, no matter how waffly and boring they were (hehe!), at my pregnancy diary. During Benjamin's pregnancy, a LOT less. Plenty of friendly and happy comments, but really noticably less than the other times. People mostly popped along in greater numbers like the old days to say something when there was significant news to warrant a comment, like a scan or a heartbeat, or a major issue or something. This time I have basically 2 cheerleaders here (love you girls!) and a handful of busy-but-excited-and-supportive mamas, and an Annie (xxx), occasionally commenting. Lots of entries have no comments, and sometimes I only find spam in the comment box! That is really uplifting, I can tell you! ;) I know I'm very boring in the first trimester, but I was the first few times too... It's just the stark contrast again. I also think that many of the commenters from my first few pregnancies were other mothers who were going through pregnancies/new motherhood at the same time as me, so maybe it was more relevant and interesting to visit my diary and comment back then. Obviously I am continuing to have babies now, and they aren't, and pregnancy is probably seeming quite a long way in the past now to some, so I wondered if the lack of "relevance" is a reason why they are no longer visiting or commenting.
Now, reading that back, it seems like I am stirring up complaints, but I had no intention of doing so. I just see it as an across-the-board thing where a 5th pregnancy is no longer a cause for excitement or joy or celebration, or even INTEREST, like the first two or three were. It's something that other mothers-of-many told me to expect, as far back as a few pregnancies ago. So I was not caught by surprise, but I AM disappointed and sad about the reality of it being played out. Also, where is this spam-in-language-I-can't-even-read coming from?! I'm deleting it as I find it, but still, it's annoying me! :S
I emailed my sweet and lovely doula, Heather, last night. She has booked me in, and told me that another lady has enquired for December - due on the 3rd. She has told the lady that she will be happy to take her on but that she will be second priority because she already has a booking! Yay, that's ME!!!! :D I was second priority last time, and it unnerved me a lot when July rolled around, so I'm reeeally pleased to be first priority this time! :) Anyway, I am (fanfare!!) in the process of writing Benjamin's birth story (more than halfway there now, yay!) and have lost the notes that Heather wrote. So I emailed her for another copy, and she emailed me back with them this morning! :) I had told her about my grandparents' reaction, and she wrote me SUCH a lovely email today about it. She was so encouraging and told me it's not the world that's normal and I'm insane, it's ME that's normal, and society isn't! ;) She sees babies as blessings from the Lord as well, and she told me to have as much joy as I could muster, reminded me how thrilled and joyful SHE is for me, and said I should keep reading 'Above Rubies' for encouragement :) So that was really uplifting to me after feeling a bit deflated for a week or two now. I AM so happy and cheerful about my pregnancy but I feel like I am sort of trying to hold up everyone else's good feelings about it with my own cheerfulness. And on a tired and nauseous day (after many in a row), it sometimes feels a bit much to be dragging everyone along reluctantly, trying to keep them in a celebratory vibe over this sweet new baby when it's just not coming naturally to them. That's probably a really skewed perspective but it's just how it feels today.
Agh, I said I would go ages ago because of naaauuusea but I didn't, and now I feel too green to move :( I will have to find something I can bear nibbling, and then I should feel better enough to brush my teeth and go to bed.
Sorry if this has been a bit pfthth, and PLEASE don't get defensive about the whole comments thing. I'm too tired right now to attempt to explain my innocence (really!) on that but please just don't take it the wrong way and think I'm whining about not getting comments from people any more, or angling for more of them. I DO want more comments please! ;) See, I'm not angling at all - I will be quite up-front if I need to, hehe! Comments = love, and I could do with some more right now, so even when I'm boring I would so appreciate more comments on this equally precious journey to the last four. I was just making an observation and feeling in a depressed mood about it, earlier, that's all.
Okay I am going to try to eat something and go to bed. I'll update again soon, hopefully. Oh! I meant to see what the baby's development is like now, but I haven't, and it will have to wait now. I'm sure it's amazing! :) My sweet little pip! I love that tiny poppet!
Saturday, 24 April 2010
6 weeks, 5 days
Oh dear, I didn't realise it had almost been a week since my last post! I have wanted to update much of this week, but it would get too late or I would feel too nauseous or whatever. I could have just done a short post - that's what I should have done! But oh well!
So I have been counting the days off this week. Ohhh to be out of "6 weeks" and into "7 weeks" (which I will also count off with urgency!)! ;) I'm. SO. Nauseous. Allllllll the time. It starts when I wake - well, when I first MOVE in bed, although if I try to cheat it by lying very still for ages, it still creeps in anyway. It's basically here from the start of the day, but gets worse as the day goes on. The afternoons are horrible right now, and the evenings - traditionally my worst time - are about the same as the afternoons. Not necessarily worse. NO food or drink is making any difference to the nausea really. If I don't eat it gets worse quite fast once my tummy is empty, and I know I just have to eat to ride it out, so I do. But I feel sick whilst posting food in my mouth, and whilst chewing it, and whilst swallowing it, and that's just SO UNNATURAL! Seriously! It just isn't right to eat whilst incredibly nauseated!
I am once again eternally thankful that I am not actually vomiting - ugghhh how awful that must be! - but all the same I feel pretty fed up of feeling sick and the way it affects EVERYTHING I do all the time. I can't wait to fast forward to the end of the first trimester when hopefully I'll be feeling a little better, and the days left of morning sickness will be numbered! It seems like forever away right now, but I know it'll pass. Six weeks is pretty much my least favourite week because it feels like I've felt sick forever, and yet I'm still RIIIIGHT at the very beginning of morning sickness. Yeurgh.
So tomorrow is my LAST DAY before I reach 7 weeks pregnant! Yippeeeee!!! :D Another thing that is actually pretty weird for me - no bleeding or spotting! At all! It still could happen, yes, but I think I have always had spotting or bleeding of some sort by now, in all my other pregnancies. I was saying to Meg the other day how it's ironic that it would be the case THIS time, because it means for the first time I don't get an early scan! THIS time the question still hangs over me as to how many babies are in there, so it would have been lovely to get an early peek to find out! ;) If I don't have a reason for an early scan, I will be absolutely 100% sure of whether or not I am carrying twins BEFORE my first scan. I know what I look like and what my womb feels like by 12 weeks with a singleton pregnancy, and if this is a twin pregnancy I will look and feel MIGHTY different, haha! ;) I always feel the top of my uterus at the level of my pubic bone as I turn 8 weeks pregnant, and so far there is nothing to feel. So that would be a good early sign - if it's the same as the other times I will feel pretty confident that there is only one baby in there. I can't imagine I'll be in any doubt by the scan.
The other question remains, as always - girl or boy?! ;) I almost chuckle out loud as I ask that kind of question in relation to one of MY pregnancies, ha! ;) My assumption (sort of 95% ish) is boy, because that's what I do. I know it doesn't mean that I'll always bear boys, but 4 in a row is surely fairly good evidence of, well, 5 in a row! I do see other families (granted ALL online, and NONE in real life, since nobody has 5 children at all, let alone 4 boys in a row and then a girl, haha!) with 4 boys and then a girl, or 5 boys and then a girl, but I also see plenty of them with 5, 6, 7 or 8 boys in a row and zero girls. Okay, so I pretty much only find these families at MOMYS (Mothers Of Many Young Siblings) and not anywhere else, but there are LOTS of families there to see! ;)
Yes, I do have names picked for girlie twins (first and middle names) - I am sure about the first one and not quite so sure about the second, even though I love it, because I also love a THIRD girl's name, so I change those back and forth a bit, but yes, I have names! Now, Neil does NOT have girlie twin names. He also slightly curls his lip at my choices! So while I say I *HAVE* the girls' names picked, that all might change if we end up actually HAVING twin girls! ;)
We do have a full boy's name picked, 100% for sure, first and middle names. I am not planning to share those names until the big scan, when I like to reveal both the gender and the baby's name here at the same time. Some pregnancies I think I have shared names that we're considering, or maybe a shortlist we're choosing from, and I DO like to share early! But I like the announcement, and being excited about it, so I will keep you in suspense until then I'm afraid! :) We tell family the name when we tell them the gender (after the big scan), but nobody else at ALL finds out the name until the birth. We do tell the whole world that we're having a boy, so we like to keep something unknown for the announcement that he's here. One of my pregnancies, I did say I wouldn't share the name here until the scan, and then before the scan I changed my mind and shared! ;) So you never know! But the plan is not to share here till the scan. I guess that would take place roughly the last week in July or the first week in August. I can't wait! :) It's always so fun, and the fun isn't dulled at ALL by finding out it's another boy, even if we've already caught a glimpse of "something" at the 12-week scan! ;) I do think that this time, when we see those familiar boy bits in grainy grey and white on the screen, we will probably just start to laugh and laugh! ;) Neil did that last time, and I feel like I will join him this time, hehe! It's kind of funny when it happens. The sonographer is curious about the laughter and we feel like we're telling a joke or something as we say, "We've got X boys already!" ;) It's fun to see their reactions, and they say, "No girls?!" in a shocked tone!
Now, if we turn up at that scan and I glance at the boy bits and see that they are missing, I am pretty sure that if I can speak I will probably stutter out, "Is that a...a... GIRL?!?!" Either that or I will fall off the bed in shock. Seriously. I am sooooo not expecting to ever see a baby with girly bits in my tummy! ;)
Well I just took a break to nurse my sweet Benjaminny who woke up while I was typing the above. Ahhh how I love it! How grateful I am to be allowed to go through it all again! :) So wonderful!
I have no soreness whilst breastfeeding still, but I know that can change at any time. Very glad that there hasn't been any yet, so far! I am having occasional little ligament pains and pulls, and have continued to have a lot of discomfort and pain around my pubic bone (above/behind/to the sides/under it). It's not the pubic bone itself at all, but what is going on underneath, deeper inside. It HURTS! I don't *think* this is usual for me, but I honestly can't remember for sure, and I haven't had chance to check my diary. But anyway. Right now I haven't got any discomfort, and in fact today has been quite comfy in that department as far as it goes, but most of the week it has been distractingly sore or uncomfy. I wondered about a bladder infection at one point as it felt sore to wee a couple of times on a particular day mid-week, but other than that I have had no other symptoms of one at all.
Yesterday I started to get a big increase in CM. I think that IS normal for me somewhere around now. I was sure it was bleeding, but no! :) I do have to wear panty liners now though. Makes it easier to check for bleeding, which I am still doing when I go to the toilet.
I am ridiculously tired all the time. My husband is truly a star! He is out of work at the moment. He does have things he needs to work on every day at the computer, but since I started feeling hideous, he lets me have humongous lie-ins every day!!! What a man! :) He gets up with the boys at 6am or so, and I stay in bed. A couple of hours later, he brings me Benjamin to breastfeed, and after I do that I put him down for his nap next to me. Then I go back to sleep with him! I sleep as long as he does (variable, but today it was an incredible 3 hours - all morning!!!) and then get up with him and try to eat something. Neil does all (ALL!) the pooey nappies in this house at the moment, because I find them so impossible with how sick I feel. And only one of our four children is potty trained! He also wipes the bum of the potty trained one, when he needs help! He is WONDERFUL. I have never had a pregnancy where I have been blessed to be able to nap, after the first one. Once you have children, that's the end of that! ;) Unless you still have a napper, but even though Arthur wasn't even a year old when I got pregnant with Matthew, he was such an appauling napper that I didn't get to nap that time either! This is so wonderful. I have never had a pregnancy like it, and I feel so incredibly blessed.
That said, with allll that extra sleep, even today waking up at 11am (!!!), I was tired enough by only 1pm (yes, 2 hours later) to feel shaky with exhaustion. Crazy! Even when I am just sitting around reading to my little ones, my body is doing enough busy stuff inside to make me feel like I just trained for a marathon or something! I still yawn and yawn and yawn my way through the afternoons after my morning lie-ins, and occasionally doze off by accident breastfeeding Benjamin before his afternoon nap. I struggle to stay awake at bedtime when I put the boys to bed. And yet I am often up late (till midnight usually) just relaxing on the sofa and catching up with blogs and Facebook. I try to graze on food all evening, and try to get some fluids in as well, especially if I haven't done too well at that during the day. It's a good time to catch up a bit in a relaxed manner! The place doesn't feel very relaxed with all these noisy little boysies running about all day long! ;) I am not sure that I remember feeling this tired the other times, but I probably did. I just think that I feel JUST as tired, even with the masses of extra sleep, so wouldn't that equate to being MORE tired this time? Hmmm.
So I am one blessed girlie to have such a fantabulous unemployed husband! :) I have no idea how I'd manage without him right now, but looking back at the other pregnancies, I know I just would get on with it and somehow "manage" all the same. The house is in a horrible state though. Neil is running the laundry through (our machine broke! And is now fixed, yay! And our lovely church family did some washing for us while it was broken!) and some dishwasher loads, but otherwise it's a real state. I can't bear to be in the kitchen at all, it just makes me feel so sick! I do pick up the living room and fold laundry, but I get dizzy doing that for too long. I have had quite a lot of lightheadedness and dizziness. And yesterday I had my first pregnancy-induced blood sugar crash thingy, where I went from queasy and not hungry to incredibly ravenous in about 60 seconds, and then when I couldn't get food RIGHT THEN I went straight to visibly shaky and wobbly, and faint. I get that a lot with my pregnancies, but I don't think this early. I'm too busy feeling sick to have that kind of thing going on, probably! And it's difficult because I DO feel too sick to eat like I'm ravenous, but still need to. Yeurgh.
I can't think what else? Oh I had a dream the other night! I am having crazy vivid dreams every night, but the other morning I woke up from a really simple matter-of-fact dream about having had the baby. It was like a couple of lines from a birth announcement, short and to-the-point. It just said, "Boy. 8lbs 8oz." and that's it! And I woke up at that exact moment and lay there thinking, "Well, that's it then!" because it seemed soooo likely, weight and all! I have had boy dreams and girl dreams in my other pregnancies though, so I don't put much on gender dreams. I did have one right before Matthew's scan that had a sense of reality to it - in that he was a boy, and I just KNEW it was an accurate dream. But I also have loads of gender dreams that are just "for fun", you know? I rarely think they have any bearing, because I have girl ones too. I haven't had any girl ones yet this pregnancy, but that's probably because that would just be a WEIRD thing to dream about for me, ha! ;)
My Tiny Pip is getting ever so much more developed all the time - with eyes and heart valves and kidney buds and lung sacs and limbs and so on developing! Soooo much going on in there right now, it's amazing. It seems to me when I read the information that the pace of development is at a peak at the moment. The baby is curled over with a HUGE head so that it looks sort of square shaped, and is about 5 or 6mm square! Very visible now! :) This is the stage that I have had a lot of the early scans, so I know what that little pickle looks like in there already! :) I can't wait to meet him!
Feeling sick and it's getting late, so I will try to nibble something else and then go to bed. Yay for 7 weeks approaching! :) I remember 7 weeks is also pretty hideous, as is 8 weeks, but it gets more exciting with each week passing, and it's also another week towards the finish line as far as morning sickness goes, so that's helpful! I'm glad to feel reassured that Tiny Pip is okay in there, with allll this quease. I'm still praying to NOT have any more of it, and for Tiny Pip to do fine all the same! :)
So I have been counting the days off this week. Ohhh to be out of "6 weeks" and into "7 weeks" (which I will also count off with urgency!)! ;) I'm. SO. Nauseous. Allllllll the time. It starts when I wake - well, when I first MOVE in bed, although if I try to cheat it by lying very still for ages, it still creeps in anyway. It's basically here from the start of the day, but gets worse as the day goes on. The afternoons are horrible right now, and the evenings - traditionally my worst time - are about the same as the afternoons. Not necessarily worse. NO food or drink is making any difference to the nausea really. If I don't eat it gets worse quite fast once my tummy is empty, and I know I just have to eat to ride it out, so I do. But I feel sick whilst posting food in my mouth, and whilst chewing it, and whilst swallowing it, and that's just SO UNNATURAL! Seriously! It just isn't right to eat whilst incredibly nauseated!
I am once again eternally thankful that I am not actually vomiting - ugghhh how awful that must be! - but all the same I feel pretty fed up of feeling sick and the way it affects EVERYTHING I do all the time. I can't wait to fast forward to the end of the first trimester when hopefully I'll be feeling a little better, and the days left of morning sickness will be numbered! It seems like forever away right now, but I know it'll pass. Six weeks is pretty much my least favourite week because it feels like I've felt sick forever, and yet I'm still RIIIIGHT at the very beginning of morning sickness. Yeurgh.
So tomorrow is my LAST DAY before I reach 7 weeks pregnant! Yippeeeee!!! :D Another thing that is actually pretty weird for me - no bleeding or spotting! At all! It still could happen, yes, but I think I have always had spotting or bleeding of some sort by now, in all my other pregnancies. I was saying to Meg the other day how it's ironic that it would be the case THIS time, because it means for the first time I don't get an early scan! THIS time the question still hangs over me as to how many babies are in there, so it would have been lovely to get an early peek to find out! ;) If I don't have a reason for an early scan, I will be absolutely 100% sure of whether or not I am carrying twins BEFORE my first scan. I know what I look like and what my womb feels like by 12 weeks with a singleton pregnancy, and if this is a twin pregnancy I will look and feel MIGHTY different, haha! ;) I always feel the top of my uterus at the level of my pubic bone as I turn 8 weeks pregnant, and so far there is nothing to feel. So that would be a good early sign - if it's the same as the other times I will feel pretty confident that there is only one baby in there. I can't imagine I'll be in any doubt by the scan.
The other question remains, as always - girl or boy?! ;) I almost chuckle out loud as I ask that kind of question in relation to one of MY pregnancies, ha! ;) My assumption (sort of 95% ish) is boy, because that's what I do. I know it doesn't mean that I'll always bear boys, but 4 in a row is surely fairly good evidence of, well, 5 in a row! I do see other families (granted ALL online, and NONE in real life, since nobody has 5 children at all, let alone 4 boys in a row and then a girl, haha!) with 4 boys and then a girl, or 5 boys and then a girl, but I also see plenty of them with 5, 6, 7 or 8 boys in a row and zero girls. Okay, so I pretty much only find these families at MOMYS (Mothers Of Many Young Siblings) and not anywhere else, but there are LOTS of families there to see! ;)
Yes, I do have names picked for girlie twins (first and middle names) - I am sure about the first one and not quite so sure about the second, even though I love it, because I also love a THIRD girl's name, so I change those back and forth a bit, but yes, I have names! Now, Neil does NOT have girlie twin names. He also slightly curls his lip at my choices! So while I say I *HAVE* the girls' names picked, that all might change if we end up actually HAVING twin girls! ;)
We do have a full boy's name picked, 100% for sure, first and middle names. I am not planning to share those names until the big scan, when I like to reveal both the gender and the baby's name here at the same time. Some pregnancies I think I have shared names that we're considering, or maybe a shortlist we're choosing from, and I DO like to share early! But I like the announcement, and being excited about it, so I will keep you in suspense until then I'm afraid! :) We tell family the name when we tell them the gender (after the big scan), but nobody else at ALL finds out the name until the birth. We do tell the whole world that we're having a boy, so we like to keep something unknown for the announcement that he's here. One of my pregnancies, I did say I wouldn't share the name here until the scan, and then before the scan I changed my mind and shared! ;) So you never know! But the plan is not to share here till the scan. I guess that would take place roughly the last week in July or the first week in August. I can't wait! :) It's always so fun, and the fun isn't dulled at ALL by finding out it's another boy, even if we've already caught a glimpse of "something" at the 12-week scan! ;) I do think that this time, when we see those familiar boy bits in grainy grey and white on the screen, we will probably just start to laugh and laugh! ;) Neil did that last time, and I feel like I will join him this time, hehe! It's kind of funny when it happens. The sonographer is curious about the laughter and we feel like we're telling a joke or something as we say, "We've got X boys already!" ;) It's fun to see their reactions, and they say, "No girls?!" in a shocked tone!
Now, if we turn up at that scan and I glance at the boy bits and see that they are missing, I am pretty sure that if I can speak I will probably stutter out, "Is that a...a... GIRL?!?!" Either that or I will fall off the bed in shock. Seriously. I am sooooo not expecting to ever see a baby with girly bits in my tummy! ;)
Well I just took a break to nurse my sweet Benjaminny who woke up while I was typing the above. Ahhh how I love it! How grateful I am to be allowed to go through it all again! :) So wonderful!
I have no soreness whilst breastfeeding still, but I know that can change at any time. Very glad that there hasn't been any yet, so far! I am having occasional little ligament pains and pulls, and have continued to have a lot of discomfort and pain around my pubic bone (above/behind/to the sides/under it). It's not the pubic bone itself at all, but what is going on underneath, deeper inside. It HURTS! I don't *think* this is usual for me, but I honestly can't remember for sure, and I haven't had chance to check my diary. But anyway. Right now I haven't got any discomfort, and in fact today has been quite comfy in that department as far as it goes, but most of the week it has been distractingly sore or uncomfy. I wondered about a bladder infection at one point as it felt sore to wee a couple of times on a particular day mid-week, but other than that I have had no other symptoms of one at all.
Yesterday I started to get a big increase in CM. I think that IS normal for me somewhere around now. I was sure it was bleeding, but no! :) I do have to wear panty liners now though. Makes it easier to check for bleeding, which I am still doing when I go to the toilet.
I am ridiculously tired all the time. My husband is truly a star! He is out of work at the moment. He does have things he needs to work on every day at the computer, but since I started feeling hideous, he lets me have humongous lie-ins every day!!! What a man! :) He gets up with the boys at 6am or so, and I stay in bed. A couple of hours later, he brings me Benjamin to breastfeed, and after I do that I put him down for his nap next to me. Then I go back to sleep with him! I sleep as long as he does (variable, but today it was an incredible 3 hours - all morning!!!) and then get up with him and try to eat something. Neil does all (ALL!) the pooey nappies in this house at the moment, because I find them so impossible with how sick I feel. And only one of our four children is potty trained! He also wipes the bum of the potty trained one, when he needs help! He is WONDERFUL. I have never had a pregnancy where I have been blessed to be able to nap, after the first one. Once you have children, that's the end of that! ;) Unless you still have a napper, but even though Arthur wasn't even a year old when I got pregnant with Matthew, he was such an appauling napper that I didn't get to nap that time either! This is so wonderful. I have never had a pregnancy like it, and I feel so incredibly blessed.
That said, with allll that extra sleep, even today waking up at 11am (!!!), I was tired enough by only 1pm (yes, 2 hours later) to feel shaky with exhaustion. Crazy! Even when I am just sitting around reading to my little ones, my body is doing enough busy stuff inside to make me feel like I just trained for a marathon or something! I still yawn and yawn and yawn my way through the afternoons after my morning lie-ins, and occasionally doze off by accident breastfeeding Benjamin before his afternoon nap. I struggle to stay awake at bedtime when I put the boys to bed. And yet I am often up late (till midnight usually) just relaxing on the sofa and catching up with blogs and Facebook. I try to graze on food all evening, and try to get some fluids in as well, especially if I haven't done too well at that during the day. It's a good time to catch up a bit in a relaxed manner! The place doesn't feel very relaxed with all these noisy little boysies running about all day long! ;) I am not sure that I remember feeling this tired the other times, but I probably did. I just think that I feel JUST as tired, even with the masses of extra sleep, so wouldn't that equate to being MORE tired this time? Hmmm.
So I am one blessed girlie to have such a fantabulous unemployed husband! :) I have no idea how I'd manage without him right now, but looking back at the other pregnancies, I know I just would get on with it and somehow "manage" all the same. The house is in a horrible state though. Neil is running the laundry through (our machine broke! And is now fixed, yay! And our lovely church family did some washing for us while it was broken!) and some dishwasher loads, but otherwise it's a real state. I can't bear to be in the kitchen at all, it just makes me feel so sick! I do pick up the living room and fold laundry, but I get dizzy doing that for too long. I have had quite a lot of lightheadedness and dizziness. And yesterday I had my first pregnancy-induced blood sugar crash thingy, where I went from queasy and not hungry to incredibly ravenous in about 60 seconds, and then when I couldn't get food RIGHT THEN I went straight to visibly shaky and wobbly, and faint. I get that a lot with my pregnancies, but I don't think this early. I'm too busy feeling sick to have that kind of thing going on, probably! And it's difficult because I DO feel too sick to eat like I'm ravenous, but still need to. Yeurgh.
I can't think what else? Oh I had a dream the other night! I am having crazy vivid dreams every night, but the other morning I woke up from a really simple matter-of-fact dream about having had the baby. It was like a couple of lines from a birth announcement, short and to-the-point. It just said, "Boy. 8lbs 8oz." and that's it! And I woke up at that exact moment and lay there thinking, "Well, that's it then!" because it seemed soooo likely, weight and all! I have had boy dreams and girl dreams in my other pregnancies though, so I don't put much on gender dreams. I did have one right before Matthew's scan that had a sense of reality to it - in that he was a boy, and I just KNEW it was an accurate dream. But I also have loads of gender dreams that are just "for fun", you know? I rarely think they have any bearing, because I have girl ones too. I haven't had any girl ones yet this pregnancy, but that's probably because that would just be a WEIRD thing to dream about for me, ha! ;)
My Tiny Pip is getting ever so much more developed all the time - with eyes and heart valves and kidney buds and lung sacs and limbs and so on developing! Soooo much going on in there right now, it's amazing. It seems to me when I read the information that the pace of development is at a peak at the moment. The baby is curled over with a HUGE head so that it looks sort of square shaped, and is about 5 or 6mm square! Very visible now! :) This is the stage that I have had a lot of the early scans, so I know what that little pickle looks like in there already! :) I can't wait to meet him!
Feeling sick and it's getting late, so I will try to nibble something else and then go to bed. Yay for 7 weeks approaching! :) I remember 7 weeks is also pretty hideous, as is 8 weeks, but it gets more exciting with each week passing, and it's also another week towards the finish line as far as morning sickness goes, so that's helpful! I'm glad to feel reassured that Tiny Pip is okay in there, with allll this quease. I'm still praying to NOT have any more of it, and for Tiny Pip to do fine all the same! :)
Sunday, 18 April 2010
5 weeks, 6 days
Okay so I have now arrived at the usual start date for my morning sickness! I feel horribly nauseated tonight. Horrrribly. The morning was not too bad at all, as we were at church and although I felt queasy, it was easier to ignore because of all the distraction of the service and people to talk to, and the little ones rushing about. Late afternoon today I was trying to snack on something I could bear eating, knowing that I would not be able to attempt dinner if I didn't ease the nausea a bit before dinner time. That feels awfully familiar to me now! Dinner was hard to eat, I felt so sick, and had to eat it in three sittings over about an hour. Leaving my tummy half or mostly empty would have been a big mistake, which I would have discovered about an hour later! So I ate almost all of it. Now it's mid-evening and I have had a yoghurt (note to self: do not eat any more yoghurt until the end of the first trimester) and am now nibbling digestive biscuits. I feel so sick! :( I may just have to go to bed to try and shut it off by sleeping, I think.
So morning sickness is DEFINITELY here. But it didn't start today, or yesterday. It has definitely been going since 5 weeks and 1 day, but it has become worse over the course of the week, I think. Verrrry subtly because I can't really pinpoint when it has become worse. I know I felt like this last night, and much of yesterday actually. And I've had moments like this in the couple of days before that. Anyway, the main thing is that it's HERE, and I'm relieved to have reached the 5w6d mark for some reason. The anticipation was getting uncomfortable! Now to just ride it out till it finishes, which I really hope will be by about 14 weeks. If it does carry on longer (which it has done for 50% of my pregnancies before now) then at least I know I will likely feel MUCH better from 14 weeks until it goes away, and it will be much more manageable. 8 weeks to go! :S Glad the time will go fast!
Tomorrow I will be 6 weeks pregnant! :) Yay! No spotting or bleeding of any sort yet. I did go to the toilet twice at church to check, because I felt a bit leaky, but it was nothing. I have more CM than usual today, but that's just a pregnancy thing. Doesn't help a slightly nervous pregnant woman though!
Not much else really. Things taste quite bitter today - carbs and such, which I don't think they have done for the earlier part of the week. In fact that might be new today? It's only when I feel really sick, and it's only really bread and biscuits and things like that. Carbs. Bitter = mouth watering all the time = worsening nausea. Yucko. I think I am going to try sucking mints like Valerie suggested! I'll give anything a try really. If it doesn't work for me then oh well.
I have been feeling quite crampy and achy lately. Definitely today and yesterday. I have continued to have some low pain that I can't really decide about - whether it's bowel or womb related. It's just sore and in a location for both, and could be either. I have been thinking bowel, and have definitely had crazy wind (!) recently and some other somewhat TMI issues (!!), but that seems a lot better today and I'm still feeling crampy. Without the bowel-ish issues in the way, it does feel a lot more clearly like womb crampiness. It's not exactly crampiness though either. Sometimes it's just like a dragging achiness. It also hurts through to the small of my back a lot of the time, and it's just distractingly uncomfortable most of the time I'm up and about through the day. The boys climb on my tummy - well, the two littlest do - and it's unbearable to have them press down on my lower tummy any more. I can't even let Nathey sit down on my tummy like he sometimes does for me to read a story to him when I'm reclining. I can't let the pressure be placed on my abdomen - it's too uncomfy. I normally notice the top of my uterus juuuust at the top of my pubic bone at around 8 weeks. So I'm thinking if I DO have two in there, I would be able to feel my uterus there even earlier? I don't know about this early, but there's nothing yet. I wondered if the achiness was just that "growing" type of discomfort to do with the womb stretching and growing in early pregnancy, but I am not sure really. No spotting anyway, and that's a big relief! :)
I announced my pregnancy on Facebook the other day, which was lots of fun! :) So now everybody knows really. Lots of people at church are on Facebook and so when I went today pretty much everybody knew, and I got lots of congratulations, and "You're brave!" type of comments, and so on! It turns out that there's some sort of baby boom going on at church, because EVERYBODY is pregnant, and I only knew about a couple of them! That's so nice! :) One of my friends at church, who I just discovered is pregnant, was saying to another pregnant friend (see!!) who was congratulating me, "I KNEW Alice was pregnant!" We asked her how she knew, and she said, "Well, everybody else is pregnant, so I thought Alice must be too!" hahaha! ;) Babies come in "batches" at our fairly small church. We have about a year of no births, and then a handful over a few months, and then another quiet patch, and so on. So far, over the last 5-6 years, I have been part of every single "batch" of babies at church, so maybe that's where this friend was coming from?! ;) Anyway it is fun to have the news "out there"! Nobody at our church has ever had more than 4 children in the whole time we've been there. And actually there's only one couple who had 4 children! Everyone else has had the standard 2, with the exception of a couple of families having 3. So we're REALLY WEIRD at church! But everyone seems happy and excited for us, so that's nice.
Today I am 27 days past ovulation, and my Tiny Pip has just finished Carnegie Stage 12 of embryonic development, and has already begun Carnegie Stage 13. Soooo much is going on inside my body right now, it's just amazing! The eyes and the ears have just begun to form. The neural tube is now closed, and upper limb buds have just appeared! Valves and septa are forming in that teeny tiny precious little heart that is beating away already. Amaaaazing! So wonderful to imagine! :) Tiny Pip is about 4 or 5mm long, easily visible to the naked eye, and curved into a 'C' shape. I love that tiny bean!!!!
Oh and we have a boy's name! Seriously, already! :) Two nights ago I was just busying myself on the laptop, and a name popped into my head - one we've considered in the past, even from the first pregnancy, but which had never seemed all that special to me before. Well, a lovely name, but not special enough to me the other times. Neil liked it before though. Anyway, it popped into my head and I loved it enough to call out the name to Neil in the kitchen. He called back, "Yeah! Great one!" and I settled back to my laptop stuff happily. And literally within about 30 seconds, I KNEW that was the name. Almost to the point where I started to think that surely this baby MUST be a boy, since I have had this familiar "know it in my knower" feeling before and it always has turned out to be a boy those times too, hehe! Anyway, oh how I love this name suddenly! I love it when I say all FIVE boys' names in a row - it sounds nice with the four we already have. It sounds nice with our surname. I adore the meaning. I like it, like it, like it! :) It stayed on my mind till bedtime, by which time I could totally picture this little one with this name as I laid my hand low on my abdomen and talked fondly to him (I guess I should say him/her!). By yesterday I was almost feeling like I would feel sad if the baby DIDN'T turn out to be a boy, because then we wouldn't have our "____", you know? How funny to think that I already have four boys, and zero daughters, and that I might have a sense of disappointment if it's a girl - hahaha! That just strikes me as funny! ;) Last night I prayed that if this baby IS a girl (or a couple of them!) that we would still be blessed with our "____" after the girl(s)! I do so love the little one that I have attached to the boy name. Last night Neil randomly said to me, "You know that name you mentioned the other night? Well, I love it. That's the one!" So we are definitely agreed! I do wonder if that alone points to the baby being a boy?! Who knows how we'll ever agree on a girl's name! ;)
Anyway it is lovely to know that we are TOTALLY ready with a boy's name! We haven't discussed middle names for it, but I already have two that I love that I know Neil would be happy choosing from, so that's good! :)
Well I am feeling so sick. I think I will have to stop using the laptop and maybe go to bed. An early night wouldn't be a bad thing anyway - I have been so tired lately. Maybe it might even ease the nausea a bit to be less exhausted? Here's hoping! I'll update again soon!
So morning sickness is DEFINITELY here. But it didn't start today, or yesterday. It has definitely been going since 5 weeks and 1 day, but it has become worse over the course of the week, I think. Verrrry subtly because I can't really pinpoint when it has become worse. I know I felt like this last night, and much of yesterday actually. And I've had moments like this in the couple of days before that. Anyway, the main thing is that it's HERE, and I'm relieved to have reached the 5w6d mark for some reason. The anticipation was getting uncomfortable! Now to just ride it out till it finishes, which I really hope will be by about 14 weeks. If it does carry on longer (which it has done for 50% of my pregnancies before now) then at least I know I will likely feel MUCH better from 14 weeks until it goes away, and it will be much more manageable. 8 weeks to go! :S Glad the time will go fast!
Tomorrow I will be 6 weeks pregnant! :) Yay! No spotting or bleeding of any sort yet. I did go to the toilet twice at church to check, because I felt a bit leaky, but it was nothing. I have more CM than usual today, but that's just a pregnancy thing. Doesn't help a slightly nervous pregnant woman though!
Not much else really. Things taste quite bitter today - carbs and such, which I don't think they have done for the earlier part of the week. In fact that might be new today? It's only when I feel really sick, and it's only really bread and biscuits and things like that. Carbs. Bitter = mouth watering all the time = worsening nausea. Yucko. I think I am going to try sucking mints like Valerie suggested! I'll give anything a try really. If it doesn't work for me then oh well.
I have been feeling quite crampy and achy lately. Definitely today and yesterday. I have continued to have some low pain that I can't really decide about - whether it's bowel or womb related. It's just sore and in a location for both, and could be either. I have been thinking bowel, and have definitely had crazy wind (!) recently and some other somewhat TMI issues (!!), but that seems a lot better today and I'm still feeling crampy. Without the bowel-ish issues in the way, it does feel a lot more clearly like womb crampiness. It's not exactly crampiness though either. Sometimes it's just like a dragging achiness. It also hurts through to the small of my back a lot of the time, and it's just distractingly uncomfortable most of the time I'm up and about through the day. The boys climb on my tummy - well, the two littlest do - and it's unbearable to have them press down on my lower tummy any more. I can't even let Nathey sit down on my tummy like he sometimes does for me to read a story to him when I'm reclining. I can't let the pressure be placed on my abdomen - it's too uncomfy. I normally notice the top of my uterus juuuust at the top of my pubic bone at around 8 weeks. So I'm thinking if I DO have two in there, I would be able to feel my uterus there even earlier? I don't know about this early, but there's nothing yet. I wondered if the achiness was just that "growing" type of discomfort to do with the womb stretching and growing in early pregnancy, but I am not sure really. No spotting anyway, and that's a big relief! :)
I announced my pregnancy on Facebook the other day, which was lots of fun! :) So now everybody knows really. Lots of people at church are on Facebook and so when I went today pretty much everybody knew, and I got lots of congratulations, and "You're brave!" type of comments, and so on! It turns out that there's some sort of baby boom going on at church, because EVERYBODY is pregnant, and I only knew about a couple of them! That's so nice! :) One of my friends at church, who I just discovered is pregnant, was saying to another pregnant friend (see!!) who was congratulating me, "I KNEW Alice was pregnant!" We asked her how she knew, and she said, "Well, everybody else is pregnant, so I thought Alice must be too!" hahaha! ;) Babies come in "batches" at our fairly small church. We have about a year of no births, and then a handful over a few months, and then another quiet patch, and so on. So far, over the last 5-6 years, I have been part of every single "batch" of babies at church, so maybe that's where this friend was coming from?! ;) Anyway it is fun to have the news "out there"! Nobody at our church has ever had more than 4 children in the whole time we've been there. And actually there's only one couple who had 4 children! Everyone else has had the standard 2, with the exception of a couple of families having 3. So we're REALLY WEIRD at church! But everyone seems happy and excited for us, so that's nice.
Today I am 27 days past ovulation, and my Tiny Pip has just finished Carnegie Stage 12 of embryonic development, and has already begun Carnegie Stage 13. Soooo much is going on inside my body right now, it's just amazing! The eyes and the ears have just begun to form. The neural tube is now closed, and upper limb buds have just appeared! Valves and septa are forming in that teeny tiny precious little heart that is beating away already. Amaaaazing! So wonderful to imagine! :) Tiny Pip is about 4 or 5mm long, easily visible to the naked eye, and curved into a 'C' shape. I love that tiny bean!!!!
Oh and we have a boy's name! Seriously, already! :) Two nights ago I was just busying myself on the laptop, and a name popped into my head - one we've considered in the past, even from the first pregnancy, but which had never seemed all that special to me before. Well, a lovely name, but not special enough to me the other times. Neil liked it before though. Anyway, it popped into my head and I loved it enough to call out the name to Neil in the kitchen. He called back, "Yeah! Great one!" and I settled back to my laptop stuff happily. And literally within about 30 seconds, I KNEW that was the name. Almost to the point where I started to think that surely this baby MUST be a boy, since I have had this familiar "know it in my knower" feeling before and it always has turned out to be a boy those times too, hehe! Anyway, oh how I love this name suddenly! I love it when I say all FIVE boys' names in a row - it sounds nice with the four we already have. It sounds nice with our surname. I adore the meaning. I like it, like it, like it! :) It stayed on my mind till bedtime, by which time I could totally picture this little one with this name as I laid my hand low on my abdomen and talked fondly to him (I guess I should say him/her!). By yesterday I was almost feeling like I would feel sad if the baby DIDN'T turn out to be a boy, because then we wouldn't have our "____", you know? How funny to think that I already have four boys, and zero daughters, and that I might have a sense of disappointment if it's a girl - hahaha! That just strikes me as funny! ;) Last night I prayed that if this baby IS a girl (or a couple of them!) that we would still be blessed with our "____" after the girl(s)! I do so love the little one that I have attached to the boy name. Last night Neil randomly said to me, "You know that name you mentioned the other night? Well, I love it. That's the one!" So we are definitely agreed! I do wonder if that alone points to the baby being a boy?! Who knows how we'll ever agree on a girl's name! ;)
Anyway it is lovely to know that we are TOTALLY ready with a boy's name! We haven't discussed middle names for it, but I already have two that I love that I know Neil would be happy choosing from, so that's good! :)
Well I am feeling so sick. I think I will have to stop using the laptop and maybe go to bed. An early night wouldn't be a bad thing anyway - I have been so tired lately. Maybe it might even ease the nausea a bit to be less exhausted? Here's hoping! I'll update again soon!
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
5 weeks, 2 days
Well I wondered at 5 weeks exactly, and became SURE yesterday, and just for confirmation I'm extra sure today, that morning sickness has definitely started! It's not nice, but in a way I AM finding it nice because it's interesting! Interesting because it's different, and my pregnancies are always so exactly alike (well, to a point! With the morning sickness anyway!) that different is kind of fun! ;) This is definitely early for me to start morning sickness. I know it's only a week early, but for a girl who starts it at the exact same DAY every time, this is quite a change! I don't know that it means anything though. Already people are saying, "GIRL!!!" or "TWINS!!!", but I don't know.... I don't think it necessarily has to mean anything. Time will tell, I guess!
So far I am a little bit apprehensive that this is just Gear One of morning sickness, and that when I reach my usual start time for morning sickness at the weekend, Gear Two will kick in and I'll be sicker than ever before, or something! :S I reeeeeeally hope not, but I'm a bit nervous about it! Right now I am somewhere between very queasy and nauseous all day except for the first part of the morning. It starts between 10 and 11am and is then THERE, pretty much just sitting yuckily, but it does get somewhat worse as the day goes on like it always has before. The actual morning sickness feeling is the same as the other times - it's awfully familiar to me now. SO FAR, it is pretty mild as far as my morning sickness goes, though still horrible. I have only really had it for 2 or so days, and I think it could get worse so I don't want to say much more about it right now!
I am eating and drinking as best I can! Today it's going okay, and I even managed to make a roast chicken dinner and simultaneously make two shepherd's pies for the freezer - determined to fill it up, and I have the ingredients to use which were bought having no idea I would feel sick earlier than expected. Blech. Anyway, I felt grim but it went okay. I am eating okay though I don't want ANYTHING to eat at all, and I had to really force my aforementioned "delicious" tuna/egg/corn/cucumber/mayo sandwich down at lunch time. It made me feel really really gaggy and sick, and it was hard work to eat, so I don't think I will make that combo again until I am past the morning sickness. I feel gaggy easily, and actually do gag if I get a hair in my mouth, ugh. I try not to but it just happens anyway.
My biggest problem at this stage is usually fluids. All fluids are just horrid, and I can't take more than a tiny sip very very occasionally throughout the day or I feel dreadful for it and struggle to do anything with the boys even. I know that when it's at its worst, my best efforts only afford me about 250mls of fluids in a whole day :( Or 500mls on a good day. So I really hope that the pattern of my nausea stays the same - with a window of feeling okay in the morning, because then I can CRAM my fluids into that window, hopefully! :) This morning when I got up feeling fine, I had a drink of water, some cereal with milk on, and a glass of orange juice. After I started feeling sick, I haven't really had much to drink. Some more orange juice and a bit of water. 7UP went down okay, but only in small bits. Oh but I did have a rocket ice-lolly this evening! :) Bought a pack of 10 from Tesco, remembering that they really helped last time, and it really DID help! Until I finished, and then about 10 seconds later I felt just as yucky again. But that's fluids, so that's good!
Anyway. I will be VERY happy if this is the start of how it will be. If it stays this way, I will feel glad, because it's milder than I remember it. For that reason though, I'm suspicious that it will get worse as I get to the 6-week mark, when I normally start morning sickness. Ugh, I hope not! I feel sick enough already!
So what else?! Not much to report symptom-wise. Some soreness here and there in the breast department, but no problems with pain whilst breastfeeding at all yet, which is good! I'm getting an increasing "something's going on" feeling in the pit of my abdomen, which is hard to describe. I notice it especially when I lie on my side. It's like a fullness or pressure, but quite a subtle sensation. I feel like there's something "swollen" in there, which there absolutely IS! My womb! :)
My Tiny Pip's teeny tiny little heart started beating today!!!!! What a precious and wonderful milestone!! I am in awe that already there's a little heart beating away inside me! I can't wait to hear it. Last pregnancy was the earliest I heard any of my babies' heartbeats - Benjamin was just 8 weeks and 5 days when I heard his heartbeat on my doppler. I will probably start listening in around that kind of time this pregnancy. Only 3 and a bit weeks to go!!! :D
No bleeding yet. I know I shouldn't say "yet", but I can't help but wonder about it. It seems almost inevitable, but that is not a good mindset to have. I am praying that it WON'T happen this time, and I should be in faith about that, not thinking the opposite! I do check every time I go to the loo, but so far I haven't even had any spotting except incredibly light implantation spotting for a few days, which is on my chart.
Neil has told one of his sisters (not the one who is pregnant yet), and his brother. He tried to call his mum to tell her but she was on the phone and then our phone was tied up the rest of the evening with his phone calls to his brother and sister, so he hasn't had chance to tell her. I am beginning to be eager to spill the beans at Facebook so that the general world-at-large will know about the baby! I'm so excited and happy, and can't wait for everyone to know that this little tiny is HERE and to be celebrated! :) Neil's sisters are both on my Facebook so I can't say a thing there until all our family know (although it might not have been the wisest move to say I felt queasy yesterday! :S Didn't think first!). I still haven't told my grandparents and at the moment we are not planning on telling them for some time. They will be aghast and all worried for us and the boys. They were each an only child, and only had one child themselves (though they did want more, they just were unable to conceive after my daddy was born), and have just the two grandchildren, so this is just basically officially NUTS to them! ;) They don't think it's right, I think. So it will not be fun to tell them, and I want to put it off for a while.
Well as always I'm sure I've missed a load of stuff but I feel sick and it's getting late, and Benjamin is stirring for a feed so I will have to go. Back soon though! :)
So far I am a little bit apprehensive that this is just Gear One of morning sickness, and that when I reach my usual start time for morning sickness at the weekend, Gear Two will kick in and I'll be sicker than ever before, or something! :S I reeeeeeally hope not, but I'm a bit nervous about it! Right now I am somewhere between very queasy and nauseous all day except for the first part of the morning. It starts between 10 and 11am and is then THERE, pretty much just sitting yuckily, but it does get somewhat worse as the day goes on like it always has before. The actual morning sickness feeling is the same as the other times - it's awfully familiar to me now. SO FAR, it is pretty mild as far as my morning sickness goes, though still horrible. I have only really had it for 2 or so days, and I think it could get worse so I don't want to say much more about it right now!
I am eating and drinking as best I can! Today it's going okay, and I even managed to make a roast chicken dinner and simultaneously make two shepherd's pies for the freezer - determined to fill it up, and I have the ingredients to use which were bought having no idea I would feel sick earlier than expected. Blech. Anyway, I felt grim but it went okay. I am eating okay though I don't want ANYTHING to eat at all, and I had to really force my aforementioned "delicious" tuna/egg/corn/cucumber/mayo sandwich down at lunch time. It made me feel really really gaggy and sick, and it was hard work to eat, so I don't think I will make that combo again until I am past the morning sickness. I feel gaggy easily, and actually do gag if I get a hair in my mouth, ugh. I try not to but it just happens anyway.
My biggest problem at this stage is usually fluids. All fluids are just horrid, and I can't take more than a tiny sip very very occasionally throughout the day or I feel dreadful for it and struggle to do anything with the boys even. I know that when it's at its worst, my best efforts only afford me about 250mls of fluids in a whole day :( Or 500mls on a good day. So I really hope that the pattern of my nausea stays the same - with a window of feeling okay in the morning, because then I can CRAM my fluids into that window, hopefully! :) This morning when I got up feeling fine, I had a drink of water, some cereal with milk on, and a glass of orange juice. After I started feeling sick, I haven't really had much to drink. Some more orange juice and a bit of water. 7UP went down okay, but only in small bits. Oh but I did have a rocket ice-lolly this evening! :) Bought a pack of 10 from Tesco, remembering that they really helped last time, and it really DID help! Until I finished, and then about 10 seconds later I felt just as yucky again. But that's fluids, so that's good!
Anyway. I will be VERY happy if this is the start of how it will be. If it stays this way, I will feel glad, because it's milder than I remember it. For that reason though, I'm suspicious that it will get worse as I get to the 6-week mark, when I normally start morning sickness. Ugh, I hope not! I feel sick enough already!
So what else?! Not much to report symptom-wise. Some soreness here and there in the breast department, but no problems with pain whilst breastfeeding at all yet, which is good! I'm getting an increasing "something's going on" feeling in the pit of my abdomen, which is hard to describe. I notice it especially when I lie on my side. It's like a fullness or pressure, but quite a subtle sensation. I feel like there's something "swollen" in there, which there absolutely IS! My womb! :)
My Tiny Pip's teeny tiny little heart started beating today!!!!! What a precious and wonderful milestone!! I am in awe that already there's a little heart beating away inside me! I can't wait to hear it. Last pregnancy was the earliest I heard any of my babies' heartbeats - Benjamin was just 8 weeks and 5 days when I heard his heartbeat on my doppler. I will probably start listening in around that kind of time this pregnancy. Only 3 and a bit weeks to go!!! :D
No bleeding yet. I know I shouldn't say "yet", but I can't help but wonder about it. It seems almost inevitable, but that is not a good mindset to have. I am praying that it WON'T happen this time, and I should be in faith about that, not thinking the opposite! I do check every time I go to the loo, but so far I haven't even had any spotting except incredibly light implantation spotting for a few days, which is on my chart.
Neil has told one of his sisters (not the one who is pregnant yet), and his brother. He tried to call his mum to tell her but she was on the phone and then our phone was tied up the rest of the evening with his phone calls to his brother and sister, so he hasn't had chance to tell her. I am beginning to be eager to spill the beans at Facebook so that the general world-at-large will know about the baby! I'm so excited and happy, and can't wait for everyone to know that this little tiny is HERE and to be celebrated! :) Neil's sisters are both on my Facebook so I can't say a thing there until all our family know (although it might not have been the wisest move to say I felt queasy yesterday! :S Didn't think first!). I still haven't told my grandparents and at the moment we are not planning on telling them for some time. They will be aghast and all worried for us and the boys. They were each an only child, and only had one child themselves (though they did want more, they just were unable to conceive after my daddy was born), and have just the two grandchildren, so this is just basically officially NUTS to them! ;) They don't think it's right, I think. So it will not be fun to tell them, and I want to put it off for a while.
Well as always I'm sure I've missed a load of stuff but I feel sick and it's getting late, and Benjamin is stirring for a feed so I will have to go. Back soon though! :)
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