Wednesday 28 January 2009

Twing, TWANG, Walla Walla Bing Bang

Hello everyone,

Well, here I am in my 16th week of pregnancy. Seems like it has been ages so far, and really I’ve barely started! I wonder if tiredness has irretrievably warped my internal calendar? I feel like I have been pregnant for years.

I am still feeling fairly okay – apart from feeling like I could sleep standing up most days, I’m getting by relatively unscathed. The only thing that is bothering me quite a bit at the moment is that I keep forgetting I’ve got a grapefruit-sized foreign body residing in my belly, and that if I get up too quickly the ligaments at either side of my bump (which are being stretched and flexed hourly as the little one grows) give an almighty TWANG to remind me to take it easy.

A painful almighty twang, I might add – such that it makes me yell, ‘OW!’ and then double over while everything relaxes. Then I can slowly put myself upright and allay the fears of my colleagues that I’m not about to give birth on my desk, and that really I’m just daft and got up too quick.

Jason is wise to it now. The first few times it happened he’d come running, all panicky-like with affectionate concern, ‘WHATSTHEMATTAWHATSTHEMATTA?!! AREYOUOKAY?! AREYOUOKAY?!?’ But now he hears an, ‘OW!’ and from whichever corner of the house he is in at the time, I hear him say, ‘Get. Up. Slowly.’

I’m sure we’re at the point now where he wants to punctuate the instruction with, ‘…you dumbass,’ but thankfully he is too kind-hearted and lovely to chastise me so. Mmmmmmmm, love the lovely Jason.

Thursday 22 January 2009

15 weeks plus 4 days

So today we had our second visit with the midwife. We walked into our appointment and the lovely Lynnette was nowhere to be found – she was on holiday (the nerve!) so we had another midwife instead.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly; I had the results from the blood work I had done last time back – everything totally fine. I have no Rh D Positive antibodies, I don’t have Chlamydia (egads!), my blood sugar is 4.4 (apparently a good number), blood pressure normal... ooh! And I learned today I have ‘O positive’ blood. All the coolest people do, apparently. Urine sample normal... well, I say normal but there was nothing normal about trying to manoeuvre a stream of wee into a specimen (no coincidence it’s called speci-MEN; who are those things designed for? The clue is right there in the name!) anyway... I managed to capture a few drops and it all looks okay.

Hmm... Maybe that’s the secret to my riches – invent a chick friendly pee sample bottle! I’d call it the ShePee.

Up onto the examination table I go, for the midwife to have a bit of a poke and prod of my belly. We established that the top of my uterus is just beneath my belly button. There was also a student midwife there, job shadowing I suppose... and she had a bit of a feel – one uterus, present and correct.

And then my favourite bit – we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. It was a bit of a wriggler today but eventually its heartbeat was located... music to my ears. I’ll never get bored of hearing that sound – I looked over at Jason as we listened to our little brand new dude/dudette thumping away. It was a handsome heartbeat, lemme tell ya. Strong, true and steady. Indescribable.

I said to the midwife, ‘Now, does that sound like a girl baby heartbeat or a boy baby heartbeat to you?’
She said, ‘Do you want my professional opinion?’
We said, ‘Hell, yeah we do!’ (Actually, we didn’t but you know what I mean.)
‘That, ‘ she said, with the air of a decidedly confident woman-in-the-know, ‘Is a boy baby heartbeat.’
‘AGGGGH!’ I said, ‘I’m officially outnumbered, then.’ I got up from the table and joined Jason on the seats across the room. ‘Even our cat is a boy!’

I’m not going to lie to you; I think it would be nice if we had a girl, because we’ve already got a boy. But it’s not like I’m not going to love it just because it might turn out to be a boy! We Proctors make really, REALLY cool babies, and regardless of the presence or absence of dangly bits down below, I can’t wait to meet our little creation. Whatever we get, I’ll be over the moon.

After that, we went down the corridor to the nurse who took some blood – ow, she was hurty! Anyway; this time I had some blood tests to screen for Down’s Syndrome. They are optional tests, and they use biochemical markers in your blood, and look at my age and weight to work out the risk of the baby being born with Downs Syndrome. I had one with Ben so I thought I may as well have one with this baby. It’s just an early indicator; nothing can be certain but at least it’s not as invasive and scary as the REAL test for Downs, which is an amniocentesis (aka big fat needle into your belly to extract amniotic fluid from around the baby.) GAH! No way. Anyway – I’m not in a high-risk category for it anyway, as I’m still young (ish), so hopefully there is nothing to worry about.

So that was this week! Next midwife appointment is 8 weeks away, but our next ultrasound is only 6 weeks away so we’ve got that to look forward to. This next ultrasound is the one where we could find out the sex IF JASON’S MIND CAN BE CONVINCED THAT IT’S A GOOD IDEA. Ha ha... he doesn’t want to find out. I kind of do; just so I could start getting prepared... but I’m not going to twist his arm; I’m not that precious about finding out so we’ll just see what happens. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a change of heart. Stranger things have happened!

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Who Ate All the Pies?


GAH! I'm giant.


Okay, everyone says that you start to show a lot earlier with your second baby, but I suppose I'm one of those people who hear words, understand them, but don't really apply them to myself because I CAN'T BLOODY BELIEVE I'M THIS BIG ALREADY.


I've just been looking at some pictures of myself from when I was pregnant with Ben (and before you ask, no -- I won't be posting them here, they are too grotesque and I will surely be arrested for bringing the human form into disrepute) and I'm about as big now, at 14 weeks than I was with Ben at probably 20 weeks.


This is weird -- the baby isn't bigger or anything... it's supposed to be about 9cm long 'from crown to rump' according to http://www.babycentre.co.uk/ (best pregnancy website bar none) but I guess all my insides are shot to hell from my first pregnancy, and everything's just a-floppin' out wherever it wants!


I'm not exaggerating -- yesterday I had to unbutton the top two buttons on my work pants, and I have already bought three (count 'em, THREE) pairs of maternity jeans. I don't think I bought any maternity clothes until I was more than half way through my last pregnancy.
To hammer the point home (as if you didn't think I was serious) I was in a meeting with my boss the other day, and I was sitting in his office going over some projections for anticipated fees for next year and he actually stopped himself, mid-sentence, to say, 'Yeah, you ARE getting bigger.' Mid-sentence, indeed!


Hope you enjoy the picture for proof... this is actually old now -- it was taken on Xmas Eve in 2008. So I'm a whole 4 weeks bigger than that, now.


I shudder to think what will happen to me by the end of this pregnancy. Will I be able to fit behind the wheel of the car? In through the doors at work? Will I set alarms off in elevators having exceeded the maximum recommended weight? Probably not; I didn't gain hardly any weight when I had Ben and if the scales are anything to go by with this one, it looks like I'm par for the same course. Which is great -- I'm eating healthily, albeit with the appetite of a pre-teen Russain gymnast amidst all this nausea and tiredness, but I'm doing okay.


We're due to see the lovely Lynnette on the 22nd of the month, so I'll report more then.

Sunday 4 January 2009

12 Week Scan


Happy holidays everyone; I haven't updated in ages so thought I'd do a quickie this morning.

We had our 12 week scan on 29th December at Wansbeck General Hospital in Ashington. A different hospital than I was at when I had Ben -- North Tyneside General, which has changed to a midwife-led delivery service. That means if (touch wood) I'm so unfortunate to have some complications during labour and delivery, I'm facing a 20 minute ambulance ride to Wansbeck, where there are consultant obsetricians. I think I'd rather have a 20 minute car trip at the start of labour than a scary ambulance one... 20 minutes is a long time.

Anyway -- so we head out to Wansbeck. As Ben has been so excited, we thought we would take him with us to the scan. Mistake! I think it was just excitement, but he was so naughty at the hospital! Once we got in the imaging room, poor Jason barely saw any of the scan because Ben was tearing around fascinated by all the machinery wanting to know what things were called, etc. I just lay there, belly all glooped up and a little teary-eyed, for there, on the screen, was Proctor Baby Number 2 in the flesh!

It was veeeeeeery different from my first ultrasound with Ben... Ben was a wriggler, he was never still. Shaking his arms and legs, doing a little 'Hey, look at me!' dance. But this one was just all laid back and comfy, with a really steady little heartbeat.

Will post more later -- here are my pictures.