Pregnancy Perks and Pitfalls

In no particular order, here are some observations on the highs and lows of my pregnancy: -

1. Morning sickness isn't just reserved for the mornings
I had a pretty textbook first trimester. From the day before my doctor's appointment to confirm that I was actually pregnant until my 14th week, I felt sick in the mornings and the evenings. Not every morning and evening, but enough to notice a pattern. I didn't realise that the sickness comes in the form of lightheadedness, rather than a stomach ache. I had a fairly unpleasant flight to the US in February, and I had some degree of morning sickness every day throughout the 5-week trip - its abatement coinciding with coming home, actually :-(. I found out that it was worse if I didn't eat within about half an hour of getting up in the morning, so I developed a routine of having half a packet of ready salted crisps first thing while waiting for Rob to wake up so we could go to breakfast.

I have to say, I don't know how women manage morning sickness during subsequent pregnancies, when they already have a child (or children) to look after and all they want to do is lie in bed. Medals all round.

2. Great skin and hair!
Actually, I didn't notice the hair all that much as mine is really thick anyway, but I LOVED the fact that I no longer had teenage skin. Unfortunately it's come back with a vengeance now :-(.

3. Back pain like never before
I'm no stranger to back pain. I've had it in some form or another for 20 years, but around my 30th week I developed a pain under my right shoulder blade which became almost excruciating at times. I was quite worried about driving 5 hours up to my parents' house at 34 weeks, and even more worried about driving back home again at 36 weeks. I won't lie to you, it wasn't pleasant, but I managed to find a seating position that wasn't ridiculously painful. Thank goodness I was driving an automatic, though - my seating position involved putting my right hand behind my head at times, and I couldn't have done that if I'd needed one hand for the gear stick and one for the steering wheel...

4. I've got a secret...
I've always thought that parents can sometimes come across as a little smug when talking to non-parents - 'until you've had a child, you don't know...' - and I'm afraid I've now joined those ranks, although I do try to keep my advice to myself unless asked for it. But I honestly did feel while I was pregnant that I had a secret that no one else knew. I know women have been having babies since the dawn of time, but being pregnant made me feel very special.

5. No charcoal or gherkins!
I was looking forward to seeing what kind of food cravings I would get. But apart from eating everything in sight during my first trimester (only in the afternoons though; mornings and evenings were reserved for throwing up), I didn't have any food-related oddities. Shame.

6. So that's what the inside of my belly button looks like...
I've had an inny for as long as I can remember. At around 28 weeks, my inny became an outy, and it looked weird ;-). I bought a silicon belly button bar from a place online, which said it would move with the shape of my belly, so I thought for £3 I would give it a try. If it didn't work, well I can't remember the last time I knowingly bared my stomach in public, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take my belly button ring out. I'm not 18 any more, after all - and even then, I didn't have a flat stomach so my belly button rarely saw the light of day. Anyway, the silicon bar did work, and my once-outy is now back to being an inny again.

I thought of loads more while I was pregnant, and kept thinking I must write them down before I forget them... If I think of them I'll do another post.

Pregnancy Photos

Keri gave me the idea to take photos of myself regularly throughout my pregnancy. I not only did that, but I also ripped off the style of picture that she used when she was pregnant, standing in front of a window and turning the flash off to create a silhouette. Good for me she doesn't mind ;-).

I usually took the pictures on a Thursday or Friday, although this became more difficult after I no longer lived at the house I was using to take the pictures, so I just took them when I could. I'm really pleased I persevered with this: I think it will be a nice reminder in years to come.

I need to work out how to make a collage of these pictures, but in the meantime, you can view them here.

Surprise!

I had a blog post for today all planned out in my head. It was going to be called 'Fully Cooked!' and I was going to talk about how I'm 37 weeks' pregnant today and therefore technically full term. Then I was going to go on to say that despite being full term, if she decides to show her face before next Wednesday, we'll be having words, as it means she'll be an August birthday and one of the youngest in her school year, rather than a September birthday and one of the oldest in the year below. I was going to say that I had planned a loads of things to do this week so I wouldn't be as bored as I was last week, including going into town to pick up a wallpaper border, lamp shade and pictures for the nursery, waiting in for a delivery of nursery furniture on Friday, dinner with Ben & Jill tomorrow evening, even a trip to the theatre on Thursday afternoon to see Les Mis (I know I've seen it a gazillion times but I thought £20 was a fair price to pay for something to do for a whole afternoon).

Then my waters broke at 06:30 this morning.

I ran to the bathroom and while I was there I looked back at my alarm clock which was taunting me with today's date. 24 August 2010. I sat on the toilet thinking 'This isn't what we planned!' Not only because I never anticipated her coming early but also because, as I mentioned above, I don't have any nursery furniture yet.

Because it was first thing in the morning, I persuaded myself that maybe my waters hadn't broken and I just needed the loo after a night's sleep, as normal. I had a midwife appointment booked in for 09:30 this morning anyway, and nothing else was happening, so I followed my normal morning routine and got showered and dressed - I even had time to straighten my hair! I drove round to Rob's and told him what had happened, then we both went up to the midwife and told her. She checked and confirmed that my waters had broken, and that one way or another we would have a baby by this weekend. She told me that 86% of women go into labour naturally within 24 hours of their waters breaking, and a further 7% of women go into labour within 48 hours, so I should just keep an eye on things.

We came away from the midwife's and went back to Rob's house so he could pack a bag and come and stay at my house until we went to the hospital, whenever that might be. I started having mild period pain-type cramps at the midwife appointment and they carried on while we were at Rob's, but they weren't painful or frequent, which were the two criteria the midwife told me they had to be before ringing the hospital or the birth centre. On the way to my house we stopped at a pharmacy and bought a Tens machine, which I put on almost as soon as we got back.

Rob had planned to go to the gym and do a workout, and ask Ben to fit the car seat while he was there, then go to Sainsbury's on the way home to buy drinks and snacks for the labour. He left the house at 12:40 having already decided not to do a workout but still to get Ben to fit the car seat and stop at Sainsbury's. He didn't get to do either of those things; when he left I went upstairs to check my hospital bag (I'd been throwing things into it for about 10 days but was pretty sure I was missing stuff) and by 13:00 I was having painful contractions lasting about 50 seconds, about 3 minutes apart. I rang Rob and told him to come straight back, then he rang the birth centre when he got here. My midwife happened to be there at the time, and when she heard the noises I was making at the other end of the phone, she told us to come in straight away.

Rob ran upstairs and threw everything that was on my bed back into my hospital bag (I was still convinced there were things missing, and I was right) then we had a mad dash along the motorway to the birth centre. We got there just after 13:30 and went into one of the delivery rooms, stopping a couple of times on the way to have a contraction. I told them I wanted to get in the pool, if possible, so they started filling it while I went to the loo. I was examined at 13:45 and was already fully dilated, so as soon as the pool was full and the right temperature (which took what seemed like forever, but was actually only about 20 minutes), I took the Tens machine off and got in.

I had been using the gas & air while waiting for the pool to fill, but once I got in the pool the midwife (not my pre-natal midwife; a different one) told me not to use the gas & air but instead to concentrate on pushing. I pushed for an hour and a half but each time I had a contraction her head came half out but then went back in again as the contraction faded. A supervising midwife came in and said that she thought I should get out of the pool as much more of the same would cause the baby to get distressed. I think that was the impetus I needed, because there was no way I was getting out of the pool, so I begged her to let me have one more try. She said yes, and told me not to forget to use the gas & air. What?? I thought I wasn't allowed to! I'd been pushing hard for 90 minutes with no pain relief, and now she tells me I can use it??? So I did. A lot.

One huge push and a few seconds of the most excruciating pain later, her head was out, then it was no time at all before we were pulling her up out of the water and laying her on my chest. Daisy Rebecca, born at 15:36 on Tuesday 24 August 2010.


I know it sounds corny, but for the rest of the day, nothing else mattered.

I stayed in the pool with her for about 25 minutes, then Rob took her while I delivered the placenta (easily one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen). Then we had some skin to skin time and we tried feeding her. She didn't seem all that interested but she did then feed about an hour later.

Rob went into Southampton at 17:45 to buy a Moses basket (no furniture, remember?) while I was stitched up - I used more gas & air during that hour than I had during the labour. Rob came back at 19:00 with Ben & Ryan for a visit. It wasn't until then that we actually got round to weighing her - 5lb 13oz! I knew she looked tiny but I didn't know she was that small. Although she didn't seem that small when she was coming out of me ;).


Ben had bought today's paper for us to keep as a memento of the day Daisy was born. It was a shame that the paper he chose was the Sun, but he said he picked it because there was an article about Manchester City on the front :). Clare also visited, bringing with her a much appreciated bar of chocolate and a not-quite-so-well-appreciated trashy magazine (seriously, I got to page 72 and still hadn't read an 'article' that was either remotely newsworthy or that concerned any 'celebrity' worth caring about - but Clare knows me well enough to know that's what I would think), then they left when Ben & Jill arrived, armed with a beautiful swaddling blanket and a 'Learn the Alphabet' book in Italian :).

Rob left around 21:30 and for the first time, it was just me and Daisy. I knew I should sleep, but I stayed up till long after midnight just staring at her :).

It's Starting To Feel Much More Real Now...

Nesting, or Necessity, or Boredom?

I mowed the lawn on Monday night. It hadn't been done for almost a month, and bearing in mind it's the summer, it really needed doing. I'd seen the weather forecast for Tuesday, which was that it would rain that day and on and off the rest of the week, so I took the opportunity to mow the lawn while the grass was dry - particularly as the drainage in my garden isn't all that good and when it rains, the grass stays wet for longer than it should.

It was relatively hard work, but no more so than for a non-pregnant me, I think. Having said that, I remarked on Facebook and Twitter that I won't be rushing to do it again until after I've stopped being pregnant. A few people commented that I should be putting my feet up, or saying it's nice to see that I've started nesting. Except I don't see it as nesting. The lawn needed mowing, so I did it. Monday was the last day for a while that I knew I'd be able to do it, so I did it out of necessity. But I took the advice given and have been putting my feet up for the rest of the week. And man, am I bored.

On Tuesday, I had nothing to do until ante-natal at 18:30. I watched a bit of TV (am working my way through House Season 5 at the moment), and was so bored by mid-afternoon that I had a nap. On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment at noon and went to the theatre in the evening, but apart from that, nothing to do between getting up at 08:00 and going out at 19:00. So I had another nap in the afternoon to break up the boredom. Today I got up at 08:30 and went back to bed again at 09:30 for a few hours, just so I would have something to do until lunchtime. I showered at 13:00 and watched TV for the rest of the afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, after a morning of - you guessed it - doing nothing, Rob and I went nursery furniture shopping. I already have a chest of drawers in her room and am waiting for a chair to be delivered, so I picked out the cot bed I wanted and ordered it online today. Is that nesting? Or is it just the reality of having a baby? She's going to need somewhere to sleep, so I'd better get her something, right?

Don't get me wrong, I know that soon enough I'm going to wish I could re-live these days of endless sleep and no responsibility, but it's going to be hard work just sitting here for a month or more, waiting for her to be born.

In conclusion, I find the idea of nesting a weird one. I'm not mowing lawns and putting up curtains because I want to make the place nice for the baby. I'm doing those things because they need doing, pregnant or not, and I might lose the will to live sitting round all day.

Must go. The downstairs toilet's not going to unblock itself.

4D Scan

We went for our 4D Scan today. The sonographer said she was confident enough to confirm that it's definitely a girl. Something about a hamburger rather than a turtle, which freaked us both out enough never to want to hear it referred to as that again ;). We took away a 25-minute DVD, plus 120 stills taken from that DVD, plus half a dozen hard copy photographs that we chose from the 120.

Lots of the 120 photographs are more or less the same image, just taken from slightly different angles, but here is a handful of them. The sonographer spent a long time trying to get the baby to move her hand away from her face, but the ones where you can see the detail of her hand are some of my favourites.
















I like to think she's saying 'Come on, enough now, Mum' at that last one :).

The Great Gender Debate

We went for our 20-week scan earlier today. The sonographer said everything looks great from a medical point of view - heartbeat strong, stomach working fine so digestion good, bladder working so kidneys are functioning well, etc etc - which meant we could concentrate on finding out the gender :).

I must say, people do have very strong opinions when it comes to deciding whether or not to find out the gender. Rob said the other day that it seems that people who would choose to find out if they're having a boy or a girl are respectful of others' decisions not to find out, but people who would rather wait until the birth are less likely to be as open-minded about those who choose not to wait. I certainly would agree with that assessment.

I wonder why people who've always waited until the birth to find out the gender say that it's 'better' that way? How would they know? I can certainly appreciate that it keeps you going through a long labour, but really, am I likely to be less inclined to push just because I know what it's going to be? And again, I can see that finding out and announcing a likely name before the birth makes it somewhat less exciting for others: rather than the usual 'oooh, what did they have?' 'what name have they chosen?' questions, you'll get 'oh, the baby's been born now.' But to be honest, I'm not having a baby just so that you can be excited on the day it's born. And Rob's opinion as a father is that if all you're waiting for on the day of the birth is to find out whether it's a boy or a girl, you've kind of missed the point.

A former colleague of mine had a baby last week. They knew it was going to be a girl, and they named her Emily months ago. When I found out she'd been born (2 weeks overdue and after a 3-day labour even though she was induced - well done Kirsty!), obviously there was no need for the 'what did they have?' questions, but I was still really pleased for them. I guess part of the reasoning behind my opinion on the matter could be that, without wishing to make this political or stir up a huge backlash, I don't believe that life begins on the day a child is born. The fact that one day Emily was in utero and the next day (or in this case, a few days later) she was outside the womb didn't make a whole lot of difference; she didn't suddenly become a baby girl the day she was born. She already was a baby girl, and if she had been born a day, a week, or a month earlier she would still have been a baby girl. And I'm pretty sure that Kirsty and Mark couldn't care less whether or not I approved of their decision to find out Emily's gender beforehand, and I'm equally sure that they didn't care what impact that decision had on my reaction to news of her birth.

I had a lovely message this morning from another friend who's due a week or so after me, saying they chose to find out their son's gender a couple of years ago and are really looking forward to finding out the gender of their second child next week. In her opinion, it means you can start to get to know them before they're born. I'd agree with that, but quite simply, the main impetus for our choosing to find out the gender is the fact that Rob is far too impatient to want to wait another 4.5 months... Plus we'd like to do some preparation - decorating the baby's room etc - and knowing the baby's gender makes that a whole lot easier. Although I'm quite keen on the idea of a neutral-coloured nursery, after all that!


Oh, and by the way, the sonographer said that whilst they never predict with 100% certainty because there's always someone who will sue them if they get it wrong, she's pretty sure it's a girl. Which means the discussion we put on hold last weekend will now need to be taken up again :).

All About Blood

I had a call from the GP's surgery this morning - my blood results from the sample the midwife took last Thursday came back with a white blood count that's in the normal range, so they won't need to refer me to a haematologist.

What I forgot to mention last week, though, is that my blood type came back A-negative. Which is interesting, given the conversation I had with a doctor from the Blood Donor Service a couple of years ago, saying that I was A-positive but my positive antigens were so weak that it was difficult to tell whether I was positive or negative. I mentioned this to the midwife and she said she'd never heard of that before, but there was no doubt in their eyes that I was A-negative, so I'd be receiving Anti-D injections later in the pregnancy.

16-Week Midwife Appointment

Rob and I went to my 16-week check-up with the midwife today. I'm over 18 weeks now, but I had my 12-week appointment 2 weeks late, so at least I'm consistent...

Everything looks fine, although she did say that the blood test she took last time came back with a slightly low white blood count. She took some more blood today and said they'll see what the result comes back with this time. It might come back normal, but if it's still low, she'll ask my GP to refer me to a haematologist.

She put the Doppler Monitor on me again, and immediately we heard 3 quick heartbeats, but then the baby moved and she had to find the heartbeat again. It took AGES, at least a couple of minutes, and by the time she eventually did find it again Rob was close to having kittens, but it was all OK in the end. She said there is sometimes truth to the rumour that girls' heartbeats are quicker than boys', but it doesn't always work out that way, and she said that a heartbeat around 135-140bpm is very middle of the road and it would be impossible to tell the gender. True to form, the heartbeat was 138bpm so we're none the wiser, although my 20-week fetal anomaly (and gender) scan is only 2 weeks away. I have no hunches either way about the gender, and can quite honestly say that I have no preference (I wouldn't have said that 6 months ago; I wasn't keen on the idea of a boy at all until I spent a week with Keri, Annabelle and Corgan and found out that boys can be just as awesome as girls), but I'm looking forward to finding out!

The midwife will ring me when she gets my new blood results back, and I'll next see her at 24 weeks. Hope it will actually be 24 weeks this time, and not 26 :).

Apparently we're having an alien...

I had my first scan this morning. I was given a due date of 14 September, making me 14 weeks and 4 days today, and I was told that everything was in the normal range. The baby seemed very energetic and did lots of moving round while we were in there, but the one thing it didn't do was face the camera :). In fact the sonographer told me to go and walk around while she saw the next lady and then she'd bring me back in to see if we could get a better shot.

The baby still wasn't facing the right way (my opinion is that it turned round then turned back again in the time I was walking round, just to be awkward) but the sonographer took a couple of shots anyway. Here they are.

Although they're separate shots, the top two are more or less close-ups of the bottom two. The ones on the left show the baby on its tummy, with its spine at the top and a leg on the left, and the ones on the right show a fairly scary-looking shot of the best we could see of its face.

If you click on the picture you can zoom in for a closer look.

Here's hoping it won't burst out of my stomach like it did with Sigourney Weaver...

First Midwife Appointment

I spoke to the midwife while we were in Bora Bora and arranged to go for my booking appointment this afternoon, after we arrived back this morning. Rob didn't sleep at all on the flight, which is unusual for him, and it even took me a couple of hours to get off to sleep but I did manage to get about 4 hours, which was better than nothing, even for plane sleep.

We got back to the house around 12:30 and checked out our newly decorated bedrooms - pictures later. We had to re-assemble our bed once the guys had finished putting up the curtains in there, and as soon as we'd done that Rob just collapsed onto it :). It was 15:00 by this time and my appointment was at 16:00. I told him not to worry about coming with me; it was only a booking appointment after all. We would just be going through family medical history etc to establish whether I was going to be a 'risky' pregnancy and therefore whether my obstetric care should be handled by a doctor or whether it could be done by the midwife. It was also going to take up to 90 minutes so I told him not to come; he should get some sleep and come to the scan on Saturday and he wouldn't miss anything.

What I didn't know was that the midwife had a Doppler Monitor and was going to check the baby's heartbeat at this appointment. The rest of the appointment was exactly as I thought it would be - I'm a low-risk pregnancy so my care will be midwife-led - but I almost cried when I heard the heartbeat, not just because it was incredible but also because I knew Rob would be gutted he'd missed it. And that's when I remembered about the wonder that is the Voice Memo app on the iPhone...

I only had about 4% battery left on my phone as I hadn't been able to charge it up overnight on the flight, but it was just enough to get this recorded.

I played it to Rob when I got home, and then I cried ;). Hearing the heartbeat made it all seem real for the first time - even the weeks of morning sickness, weird metallic taste in my mouth and ridiculously heightened sense of smell didn't 'prove' to me that I'm pregnant; they're all symptoms that can be explained by other things. But this? Wow.

Plus, it's Rob's birthday today, and I think I'd have to try hard to top the sound of your first child's heartbeat as the best birthday present :).

Southampton to Santa Barbara in 20 hours

Flying miles: 5,471
Driving miles: 160; 64 from home to Heathrow, 96 from LAX to Santa Barbara

Woke up 07:00, car picked us up 10:00, arrived LHR 11:00 to make the most of lounge access. Saw Jason Statham at airport. Had Thai chicken wrap for lunch, boarded plane at 14:45, took off almost an hour late at 16:00, watched An Education (very good), threw up chicken wrap, had tomato soup, threw up tomato soup. Declined main course and dessert on account of previous record with food so far today. Slept on and off for 6 hours, threw up bile, had 3 sips of water and ginger biscuit, threw up water and ginger biscuit. Had to sit in seat for landing so threw up rest of ginger biscuit, water and bile into sick bag. Got through baggage claim and customs without having to find a loo: good, because there weren't any. Waited outside Hertz office in fresh air while Rob sorted out paperwork for rental car, left LAX in Volvo C70 just after 20:00, arrived at the Upham Hotel in Santa Barbara just before 22:00, with a quick stop at Camarillo to throw up stomach lining at side of road. Straight to bed at 22:30.

Got another 6 flights this trip - hope they're not all like this one...

Knocked Up

[NB As ever, this post is dated 18 January but was actually published two months later, but as this is my 'diary' and I want to record things as they happened, I'm posting to the correct day.]

I took a pregnancy test on Wednesday morning as, despite the fact that I'd had a negative test a week ago, I hadn't started my period.

It was positive.

So I took another test. I guess there's more than one way to pee on a stick right because that one came back with an error, so I took a third. That was positive too, so just to be sure, I took a fourth. And a fifth.

By the time I had taken the fifth test, even the one that had an error was showing as positive, albeit faintly.


By this point I was cautiously optimistic, but did still think that because I had bought all the tests at the same time, maybe I had just bought from a faulty batch. I showed Rob, who was very excited, and I rang the doctor to make an appointment, but the snow havoc meant that they didn't have all their staff in and the earliest they could offer me an appointment was this morning at 09:20.

The next opportunity I had to go to the supermarket to buy a different brand of test was Friday, but I had a PT session at the gym first thing. So I got up, peed in a plastic cup with a sealable lid, put said cup in my £450 handbag, went to my PT session, went to Sainsbury's to buy more tests (bought a two-pack), then went to the old house to pick up the mail. While I was there, I dunked one of my new tests in the cup, and voila:


This time around I was pretty sure it was accurate, and seeing as I had another test left, I did it on Saturday morning and got another positive ;). If I needed any further confirmation, last night I started feeling quite nauseous. As it turned out, the doctor didn't re-test me this morning when I saw her, presumably because home pregnancy tests are as accurate as any test the doctor can do at this stage. If I had been less sure, I would have asked the doctor for another test, but I think 7 positive tests and sudden onset nausea are pretty conclusive...

So, I've been referred to the midwife for a booking appointment and a 12-week scan, although it didn't occur to me until after I left the doctor's that I won't actually be here at 12 weeks - we're going on holiday from 9 weeks to 14 weeks. I need to change GP anyway, as we no longer live in the right area for that one since we moved, so I'll arrange to register with a GP near the new house and let the new doctor know about the holiday.