27 Weeks - Hungry, Hormonal, Healthy

Hungry
Hunger in pregnancy is different from normal hunger, I have found.  Before being pregnant, I could notice my hunger without having to fulfil it, and could ignore it if necessary.  Hunger in pregnancy is HUNGER!  As in, I MUST EAT SOMETHING RIGHT THIS MINUTE hunger.  It is an urgent kind of hunger that absolutely must be filled if you hope to function in any shape or form.  In fact, sometimes I don't actually know I'm hungry, I just suddenly feel strange, out-of-sorts, incredibly tired and kind of restless... put a big carby feed in front of me (hot chips, steamy pasta, all such good things) and suddenly I'm awake again and feeling a million times better.  I also find myself grazing for hours - I tell ya, this is a hungry little bub!  Even when I'm full, it's a kind of "yep I'm full but I really could keep eating if I wanted to" kind of full.  Daddy C says that now I know what it's like to be a boy :-P

Hormonal
I'm aware that so far I may have made pregnancy sound like a completely joyous walk in the park... well, no, it's not quite rainbows and lollypops 24/7.  Some days you're happy and on top of the world... but then there are the other days.  The days you feel teary without really knowing why, the days you feel like you'll smack the next person in the face who comments in any way on the size or shape of your body, the days you feel like you just want to sleep for days and instead have to push your way through a day of work, the days you feel like a giant heffalump, the days you really just want a glass of WINE and can't have one, the days your partner goes out for a quality evening of drinking beer and getting smashed and you realise that you are never going to have your pre-baby life back ever again.

Of course, when it really comes down to it, you know that this baby is going to be more rewarding than all the partying in the world ever was, and that all the discomforts of pregnancy will be more than worth it when you are holding that very wanted little girl in your arms.  But I think it's more than normal to have the odd moment of mourning the life you are leaving behind, just as most of the time you are excited and looking forward to the life ahead of you.

Healthy
Headed to my GP the other day to get referred for a blood test, as I wanted to check my iron levels before I see my midwife next week.  She had a feel of my tummy and confirmed my suspicion that little girl likes to lie with her head down in my pelvis and bum up near my ribs - not so fun for my bladder capacity, but great for the impending exit, so hopefully she continues to favour that position!

The GP also managed to talk me into the 27 week gestational diabetes test, which I had been planning on refusing seeing as I have absolutely zero risk factors (no family history of diabetes, young, slim, not of certain ethnic backgrounds) but at the end of the day, I was going for a blood test anyway so I decided to give that battle up if just to get the GP off my back!  It's really not a difficult test, they just give you a glucose drink and then take a blood test an hour later to see if your body has processed the glucose normally.  If it hasn't, then you progress to a more convoluted test.  Luckily mine was all clear and fine, so I don't think I would do the test again in future as I feel it is unnecessary for me.

 

  All my other parameters came back normal also, except for my iron, which had dropped dramatically.  I knew babies used up a lot of iron, I just had no idea how much!  So I will be gulping my iron tonic like there is no tomorrow.

But otherwise we are both healthy and happy and growing along well :-)  Besides getting up 50 million times a night to pee, this pregnancy has been a very healthy and happy one so far - may it continue that way!  I have decided to reduce my work hours down to four days a week, as 40 hours was getting a bit much for my easily exhausted self these days, and I have felt much better and on top of things since then.  I have also begun my nesting, setting up my change table, cot and pram and going shopping for cot linen, which I found rather disproportionately exciting :-P  Hopefully my little girl hasn't grown a peepee cos she's got a lot of pink stuff!

The 25 week bellysplosion

26 weeks

27 weeks - definitely preggers now!

24 Weeks - Babymoon!

Over the last few weeks, Daddy C and I have taken the (rapidly diminishing) opportunity to take a couple of trips while it's still just us two.

First we went to Perth for a few days, the Western Australian capital where Daddy C grew up, for St Patrick's Day.  Daddy C enjoyed lots of Guiness and Mummy Em enjoyed lots of gorgeous sunny weather!

19 weeks pregnant, meeting the locals in sunny Perth!

 Then about a week ago we spent a lovely weekend together in the Gold Coast.  The sun and beach were stunning and we really enjoyed the chance to have a couple of days away together.  I have to admit, it was almost bittersweet... I had this feeling like I was living out something that would become a memory, one I would cherish (with a little bit of longing) in years to come.

Beautiful Surfer's Paradise on the Gold Coast

 Since then... well back to real life and the babymoon is over! :-P  My little belly has been growing up a storm!  I've even noticed a growing pattern - I get really hungry over the weekend and then on about Tuesday or Wednesday, my belly suddenly looks heaps bigger.  Then I'm not as hungry for a couple of days... and then the pattern repeats!  I even had ligament pain this past weekend, an achy, stretchy feeling in my bump - growing pains, basically!  My uterus is up way past my belly button now, pretty much as high as it can go - so it's only out from here!

It's a funny stage of pregnancy, this second half of the second trimester.  All the ultrasound scans are done but it's not quite countdown time yet... so you just kind of sit and grow!  You have to create your own little  milestones... the first time she jumps on your bladder (today), the first time you get offered a seat on the rush hour train (today... guess I must really look preggers now!), the first time Daddy C is able to feel her from the outside (still to come - I'm looking forward to that!).

At our hospital appointment a couple of weeks ago, the doctor reviewed the notes on my previous pelvic fracture and gave our homebirth the go-ahead - which is very exciting!

It might sound weird, but I was quite happy to learn that my little munchkin is now "viable" - which means she would have a half decent chance of surviving outside the womb with the right care.  The more time goes by, the more I feel like I can really believe that I am really going to have a baby!  She even has hair now, on her head as well as little eyebrows and eyelashes.

A little bub at 24 weeks

As much as I get impatient, time is definitely flying... less than 16 weeks until another little human being joins our lives!

23 weeks

24 weeks - yesterday

22 Weeks - Finally Starting to Look and Feel Pregnant

Over the past couple of weeks I have really become fascinated and in love with my funny little belly!

For one thing, it seems to sometimes have a little overnight growth spurt, none more than when I went to bed at 21+2 with what could have been a little beer-and-pies girl belly and woke up looking... pregnant!

21 weeks 2 days - belly-splosion!

 The other weird thing is that it seems to flucutate - sometimes it looks more pregnant than others.  I think it depends a lot on what I'm wearing, but also maybe has to do with the position the baby is lying in.  I've noticed that it looks a lot smaller and flatter after I've done yoga - maybe yoga puts the baby into a more vertical position or something.

Here's a little timeline to illustrate:

20 weeks 2 days

21 weeks - I think I had just done yoga before taking this picture

21 weeks 3 days - Three days later... pointy belly!

22 weeks - today!

I've also noticed that my normally deep belly button has become a lot shallower - I tried to point this out to Daddy C in fascination but he just looked vaguely horrified and didn't want to hear anymore about it!  Haha - boys are so funny!

One thing is for sure though - I love my little growing bump!  Having always been fairly slim, having a belly is quite a strange novelty to me, but I love watching it change and grow, because it means my little girl is healthy and strong and getting big enough to meet me :-)

I'm also getting movements every day, multiple times a day now, which I LOVE!  I love feeling her move around in there and knowing she is active and healthy.  She is definitely getting stronger these days and finding weird places to nudge me in.  She even seems to be big enough to nudge me in two places at once sometimes, and sometimes I have a really weird sensation that I assume is her doing a little flip or something.  It's very exciting and I can't wait until her little nudges are full blown kicks that Daddy C can feel from the outside!

Tomorrow I have a hospital clinic appointment, at which I hear what they managed to find out from the NZ hospitals about my prior pelvis fractures.  My lovely independant midwife is coming with me so we can make a birth plan with the knowledge, as well as Daddy C for some moral support.  I really hope the news is good and I can continue with my plan to homebirth, but I'm trying to be at peace with the fact that, as Daddy C always reminds me, "whatever will be, will be"

19 Weeks - We're Having A..... (drumroll please!)

Around the 20 week mark is the most important ultrasound scan, called the morphology scan.  It basically checks that baby is growing properly and has all the bits and pieces and fingers and toes it should.  AND.... if you want... you can find out the gender!

I have been DYING to know whether I have a little boy or girl ever since I found out I was pregnant!  Not to mention I just wanted to know bub was ok, as I still wasn't feeling much in the way of movements yet.

I had heard a few horror stories in the preceding weeks, so the night before the scan I barely slept a wink!  Luckily the scan was in the morning, but the scan place was running 40 minutes late - torture!!

 

Finally, though, my name was called and it was so worth the wait!!  The scan was amazing, all little arms and legs and fingers and toes accounted for and wriggling around!  All the structures of the brain were measured and we could see inside the little beating heart - and we even saw little bub taking little gulps of the amniotic fluid, which I thought was amazing!

My perfect little bub at 19 weeks 1 day

AND... the big question... little bub gave us a nice clear look between the legs and....

A perfect little girl :-)  I thought I wanted a boy, but ever since finding out she is a girl, I have been totally in love with her.  I love that I have a pronoun for her now, it all feels so much more real!

She is measuring right on date too  - she has been such a textbook baby so far... let's hope that bodes well for the birth.... and after!

Hopefully not like this - Crazy Baby!!

Daddy C and I even came across a girl's name the night before that we both really liked and it is definitely in the forefront in the name stakes now.  I thought we were going to have a lot of trouble picking a girls name as we hadn't been able to really agree on anything before that - but it turned out easier than I expected!  I think we'll probably wait until she is born before introducing our little girl to the world - just in case she comes out and doesn't suit our name at all!

The thing I find funny is - I hadn't really been feeling movements before the scan, just the odd niggle about once a week.  Even during the scan she was going to town with the wriggling and I couldn't feel a thing.  But ever since the scan I have been feeling movement everyday, multiple times a day.  She even seems to have a little cycle, movements are mostly in the morning before morning tea, sometimes in the afternoon, and then in the evening again.  They are mostly little niggles rather than big kicks (I guess her feet are still pretty little and her cartilage is only just turning to bone now) but it is always exciting, I absolutely love it.

I'm not quite at this stage yet!

 It's very exciting to know that my little girl is growing and getting active in there!