Glowing, discomfort and 4D scan!

So everyone keeps telling me how great I look which is lovely! I've got a very neat bump so far and haven't really gained weight anywhere else, other than my boobs, which I keep getting told are huge! It might be partly my summer tan but I have to agree that when I look in the mirror I see a much healthier, shinier haired, brighter eyed version of myself :) My back pain seemed to have got better over the weekend and at the beginning of last week and I couldn't work out exactly which of my different strategies had helped it. I've been lying on my back in an Alexander Technique pose for 20 minutes a day, my OH has been giving me a brief massage each day and I'd been taking the magnesium citrate supplement recommended by my yoga teacher more regularly. As well as my back being a bit better, I've also had very loose bowels! I'd also stopped gaining weight and even lost a couple of pounds in a week. I remembered reading something about magnesium citrate sometimes being given as a laxative and so I stopped taking it for a couple of days. My bowels improved and my back got worse! Great. So now I've started taking a lower dose of the magnesium and I'll gradually build it up to see what happens. I was taking 200mg in the morning and another 100mg at night. I'm now taking 100mg in the morning and another 100mg just after lunch. I went back to the oocupational health physio for a follow up this week. She didn't give any further advice but she has referred me to an obs/gynae physio who helps pregnant women with ligament problems. I'm waiting for an appointment now. In the meantime the back pain has been a bit of a struggle at work this week. It's exhausting and by the time I get home from work I just want to lie on my back for the rest of the evening. But I know that lying on my back isn't good for the baby at this stage of the pregnancy. It's tough keeping comfortable. The heartburn has been pretty unpleasant too and that's worse if I'm lying down! I can't really win at the moment. I've had a couple of odd pregnancy symptoms. Every now and again I can hear by heartbeat in my left ear really loudly. It's usually just after I've exerted myself a little bit. I guess it's due to increased blood flow. Another one is that occasionally I get a dull ache/twinge very low down in my uterus. It's pretty uncomfortable but it doesn't last long. I asked my sister-in-law if she had it in her pregnancies and she said yes, and it gets more frequent as the baby gets bigger! Sleeping is getting more difficult. I'm conscious that I'm not sleeping solidly and I'm still waking up around 6am every day. So, all in all I'm experiencing the discomfort that you hear pregnant women complaining about in later pregnancy. The constancy of it is pretty tiring. On the plus side, we had a 4d scan this morning! They confirmed that we're definitely having a girl :) She wasn't being entirely cooperative though. She was curled up and her hands and feet were in front of her face so it was a little tricky getting some good pictures, but we got a few!

The debate has begun as to where the family resemblances lie. My Mum thinks she has her family's nose, one sister in law thinks she has my OHs nose and the other sister in law thinks she has my mouth. Only time will tell. As she still has 13 weeks of growing to do and she's currently under water, she will no doubt look a little different by the time she's born! But it's lovely to have a little face in my mind now :)