NCT

So we went to the first NCT antenatal class on Thursday. I really felt for D as he came home from work tired and we had to head straight out the door again for the two hour class. I think he could probably think of better things to do with his time. As it was the first class we had some of the obligatory team building stuff to deal with but other than that the class was worthwhile and the tutor was lovely and very relaxed. It was interesting as she actually re-iterated a lot of the stuff that my yoga teacher is always banging on about but in a clearer, more concise and less preachy way. The group seem really lovely and hopefully we'll get to know some of them better as time goes on and be a good support for each other. D came out of the class quite chatty about everything and I think he found it worthwhile too. We have 4 more classes and I'll also be going to the breastfeeding class too.

Time ticking on...

I had a routine midwife appointment this morning. All is fine. My blood pressure hasn't risen at all throughout the pregnancy. The babies heartrate is still good. She is maintaining the growth rate on my chart. My iron levels are fine. However, my platelet count from my last blood test was a little low. It's supposed to be between 150 and 400 and mine is 147 or something close. So I need to have my blood re-done next week to check that it's not dropping further. If it stays as it is then it'll be fine but if it drops below 100 then I'll need to see a consultant so they can 'make a plan' for the birth. I'm not concerned at this point. I've made an appointment for next Friday at my GP surgery for the blood test and I'll also be having a whooping cough vaccination to protect the baby as there has been a bit of an outbreak apparently. Have I mentioned that my vocal chords have been weird? I think it must be hormones. The tone of my voice is pretty unpredictable and I can often sound like a pubescent boy! My OH has hinted more about the baby shower that a friend is holding for me and who is going to be there, including one of my friends who doesn't live locally. She then sent me a text to say that she was coming down 'for a family do' and we've arranged to meet for coffee so I'm pretty sure it's happening sometime that weekend! (14/15 Sep). My OH (I'll refer to him as D from now on) was angry because apparently one of my very good friends couldn't make the original date. D was annoyed that she hadn't prioritised the shower. I was a little hurt at first too but having thought about it quite a bit I have to consider that she might not be too keen for lots of reasons. She hasn't ever expressed an interest in having kids but apparently she broached the subject with her boyfriend recently (boys are bigger gossips than girls!). Maybe she's just not interested in a baby themed event or maybe having a baby is actually something she quietly really wants but is concerned about it not happening due to her relationship/age/etc. So if she doesn't make it to the shower I'm not going to take it personally. My back and rib pain continues and I'm having good days and bad. I'm increasingly uncomfortable generally! I'm finishing work at 3:30 instead of 5 at the moment. I'm taking it as annual leave but my boss has said that I should just go home if I'm not feeling good enough to work and not take leave. She knows that I don't take advantage and that a lot of people would so she's being very flexible which is great. I had a massage on Saturday which was done on a normal massage couch but with warm water pads on top. I lay on my back the whole time and the therapist massaged my back between the pads and my back. It was really nice not to have to move for the full hour and it was very relaxing. I might have to squeeze another one of those in before the baby is born! When I got home afterwards my Mum had just arrived at the house and was waiting for me to get back. She wanted to know if I would like her to use some of my left over wedding dress material to make a christening gown. She wanted to check in case I thought it would be too old fashioned. What perhaps she should have been asking was whether we are planning on having a christening, which we're not! So I had to break that to her in my post-massage stupor. It was really nice of her to offer to make a gown and hopefully she's not too upset about it. I don't consider myself to be a religious person. I intend to educate my child about religion generally and let her decide for herself. D is a christian but he doesn't attend church and doesn't believe that our baby will be banished to hell if she's not christened. We like the idea of having some kind of ceremony but we're not clear about what would be right for us at the moment. We've thought about Godparents (or maybe Guideparents!) but we have quite a few friends that we would want to ask so it would be really hard to know where to draw the line. We'll give it some thought. The babies movements are definitely getting bigger! There are more large movements and she appears to still be in the same position (head down on my left side). It's still odd to think that there is actually a baby in there! I only have 6 weeks left at work now which will fly by I'm sure. My stuff for the hospital bag is slowly piling up and at our next midwife appointment at 34 weeks we'll be discussing the labour and birth. Our NCT (National Childbirth Trust) antenatal classes start this week. I'm looking forward to meeting some more mums, hopefully making some new friends and learning a bit more. I'm really hoping that D finds the classes useful too and benefits from meeting some other dads-to-be. We're getting close to this baby being here now!!

A tough week

I've had a tough week with my back pain and the pain has also moved around to my ribs (under my right boob). I googled it and found this page. This is exactly what I'm experiencing and the symptoms and the way to relieve it are exactly what I’ve been experiencing with the back pain too. I guess since the baby has moved it has just made the pain shift around to the front. My time sitting at work has been really tough going. So much so that I devised a plan to request to take annual leave from 3:30pm each day between now and just before I go on maternity leave. It's by 2-3pm in the afternoon that I'm starting to lose my mind with the discomfort. This would mean a total of 5 days annual leave which I would no longer have to add onto the end of my maternity leave but I think that this is a good use of the time. I'm also getting more and more tired and the rib pain, plus general discomfort, is affecting my sleep more and more so working a shorter day would be really welcome. My manager agreed to this for next week to see if it's the right thing for me to do which seems sensible. I'm really looking forward to walking out early and coming home to lie down, do some stretching and some other light exercise, maybe take a short walk and get some stuff done around the house to avoid sitting, maybe take a nap. I think it'll be a good move. At the last midwife appointment, my OH asked her what she knew about the magnesium citrate that I've been taking. She wasn't sure and said that she would look into it. She sent me a text later in the week so say that as there isn't enough research about it she didn't recommend that I take it. I can't bear the thought of going without it at this stage. So we were then left frantically asking anyone who might know for some reassurance. My sister in law asked a medic friend of hers who she trusts and she felt it was fine. And another medic friend said it should be OK. They are both Americans looking at different data from docs in the UK. So I'm still taking it... I feel pretty happy with this decision. I think a lack of research shouldn't be reason alone not to take it. But I understand that my midwife would have to advise me the way she did on those grounds. All of my organs seem to really be feeling the pressure now. Even sitting and lying around seems to put pressure on my lungs and the heartburn comes and goes through every hour. I don't know where she is going to go as she gets bigger! Hopefully I will keep stretching out front as there is no more room for her inside! The lack of being able to find a comfortable position has been getting me down quite a bit. I'm not sure how the remaining 10+ weeks is going to work out! Not sure if I've mentioned this before but I occasionally get very unexpected gushes of fairly watery discharge...which is nice! I'm now using panty liners pretty much all the time as a precaution... My husband is building a wooden box which will be a time capsule for our daughter to open when she turns 18. We have a few ideas about what we will put in it. The pregnancy tests, her scan photos, hospital wrist bands, the outfit that we will bring her home from the hospital in, a newspaper from the day of her birth, her first shoes, favourite baby toys, a savings bond of some kind, letters that we will write to her each year, a 2013 bottle of wine, her baby blanket, music from 2013, a collection of Christmas tree decorations (one bought each year), and I'm sure that we'll add to it. Maybe I'll print this blog too! I'm also planning to do a photo book of the pregnancy and her first year which she can look at before she turns 18. I've been half expecting that my "surprise" baby shower might happen this weekend. My OH told me that a friend of mine is planning one as he knows I'm not great with surprises and he didn't want me to worry that no one would throw one for me! But nothing so far...so I'm thinking maybe in the next 2 of 3 weekends  We did a bit more shopping this weekend for, to be honest, slightly dull things that we are unlikely to get as presents: nappies, muslins, cot sheets, flannels, baby bath and foam support, maternity pads, nightshirts and nightgown for the hospital. For the hospital, my OH bought a cute pink sports bag for the babies stuff and he and I will pack our own separate bags as well. I'll slowly start pulling the necessary stuff together over the next few weeks! It still hits me occasionally that we have come from the journey of IVF to actually buying nappies and stuff! So surreal. So lucky.

Good news

I started off this week feeling a bit nauseous in the mornings. I thought the morning sickness was coming back for the third trimester! But thankfully it’s passed now, so I don’t know what that was all about. We had our 28 week midwife appointment on Tuesday. She met us at the hospital as I needed to have an Anti-D shot as I’m Rhesus negative and so they do it in a clinical setting in case I were to have a reaction of any kind. We met in one of the birthing rooms of the Birthing Centre (the low risk birth unit). It was very quiet in there – no babies being born. There are three birthing rooms, two of which have a pool. They have birthing balls, beanbags and a birthing stool too. They were decent size rooms although not overly big for moving around in. If there were a few of you in there I imagine it would feel pretty crowded. I asked the midwife what the difference is between the birthing centre rooms and the labour ward as I’m not sure which I want to go with. She said that the labour ward rooms have more emergency equipment in tem and they are a little bigger, there is only one pool available on the labour ward and that it’s generally noisier and you can hear noise coming from the other rooms. My initial thought was that I wanted to be in the low risk birth unit but one of the doctors we spoke to after a scan suggested that it would be better to be in the labour ward in case there is an emergency. Although the two wards are very close to each other, she pointed out that in an emergency there isn’t time and it would be much better to be exactly where you need to be. So, now that thought is in my head I wonder whether we should stick with the labour ward to reduce any anxiety about it. I would prefer to be in a quieter environment though. I just don’t know… Being in the hospital seemed to really be a wakeup call for my OH! I think the reality of me being in labour and in pain was brought home to him. He’s talking about getting his hospital kit ready to go now! Anyway, the 28 week antenatal checks were all fine. My bump was measured for the first time, and although she is at the lower end of the ‘range’ (26 cms I think) the midwife assured me that this was perfectly fine. The heartbeat is still good and strong and at around 140 bpm. All very reassuring. A friend came over to see me on Tuesday night. She had told me early on that she was happy to share her birth story and I took her up on the offer. She was lucky and had a good, quick labour and she described it as not really that bad at all. She used a hypnobirthing CD for a few weeks before hand and she said she thinks that it really helped her to stay calm and that her midwife noticed it too. (Something else for the shopping list then!) She also pointed out that everyone focusses on the labour and birth but that it’s really important to prepare for the baby! She wasn’t aware how regularly the baby would need feeding when hers was born! I think I’ve been preparing myself reasonably well – watching videos about how to change nappies, etc, but it was a good point! Labour is just the beginning after all. I had an appointment with a gynae physio for my back pain on Wednesday morning. She was very kind and tried to be helpful, but I didn’t really come away with any advice to really help the pain. She confirmed that she thinks the pain is related to my scoliosis but there isn’t much we can do about a skeletal problem. She suggested trying some different chairs but they were all designs without back support and I know that good back support is the only thing that really helps me. She also suggested leaning forward onto a cushion at my desk, but I know that leaning forward is really uncomfortable. So all in all, not helpful unfortunately. On the plus side, I feel like I’ve tried all the options and got advice from as many people as I can (2 physios, an acupuncturist, my yoga teacher, friends, family….) and that I’m now at the point where I just need to do the things that I know help keep the pain to a minimum and remember that this isn’t forever! I’ve had the pain for about 8 weeks and I have another 8 weeks at work so I just need to battle on with it. I can cope so much better at home where I’m not seated all day. Bring on maternity leave! On Wednesday afternoon we had our 28 week scan. This is one of the additional growth scans that we were offered purely because we were IVF patients. We’ll have a final one at 35 weeks. The sonographer was really lovely and she clearly loves her job. She explained everything she was looking at really clearly and she was almost as excited about seeing it all as we were. We saw some really detailed pictures of the heart and all of the measurements were spot on. She described the baby as “textbook” which was really lovely to hear. One big surprise is that she’s moved to head down position! She has been lying across my belly with her head under my ribs on my right for weeks and weeks and she must have moved very recently as we definitely felt her head in its usual place in the last day or two. But now her head is down (yay!) and she is lying laterally on my left. So she only needs to move her spine around to the anterior position (spine facing forwards) and she’ll be right where she should be for labour. I was very pleased to hear this! I was slightly worried that she might be getting a bit too comfortable where she was and that I wasn’t helping by spending so much time leaning backwards to help my back. My yoga teacher had said that you need to create a ‘hammock’ by leaning forwards to give the baby space to move around. But it seems like the baby knows exactly what she is doing and hopefully she will stay head down now. I need to have faith in her and my body. #proudmomma Speaking of yoga, I’ve decided that I just need to keep my mouth shut during the chatting time! The teacher was talking about the support that partners can give and how some birthing ‘gurus’ suggest that perhaps men shouldn’t be present as they interfere with things when the mother should be left to focus on it by herself. And that men need to be given practical tasks so that they feel useful. So I asked what kind of tasks they should be given if they shouldn’t be involved too much. I was genuinely just a bit confused about what role they should be given but I don’t think my questioning went over very well for some reason. My question has answered very quickly (“they can make sure you drink regularly”) and then we moved on. I’ve come to the conclusion that the teacher likes the sound of her own voice and isn’t a very good listener. Oh well. I think the yoga itself is beneficial and I’m getting to know the other group members which is really nice. I mentioned the IVF to one of the girls and she was asking me about it. I said that now we are where we are, we feel extremely lucky and the journey of IVF is all starting to feel like a distant memory already! I had ordered a birthing ball and it arrived yesterday. I bought it into work today to try sitting on it instead of my chair (as suggested by the physio) but as I suspected it isn’t helping my back due to the lack of back support. But I will use it to exercise on and during the early stages of labour at home. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that I’ve been working on my birth plan. I used my sister-in-laws plan as a starting point along with a phone app that I have. It’s coming together and I’m hoping that the antenatal classes that we’re starting next month will help answer some of the questions that I’m still not sure about. Getting excited!

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 :)

Fear and pain

I've had a slightly shitty week. The back pain has been pretty bad. Had a bad day at work with it on Monday and then tried a lumbar support on Tuesday morning which intensified the pain so much that I thought I was losing my mind and had to leave work early. My OH booked me in to see an acupuncturist on Thursday evening. She was very good and spent quite a lot of time looking at my back trying to find out the source of the pain. She suggested some things to try and did some cupping and put in some needles. My back was so tense that it pushed the needled out! I've come to the conclusion that the pain is being caused by a combination of the scoliosis that I've always had and extra pressure on my back due to carrying the bump. I'm getting to know the ways that relieve it but it's still exhausting to sit for any period of time. I've been feeling generally a bit more anxious and overwhelmed about things in the last week. Time seems to be flying by all of a sudden and I suddently felt the need to get organised with my hospital bag list, birth plan and understanding labour. I've started frantically reading up and taking loads of notes! I wish our antenatal classes were starting sooner than September. I've been reading about Braxton Hicks and I'm wondering if I've had a few of these already. There have been a couple of times where my abdomen has tensed up and reached a kind of peak around my belly button. I thought that it was the baby pushing out and tensing at the time but now I wonder... It wasn't painful at all, just a different sensation. I went to yoga on Wednesday night and the teacher really worried me. We were talking as a group about fears of birth and she asked if we had any stories and I mentioned that my mum had two very long labours. She pulled me aside afterwards and said that I'm likely to have difficulties too. I was feeling positive about the birth and she made me anxious. I felt like she was making a rash judgement on very little information. She said that it's likely that my Mum had a pelvic imbalance that stopped the baby finding the right position and she recommended that I have cranial sacral therapy but didn't really explain how this would help other than that it would release tension in my skull, spine and pelvis that might have been there since birth... My mum has made a drama of her birth experiences my whole life and it really scared me when I was younger, but as I've got more knowledgable I've become less fearful so it was horrible to go back a step! I know that I have to take what my yoga teacher said with a pinch of salt but she is a doula with a lot of experience and so I also feel that I should give her some credit too and consider what she suggests. I felt pretty pissed off and stressed last night that what is supposed to be making me feel more confident and positive about labour had left me anxious and confused. But having thought it through logically this morning, and having talked to my OH and sister in law I have gained some perspective. My mum gave birth 40 years ago for fucks sake. She was probably on her back the whole time, I don't think she had anyone with her (my Dad was watching the cricket!) and I doubt that she was very well informed about the process of labour. Although she speaks of being in labour for 5 days with my sister, I don't know how much of this was pre-labour, early-labour or active labour. I know that my experience will be completely different from hers anyway. And if I do run into difficulties I will be in the right place, I'm happy for the medical staff to intervene and help me if it's needed. *sigh* On a positive note, we saw the midwife on Tuesday morning for our 25 week check. She is happy with everything and the baby's heartbeat is strong and in the right range. Also, I chatted to a few more people at the yoga class. One of the girls that I was paired up with is called Antonia! To my OH this is the third sign that it's the right name! We haven't committed 100% yet though. I discovered that some of the other girls who are as pregnant as me or more so aren't as prepared as we are with buying stuff. And one girl is 39 weeks pregnant and is only doing her birth plan next week! I couldn't cope with that! She does seem extremely relaxed about everything though.

Update

Lots to mention since my last post: 1. My body is being prepared for earlier mornings - I'm waking up at around 5:55am every morning. Weird. 2. We've been getting the nursery a bit more ready by putting up some wall decals. It's looking really cute :) We've been leaving the door open so we can have a peek whenever we walk past.

3. I've been a little bit snippy to my OH recently, which he was none too pleased about... I really don't mean to be. The weather has been getting warmer and I've been getting a bit impatient and cranky. Oops. 4. We went on our last child-free holiday, our babymoon, last week. We spent a week on an island in Croatia. It was bliss. Really chilled. I only spent one day site seeing and I really struggled in the heat. Otherwise we took it really easy. It was great to have the time to wallow together in our happiness about the baby, and sit together every afternoon watching her wiggle :) We bought a cute monkey for her too.

5. We've been really struggling with names up until now. We had a couple of possibles (Cerys and Elsa) but nothing that we have felt really strongly about. The were some other names that we like but that are already too popular (Ava and Isla). On our journey to Croatia my OH had a name pop into his head (Antonia, with Toni as a pet name). We both liked it and and played with it for a few days. Then we went on a day trip to Dubrovnik and bought a little wooden bee for the nursery from a stall-holder. She told me that I had to name it and I asked her what she would name it. And she said Tony because her son is called Antonio. Weird! So this one seems to be sticking more than any others. We're going to wait until she's born before making any final decision though. And I don't want to share this idea with anyone. People have such strong opinions, I don't want to be influenced.

6. I suffered quite badly with acid reflux on holiday. A couple of times I woke up choking on it which was awful. I think it was probably eating so late in the day. It's been much better since we got home. Certain things definitely trigger it though: chocolate (boo!), the green tea that I drink, mint and bending over. 7. The back pain is ongoing... I had a workstation assessment at work just before we went on holiday (I'm now using a different chair and my monitor has been moved) and met with a physio (who has given me some stretches to try). I was really hoping that a break from work would help too but I suffered a little bit on holiday during the rare times I was sitting (rather than walking or lying) and now I'm back at work it's come back again just as bad as before. I forgot to take the magnesium supplements while I was away so I need to start popping those again. Looking forward to getting back to the yoga class tomorrow night for a bit of relief. I'm really hoping that, just like so many symptoms with this pregnancy, that this will be a temporary problem.