my-speck

i'm pregnant and it's going to be a rollercoaster

Hospital Bag. What to take. June 3, 2009

Filed under: baby stuff,birthing,exhaustion,pregnancy — rakster @ 10:52 am
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Hello Baby,

well.  Aren’t you an active little volcano.  Your mum is very not happy this morning after a shocking night’s sleep.  It wasn’t all your fault, but mostly hormones.   Woke up at 2:45 am and my brain was just “BING – ON!”.   With all sorts of half-real imagininings and panic and stress.  Your Grandad, my work, your dad’s employment.   All non-you related things.   Things to do, people to see.   Aagh.  And then got a major attack of the itches all over my body for no apparent reason.  I almost convinced myself there was a small spider in the bed that had been feasting on me.  But examination in the bathroom revealed that was all just ficticious imagining.

An hour and a half later I finally gave up and got up, changed to the spare room and read my book for an hour.   Yann Martel’s “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios’.   Thankfully I was past the first story – the title of the novel, as that one made me ball my eyes out for about 20 minutes before bed the other night (though in retrospect, although upsetting perhaps helped me sleep better as I was emotionally exhausted by it.  Needless to say the other night your dad did his usual “what the hell are you reading”.  Tried to steal the book and throw it away a few times.  I protested.  Crying sometimes is ok according to my book-reading philosophy.  Ended up he still had to comfort me after the story, with his usual grumpy hug.  But I ended up with the book – so this is what I read last night).  Anyway, the story I read wasn’t exactly uplifting – small sections of a warden’s account of a man’s last hours on death row – the account written to the mother.  About 10 different versions.  So not happy, happy, joy, joy.  But it worked.  Took my mind off whatever it was that had been keeping me awake and stressed, and I managed to go back to sleep.   You then woke me a number of times – your movements at the moment when I’m lying down seem to be pretty major.  Like all limbs and body flailing around like you’re playing volleyball in there.   Its actually pretty disconcerting but I take it as a good sign that you’re healthy.   But yeah, overall I missed a few hours of much-needed sleep so today am feeling a bit shabby to say the least.

Anyway, in order to appease the rising anxious nerves, I haven’t managed to pack a bag for the hospital.   But I have written a list.   So I’ve made a start.   And you dad is in charge of labour food (mostly for him from what people have told me, but we’ll see), and he has made his list too.   Neither of us have got any further than that as far as I know.   So my list:

  • your dad
  • me
  • camera, charger & memory stick
  • cards & games for if we get stuck in a maternity ward for hours with nothing to do.  Or just so we can play cribbage between contractions.   Wishful thinking on my part.  But I’m going with it.
  • my phone.  yes,  I’m addicted to my iPhone and it is coming along with the charger.   How else am I going to communicate with the outside world if there is no wifi / computer in the hospital?   What were they thinking – its a brand new facility, where were the wifi access points, we wondered when we did our tour?   Yes, again, I think you are going to subsume my entire attention after your arrival, and perhaps I won’t be thinking about the internet at all.  In fact I really think I won’t give a flying contraction.   But these are the deranged thoughts I’m frantically having as my ability to reason / think logically seems to desert me more each day the closer you come to arriving.   So I’m putting it on the list so that my brain can stop churning over it and worrying for no rational reason.
  • a bar of lemon myrtle soap.  So I can smell it if I feel like it in the delivery suites.   Its a good smell.
  • a big poster of the rainforest / waterfall to look at in the delivery suite.
  • nightie
  • jammies
  • toothbrush, paste, hair wash, moisturiser, hair band
  • daywear.  That is on the hospital’s suggested list.   What the hell does that mean.  I think I will just shove random t-shirts into the bag on the day.  Whatever is clean.  Pants are surely optional when you’re in hospital and have just had a baby.
  • new big boobie maternity bras (yay, I finally found one that fit when in Sydney a few weeks ago, and then ordered up from the states – they arrived yesterday so now I have enough big-boob over-the-shoulder-milk-holders to hopefully be comfortable.  For reference – Anita brand seemed to be the only ones that came in big enough sizes and didn’t make me look like I was a large mono-boobed monster and felt comfortable too).
  • granny knickers – yeah, I’m taking the advice of a friend and buying up a pack of granny knickers that I can THROW OUT soon after you’ve arrived and we’ve gone home.  I looked at the ‘wearable’ knickers – those incontinence knickers yesterday.  One of my friends who is due the same time was given some by another friend who recently had a baby and said they were great.   Yes, maybe convenient and I know some mums use them.  But I don’t know if I could bring myself to put them on.  Too much like your nappies.    It might just depress me.   I’ll stick with maternity pads for the moment.
  • my ugg boots
  • my ankle brace
  • nursing pads to stop my leaky boobies
  • maybe a few cloth nappies so that we can get the midwives to show us some nifty folding techniques to keep your liquid poo in.
  • clothes for you –
    • 6 singlets,
    • 6 growsuits,
    • a beanie,
    • 2 pairs of socks,
    • and a blanket to wrap you in for when you come home
  • and newly added as of yesterday, something stylin’ to wear home so I feel like a superstar mum.  My friend I visited yesterday had a great vintage long dress that almost glows radioactively there is so much orange and green from the 70s in it.   I don’t know I have that exact thing, but surely there is something in my wardrobe left that doesn’t make me look like a bloated whale.

Ok.  Got it all out.  Can now relax.  Schedule relax time.

Love you

mum

p.s. Byron Bay weekend beckons.  I think I really need it.

 

your dad cheated (or alternatively he was a creative problem-solver) and carpal tunnel attacks May 27, 2009

Filed under: healthcare,pregnancy — rakster @ 9:23 am
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Hello Speck!

I got it wrong again – your dad didn’t win the celebrity babies (that was S of course & then K second), he won the “fill-in the nursery rhyme blanks” game.   Which I still find pretty amazing (they were hard).   But I got it out of him – how he did it.  Quite tricky really.   He collaborated.  With the 5 year-old L.   So your dad apparently sang the beginning of the rhyme to L & L just finished off the sentences.   Even the one about 3 men in a tub who apparently came from rotten potatoes (who would have known???).    It makes more sense now.   The baby food one I’m not as surprised about.

And I have worked out why my hands are so sore in the morning and why my arms keep being totally numb when I wake up in the middle of the night.  It seems I may have pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome.   Another pregnancy-ailment that occurs mostly in the third trimester and should hopefully disappear when you’re born.   Something to do with the fluid retention in my hands and wrists and crunching up my hands when I sleep.  I’m going to try to drink heaps more water today and perhaps some camomile tea and see if that helps.  Its pretty painful, but goes away relatively quickly once I wake up and move my arms, wrists and fingers about (though this of course hurts).   Love the body changes with pregnancy.  You never know what is coming next.

Hope you’re well.  There is still lots of vigorous movement going on down in there so I suspect you’re not ready to come out yet.  Still in-training.

love you

mum

 

Not much new to report. I think you’re getting bigger, you’re kicking around a bit. And the "Pramway" is underway. April 30, 2009

Filed under: exercise,pregnancy — rakster @ 9:30 am
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Good morning Speckle,

It’s cold! I actually got under the duvet last night for the whole night. First time this year – I’ve been so hot that usually I let your dad have it all (a treat which he is enjoying as I am traditionally a duvet stealer but since I’ve been pregnant I’ve been hot and haven’t wanted it). Bbbbrr. Going to the bathroom five times in the freezing cold is tough. So I stayed in bed until 7:30. Lie-in. Mmm.

I’ve been a busy fat waddler this week. Running about to my yoga and exercise classes. I’m getting quite proficient at rolling my hips around on a fit ball. You generally just seem to sleep through it all, so who knows if you even realise that I’m exercising. I ordered a new fitball for us at home but it hasn’t arrived yet. My favourite exercise is squats against the wall with the fitball – the rolling motion of the ball on my back feels a bit like a massage and helps relieve the pressure that has built-up. I’m not convinced by the “Yogababy” pregnancy classes yet though. Too many people in the class and just a bit of a mish mash of movements like rolling your hips, with maybe warrior pose thrown in for good measure. I think the normal yoga classes with some modified poses are better.

You are very much awake this morning and rolling around down there. You aren’t too bad though – earlier this week I think you managed to get your foot wedged in the space between two of my ribs and just jammed it back and forth for at least 20 minutes. I apologise slightly, but after attempting to get you to move gently I resorted to some relatively strong pushes to get you to move (read – you jab me and I jabbed you back when it got intolerable). At the moment you seem to be active first thing in the morning, and then usually again around 3pm and then again around 6pm. Either I’m sleeping better as I’m going through another really tired phase, or you’re also sleeping through most of the night too. Hope you keep that up! I’m sure you won’t.

Your dad started building the new decking path from the front gate to the front verandah yesterday. He dug a big hole in the middle of the front garden for some support posts, moved the massive piece of rock under the deck that acts as a step, and sledgehammered the step from the footpath right away. The wood and stuff arrived on a big truck (which incidentally took out a large branch on the black bean tree – very unfortunate as it was a branch that gave the front of the house a lot of shade in summer), and he has done some priming on the joists (or whatever they are called) so that today it should all be ready to start laying the structure from the path. The plan is a ramp that goes right from the footpath down to the level of our front deck, so we can just roll you on in your pram. Also, it will be easier for people to walk – less tree roots, and general compost material to trudge through. I think the decking we bought matches the front deck, so hopefully it will look ok. We’re not planning on putting any handrails on it though – so I’m sure as you get bigger you’ll stack it off the side many times – to a 30cm max drop. We’re planning on mulching up around the sides and putting some more garden bed in, so it should at least be a soft landing.

Hope you’re well.
love mum

 

goodness, is this a practice endurance workout? April 21, 2009

Filed under: development stages,pregnancy — rakster @ 5:17 pm
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Hello Speck!

I wrote this morning that you’d been active.  Well, was that an understatement.  Just a quick note to let you know that I think this has been your most active day ever.  You’ve been kicking and punching and generally rolling around in there for hours.  Are you bored?

I have been sitting at my desk tapping away on my computer and working, perhaps you’re just sick of staying still for so long?  At lunch I played the tap-tap game with you: where you kick, I tap, and then you return the tap with a kick, then I tap about 2cm away and then you kick there.  I got you kicking up near my lungs and down near my belly, all on the left side.  And you lasted for ages, about 9 or 10 taps.  Your previous record was about 4.  So stamina, concentration increasing it seems?

The other alternative is that you’re just getting so squished by now that you’re uncomfortable so you are incessantly moving to try to get comfy?

We will never know.

love you

mum

 

week 30! omg 10 weeks to go. And Antenatal classes Mark #3. April 17, 2009

Filed under: birthing,healthcare,pregnancy — rakster @ 11:07 am
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Hello Speck,

Its finally stopped raining for two days straight! Things inside the house are starting to feel like they are slowing drying out, but things like blankets still need an airing after the previous two weeks of torrential downpour. Apparently it is going to be the wettest April in 20 years. Twenty years ago I had just started high school and was alternately catching the train to school and trying to avoid puddles, and being taken down to the park before school by your Grandad M to fill big white buckets with as many Graceville Green Frog eggs as we could before the water levels of the flooded park went down again and they all died as little tadpoles.

So. You are due in 10 weeks. Well, 9 weeks and six days now, to be precise, or 69 days. Your dad and I walked up to the hospital last night for our third antenatal class. This one was with the physio again, and was about pain management and pain cycles, and birthing positions. We got to practice some and best of all we gave each other reciprocal massages. It was pretty good. Interestingly, we went around the room at one point and some of the men and some of the women had to say what they were most worried about. The men were all worried about knowing what to do on the day, what to do if something went wrong, and how to be the best support. The women unanimously said that they had been consciously putting-off thinking about or dealing with the birth itself too much. Which is exactly what I have been doing. Good-oh. Spot-on average. I do think though that the pregnancy hormones have something to do with this – its impossible to get too worried about anything for any length of time, the hormones kick in and I just feel like it will all work out somehow.

You were very quiet through the whole thing, but then on the walk home I was in quite a bit of pain again, I think it was those Braxton Hicks contractions again – my stomach just gets really really tight all over and a bit of back pain, and discomfort. It comes and goes. It abated after about 20 minutes. When we then went to bed you were the most active you’ve been in days. Lots of kicking, moving and pushing again.

Know that your dad and I are both thinking about you and feeling you down there.

love mum.

 

yay! No gestational diabetes for me. Tonight after exercise class I’m going to celebrate with cashew toffee ice cream. April 8, 2009

Filed under: cooking,eating,emotion,healthcare,pregnancy — rakster @ 2:48 pm
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Hello Speck!

Lunch time.  You’ve just made your presence felt once again – you seem to get annoyed by the consumption of food – like it impinges on your space so you have to make your displeasure known by giving a few big solid movements around the stomach and lung/rib area.  I played a game with you and grabbed your little bottom and foot again.  You moved around, so I did it again.  It makes me pee myself with laughter.  It feels really strange when you’re doing ‘tent pose’ and you move around, and your dad can see it from the outside, and I can see and feel it.  You generally like it when I laugh too, and go back to sleep for a bit, so it works out for all of us.

Good news – I don’t have gestational diabetes.  My base level was 4.2 and my 2hour level was 6.2, which is ‘excellent’ according to the endocrinologist.  I’ve read some more about it, and the accepted cut-off levels in Australia recommended by Ranzcog are fasting >5.5 & 2hr >8.0. So I’m well within. Yay.  No carb-cutting diet restrictive practices required.  My iron levels however, are low.  So I’m going to start iron supplements today.  I’ve been tested earlier in the pregnancy for Iron, so I know I’ve been fine most of the time, but I have read that around 28 weeks the level of your growth kicks in again and thus lower iron is common (and apparently this growth-spurt in you can also have links to grumpiness in me – which tallies).  Anyway, I was hoping to avoid iron tablets ’cause they have some nasty side-effects, but I guess it has to be done.

P.S.  I think we will be making cashew toffee ice cream tonight to celebrate after pregnancy physio exercise classes are done.

Love you

mum

 

dreaming of your birth April 1, 2009

Filed under: birthing,pregnancy — rakster @ 8:53 am
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Dear Speck,

good morning little squirmy one.  You are moving around whenever I sit or lie still.  Its been going for days.  Given that I work sitting still, and sleep lying down, that is a lot of squirming.  Its quite disconcerting to lie down and watch you make my stomach go into strange shapes.  You can make it ripple, make a lump in it as you push up & stay pushing up, and make it just jiggle a lot.  Good work.

Had a strange dream about you last night.  I was reading about birthing before bed, so no surprises as to where the thought process came from.   The dream was about you being born.  Good for me, you came out really quickly, and it wasn’t too painful – I actually remember saying to your dad, “well, that wasn’t too bad, must have been really lucky”.   Anyway, you were gorgeous except you had a very funny shaped little nose.  Your eyes looked at me and I loved you a lot straight away and just didn’t want to put you down.  You were pretty clean too compared to the mucous and blood-covered babies I’ve seen born before.   You were also amazingly well-developed for a newborn as next thing in the dream you were trying to pull your own head up and I was trying to make sure I didn’t drop you as you squirmed around.

I think I have a phobia about dropping you when you come out.
And you were a girl, though I don’t remember seeing any genitalia, just knowing that you were a girl.  You had a big head too.  But it is your eyes that I remember most clearly.  Bit spooky.

This week overall you’re suddenly feeling a lot more real to me.  Might be all the moving around.  I’ve started calling you baby, and now I really think of you as a little person more and more.  Wheras before you were a bit more ephemeral in my mind somehow… Now you’re solid and you move me around when you want, and you seem to get cranky when I lie on the side you’re resting on, and you seem to respond to your Dad’s voice when he talks to you (or me) by moving around.  And if you were born early you might survive in a humidicrib.  Much more than just a speck.

anyway, hope you enjoy the exercise down there.

love you
mum

 

All mighty movement March 25, 2009

Filed under: exercise,pregnancy — rakster @ 8:36 pm
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You are either really excited or just a bit antsy like me. You have been kicking, turning and generally pummelling my innards non-stop for three days. Perhaps you know I haven’t written in a while and are worried that I’m not paying you enough thought attention. Aerobics workout. Rest up, you’ll get a chance to tax your dad and I when you come out.

Love you
Mum

 

Saturday Night Fever. Or was it Staying Alive?? February 24, 2009

Filed under: baby's feelings,pregnancy — rakster @ 3:27 pm
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Hi Little Speck.

What is going on down there?? You are kicking like a demon.  The kicks are so strong I sometimes exclaim involuntarily.  Like at dinner on Sunday night, when I think you went for the seventies disco workout pose and flung your leg down and out and your opposite arm up, mimicing John Travolta or someone like that, all in one hit.  It was such a strong and strange feeling – two spots at once, that I yelped out aloud in the restaurant.  Keep it down in there will you! I like to dance too, but you have to dance to suit the situation.

We might have to put some music on at home tonight and have a boogie though – you are going slightly beserk down there this afternoon.   And you are pushing up at the top of where you come to in my belly now (about 2 cm above my distended belly button), rather than just kicking at the bottom.  I take it back.  You are doing loop-the-loops and just kicking or throwing or whatever away down there like a crazed thing.   I wonder if you know that it is making me a bit tired?  I’ve had a very long week at work already even though its only Tuesday.  And your Dad left Sydney on Monday morning after dropping me at work for the drive back to Brisbane.  So I am hanging out with Cokemeister, who forced me to watch the Oscars last night and I stayed up too late…  Retribution is your kicking..

Love you
mum

 

Kicking! Like a crazed soccer player. Or maybe you were attempting to practice throwing a frisbee and it was your arms doing all that pushing on my abdomen/bladder. February 2, 2009

Filed under: baby's feelings,development stages,emotion,exercise — rakster @ 8:26 am
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Good morning Speccie!

You have got bigger and stronger for sure!  Last night I felt SOLID big kicks/movements for the first time.  It was after watching the tennis, I went to bed and couldn’t sleep, so lay there and felt you moving around for a bit.  You really felt like you were wriggling around a lot.  I’ve read that you are more likely to be active at night as my walking about and moving rocks you to sleep during the day.

So, with my hands on my stomach, I laid there and practiced my yoga breathing and pelvic floor strengthening exercises (the fear of you tearing when you come out outweighs the laziness and I’m doing them every day).  Anyway, that seemed to stimulate you even more, and you went a little bit “Hi, I’m here, stop that and give me some attention.  No?? Well, I’ll just kick/punch you as hard as I can repeatedly!”  Or maybe, to be more  <mindblank word has disappeared. baby brain.  Insert appropriate word here>, you were perhaps just testing newfound strength in your little body and saying hello as best you know how.

I lay there for a bit longer and decided that not only could I feel you from the inside, but my hands could definitely feel you too.  So I woke your slumbering dad up (he is a bit used to it ’cause i do it relatively frequently when he has just fallen asleep in 3 seconds – or less – and I lie there for hours); and after listening to him grump a bit, got him to put his hand on my belly and push gently down near my bladder.  And you obliged and remained practising the kicks/frisbee-throwing action.   At first it was a bit softer, so I waited and then said out loud when you did a big one.  He didn’t feel it, but about half a second later you did an almightly HUGE GINORMOUS big one and he withdrew his hand in shock and disbelief.  I think he liked it but was actually a bit scared,  or shocked at how strongly he felt it.   Your dad then immediately went back to sleep after assuring me he felt you too.  So there.  You have made bodily contact with your dad and me now.  Good one.

This morning you are at it again.  Maybe you are hungry and letting me know.  I will go find some yoghurt & fruit to satisfy my and your hunger.

love you.

mum

p.s. we get to see you today for our check-up scan.  I hope all your bits are there and in the right spot.  I was worried about it last night so your kicking/punching was very well-timed ’cause it really helped put me at ease.  You really must have been doing a big aerobic workout so all your heart chambers etc must be fine, surely.  Anyway, we’ll see today. Hope the noise & intrusion doesn’t bother you too much.

xxx M