My baby isn’t the size of a gummy bear yet. I want the gummy bear. I think I’m at the lentil stage, which isn’t quite as cute.
Got a bit whomped by fatigue yesterday, and a headache, which could have been contributed to by the very heavy weather. I took a two-hour nap and felt worse when I woke up.
Today, all efficient and full of beans. Sorry, lentil.
Today I am six weeks pregnant and we’re going for a tour of the birthing center I hope to use. It’s been recommended strongly by at least three friends, and having done the hospital thing and had a straightforward vaginal delivery, I think I’m in a good place to know what I want and choose a birthing center. Anyway, they’re right around the corner from a perfectly good hospital, should the need arise.
I’d love the opportunity to have a water birth, or at least try labouring in water, and to be not hooked up to an IV and monitors (no matter how much I tried to avoid it, once you’re in hospital it’s par for the course, especially if your waters have broken, as mine had) would be so nice. And they do have pain relief available, so I wouldn’t be committing to totally natural birth – though I’d like to give it a shot because I’m still unclear about how much of Monkey’s sleepiness (and therefore not eating and possibly being dehydrated, though I think the doctor was just being a drama queen) in the early days could have been due to the narcotic I was given. I could probably ask them about that too. And they have a good lactation consultant so I might just run things by her in terms of how much we’re still nursing and my plans (hah) for weaning.
I thought this pregnancy would be a much worse kept secret than the first, but so far it’s turning out about the same. I like this time, when phase 1 is complete but I still feel like it’s really just a holding pattern until we get to week 12 and can count it as (hopefully, knocking on wood and not tempting any fate or anything) a really real thing, not just a potentiality.
Rather than being frustrated and impatient, right now I’m enjoying the incognito aspect of it. I’m underground pregnant, if you will. I don’t have to talk about it, I don’t have to make decisions (mostly; I’m happy with where and how I want to do it, and we’re going to see them on Thursday), it’s just a nice little secret we have that will, with luck, blossom forth in due course. Ooh, it’s a Spring metaphor.
Quite possibly I’ll be frustrated and impatient tomorrow. I just have zen hormones going on today.
Five and a half weeks and still, seemingly, with embryo. Yesterday I felt sickish when I woke up, and had a stitch-like twingey pain for a while in the morning, and on Saturday I was very grumpy in what I will describe as a bout of hormones: those have been the only symptoms so far, and today I feel perfectly normal again, thank the deities.
We got a full-size futon from Freecycle and set it up yesterday as Monkey’s “real” bed, with a cute little red IKEA lamp overhead and everything. He thought it was great, and it wasn’t any harder to sneak out of in the middle of the night than the mattress-on-floor arrangement. (Why no, it didn’t inspire him to sleep through the night like a big boy.) The futon mattress is not very comfy, though, so I’ve now piled the other one (which is annoyingly non-standard sized, somewhere between a twin and a full) on top, a la princess and pea, and I think it’ll do quite nicely.
I’ll put a comforter below for a while in case he rolls out, but it’s so big that I don’t think that should be a problem. When I checked on him before I went to bed last night, he was sleeping horizontally, but it didn’t seem to be doing any harm.
4 weeks and 4 days, which officially allows me to say four and a half weeks. I rang the birthing center and made an appointment for a tour. This part is much easier than last time, because I know what sort of birth I want and where to find it. (As my friend pointed out, of course this means that we will now be whisked back to Ireland where the maternity system is in crisis and you can’t find a midwife for love or money…let’s hope not, just for now; if I have to do all my childbearing in the US, that’s not the worst thing in the world. On the other hand, if I could do it in Germany – or the UK or Sweden or many other places in Europe – it would probably be even easier to get what I wanted and be free as well.)
I feel bad talking (to myself) about the “new baby”. It sounds as if this one will be new and improved, to replace the old and inferior one. It should be “next baby” or “other baby” or “smaller baby”. Monkey constantly refers to himself as “Baby” now, which is partly our fault for addressing him as such, and also because his own name is harder to say. When he says “Baby?”, meaning “I want to do something”, I try to respond with “Yes, you are a baby. Your name is [Monkey].” And I’m trying to tell him how he’s a big baby and there are other, smaller babies around too.
Someone brought a big pack of plain cookies to my house for playgroup on Friday, and now I’m stuck with all these boring biscuits. Gah. I nearly asked her to take them home with her since they weren’t eaten, but I suspected maybe she was trying to get rid of them. Or maybe that’s just something I would do. (We still have a bottle of very cheap Chardonnay in the cupboard that I can’t bring myself to palm off on anyone else. The fact that it’s not even in the fridge shows you how unlikely I am to drink it myself. Oh. If I weren’t pregnant, that is. Darn: I had just started thinking how nice a pinot grigio would be now that the weather’s getting warmer.)
Anyway, phase two of the weaning process has been implemented today, as we strollered to sleep for naptime instead of nursing. He didn’t object and was asleep in no time flat. If I can keep it up all week, it should become second nature, and hopefully will inspire him to eat something more than cereal/crackers/waffle during the day. If I can get this established before my boobs really start hurting (assuming they’re going to), that will be great.
So, yeah, pregnant. Two pink lines plain as could be this morning (Friday), making me officially 4 weeks and 1 day pregnant. Just 8 more weeks before we can tell everyone.
Hmm. I have a feeling this time won’t be quite such a well kept secret as the last. But I suppose if we can keep the news to this side of the Atlantic for the time being, it would be a start.
To be honest, I haven’t told anyone yet (save B, by most unsatisfying e-mail), because my playdate this morning where I was going to spill all to my friend was cancelled because her daughter spilled all all over her in a much less appealing manner.
I think the super-bionic sense of smell might have kicked in, but other than that I’m basically delightfully symtom-free and all inspired to eat nice healthy things. I’d better go with that while I can, because who knows when I’ll be jumping on the all-chocolate-and-I’m-pregnant-so-I-can train to Muffinsville.
On Tuesday I took another pregnancy test. It was way too early to know anything, mostly, but B. was headed off to conferency stuff for 9 days, so I thought if there was anything to know we should find out before he went, even if all we could know was a resounding Not Yet.
Which, I suppose, is what I got. As I watched the first pink line appear, I could just just faintly make out where the second pink line would be, if it were there. Several minutes later, when the first line was dark pink and definitely all done, there was a hint of a shade of another one beside it.
Hmmm. I know what that really means is “Ask Me Later”, and I will, on Friday or even Saturday if I can last that long. But having read in several internetty places that no matter how faint the line, if it’s there at all that’s a positive, my mind has jumped straight into “I’m Pregnant” mode.
Whoops. I vowed last night that I certainly wouldn’t do anything so forward and fate-tempting as looking up a due-date calculator until I got a definite positive. I can wait a few days before getting that serious about it. November 20th. Oh, sorry, did I write that out loud?