madelinekelly

Nearly 38 weeks pregnant now. The home-birth midwife team are on standby to come dashing round at the first sign of labour, apparently. If I was to have the baby now it wouldn't be considered premature! Gosh. I hope I don't have it now. I still have 2 full weeks of teaching, rehearsals, exams, church services, and sorting-out-of-house-and-finances to do first.

Anyway, how am I doing? Boringly well, just like last time. Still no varicose veins, haemorrhoids, stretch marks. No swollen ankles (which is actually better than last time). Lots of kicking and hiccuping going on in there, and the baby has started to drop down into my pelvis just a little.

It hasn't been a fun pregnancy, though. Queasy until week 24. Then, after 2 weeks of blissful health, I caught a chest infection which knocked me out for 4 weeks (Matt and River had it too, so we were all pathetic together). Just got over that and then a week later came down with some kind of sinus infection which left me bunged up and sleepless for 2 weeks. Then, just before I got over that, the Braxton Hicks contractions started -- and they always make me feel a little bit sick. So there we are. Out of the last 32 weeks I've had 3 weeks of feeling good. Oh well. Other women have had it much worse than me, I know.

I had to have a glucose tolerance test to see if I had gestational diabetes. I don't have gestational diabetes, but I do now have a hatred of glucose tolerance tests. You have to starve for 15 hours, have a blood test, drink half a litre of Lucozade, wait 2 hours, then have another blood test. Why would anyone choose to drink that vile stuff voluntarily? Synthetic and gassy and nasty and awful. By the time I got home after the second blood test I was shaking and queasy, and didn't feel better until I'd had a lovely solid meal.

River is growing fixated with my bump. Since we told her there was a baby in my tummy she's developed several coping strategies:

( Mummy pig, am I in your tummy? *snort noise* )

The house is progressing frustratingly slowly. At this rate we'll have the render finished by the weekend, but that leaves Matt with basically no time to get all his scaffold-worthy jobs done before the baby is due. He is understandably stressed and upset by this. I am trying to stay focussed on having a happy birth, and not getting sucked into worrying about the house again. We're not going to be able to live there until next March anyway so it's all moot.

Baby update! I had potentially my last midwife appointment today. My blood pressure is still low, which is great. The Braxton Hicks contractions have been doing their job of shifting the baby into position, and now she is apparently perfectly positioned for birth. Three-fifths engaged as well (which just means that her head has sunk so low into my pelvis that only two-fifths of it can be felt from the outside). This makes me really happy because I'd been worrying that I'd start waddling when she engaged -- and I haven't at all. I've been feeling a lot of twisting/turning low in my abdomen, which is also good according to the midwife: it's the baby trying to get her head at exactly the right angle.

Last week I had glucose in my urine sample, which got the midwife worrying about gestational diabetes. If I'd had the same thing this week then I'd have had to do the horrible fasting/overloading-with-sugar blood test tomorrow. And if that had turned out positive then they would probably have induced birth within a week. Induction is unpleasant so I was really worrying about this. But luckily I had a clear reading today. Hurray!

And that's how things stand at the moment. :)

Further to my other post on all the various side-effects related to pregnancy that I'd had -- which I think took us up to week 29 -- I thought I'd get you all up-to-date on how things stand at 38 weeks. ( Details under the cut. )

I'm 29 weeks pregnant now -- only 11 to go! -- and I thought it might be interesting to at least a few of you if I wrote down the various odd changes that I've gone through since we conceived in February.

So. What follows are side effects that have been reported by many pregnant women, so I know it's not just me. :) I should say that, although I've written a lot here, the majority of side effects have been entirely trivial. The only really bad things have been the nausea and the exhaustion through the first trimester.

( Mammoth post under the cut. )

1. Matt passed his driving test on Monday! First time! YAY! I am so proud and so delighted and so excited for him. I remember the way my life changed when I suddenly had independence and could go wherever I liked (very important when you live in a rural place with a rubbish bus service like my rock) without having to ask for a lift. Oh joy. It's going to change his life.

2. Baby is kicking like crazy, every four hours. Not sure what this means, but I'm hoping it's an indication she'll be easy to settle into a routine once she's out in the open air. Also, I suppose it means she's going to be one of those wriggly, active babies who don't like being held, ie. nothing like me. Oh well.

3. House continues to be an entertaining train wreck. We tried to get the chimneys swept last week, but the sweep couldn't do it because it turns out that the visible pots on the stack actually belong to our schizophrenic neighbour, and our flues have been capped with concrete paving slabs. I really wish I could go back in time to the 1970s to watch the crazy builders who did so many awful awful things to this house. They must've been easy-going, happy chaps, really.

4. I still have insomnia. Boo hiss.

5. Trying to do a bit of yoga every morning, which is fun and lovely. Matt joins in sometimes.

6. Might be moving into the house this weekend! Eeeeee! We've got a bed and everything (and by "everything" I mean "sofa and chest of drawers"). I shall post photos once the room is set up to my satisfaction.

7. My bump is impossible to ignore now. A photo will be forthcoming once I've stopped freaking out. :D

8. We've thought of names! ( NAMES! )