madelinekelly

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.

First of all, rather worryingly, if I was to have the baby right now it wouldn't be considered premature. She'd be small, but she'd be able to survive on her own. If I was to have an elective caesarean section then it would be happening this week. After the antenatal session on C-sections, I am VERY glad I'm not having an elective C-section. Ugh.

Okay. Side effects!

I'm still not sleeping very well, although the reason for this is much easier to pin down now: I can't get through the night without getting up at least once to have a wee. And rolling over in bed is very difficult, so it thoroughly wakes me up each time I attempt it.

By week 33 my ankles had started to swell up in the evenings. My feet have since decided to swell up too. And my wrists, a little bit. It's not much, it's not uncomfortable, and my shoes still fit. Hurray!

Amazingly, I've so far managed to avoid the other obvious visible side effects. No varicose veins, no piles, no stretch marks.

But I am experiencing one invisible side effect: Braxton-Hicks contractions. These started about two weeks ago. Very sporadic to begin with -- just a weird surging sensation up and down the front of my torso. They've become more frequent and more intense in the last week. Now, if I sit still for ten minutes, I can almost guarantee I'll have a "practice contraction". They don't hurt at all -- it's just a little uncomfortable, and sometimes I feel a bit sick just before the surge (I assume because, somewhere inside where I can't feel it properly, my digestive system is being squashed even more than usual) which makes me worry that I'll be the kind of woman who vomits a lot during the early stages of labour. Oh well. Better to get it all out beforehand, I suppose!

Other than that, I've been pretty boring. The community midwife said that, while she would normally be scheduling appointments on a weekly basis at this stage of my pregnancy, I'd been so boringly low-risk and healthy that she was happy to leave things on a fortnightly basis. I don't whether to feel proud of myself or not. Is this down to the efforts I've been making to stay relaxed and hydrated and healthy? Or is my body at its best when it's pregnant? I have no idea.

It's been an interesting year for me and Matt. I occasionally have a small panic about how impossible it is to imagine what our lives will be like once the baby is born. For the last ten years I've been able to reliably predict how the next day, week, month, year will unfold. Not any more. That loss of control sits uneasily with me. No doubt this will be very character-building! I should also say that it was the sense of predictability and unchangingness that motivated me more than anything else to try and start a family. I was getting tired of hearing myself say "nothing, really" whenever anyone asked "what's new?".

In summary, not much in the way of side effects to report, I'm afraid. I'll try harder with the next update...