Such a cliche

At 22 weeks pregnant, I'm finding I 'hit the wall' at about 9pm. I am normally a midnight-and-still-awake person, so this is weird. But then, the last couple of days I have felt like I'm carrying about a ton of weight in my tummy, which is also weird and very tiring, so maybe the two are connected. I'm vaguely bitter about the fact that tiredness is supposed to ease in the second trimester - I wasn't really tired in the first trimester, so I guess this is my particular take on pregnancy.

I am growing a chocoholic, by the way. The only thing that reliably gets the baby bouncing around is chocolate. And maybe blueberries. I've been eating heaps of blueberries to try to be nice to my legs, which are growing thread veins like it's a biological imperative.

I can't believe I haven't been keeping a pregnancy journal! It's not too late to start now though, and I figure I can remember enough, and have enough journal and blog entries to populate the early months and get into a routine from now on.

On that note, I am going 'in bed', as my Italian mother-in-law says.

Narnian adventures

I saw Prince Caspian tonight. Enjoyed it. I still get a thrill when 'good' fights 'evil', when talking animals and centaurs and children best an army of men.

At the door on the way out I was handed an A4 sheet of paper headed '4 Things We Can Learn From Prince Caspian'. It goes on to outline the 'four spiritual lessons we can learn' from the story.

Is it just me who is a bit nonplussed by this? I mean, way to go local churches for doing some targeted direct marketing I guess, but is there an adult who has read the Narnia Chronicles who isn't aware that Lewis wrote them as a Christian allegory? I've only read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and it was obvious to me when I read it again as an adult. I suppose a lot of people see the films only, without reading the books, but how could they have missed this aspect? Once you know it, the 'spiritual lessons' are written plainly on Aslan's furry face.

My critical assessment? Susan's lips were even bigger than in the first film, but I did like this song.

Lazy blogging

Wherein you get the contents of a comment I left on Sarawr's blog, with a bit of editing and some photos:

My week (and a bit)
by Anne

Wednesday 25/6: 4 hours sleep the night before. Fly to Berlin. Walk around all day. Go to some middle-of-nowhere place in East Berlin just for the hell of it and find there is nothing there. Find out from a colleague at work later that its name means 'Mosquito Bridge'. We did actually see some mosquitoes. Wander back into town and stumble across Checkpoint Charlie (bonus!). Get no sleep because Germany won the football and the whole city decides to stay awake outside our hotel window. With fireworks. Note to self - do not stay on the Ku-damm when Germany is playing in the European Cup (I think that was what it was). Actually... Revised note to self - do not go to Germany when Germany (or Turkey) is playing in the European Cup.

Thursday 26/6: Walk around all day in Berlin. Catch a tram to the end of the line in East Berlin and find... huge Soviet-style mega blocks of flats, more flats and... a Chinese restaurant. Play darts and eat kebabs (real ones) in a Turkish pub a bit closer to civilisation. FInd an awesome chocolate shop which sells chilli chocolate so hot I could only manage two small pieces at a time. Get no sleep because Spain won the football and the whole city decides to stay awake outside our hotel window. WithOUT fireworks.

(The Chinese restaurant at the end of the universe)

Friday 27/6: Go to the zoo and subtly distribute M's poem 'The Liberation of Berlin Zoo'. See Knut the famous polar bear cub (not so much cub any more) and discover he is an attention whore, unsurprisingly. Feel sad about zoos in general. Wonder if the elephants are actually suicidal or if dangling their legs into the waterless moat is just exercise. Go to Spandau. Regret it. The Zitadelle is closed for a Kraan concert. They formed in the year I was born. Rock on. At least there is a post office. Post some postcards. Not terribly much sleep. There seems to be a small group of randomly singing men wandering the streets outside our hotel. They go away around 5am.

Saturday 28/6: Relaxing German-language boat tour (we could make up our own commentary!) and a fantastic afternoon and evening in Potsdam, wandering the gardens and biergartens of Sanssoucy (truly Berlin's Versailles, plus windmill). M tries a red Berliner Weisse as the rain buckets down. Almost no sleep because we get on the wrong train (I'm not complaining, I had 4 days of not caring too much where we went and letting M and P make all the travel plans) and we go back from Potsdam to the centre of Berlin via THE AIRPORT late at night and reach the hotel after midnight.

And especially for Sarawr - tomatoes growing in the flower beds at Sanssoucy:

What I learned about Berlin in a very short time:

• Their iced coffees are almost as good as Australian iced coffees, and leave British attempts in the dust.
• I need to go back and do more touristy things - I am fascinated in a very cliched way by the Berlin Wall.
• The Turkish food there is indeed rather wonderful.
• My German is kind of passable.
• The public transport is cheap and excellent.
  
• Pfifferling mushrooms are yummy - in season now.
  

Sunday 29/6: Fly back home. Go to bed too late. Cry in the shower because I am so grumpy.

Monday 30/6: Wake up exhausted and headachey after too much walking for a pregnant person and not enough sleep in Germany for any kind of person. Work.

Tuesday 1/7: Work. Not impressed to be on the early shift this week.

Wednesday 2/7: Work. Go to see a film with friends but I get the day wrong and we miss the film, so eat Indian food together instead. M comes to bed at 3 fricken 30 am despite promising 12.30am at the latest. Not impressed that we no longer have a spare room to which he could be dispatched. (It's now an almost-nursery.)

Thursday 3/7: Almost fall over from tiredness when I get out of bed. Stumble through the day and because I am a perfect wife still go to M's poetry reading in the evening.

Today 4/7: Oh my god, how pregnant do I look now!?! Work. Stood up by MY THERAPIST. (Later find out she had a good excuse.) Bed.

Juicy

I can't remember where I found this picture years ago, but it still amuses me greatly.

Summer?

The weather here has been pretty unpredictable but there have been some gorgeously sunny and warm days amongst the cloud and cool.

Tuesday was our second wedding anniversary so we caught a train from Victoria to the Kent coast and ended up at Broadstairs. A wonderful day of walking on the beach, Italian food and watching teenagers jump from the forbidden pier. I even got ever so slightly sunburned - not something I would remotely tolerate in Australia, but here it's so unusual it felt healthy!

On June 10 2006, we probably would have laughed if you'd said that two years down the line we would be expecting a baby.

What the fruit?

A while back, the baby was apparently the size of half a banana. Then not so long ago, the internet tells me it would be around the size of a grapefruit. My latest search reveals that baby p2 is now the size of an avocado. Fine, except in my fruit-eating lifetime, avocados, while obviously differently shaped to grapefruit, are also rather smaller, no? So, Dear Internet, this fruit analogy deal you've got going on is not making a great deal of sense to me.

This is not an original thought, but I think it does bear repeating.

Barring a misquotation, Sharon Stone thinks that China's earthquake situation might be down to karma.

By that logic, what is she implying about her own nation being hit by Hurricane Katrina?

I was oh so very 'wifely' the other night. I had received some beautiful gifts tied up with ribbon, and as another tea towel fell from its hook to the floor I thought, 'Why don't I recycle these ribbons by sewing loops to all of our teatowels!'.

And lo it was done. While M and I watched 'Planet Earth' on DVD, I was transformed into a diligent housewife. It was fun, and had a great result, but that might be it for me and housewifery for the moment.

I just happened upon a painting of trees in sunlight and shadow, and became intensely homesick for that kind of light. It felt like a break in the rainforest. I'll blame the terribly grey and wet day outside and make a note to get out into the sunshine to find my own miraculous dappled light and dark when acceptable weather finally returns.

Apparently my baby is now about the size of a grapefruit. Seemingly a grapefruit positioned cunningly to put pressure both on my bladder and the fibroid.

Stolen from wish jar journal

Because it's such a spendid, marvellous idea.

http://add-art.org/

Replaces online ads with artwork!

Hiccups

This discomfort is really starting to get to me. A hot water bottle helps the constant sub-ache somewhat. I'm pretty sure this is all compression pain (i.e. the fibroid is starting to get squashed) but rest assured I will explore it fully with my doctor.

I think it's pressing on my bowel, and while I would normally massage my abdomen to relieve the feeling of bloat and wind, I can't because my hand hits fibroid too soon, and I am not massaging my fibroid.

Finally found another pregnant woman (obgyn.net) with a pedunculated fibroid, and she's not having a good time of it as her fibroid is degenerating (i.e. dying) and causing major pain. My fibroid already did that once a couple of years ago and then came back better than ever. Lazarus as fleshy growth.

This lady warned me of some danger signs which could lead to miscarriage, so I will also talk about those with my doctor, and a doctor replied to my post with some information about how s/he treats fibroids with 'red degeneration' which is common in pregnancy.

Forewarned is forearmed. This is rather scary, but it may never happen. I can deal with this discomfort, and probably worse, as baby and fibroid grow, for another (gasp) 25 weeks if need be.

And I will also find out about the antibody issue on Monday. Our miracle baby is going to be even more of a miracle to make it unscathed through all of this. I can't wait to meet him/her.

Things that have changed since I became pregnant

• Eating sometimes feels like a job - am I getting enough calcium/iron/protein...
• Fred the fibroid is on a major growth spurt
• I haven't had a full night's sleep since mid February, when I was ooh, about a day pregnant
• I am beginning to learn to love my tummy
• Belts are not my friend
  

Question

So when does feeling fat turn into, 'Oh, look at my lovely baby bump' ? I'm hoping rather soon.

Two scans down...

So the scan went well on Tuesday and ohmygoodness what a different experience it was for me compared to the first one. Firstly, the technician was one I've had several times before for scans to do with my endometriosis, and the first words out of her mouth were not, 'Wow, you've got a really big fibroid!' She explained everything on the screen, turned on the sound so we could hear the heartbeat, and took lots of time doing the scan, probably mostly because Baby P was not cooperating in terms of a position in which she could measure the back of its neck. She asked me to cough a couple of times, and the baby got the cutest little shock. I bet it's having fun now that I have a dreadful (unmedicated!) cold, what with all the body-jarring sneezing and coughing going on.

Secondly, whereas at the last scan (10 weeks, 3 days) I couldn't make out much on the screen at all - just hyper-magnified blobs as the technician whizzed around (while M could see the heart beating and everything - the scientist in him maybe?), this time (at 12 weeks) there really was was an actual little baby up there. Its legs were crossed at the ankles (just like mine when I lie on my back, I find it the most comfortable position), little hand moving up to its face and mouth every so often, and at one stage it turned its back on us. This is the first time the pregnancy has felt so real.

There is one little issue about antibodies which is of concern, but we don't have all the information yet, and I have this overwhelming feeling that everything is going to be just fine, so I'm going to go with it.

Nope, turns out I still can't feel comfortable blogging about being pregnant until I have my next scan on Tuesday (I was only 10 weeks and 3 days - not that we had a clue really at the first one, which is too early to really tell anything other than (a) there is a baby in there and (b) it is alive). This is the nuchal translucency scan where they look for signs, well one sign, of Downs Syndrome.

I'm mega-worried. Almost makes me long for the days when you were just pregnant until you had your baby. No scans, no tests, just the happy surprise at the end. And I know I could decline this test, but if there is something wrong, even something non-life-threatening like Downs Syndrome, I would rather know so we can prepare for a baby with special needs. I think it's pretty normal to want one's baby to be as healthy as possible, and I know that if this baby is Downs, it has been since the moment of conception - it's not because of something I have or haven't done. That's a big thing with me - maybe it's Catholic guilt.

Whatever happens, we'll always have the magical moment where we discovered we were having a baby. That we could. No one can take that away from us.

Baby photos

Having my first ultrasound scan tomorrow morning. I think I might start pregnancy-posting after that if everything is ok with the baby. Nervous!

I should have been there

except that I was, um... sleeping.

Waiting

I have my first midwife appointment tomorrow, and then my dating scan next Friday. Maybe after that's all out of the way and I can feel confident that (a) I am actually pregnant, and (b) the baby is ok so far, I will start posting about this whole thing.

Just a few snippets:

1. Prenatal vitamins, or rather the iron in prenatal vitamins, are the devil.
2. I'd love a little boy, but given my current obsessive predilection for old Britney Spears songs, I'm thinking there's a very girly girl in there somewhere.
3. I have never experienced this kind of yawning hunger before.
4. I wish I could sleep better. Feb 15 was my last good night of sleep. Which is not to say I don't feel like I could sleep forever. Surely the training for the sleepless, nappyfilled nights doesn't need to start this early?
5. That whole Chinese potty-training thing looks really good, if completely undoable in a London house. Or a London anywhere.

Watch out world

Apparently I am having a baby.

This is totally unexpected but welcome, as with my medical history (severe endometriosis) we thought that if we did ever try (which we weren't doing at the time) it would be an arduous, long effort, possibly punctuated by IVF or IVM. Nature had other plans.

There are no guarantees, but if it does work out, maybe I will be a mommy mummy blogger after all!