19 weeks pregnant

I don't know about you but at 19 weeks pregnant, I felt much more anxious and nervous than at 12 weeks. A few pregnancy symptoms I had have dissapeared or even worse, they were not there at all! At the back of my mind I was wishing that my baby at 19 weeks was alive and healthy.

It wasn't just paranoia, my doubts were founded on specific reasons. I did have very itchy dry hands a few weeks ago which was a normal pregnancy symptom. My friend who recently had a baby, just managed to have her hands back to normal. I've read that this happens due to the hormonal change after labour so you can imagine my worry when I saw my hands back to normal already!

To add to my anxiety, there were all these newsletters I received by e-mail which mentioned that I should start feeling my baby kicking by now but nothing was happening. My partner was even talking to my bump to tell him/her to give us a sign that he/she was there.

I think it was normal to worry. I was going to have my 20 week anomaly scan soon and I immediately started thinking about all the things that could go wrong. At the same time, I was also very excited because we made the decision to ask the sex of the baby so we were really looking forward to that.

On the day of the scan, I've decided to work to keep my mind occupied as it was in the afternoon. I wanted to have an active baby in the scan so I've asked our Koolmami Facebook fans to give me suggestions on what I can do to keep baby moving.

They were all very encouraging and suppportive and I was overwhelmed by the good luck wishes. They told me to have an energy drink or something with caffeine, something cold and chocolate. It was a hot day so I went for a cold energy drink.

We've got to the hospital and we had to wait for a bit which made us more impatient. I did pray for the baby to be okay and for everything to be fine. We were called in and the sonographer was so matter of fact and bored with 'yet another baby scan' that we were just focusing on the screen. 

It's the best thing in the world to see some movement at that point. We realised that the baby grew a lot since the last scan and the images were not as clear. We think it's because the baby couldn't fit in the screen as it did before. The sonographer was focusing on the different parts of the body literally going bit by bit checking her sheet of paper. Baby was very active and I think the sonographer was getting a bit angry that she coudn't get it to stay still (whoops!).

She was going to finish when I've asked her about the sex of the baby. She wasn't going to tell me otherwise! She said 'it's a girl. You see these three little marks here, that's a girl, although 1 in 5 we do get wrong'. The news didn't sink in, she said it with no emotion at all that it sounded like she was talking about the weather or something...
 
We were shocked. I think my partner expected a boy for some reason but he was very happy still. It took us a while to think that we are having a 'she' now and not an 'it' or a 'he'. It feels so weird but we are over the moon to know that everything is okay, she is healthy and alive. We can't wait to meet her! Have a look at out scan pictures. We are so proud!

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Information Overload!

When I went to see my friend's baby for the first time, we were chatting about various things and she mentioned Baby Clubs and freebies. Of course, my ears went into 'recording mode'. Who doesn't love a freebie?

She told me that there are lots of websites you can suscribe to and you get lots of offers, advice, coupons, free samples and some of them throw a cuddly little soft toy too! Of course the purpose of these things is to sell you stuff and hook you from the beginning of your pregnancy with their brilliant marketing but to be honest, I don't care.

Receiving a few newsletters every week is okay with me. I must admit, sometimes I read them, sometimes I ignore them. It's funny because sometimes I get them one straight after the other so I can compare them (sad, I know!) Not sure if you've ever noticed but I did. My baby seems bigger in some of them or it's a different 'fruit' size or even I might have different symptoms!

Anyhow, for example this week (20) one newsletter says that baby is the size of a grapefruit, 6.4 inches long, his lungs and digestive system are developing and I should already start feeling kicks (this is the bit I read anyway) avoiding all other product 'suggestions'.

The other one is a bit more interesting because it covers different subjects such as how your baby responds to your moods, getting the most out of your diet, the facts about sex in pregnancy, great tips for unpleasant symptoms, could you be suffering with thyroid dysfunction?, a dad in the making, how you are already practicing for motherhood and strange taste and cravings.

You can see my point now that it depends what they sell is the information you get. This particular site sells one type of products which you don't need yet so they are much more informative.

Another one just sent information about TENS machines! I haven't even had my 20 week scan yet and I already have got a lot to think about to even start thinking about which machine to buy/rent (if any)!

The next one says that I am 21 weeks already! I've checked that I've put the right due date on their website and it's correct so not sure how they work that out! Apart from that, it just talked about what sort of things should I buy for a newborn?, which is fair enough as I started thinking about that too. I'm an organised person so I need to think in advance about how things are going to happen. They also have links to other useful information. One nice thing it says is that baby can now hear me so I can start talking or singing to him/her.

Baby is now the size of a large banana according to another one! It says that you may well have gained around 10 to 15 pounds and that many mums feel an urge to ‘nest' or start tidying up. They also started talking about the basic things you need to buy for baby. It also explains that sucking, swallowing and blinking reflexes are all in place. The internal organs, vocal chords, genitals, eyelids and eyebrows are also developing and your baby's skin will soon be covered in a protective white coating called 'vernix'.

As you can see, a lot of things happen in just one week! How can you keep up? My mum probably didn't know even 1% of this! Was she less happy about it or did I suffer because of this? I don't think so. It's just that with the Internet, everything is available at the touch of button and Dr Google could be so evil sometimes for anxious (impatient) mums like me! If you still want to go ahead and sign up for all these newsletters, they were www.boots.com, www.pampers.co.uk, www.bounty.com, www.cowandgate.co.uk www.aptamil.co.uk




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Amazing!

There was a really nice surprise on my last midwife’s appointment. She asked me to jump on the bed and I wasn’t prepared for anything else! I really thought she was going to do an internal examination or something like that, but I was wrong. I was a bit embarrassed because I was still spotting...

She said I’m going to feel your baby to see how it’s growing. She put her hands on my tummy and identified the top and bottom of my uterus. She showed it to the student midwife who was with her. She said that although I’m 15 weeks, baby feels higher than that. She didn’t use a tape measure, just her hands.

I was intrigued by this, so I’ve found out on http://www.babycentre.co.uk/pregnancy/antenatalhealth/largeforstageexpert/ that ‘the number of centimetres your bump measures should be the same as the number of weeks you are pregnant, give or take 2cm. Carrying a little extra fat, or being shorter than average, may also make the measurement bigger’.

Since I was in the horizontal position still, she said ‘we are now going to hear your baby’s heartbeat’. I was so excited and scared at the same time! What if she couldn’t find it? What if something was wrong? Anyway, I was there already so I might as well go through it. She put some gel on my belly and advised me that it might take a few seconds to find the heartbeat and not to worry. She knows that those seconds can seem like minutes for every mum. 

She tried once, nothing. Then she tried again, nothing. Finally, she found it! Yay! It was amazing! It sounded just like a train at high speed! It was beating very fast. Then she let me listen to my own heartbeat which was completely different, much slower and it sounded like a boomerang being thrown. 

Then, the shocking part of all, she said ‘it’s a boy, it’s a boy!’ I asked her ‘really?’ She said that if it was a girl, the heartbeat would have sounded like a horse galloping and beating even faster. I went online to find out but according to this website http://www.in-gender.com/Gender-Prediction/Fetal-Heart-Rate.aspx , this theory is false.

My midwife said this is not 100% as sometimes she gets it wrong so who knows? I need to test this asap! Let’s get some evidence together! Please put a comment if you remember what your baby’s heartbeat sounded like and if you had a boy or girl. It’ll be fun to know!

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15 weeks today!

I had the day off to see the midwife for my 15 weeks appointment so Gareth was in the shop. She was meant to tell me the results of my blood and urine tests and take more blood so I wasn’t really excited about it. 

 As soon as I’ve got there, I met a midwife student who was being trained by her. She asked me if I brought a urine sample but I didn’t remember I had to do that! Am I having ‘baby brain’, already? Although, I must admit when I was reading my notes a few days ago, it did say there about testing the urine on every midwife visit! Anyhow, she let me off for now.

The other lady took my blood pressure which is a bit higher than the first time. They said not to worry as probably the first time it was really low due to being on the first trimester and drained.

 

Then, she told me the results of my tests. Luckily, everything was fine, no infections whatsoever, great! They did test me for Sickle Cell Disease because I am from South America and this is an area of high risk apparently. There is more information about this on http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Sickle-cell-anaemia/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Afterwards, she took my blood again for the Down’s syndrome screening. This is the only stage we are taking towards finding out. If the results come back as ‘high risk’ then we are going to leave it up to destiny. As the famous song says, whatever will be, will be. We will still love our baby with all our heart, no matter what happens.

She explained that if it is ‘high risk’ then someone (a midwife) will give me a call within a week to talk about my options which are having diagnostic tests such as CVS (Chorionic Villus Sampling) and Amniocentesis. These tests carry a small chance of miscarriage so that is not something we’d like to do. This website explains them in detail http://www.babycentre.co.uk/pregnancy/antenatalhealth/testsandcare/screeningfordowns/ . 

She also added that if the results come back as ‘low risk’ then I will receive a letter within 10 days. The thing is that these results are not 100% accurate so the chances of them being wrong still exist.

It is up to every person to decide what is best for them and the baby. We took our decision and will stand by it so let’s see what happens.

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