It's a baby!

The hideous "something has gone wrong" feeling wouldn't shift, so I made Mike call around local places that do private scans to get an appointment. No amount of bad feeling would make me part with £100 so we tried the cheaper places, one in Leamington didn't answer the phone but a place in Hinckley had a 7pm appointment, and was £50 so we went for it. On the drive I chugged a 500 ml bottle of water, we got there and I filled in a quick disclaimer and in we went. There was a huge TV screen in front of a sofa for Mike, and there it was, a little flickery blob. The guy pointed out the heartbeat (which I couldn't actually see, but said I could. Like Rachel in Friends I didn't want to be a bad mother!). It waved a tiny paddle, but that was about it for movement, it's 1.85 cm long.

Measuring 8+5 days.

 

Ixnay on the liqourice

At the weekend, I happened to buy a rather tasty "strong salt liqourice" mix. It had some "triple" and "double" salt, and the regular salty stuff. I had a few pieces on Saturday, some last night, and 4 or 5 bits tonight. I was really enjoying it when a slightly odd feeling crept over me. I'm not allowed to do/eat anything that I really enjoy...So I had a search. It seems liqourice might not be that safe in pregnancy. A couple of studies suggest that women who eat stupidly large amounts of the stuff run the risk of their children growing up with ADHD, lowered IQ, and other mental development issues. This doesn't particularly bother me - I wasn't going to eat silly amounts, I'm sure that there are many other things that cause those problems etc etc. It does seem to be true however that liqourice is linked to pre-term labour/birth though. So there's another thing to avoid.

In other news, I had my first batch of blood tests today. Right arm refused to bleed, despite the needle being jiggled around to try and hit the vein. Left the hospital with a plaster on each arm. Shame there were no small children around I could impress.

Boy or Girl...

I don't believe it, but I think the "predictor" tests are sort of fun. My favourite quote of the day (about the Chinese Chart) is "Using your lunar age and date of conception, the gender can be “guessed” with 50% accuracy!". No shit!! It's either right or wrong...If I went around and took 1000 women and guessed, I should be corret 50% of the time and I'm not ancient or chinese!

According to this site it's a boy. This says girl. I'm pretty confident that one of them is 100% right, one 100% wrong. There are also a few tests available to buy, none of them really reveal how they work. My assumption is that it's going to be based on testosterone, as I'm not sure what other metabolites would be male/female specific. It doesn't really seem like it would actually work though.

6 weeks...

So I went a little quiet, maybe I'll backfill later. Sunday afternoon I got a "bad feeling", and have been feeling a bit down since then. I'm not sure what it is, maybe just hormones or something but I definitely feel a bit uneasy like something has gone wrong. Looking things up online certainly isn't re-assuring!

A couple in work announced they were expecting today. I asked when she was due and she said sometime in February, so that's not far ahead at all. Queue lots of awkward conversations with other people along the lines of "it must be scary to get a positive test" and "oh, so that explains why she's been grumpy" (glad I'm still having an un-grumpy persona!). Congratulating someone else felt very weird though.

Feeling sick a lot, and tiredness has reached a new high (low?). Had to sleep an extra hour and a half this morning, and felt marginally better for it. Appetite comes and goes, but no actual vomiting.

I tried to work out today what I need to do doctor/hospital-wise. The NHS pages seem to offer conflicting advise; one page says go to the doctor as soon as you know, another says just contact a midwife and make an appointment for 8 weeks. There seems to be little point going to the doctor as it says an appointment will be to offer you information on "keeping healthy". I don't see how this can be more than you can get online (i.e. how much exercise to do, how much to eat, what not to eat), so it seems a bit pointless. I've worked out myself that taking folic acid is a good idea, drinking a bad one, and suddenly panicking about being overweight and taking up running is also a bad idea. Plan for sometime before the end of the week is to phone the hospital and see if they can tell me what to do. Tricky to do at work though...

Nothing exciting to report...

Picked up some proper vitamins last night, since "self diagnosing" I've been eating standard multi-vitimins we happened to have in the house. They had folic acid and iron, so figured that was a good start. Stocked up on slightly boosted B-vitamins and some zinc. Probably need more calcium (an excuse to eat cheese?).

I've made vague attempts to quit caffeine, which makes going for "coffee" tricky. I don't drink coffee, but tend to grab a diet coke whilst everyone else does. I've checked the caffeine content and it's far lower than a coffee (which searching tells me would be fine to drink once a day), but I think better safe than sorry. I wish places would stock other diet soft drinks! So today I bought a big slab of chocolate cake topped with a sort of chocolate mousse. Probably had just as much caffeine as the coke I ignored, but boy did it taste good. I still don't fancy food, so I'd only had a bit of salad and chilled (cooked) turkey (SALMONELLA! LISTERIA!) for lunch, I think the cake was allowed.

Home-made cheese-filled turkey burgers for tea were delicious though, it seems to just be "carbs" that I really don't want to eat. Pasta, rice, quinoa and bread just hold no interest. Yorkshire puddings however went down OK. Last time I had pasta I felt full to bursting after about half a serving.

Starting to wonder when I should see a doctor. Things online suggest either they won't see you until 8-10 weeks, so there's no point, but the a bunch of other people seem to be going for very early 6 week scans. I seem to have picked up an ear infection (putting earbuds in is agony), so perhaps a dual appointment next week is a good idea. I still feel like I should wait a while and re-test in case I'm imagining it all.

Fun? I'm afraid that's off the menu.

Today I'm vaguely worried I am an alcoholic. I am desperate for a beer, I think it's the knowing I can't have it that makes me want it, I've never craved beer so much before! Appetite has gone completely, the only thing I wanted today was a McDonalds vanilla milkshake, and when I got there the machine was broken.

I've been trying to find out things I can and cannot do (ignoring the fact I am knackered, and don't particularly want to do anything). A list of things I have accidentally done (before knowing!) this month include:

• Go Ape! Technically they allow pregnant people to do the course, but warn it's not going to be the safest thing in the world.
• Snowboarding. Quite clearly off the menu, oops.
• Eaten sushi. The jury is out on this one, I'm inclined to believe it's the "insane Mum posse" saying no on this, Japanese women eat it and that all goes fine.
• Drunk. Not a lot, I think the most was a bottle of wine in a night, but still, at a bit of a critical time.

To console myself I thought I'd have a nice hot bath and read a book. I'm from the school of thought that a bath isn't a bath if you don't turn into a lobster, sadly this is now also out. Lying in a barely-warmer-than-me bath, I realised I'd left the window open. An ice cold breeze when having a thermidor style bath is one thing, but it was certainly not pleasent in the lukewarm bath.

Also, today boob pain started to hit. Why oh why do these symptoms start so early? I won't need to produce milk for 7.5 months, why does the body start preparing now? Cramping is a thing of the past though...I hope.

Small panic in work when discussing the "meanings" of people's names, and a co-worker announces "you're having a baby, let's name it". Thankfully face was pointed at the screen so I don't think there was any "Wtf? How do you know?" expression spotted.

Tuesday

Irritating abdominal cramps are still going. This is another thing to add to the list of "why did no one ever tell me this?" about pregnancy. Right at the top of the list is something I found out from a friend who had a baby last year, who found out from her friend who handed over a bag of "useful things" shortly after she had given birth that included paper underwear. It turns out the paper underwear is something you might want to wear after giving birth as you can bleed for a week or two. Now a week, that's not a huge amount worse than a regular period. But no one makes paper knickers for that - how bad is this bleeding? I was mildly freaked out about that for a couple of days until I decided that was something that could be ignored and never thought about again. I assume the only reason these things are never discussed is because if you did add them all together, no one would ever want to go through it all!

New "symptom" for the day is total absence of hunger. I'm rarely hungry at breakfast time (I get up at 6 which is far too early to think about things like food), so normally grab a cereal bar or some breakfast biscuits and a glass of juice. The weird thing was lunch time, I had taken a bit of leftover pasta with tomato and veg sauce, and some leftover chicken (which I assume is a terrible idea, apparantly listeria lurks around every corner). Halfway through I realised I had completely lost interest in eating it. I did finish it, and followed with a stick of pineapple and a mini muller corner. A couple of hours later I was feeling quite sick...maybe I should stop eating when my stomach says to.

I have also downloaded a couple of tracking apps to my phone, this isn't acceptance yet, but perhaps if I keep doing things like this it will hit me. Both of them have links to message boards for your "due date club" (horrific much?). These seem to be full of frantic women testing days before they can know, or looking at lines fainter than a ghost and hoping for the best. It all seems a bit crazy, but maybe crazy will hit me soon.

28 hours later

At school, in the small number of "sex education" type lessons we had, they hammered home that if you don't use protection, you'll get pregnant. Real life though, suggests that this is a lie. You don't have to look far to find forums full of people desperately trying to get themselves knocked up, figures vary in telling you that it takes on average 5 months to get pregnant up to 9 months. It seems then, almost "safe" to assume it won't happen to you. I (and in fact we) are at the "don't believe it" stage. It's not denial of an "oh my god this isn't happening" level, just a general "seems a bit too convinient" feeling. In fact, I'm amazed. It also shows that the morning after pill works (I'd always been faintly convinced infertility was the reason that a surprise baby never followed taking it). The regular pill also works (see above).

Now may also be the time to offer explanation on the title, it isn't a huge mistake (nor am I even sure you can use the term "accident" if you knew it was a possibility). But accident it will be. This isn't something unwanted, it just hasn't come after years of desperate hoping, or any concentrated effort. I may not be particularly excited, but that's due to the "not believing" feeling. I'm also a pessimist, not a worrier though, I just always tend to err on the side of caution. Last week I read an article stating that 1/4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, which I didn't think was that bad. Further reading tells me that this doesn't include "missed" miscarriage, and only counts from implantation onwards, which is a little scarier. The second horrific statistic was that if a man is over 40, this risk is raised to 33% (not by 33%, though it really was a badly written piece).

The BBC also posted up this happy(?) story. It's time to stop reading I think.

Unsurprising surprise

To start...after suffering from abdominal cramps for 3 days, a bit of a Google diagnoses the problem. I'm pregnant. The internet is full of useful stuff, but I'm not convinced it can really know that, so yesterday forked out 89p for a twin pack of test strips. I also bought two bottles of Jaques cider at the same time. The cashiers at Home Bargains either don't look at what they're selling, or they get that all the time.

So Saturday night, we share one of the bottles then stop. Since I already "know", more seems wrong. I barely sleep that night, and end up taking the test when I get up for the loo at 5am. The cup Pie uses to hold his toothbrush seems like a sensible urine holder. Urine must be room temperature so I run water down the outside of the cup, dip the stick then abandon it for 5 minutes to develop. There are already two lines when I leave the room...The alarm sounds, Pie bravely walks into bathroom first and spots the two lines. Much shock and mild panic ensues. How has this happened? What do we do now? At 7, we're both asleep again. We can worry in the future.