I am feeling the baby move and make tiny wiggles much more frequently now, probably enough times per day that I am not really counting. Not like a dozen or anything, but several times at least, each day. I LOVE this stage! :) On rare occasions I am starting to feel a proper kick, but it's still such a very tiny feeling, even though I can tell it's done with real gusto, bless Krispie's tiny heart! :) The "big" kicks feel like a firm but extremely brief poke with the tip of my little finger - makes my heart just melllllt away! :)
The boys (especially Arthur) have been absolutely longing to hear the baby's heartbeat with the doppler, so this past week I got it out and let them listen. I lay on the living room rug for ease of access - they all wanted to sit around me. Elijah wouldn't stop clambering over my chest and patting my tummy as I was trying to find the heartbeat with the doppler, so Neil had to pick him up in the end, lol! The others all sat expectant and excited. They all gasped when they heard MY pulse as I picked up the placenta, thinking it was the baby's, but I explained what it was, and when we heard the much faster little galloping heartrate of our tiny baby, they were so excited! Arthur probably could have listened all evening if I had let him! He was very disappointed when I put it away after maybe 4 or 5 minutes, and has asked every evening since then if we could listen before bed. I don't want to use the doppler all the time (what a change from the days when I was listening in to Arthur's heart beating on a daily basis for weeks, hehe!) so I haven't obliged him yet, but I told him maybe once or twice a week - he made suitably horrified noises and isn't exactly happy about that, which I LOVE because of how much he enjoys me being pregnant and there being a new little baby on the way! :)
When we listened with the doppler, the baby was very active. The heartbeat was constantly disappearing and I would move the doppler an inch across and find it again, only to have a big SPLATCH-BOOMPFH sound and then have to find it all over again! ;) All the boys loved hearing the splatches and static "doof" sounds of the baby kicking about, and laughed every time, making comments about it being a very busy baby, or a cheeky baby, trying to hide from us already! ;)
I am starting to feel better! Over the past week I have still felt really sick most of the day, much worse when nearing mealtimes, and in the evening, but definitely nothing like the earlier weeks, and I am managing the days much more normally again now, not held back by nausea at all any more really. I do have to make sure I eat when I feel my nausea worsening, and - though it makes me feel guilty EVERY TIME, I have to make sure that I make my lunch and eat it first, before serving the boys theirs. Otherwise I never make it through the lunch-making process for the boys before feeling too dreadful to finish and serve, and then make my own. I also have still had to nibble throughout the day to try to keep the nausea from worsening.
BUT, the day before yesterday I realised I had had patches in the day where I didn't remember feeling nauseous as such at all, or maybe just mildly queasy. Otherwise it was pretty much the same. I only realised it in hindsight, the following day, when I realised I had not felt sick much outside of mealtimes, AND I didn't need to eat a thing during the evening! I didn't eat for 5+ hours after eating dinner with Neil and the boys much earlier, and did NOT feel sick!!!! That really gave me hope! :)
Today, I was ready to be more aware as the day went on. I woke without nausea, kept down a big glass of water to take my GERD meds, without nausea (drinking water is a BIG difficulty for me, even sips, when morning sick), ate breakfast, and then did not feel sick at all until just before lunch time!!!! So exciting!! I have felt sick pretty much most of the day since then, but milder - just queasiness really. I have felt pretty yucky at times and had to snack to keep it from getting worse, but I would still say even then that it's milder. I REALLY hope that it means mayyyybe the morning sickness might be on the way out! I am cautious about that because I remember last pregnancy I had two periods of about a week during my morning sickness (10-11 weeks, and 19-20 weeks, I think) where I had NO morning sickness, and was sure that must be it, but then it came back again both times. So we'll see! But I'll take milder morning sickness for sure - yay!
Today Neil and I talked about baby names. I feel so much more strongly all the time that this baby IS a girl, but I have a hard time believing that even so because - strong hunch or not - I have NEVER produced one, haha! I'm sure I've had girl hunches before with some of my earlier pregnancies and obviously those hunches were not correct! ;) So I hesitate to go there.... I don't want to set myself up for disappointment if it's a boy, because then I will be crushingly disappointed beyond comfort AT MYSELF, just annoyed and frustrated that I let myself go there, you know? I will be over the moon and completely in awe at God's blessings to me if I am having a SEVENTH son in a row, and that's the honest truth. So I don't want to mess that up with some unnecessary anticipation thing. So, I don't want to think about girl names. Neil was commenting on my shape (I am starting to show, wheeee!!!) and saying that it seems different this time - more up and down rather than round like a ball (very girly - that has been my own observation with friends who have carried girls and not found out the gender until birth, and I've theorised based on the "vertical watermelon" shape, or high bump, and mostly been right). Anyway, he commented about it seeming like a girl, and I agreed, and then told him I didn't want to set any more anticipation up than necessary, and I wanted to NOT think of girl names before the scan, but I did want to have a boy's name ready that I REALLY like, so that I can be full of joy to name him right away when (if?) we see the ever-present boy bits! ;) Then I have something wonderful to DO straight away, as a result of seeing those bits, you know? I can get straight into the joy of having another boy, and I WANT that so much.
So Neil asked me if there was a name I liked, and I told him the only name I have in my head for a boy is Toby, even though we've used it in a sense, for Elijah's twin lost very early on. I named that baby Toby David, because I love the name Toby, and it means "God is good", and David means "beloved". It seemed perfect. But I still love the name, and it feels like if we have another son then Toby is the perfect name, still, for the next boy. I love the way Toby sounds when I say all the boys' names in a row together. It goes well with our surname, the meaning is wonderful, and... I just love it. I would love to be able to physically SAY the name a hundred times a day to a little one, and hear his brothers say it too. I didn't want it just tucked away in my memory album, never mentioned, as it has been. Toby David is still Toby David, but it feels okay, somehow, to use Toby again for a living child.
Neil likes the name and asked me if I had thought of any middle names. I have! :) I wanted a 'J' name for some reason, and liked the meanings of the following: "Joseph" (may He add - as in, more children), "Judah" (praise), "Jonathan" (gift of God), and "Josiah" (the Lord saves). We discussed those for a while, and liked the two-syllable names for their "ring" better, and we chose Joseph. So, if we get to our scan on June 7th and find out that our baby IS a boy, he will immediately bear the name Toby Joseph (Neil secretly loves the idea of calling him TJ, but hmmm, that's not my thing, so it can be his special daddy-son thing, I guess, lol!). I love that the name means that God is good, and may He add more children to our family! Love that sooooooo much, and I know I will be joyful and excited to name him at the scan and be ready to tell people (well, the people we'll tell before the birth, not the general public or Facebook!) when we get home. I'm so grateful to Neil for being so understanding and so easy-going about the name I've chosen, just happy for it to be our baby's name if it's a boy. He knows it means a great deal to me, and I'm just so grateful! We will not be choosing a girl's name, because it will help me not get overly focused on the baby being a girl, or falling in love with a girl's name that we might never get to use, etc. And also we've got plenty of time to think about that once we know for sure, if it's even possible that I really and truly COULD be carrying a girl baby!!! :-O We did discuss middle names though, because we always planned to do like the boys' names, and use our mothers' names - one at a time, of course. I am not crazy about two middle names. I much prefer just one per child, but if we really do have a daughter, she could very likely be our only one, and we would not want to use one mother's name and never use the other one. My mum's name is Jane, and Neil's mum's name is Averil. Jane Averil would work fine for two middle names, but I really don't want two middle names! :S We originally planned for our first daughter to have Jane as her middle name, and the second daughter to have Averil. But hmmm... Anyway, we haven't really made much progress on that, but we've discussed it a bit anyway. If we have a girl, her middle name will definitely be one (or both!) of those names.
Okay it's suddenly really late and I must go to bed. I am a bit queasy. Oh! I forgot, I think my milk is drying up a bit. Earlier than the last time or two? I can't remember. It's still there, Elijah still sometimes has milk running down his chin when he pulls away suddenly, but I am still breastfeeding Samuel, and Benjamin (for very brief (seconds, sometimes) sessions, and usually just at bedtime and once in the day somewhere when he sees a younger brother nursing), who can tell me things like, "I didn't get any!" sadly, or "There's none left!" even after a few minutes. So I'm pretty sure that's a sign it's going. Also, Samuel and Elijah seem thirsty a lot more, and especially right after nursing, which would indicate that it's saltier than usual (weaning milk, a natural result of diminished supply when breast milk dries up). Elijah is such a petite little manny for his age, that I worry that he's not getting enough nourishment with my milk drying up. It was definitely his main source of nutrition, even though he's eating well now. He turned 11 months old today (!!!!!!!!!!!) and has a month to go before he starts drinking cows' milk (when I will rest much easier!). Right now I'm working cooked milk into his diet as much as possible. Thankfully he loves homemade macaroni cheese, porridge, rice pudding, etc, so it's not too hard. He seems hungry whenever offered food, so I'm just really increasing the offerings right now, and he's happy with that! He is drinking a LOT of water now as well, through a beaker with a lid (he has never had a bottle) independently, so that's reassuring too. He has started having a night drink by the bed at night for the first time this week, in case he is thirsty at night and my milk doesn't satisfy his thirst for whatever reason. I nurse him on demand day and night, and this has always included MANY times each night (minimum 3, ever) like all my other babies at this age, and when I'm pregnant and my milk supply is diminishing, it always does seem to flow more strongly at night, so I'm glad to keep nursing him multiple times at night while he's under a year old, and a bit beyond too really.
There's probably other stuff to write, but I MUST go to bed! Glad to get in an update though! Ooh, and I posted two entries right before this one - long overdue. One is my ultrasound gallery, with the pics from 8 weeks and 12 weeks (and will add the next scan too), and the other is my belly gallery (at last!!) with the only two belly pics I've taken so far, at 7 weeks and 12.5 weeks. Must try to keep up with them better this time around! I was pretty bad at it the last two pregnancies. :( Anyway, yay! Those pages are up for your viewing pleasure, lol!
Hopefully back soon! :)