I've had an interesting few days. My headache continued for several days - not terrible but still a bother. The midwives have been looking after me so well! Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, a midwife has come out to me and taken my blood pressure, and my urine was checked for protein on Friday and Tuesday as well. It's fine - my blood pressure was 116/70 (great!) yesterday, and not a trace of anything untoward in my urine. I woke up yesterday with NO headache for the first time in a few days, which was lovely! Also no visual disturbances, but those hadn't continued anyway after the first day or so. About half an hour after getting up for the day yesterday, I started to have HORRIBLE back pain, low down on my left side. It went right through to the front of my bump, and I wasn't sure what to do, it was so sore! I took paracetamol which didn't do anything, and just carried on as normal, as much as I could. It didn't feel like joint pain, but it was so generalised that I couldn't be 100% sure if it was my uterus or my bowel complaining. Any time Lydia moved it hurt soooo much!
The midwife (my favourite, Mandi!) came to check my blood pressure at 11am-ish, and I asked if she'd mind checking the baby's position in case the pain could be put down to a change of lie or something. But no, she was still head down, 3/5 palpable (not quite engaged - 2/5 or less of her little head available to feel above my pubic bone is "engaged") like last time, and still with her back to my left side and feet to my right - although she does sometimes change sides. I had a bit of a show on Monday (the day before), which wasn't bloody so I did not get excited about it, but it was - sorry for the TMI - thick mucus, and enough to, um, hang somewhat when I went to the toilet (sorry, sorry!). Not my usual CM for sure! :) Nothing after that though, just normal CM, which is generally mucus-plug-y in the last few weeks for me anyway.
I told Mandi about the little "show" and about the pain in my back/front, and she said it sounded like "early signs" and that she reckoned it would be sometime in the next few days. I am not so sure! I am still only 39 weeks, and my others have all been after 40 weeks. Nathan doesn't count, at 35 weeks, because my waters broke - my body didn't go into labour and so I was induced.
So that was encouraging, if a little scary! I have been feeling SO anxious and somewhat filled with dread at the prospect of going through labour and birth again! It's just so painful, and overwhelming! There are wonderful parts to it though, and the reward is like nothing else, most especially when I have done it all by myself, so to speak - which I finally did last time! :) Awesome feeling, and so worth every second of the pain and trauma! I'm trying to fix my eyes on that, but the anxiety feeling is pretty strong. I need to pray through my prayers that Heather laminated for me when I was pregnant with Benjamin. Those are SO helpful to pray out loud, as often as possible! :)
After Mandi left, I had to put Elijah to bed for his nap. I took him upstairs and breastfed him, and while I was nursing him, the painful feeling in my back and lower bump became more wave-like, and made me think, "Hmmm!" because that's how it started with Elijah's labour and birth! I was breastfeeding Samuel to sleep, having had no contractions or signs of labour (the day after a sweep), and started contractions while breastfeeding - I had 4 or 5 in the 15-20 minutes I was breastfeeding, and they got stronger after I got up and left him asleep, and you know, 5 hours later I had a baby! ;) Pretty much. So I wondered. After I came downstairs from putting Elijah to bed, I had some strong-ish Braxton Hicks contractions in the kitchen while sitting down to make lunch for the boys, which was also encouraging. Elijah woke early and I went up and breastfed him again to try to settle him back to sleep for a bit longer (no joy), and noticed the pain becoming wave-like again.
The rest of that day I was so fidgetty! I wanted space, I didn't want the boys around me all the time. I wanted to hurry them up eating lunch because there was a box of cooking apples from my grandparents' apple tree on the kitchen floor which I was suddenly agitated about! I needed to process those apples so they didn't just sit and rot and get thrown away because I went and had a baby before getting around to it! I kept myself in check and didn't hurry the boys with lunch, but the urge was there. They watched movies a lot during the afternoon on my laptop while I, slightly hormonally crazed, made an apple and rhubarb crumble (with Heather's rhurbarb from her allotment!) and an apple and cinnamon crumble for the freezer, and then peeled, cored, sliced, and froze (on trays, then bagged them) 17 apples! It took me aaaaaaages, and it wasn't a rose-tinted experience, it was more grim determination to get the things DONE, lol! I did feel increasingly relieved as the day wore on and the apple box got emptier and emptier, and the boys were thrilled to have apple crumble for pudding that night! :)
I phoned Heather a couple of times during the day, and updated her with how I was doing. She felt that the signs were pretty good, and stayed "on standby" throughout the day and evening, half expecting me to call her to come over. I felt nauseous a lot during the day as well, and the evening too. Everyone had told me to get an early night, but I felt so grim and yucky that I couldn't stand to lie down just yet. I ended up staying up to almost midnight, but I am so glad that I did. Yes, I'm more tired for it, but the difference between 10.30pm and midnight was huge for me. By midnight I felt totally settled in my stomach and no longer nauseated, and my back and front pain was easing off. I felt calm in my thoughts and emotions, and tired and ready for sleep. I know if I'd have gone to bed at 10.30pm I would have felt sick and bloated and in pain, and anxious to boot. I don't know how long it would have taken me to get to sleep, but from past experience I would likely have woken in the night several times with tummy ache or nausea. I get IBS a lot, and usually if I stay up really late, it resolves. Not so if I go to bed before I've reached that point. Anyway, glad to have gone to bed feeling better. I did wake loads in the night anyway. It was Night Two of Elijah being in the boys' bedroom, and I'm not sleeping brilliantly without him! :(
He is doing fine in there. Last night, he slept through the night from bedtime to morning, for the second time ever! The first time was random, and months ago. He is happy in there, but can't really settle to sleep in there yet with all the distraction. He has a breastfeed on his new "floor" bed , and then Neil takes him downstairs and walks him to country music like he's done since he was tiny. Always works. The only thing I didn't anticipate is Samuel. He isn't taking to the bedroom change so well. It's his old bed that Elijah is moving into, and Samuel is moving up to take Benjamin's place, top-and-tailing with Nathan in the longer-than-standard-length bottom bunk bed. Benjamin has the toddler bed, which we haven't used since Nathan was 3 or 4, and he's very happy about it! :) But Samuel doesn't want to be in Benjamin's place after all. He wants HIS bed back, and he won't go to bed anywhere else! :( Not sure how that will pan out, and I really don't want to cause him any upset, because he's only 2, and there's a big upheaval coming with a new baby arriving soon. So we're still thinking on that. Right now, when Elijah goes downstairs to be walked to sleep, Samuel has his usual snuggles with me (he won't breastfeed any more, even though he occasionally asks and latches on for like two sucks, because he says it takes "too lucky" (that's yucky, by the way, lol!)) in his old bed, and falls asleep there. Elijah is put into my bed in the other bedroom when he has gone to sleep, and somewhere during the evening we lift Samuel into his new place, and Elijah into Samuel's old bed. Elijah hasn't done much waking or stirring so far in their room, though I've woken to every little bit with my door open, so tuned am I to his every need still! But Samuel wakes or stirs quite often still, and he has wanted to get back in his old bed at night once or twice, and refused to go back into the new one... It's worse when he falls out of the new bed since it's off the floor (we pad the floor heavily with pillows and such), so today we got a bed guard to put on the side. There wasn't time to do it tonight, but we'll fix it on tomorrow and see if that helps. He has a never-ending chesty cough at the moment (the only boy who got that after the cold we all had) and he wakes and coughs a lot, so he's more likely to come round at night and get annoyed about the sleep situation!
Anyway. So far it's going okay... If Samuel doesn't get used to the new situation, I think we'll have to let him keep his old bed, and find a way to make the bottom bunk safe for Elijah, maybe. With a bed guard it should be okay, especially since he doesn't care which bed he's in - he is just so happy to be in there! And Nathan told me he would SO like to share his bed with Elijah - 'Lijah would love that too. We'll see...
When I woke last night, I seemed to wake RIGHT UP each time, and then get restless legs which stopped me going back to sleep for a while, every time I woke. Frustrating!
Today my pain issues seem to have resolved for the most part. I feel much more calm in my womb - only one Braxton Hicks during the day at all! I wanted to take a bath, and also to bake lemon fairy cakes, and cut some boys' hair. I never got the haircuts done - the older 3 are in desperate need right now, so I am hoping to find time to get their hair cut before having a baby, or they won't be able to see by the time I get around to it again, lol!
I had a bath this morning while Elijah napped and the boys all played a dinosaur game together. Just a quick bath, but I like to keep myself clean when I'm nearing labour and birth! I always get in the shower anyway when I'm in early labour, but still. I like to keep clean more often than usual at this stage. Also, any backache I still had would be helped by a bath. I did feel so much better after the bath, just relaxed and more physically comfortable, even though I hadn't felt all that bad to begin with this morning. I decided to check my cervix after the bath. I don't normally like to any more, but I just got curious! I couldn't reach all of it, so I couldn't determine dilation at all, but my cervix was anterior (great sign!) and very soft, but thick. I think that's pretty good for me at 39 weeks - I know I've checked it in previous pregnancies around my due date or later and not been able to find it anywhere, or else it's been central or posterior, even if it was soft. Anterior and soft is great news!
Even so, I have suddenly hit that feeling this afternoon and evening where I "give up". I suddenly feel like, "Oh what's the point? I'm never going to go into labour anyway?!" and though I can hear myself saying it and KNOW it's daft, it feels so true all the same! I just got to thinking that I won't go into labour this week anyway, because I'm not even DUE this week! I have never gone into labour before my due date! Then, Mandi is coming back for my "due date" appointment on Monday, so that's actually the day before my due date. Going by my scan dates, I'll be a day AFTER my due date that day, and various midwives are going by that, whilst others are hanging with me on my own dates! ;) Anyway, because Heather suggested I might want to have a sweep at my due date appointment, to minimise the stress over not going into labour before she's unavailable to be my doula - she's only available up to the Sunday after my due date! :( - I have asked Mandi if she'll do a sweep on Monday, and she said yes that's fine. Only thing is, now I'm starting to waver on that decision. I have had 3 sweeps before. Twice when I was 41 weeks, and both times I had a baby the following day (so the sweep essentially "worked"), and the other time was when I was 40 weeks and 3 days, and my waters had broken the day before with Elijah, so it was time to get things going or else induction was on the cards. I did go into labour the next day, but it seemed to me more likely to be breastfeeding that started it, as I woke with a very quiet womb that next day, so I'm not sure about putting it down to the sweep. Anyway, statistically, sweeps seem to have worked for me, but I'm well aware they don't work all the time, or even a lot of the time! And my body has to be ready. It hasn't been at 39w6d before, so why would it make a difference this time? And if it does make anything happen, it's usually particularly sore in my cervix during early contractions (not to mention before any sort of contractions start!) due to the poking I've had! That part isn't fun. I started to feel sort of resentful of the fact that I would only be agreeing to have a sweep on Monday to work around Heather. When otherwise I wouldn't choose to have one. I would prefer to wait and let my body do its own thing - now, granted, I will change my mind as I approach 41 weeks anyway, lol! But before my due date has even arrived quite yet?... Although, to contradict myself again, I wonder what's the matter with starting things off if my body is ready anyway?! If I go into labour, it can only happen if my body was ready to respond to a sweep. So what's wrong with that? *sigh* I feel torn over it, and I can't decide. I have time, and it's totally up to me, so that's fine.
But in thinking all this, I started to be like, "Well, I won't go into labour this week because I'm not due yet. And next week I'll say no to the sweep, and then wait and wait and Heather will go off to her craft fair for 8 days, and heck, I might as well just not bother going into labour at all past that point!" So yes, a bit of a defeatist and pessimistic attitude, but I'm not particularly moping about it, just feeling that sense of absolute acceptance that I'll just stay pregnant, then! :P I thought about how Arthur's birthday is only a few weeks away, and then before I know it, I need to prepare Samuel's birthday in December, and then Christmas is right on top of that, and a few weeks later it's Nathan's birthday in January. And I thought, well, I'll probably still be pregnant then, and it's probably for the best! ;)
I do remember getting to this stage of thinking with previous pregnancies, but I think it was later - more around or past my due date? There is a definite sense of, "I will NEVER go into labour!!!" with it, and I recognise it. I am slightly optimistic that it's early this time... But not optimistic enough to cancel out the general "I'll be pregnant forever" vibe. I did bake those lemon fairy cakes though! :)
Tonight I am not nauseous - first night in ages! :) And I've eaten well. I feel heavily sleepy, like I took something to help me sleep (I didn't!), and Lydia has been active as usual during the evening which has been surprisingly painful/uncomfortable. When Mandi was feeling for her head, it hurt SO much, like my uterus itself was just plain SORE. It feels like that when Lydia moves vigorously. Her head on my cervix when she turns it about it like sharp pins, it's not a nice sensation, and always makes me wince out loud or takes my breath away. I have back pain again now, and am looking forward to lying down and sleeeeeping. I will still leave my door open in case Elijah does have a distressed waking during the night and needs me. I want to be sure to go to him when he is upset at night at this stage. But hopefully I'll sleep a bit better and get some good rest.
Tomorrow I would love to have Lydia because it's my sweet friend Megan's daughter's birthday. She will be 9, a few weeks ahead of Arthur turning 9, and I know Megan through being pregnant with her and blogging together at the time! :) So, oh, it would be so special! But otherwise I don't see it happening. I know that there's a full moon on both Friday and Saturday (and someone said there's an eclipse too?!) which WOULD fill me with hope, except that I have had full moons around my due dates before, and even when I've been past my due date, but they have had zero effect on me, personally. So yeah. Pregnant forever! ;)
I will be sure to update again soon! Thanks for being on the ride with me! :)