I'm tired and really want to be in bed sleeping, so I will hurry this a bit - I really needed to update though! Thank you for the comments, and the Happy Mothers Day messages (ours in the UK is in March, but I will totally take extras in May! ;) )!
I am getting really kind of fed up of bleeding now. :/ It has changed since I started bleeding when I first found out I was pregnant. It was continuous (mostly) back then, but now it's very stop-start. When it's "start", it's bright red, fresh bleeding. It's a sudden, "soaking" amount. I always need to have a pad on, 24/7, and change it immediately when I feel it start, because it goes right through. If I sit on the toilet it drips constantly into the water (you get all the TMI here, don't say I didn't warn you, lol! I need it this detailed for my own records). Then it quickly (within an hour) goes to brown and peters out within a few hours to almost no brown spotting left at all. Then a certain amount of time will pass before the next fresh red bleed. Lately the time is becoming almost predictable. It's every other day, or ever day. Basically once every 24-48 hours I will have a sudden fresh bleed. Always fades off like I described, so that's reassuring, maybe? NONE of this is reassuring, despite my vast experience with bleeding in pregnancy - aaarghh!! It's just annoying. Every day I am wearing pads and checking my underwear, rushing off to the loo at the slightest sensation, and becoming uncannily accurate in knowing what sensation means blood and what isn't. I can be emptying the dishwasher, say (calmly) to Neil, "Oh, I'm bleeding - I'm going to the loo." and off I go - and there it always is. So annoying when it becomes this constant and familiar! :/
I feel like it's getting more frequent. Sometimes it's every day, sometimes every other day. Yesterday around lunch time I had a bleed. Today at lunch time I had a bleed. Then I had another about 8 hours later, this evening. :( More than usual. I phoned the emergency gynae clinic today, at the number they gave me to call if I had any concerns before Friday's scan. Where we've moved to, the hospital is SO FANTASTIC so far! For early pregnancy care, it's amazing. I felt looked after at the hospital where we used to live. Maybe they are less overwhelmed here (having moved from a very busy greater London hospital), but I am not having to ask for anything. They are offering appointments, scans, numbers to call out of hours, I get talks with the doctor that didn't used to happen at the other hospital, etc. I didn't even have to persuade the GP to let me get an early scan in the first place! He suggested it right away! :) Really grateful!
Anyway, by this morning I had got myself (if you know me, I know this will shock and astound you! :P ) into a huge flap about having cervical cancer on top of being pregnant, and then I was going to have to choose whether to let my baby live or die so that I could have chemotherapy, and then my baby would die and in the end, so would I, and I would leave my babies without their mama, and they would grow up with broken broken hearts and struggle with depression and never find happiness, and I could see the sadness in the grown-up version of their eyes as I hyperventilated and waited for the nurse to answer the phone. I possibly am very very good at anxiety.
So the nurse was wonderfully reassuring. There's no point beating around the bush (or hiding my anxiety - I am learning to tell it like it is, as evidenced in the above paragraph!), so I told her I was bleeding on and off, and off and on, and it was like before except fresh bleeding and more frequent, and what if it was cervical cancer?!?!?!! So of course she was like, "Oh GOSH now, that's very very rare in this situation!" and "Don't fret over it now, everything is probably fine - bleeding is VERY common, and even clotting is FINE (haven't got any at the mo) if you've been bleeding!" which, phewww! Thank you nurse! :) She said they wouldn't even be thinking of cervical cancer, but sometimes the cells that cover the inside of the cervix can protrude outside the cervix during pregnancy and be very prone to bleeding. She said if it would reassure me, the doctor could examine my cervix when I go for my scan on Friday, and I said yes please. Because, knowledge. An anxious person needs to KNOW! I really know that I need to let go and let God, with basically my whole life. But there it is. Anxiety. Not a walk in the park.
So that's the bleeding. Still going right now. Not sure when it will ever go away!!! But hopefully it isn't a threat to my little one.
The other source of anxiety for me this week has been morning sickness. It has been SO WEIRD, from the start. Proper yucky all-day morning sickness, including the typical can't-bear-to-chew-my-fingers symptom, and worse in the evenings - but starting at just 3 weeks and 5/6 days!!! Crazy early for me. Then, fading off from 4 weeks and 4 days - half as bad as the day before. 4 weeks and 5 days, almost gone completely, which it maintained for most of the rest of the time. I have had an underlying minor quease, and this past week there have been times when I've thought, "Ah! Here it is at last!" because I'd get a bit too hungry and then feel yucky. Somewhere between quite queasy and mildly nauseous. But I'd eat, and it would improve and I would feel pretty much okay the rest of the time. Sometimes I feel properly like morning sickness (still mild, but nausea all the same), but it would only kick in around midnight if I was still up! Then I'd feel gross, suck on a couple of mints or something, the edge would be taken off it, and I'd go to bed after a while anyway. So weird. Also, all this time, I could totally bite my nails and chew my fingers, so to me, that made it "not legit". Even the mildest morning sickness comes with the aversion to biting my nails, in my experience...
Anyway, so my apprehension was building as I approached the weekend, because in ALL my pregnancies, by the end of the day at 5 weeks and 6 days, I have always had full-blown morning sickness - or as full-blown as it would be. Many of them, I had zero morning sickness until that day (with Arthur I was fine in the morning - I remember because I had a scan as I was bleeding and sure I was losing him! And then suddenly morning sick all evening - first inkling of nausea in the pregnancy!), with others I had started it in the days leading up to that gestation, and with Lydia I had started over a week before, but although it was fairly grim, it was milder than the morning sickness I was used to, and I was just feeling pretty happy about that when I arrived at 5 weeks and 6 days, and the intensity of the nausea about quadrupled overnight! So there is something about that gestation for me. I knew I needed to be feeling sick by then, or I would not have a good feeling about things...
I felt slightly more queasy at 5w5d than I did at 5w4d (which felt marginally more queasy than the day before), and at 5w6d... I felt pretty much the same as 5w5d! :/ I was soooo worried! In the evening I did feel pretty yucky, but the intensity that I was used to just wasn't there. After 7 babies it kind of makes you wonder, you know? Today is the very next day - 6w0d, and I am definitely feeling morning sick today. It's SUCH a relief!! :) But it's milder than I'm used to. Because it's so obviously *there*, I think I am just going to accept it and be thankful that it's milder (and hope it stays milder too!). I can totally function at this level of nausea. It's not pleasant, but it makes me realise HOW EASY people have it when they have just mild queasiness or none at all!!! I am nauseous, but can totally manage life normally. It turns my stomach and makes me grimace to change a nappy, pick up squashed banana, or breathe the smell of fresh air on carpet-with-food-in-it (the combination is truly gross!). Making gravy from the fat and juices of a roast made my throat close up like a gag, several times, two days ago, and I had to mentally chant, "Look ahead, mouth breathe, look ahead, mouth breathe" to stir it until it looked and smelled more like gravy! ;) But THAT'S IT!! And even when I have had my worst morning sickness, and felt it was unbearable, I still have it SUPER EASY compared with vomiting mamas, or those with HG - I seriously cannot imagine, uggghhh. I'm really grateful for the easier time just now. I just hope it's not because something isn't right with this pregnancy.
I heard from various people that as they got older their morning sickness lessened, so I did a bit of research online, and found many studies confirming that (yay!), and then quite a few studies disproving it (boo!). I'm going to lean with the confirming studies and hope that it's just being older that's helping me! :)
I cannot eat Oreos!!! I LOVE Oreos! They taste like disgusting chemicals, which make my mouth water and my gullet arch, and my throat close, while I chew them. I literally sat crunching them with this going on, shaking my head in disbelief because my head KNOWS how yummy they are, and yet my taste buds were lying - LYING!! - to me, and making my stomach do all bad things because of the LIES!!! lol! Oh well.
I still have a very sweet tooth. I also am particularly enjoying salty food. Neil made steaks earlier in the week and he salted them, and OH MY GOODNESS. I tasted them in my memory tastebuds for days afterwards, mmmm! Then we had a joint of roast beef at the weekend - again salted, again OH MY GOODNESS!!! Lasagne with garlic bread tonight did NOT go down well - usually that goes off the menu once I am morning sick, so whilst it's a shame, I'm reassured by it! I did manage to eat it all anyway though, which I never would have been able to in other pregnancies...
I smelled fish and chips outside tonight, and my mouth was watering like crazy! I was longing for it, until I realised that it was the SALT and VINEGAR that I wanted, and then I realised, and literally said out loud, "Ohhhh... it's a BOY!" ;) I am definitely feeling like this baby is a boy. I am not desperate for protein, but I am not sure if I always was by this stage, with my boys (NO interest in protein, particularly, with Lydia), and I am certainly enjoying it a lot when I do eat it. I have no real urge to eat a load of cheese, boil eggs for lunch, or buy cottage cheese, etc. So those things were typical for my boy pregnancies... but it's the salty, vinegary, meat-enjoying thing that has me wondering. That and the six boys we've produced so far, lol! ;) The only thing that doesn't match up with a boy, is the early start to the morning sickness (even though it didn't stick for a while!). Two boys to start?! I just hope I have at least one baby in there on Friday!
So otherwise I am doing fine. Tireder than usual, but not overwhelming. I went to bed with the boys last night, and felt better for it, but still tired and breathless in general. Totally manageable, which I'm happy about. So far, anyway. Occasionally sore breasts, but not painful to breastfeed yet. I often feel a kind of heavy pressure in my groin, kind of a bit like being constipated, but further forward! ;) I know there is changing and growing going on in my womb - every morning when I wake, and every evening when I go to bed, I lie in bed and press gently right above my pubic bone, to see when I might feel a change there. This past week I have started to notice changes - a "rise" of soft tissue that isn't solid, but wasn't there before. My waist line on the front is feeling very bloated and squashy, as though "stuff" in the way of my growing uterus is being shoved up out of my pelvis. This morning the "rise" is more of a roundness with much firmer resistance, but I don't think I am feeling my uterus yet. I have felt it at 6 weeks and 3 days before, juuuust about, so maybe it's nearly within reach! Exciting!! :)
I MUST go to bed! I haven't snacked at all in this whole time I've been online (over an hour) and am still just mildly nauseous - it hasn't driven me to switch the computer off and go to bed, or rummage in the kitchen for something to take the edge off. Unusual at 6 weeks, but at least I am nauseated, I guess! Four days until my scan. I may update before then, but I will definitely update if there's any news, and on the day of the scan. They don't appear to give scan pics, but if there's a baby visible, that won't stop me asking for one! :)