Feeling strangely fine

Showing my age as a “geriatric mother” with that title, but when I was thinking about how to sum up this blog post, those were the words that sprang to mind.

 

Today I am 39 weeks pregnant. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d say. We are now out of the waiting game and into the OMG IT COULD HAPPEN ANY TIME game. In part, I feel completely unprepared and in part I feel pretty zen. I think a large part of feeling okay with all the various things that could or might or maybe are going to happen is I feel insanely grateful to be pregnant and to possibly be in the home stretch of actually having a baby. It’s hard to describe because I had 16 years of always being the one without the baby. So yeah, I always have in the back of my mind that the aches and pains and inconveniences are a means of my body doing something that I never thought I’d ever have the opportunity to do.

 

After the last blog post where I had a mini meltdown about last minute changes of birth plan, I have done a bit of Jedi mind trickage and I think I am pretty okay with it. This is partly because I had a meeting with my midwife L (the amazing Best Midwife In The World) and we talked through everything and agreed it. Long story short, I had meetings with various medical professionals prior to L – the diabetic midwives (“Computer says no”), the diabetologist (“I agree, I don’t think you are diabetic as such – if you weren’t pregnant, we’d say you had signs of being pre-diabetic”) and the diabetic obstetrician (“I can completely understand why you don’t think you’re diabetic – I think you’re low risk and I don’t think you need continuous monitoring during birth”).

 

Basically, the diabetic doctor said I was fine for the birth centre. And then I saw L and she said unless I was actually categorically not diabetic, she wouldn’t feel comfortable with me not having the monitoring… and then she brought in my original doctor, who deals with high risk patients, and he said he really recommended I had continuous monitoring because of XYZ “soft risk factors” and I thought, well I’ve pushed back, got a diabetic doc to agree I probably don’t have diabetes, and they still want me to be monitored, so maybe I should just accept it.

 

So I have. It sounds a bit like another U turn but there you have it – I’m the master of U turns and mind tricks; I just need a few days to get my head around things. I am disappointed for sure that I won’t get to give birth in the birth centre, but ultimately the important thing is that B gets here safely. And if the head midwife and high risk doc would prefer it if I’m continuously monitored then I need to go with that. I mean for all I know, my zen birth could end up being an emergency caesarian. Also, both of them (L and high risk doc) were very respectful of my wishes and said that they’d allow me to use the birthing pool etc and suggested we do the lights and music and whatnot so ultimately it will be as similar as possible to the birth centre, just in a more hospital-like room with less nice furniture and decor. (I guess I would have felt better about the whole thing if I’d never have seen the birth centre! Ha.)

 

In other news, the annoying one from my NCT group had her baby! Which is actually good news because she was seeing my midwife (a late referral due to her general cray cray-ness) and I had a concern that I’d end up going into labour and find out that L was delivering her baby instead of mine! Anyway, she seems completely happy about it and so maybe this is a sign that she will be chilled out from now on. She was probably getting to me because (apart from the strange borderline stalky behaviour) she was always so down about everything to do with pregnancy. And given my history, I just didn’t want to be around someone who constantly whinged about pregnancy and was so obviously scared of childbirth. It turns out that she is one of those “OMG it was fine, I forgot all the pain!” people so I’m hoping that this bodes well for future interactions! Which I’ll still be limiting until she proves not to be a stalking psycho!

 

I’m now on hospital bag v2, which means I brought it back up from the car and repacked it with some additional stuff. I’m feeling pretty prepped in that way, although I still feel if there were a way to smuggle Dog into the delivery suite then I’d feel a lot better about everything! Poor little thing. I’ve been working from home this week and told him many times that he’s still my #1 dog, and always will be my first boy. Although I’m going to have to get out of the habit of calling him “My best boy” which is what I usually call him. Bless him. I am sure he won’t know what hit him. We keep having long lie ins together now that I am working from home (*cough cough*) and so I’m not sure how he’ll take to some screaming baby. But… I’m comforted by the fact that he loves most humans, and especially males! I’m hoping they turn into the best of buddies.

 

We also constructed the cot, by which I mean, T built it and Dog and I watched. It is the Snuzpod which is very cute. It’s meant to last until 6 months. T’s parents bought it for us, which is nice. It’s a bedside sleeper if you want it to be, although it’s not attached to the bed right now – I’ll probably attach it. It’s right by my side of the bed which is quite odd as when I turn on that side I’m just staring at it and thinking, wowsers, there might be a little person in there in a while. T told me last night, OMG, it could happen in the next week!! What a thought!

 

I had a rather large sense of achievement over this – although putting a fitted sheet on a tiny mattress is significantly harder than it looks!

 

We also tried out the sling which it turns out is a bit more complicated than I first thought. I’m hoping it becomes more obvious when you’re trying it with a baby and not a dog! Dog was not particularly impressed but it’s nice to realise it fits him!

 

It’s my last day of work today – although I’ve been working from home for the whole new year. Unfortunately yesterday we had a bunch of bad news landed on my account which is really annoying and probably affects my bonus. Fortunately, I am leaving the account for four months (yay!) and won’t be thinking about work for a while (yay! yay!) and also I have not depended on my bonus for anything. I kind of don’t understand people who do, because it’s not guaranteed. But, it’s really disappointing because basically we were on track to meet our targets and now something outside of my control has completely screwed not just our December numbers but it’s so bad that it’s brought down the average for the entire year, which means we narrowly miss our target. It’s kind of aggravating and if I wasn’t going off, I’d probably be a bit more angry about it… but I’m hoping my boss will appreciate it was outside of my control. (It’s down to another team outside of the country – and I’ve already heard he gave them a huge b*llocking this morning after speaking with me – eek.)

 

My sister had her second scan and everything was fine! So I’m sooo hopeful that it’s going to work out. If everything goes according to plan with B’s arrival, his arrival will coincide roughly with her 12 week scan and whilst I know that everything is not hunky dory in people’s minds when they’ve experienced a loss, 12 weeks is a big milestone. I guess selfishly I want her to be able to celebrate B’s arrival and not feel terrible about it. In my more selfish moments I think, I don’t want her to be a downer because if everything goes right with hers, everyone will celebrate hers whereas my B will be overshadowed by other worries. But then I think that is completely selfish, and I know how bad I felt when my brother had his baby around the same time as we were getting over our loss, and I remember that pregnancy after loss is a screwed up mind**** and makes normally rational people go a bit irrational (and my sister isn’t even a normal level of anxious to start with!) so I need to let her do whatever she feels capable of doing. I sort of feel she has been supportive from afar (buying presents etc but avoiding me in person) which I can understand, but I’m hoping if they get past 12 weeks that she can start to feel better about things.

 

My brother has been having a hard time lately, and this is the one I’ve posted about before who nothing bad ever happens to. And what has happened is life changingly bad. I don’t really feel right posting about it just now in detail because I haven’t even spoken with him about it as he’s made it clear he’s not ready to discuss it. But it has made me feel a great deal of compassion for him, which is not something I am used to feeling about him. (It’s usually jealousy/resentment due to his perfect life.) Thing is, he has had the most amazing cushy easy life and of course I’ve envied him that. But what’s happened to his family (to do with his child’s health) is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. So I’m doing my best to be supportive and open, and although we haven’t talked about it at all, we had a good long Facetime session at Christmas and I feel hopeful that maybe B’s arrival will help us to build some bridges and strengthen our relationship. It’s not that we have a bad relationship – it’s just we aren’t overly close, and that’s probably both of our faults because I found it hard with the kids and he is a man, who makes almost zero effort to stay in touch! We like each other when we see each other but we are kind of casual texters when we really could make more effort to stay in touch. So I’m really hoping that 2017 brings some good news for them, and also that we can become closer during this year. (It already happened with my sister a few years ago – we went from hardly speaking to being pretty close, so it can happen!)

 

Another thing I’ve been wondering about is the blog. Like I see how it often happens in blogland, where people blog for a year or two or three about trying to have a baby. And then they have a baby and stop posting, or they have a baby and it turns into a “mom-blog”. I am really not sure how I feel about that. And I don’t think I’ll know until it happens. I have no previous experience of having a child to compare it with and although I can imagine it in the abstract, I have no idea what it’ll actually be like having a baby. (I keep talking with Dog about it but he doesn’t seem to have much insight!) I’m in that pre-baby state of mind where it seems within touching distance but my day to day emotional life is pretty much the same – I’m still childless, even though there are many indications that will change within the next week or two.

 

I initially set up my blog to talk about the IVF process, so in that sense I think it has been a good outlet for that experience. I’ve been through two IVF cycles and have no plans for any more. From my own perspective, I think it’s important to share the whole story, including the miscarriage from cycle 1 and the emotional recovery from that… and also, whilst thinking about infertility, my mind naturally wandered to adoption, because I’m adopted. So I’ve shared thoughts about that. And also I just blog when I have something on my mind even if it’s not related to either of those things. (Work, or friendship, I think.) It’s always been that sort of 3 category blog: Infertility, Adoption, and random thoughts. Also I have blogged out of the infertility into the pregnancy after loss. I realise that must be triggering to some people who start to follow an infertility blog and then it becomes a pregnancy blog, but equally I feel like my pregnancy came out of that infertility. So I understand that readership probably ebbs and flows over time.

 

So yeah, not sure what’s next. I guess I’ll know in a week or two when B is here. The main thing on my mind right now is hoping that he gets here safely. The rest is just cosmetic…

 

Excerpt from my first blog post:

So that’s what I’m going to tell you about. The journey. What it’s like and the thoughts and ideas I had about it. Maybe this will never be read by anyone. Or maybe, just maybe… in 15 years or so, when the mythology of his/her being is slipping into the mundane, I’ll knock on the door of my adolescent’s bedroom and I’ll say “There’s a story I have to tell you…”