And we have a...

Large plum. This really is disappointing, as we've already had a plum two weeks ago. Therefore we've decided that we have a... Mandarin!!

Mandarin measures 6.3cm and weighs 14 grams. So it's a fairly light mandarin I think, but that's okay. Only size matters at this stage :-)

Although I'm still wondering if there's anything growing inside me at all - just a survival mechanism I think until we've had our first ultrasound - my trousers are making perfectly clear that someone has grown a bit. Don't like buttoning up anymore, and the trick with a hair elastic works as long as I'm standing. With mostly working from home I can walk around with my fly down and unbuttoned, until the first embarrasment occurs, like forgetting the bloody thing when going to the supermarket or so.

Hope to stretch this one more week until the scan confirms that there is a baby (or two) and then I'll go shopping for some new pants!!!

If there's no baby DH said I deserve a slap around the ears for going to bed at 8pm all the time. Hahahaha.


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Gaining weight

Women are not programmed to step on the scale and watch with satisfaction that another couple of hundred grams have been added to their weight overnight.

Till a few days ago I had only gained half a kilo in these ten weeks, but very suddenly this became 1.2kg's. Visions of beached whales, triplets and doubling DH's weight appeared.

Luckily I have another pregnancy app on my iPhone which gives me some insight as to what a healthy weight gain is for women of my length and weight. If I can keep my current weight more or less the same till next Monday, I'll be sweet. We'll see what the body and mind decide :-)


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Sleepy

Thought I'll write a nice post but I'm way too sleepy. If I don't take a nap either straight after lunch or around five-ish then I barely make it to 8pm. As is exactly the case now :-(

A nap makes a HUGE difference, as does eating at regular intervals. I find I'm pretty ok till mid afternoon and then start to run on empty. Get tired, queasy (spelling?), then eat too much with dinner with nausea as a result. Really, I need to do that part of the day better. DH says I should set an alarm every 2 hrs to take something to eat, just like we did on our cycling holidays to prevent him from running on empty. Sounds a bit ridiculous but maybe it's a good idea. And loads of dry biscuits, those plain ones. Quite yummy and very useful.


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And we have a lime!

Today Plum made the transition to the next fruit of the week, a Lime of 5 cm and 8.5 grams.

25% underway

Today we've reached the 10-week mark! Quite the achievement, from nothing to ... something between plum and lime. The belly seems to expand a little too; I still think it's my own baby fat, but DH is sure it's different.

I had the feeling last week that some of the symptoms were subsiding a bit, and following the discussions on my February '11 discussion board I heard a lot of women who are nearing their 2nd trimester talking about the same thing.

Still spotting on and off, it's going on for more than a week now. There was nothing wrong with my urine sample, so no bladder infection. It has been quite distracting as you're more or less waiting for a miscarriage to happen, but plum is still present, doing its thing, and actually I feel fine and have no cramps or anything like it. It doesn't really help that heaps of women of my February '11 board are leaving the board for exactly this reason. But on Friday evening before I picked up DH from the airport I decided that I was totally over all this stupid stuff and would just take it as it is.

That helped! I played a nice round of golf in the Club Champs although I lost from my opponent and exited the Club Champs as quickly as I enterend :-)
And yesterday we had a lovely lunch in the garden of a cafe, in the sun, with some friends. Afterwards we went for a walk on the beach. Yeah, winter is Tasman is quite allright!

Hysterical

I have this iPhone pregnancy application, where you can access online forums. After entering your due date when using the app for the first time you get access to heaps of general pregnancy forums, like '35+ mums', 'dad's corner', 'multiples and twins', etc. I've also been placed in a 'February 2011' forum, which is actually quite an interesting one, as there are heaps of women on this forum all due in Feb '11. Which means sharing the same symptoms, oddities, pleasures and concerns.

This pregnancy app originates from What to Expect When You're Expecting, a US bestseller, so there are mainly Americans on these boards. This way I get quite a clear picture of how pregnancy care is arranged in the US, and how women in the US think and act around pregnancy. It's certainly different.

For example: they get pregnant women a first (vaginal) ultrasound when they are 5 weeks underway. What happens then is that there is nothing to see on this ultrasound as it is acutally quite early on. Often there is just a gestational sac and no yolk, or the other way round (still not an expert...), resulting in a lot of hysterical women on the forum who think they are miscarrying. Because there is nothing to see, a second ultrasound is arranged, just a few weeks later. Some of them can then actually hear a heartbeat, but a lot of them can't or it's erratic, as it's still early on. More hysterical women on the forum...

Then we've had a couple of weeks in which people wondered 'to tell or not to tell' and 'who to tell'. A lot of stories about horrible Mothers in Law, jealous friends and sisters, and work colleagues who couldn't keep their mouths shut. It's quite the rollercoaster ride :-0

And continuously going on are stories about hormones and moodswings. Some are crying because they've sent their husband out in the middle of the night for a very specific sandwich, and when he finally got home with the right thing they realised after looking in the fridge that there is no hot ketchup! Hysterical, so I thought... until:

1. Ziva came home the other night with a dead bird - booohoooooooooooo
2. My manager said she had no problems with me cancelling my trip to Wellington - boooohooooooooo
3. A police dog in Christchurch got shot and on the tv they showed him lying on the street - boooohoooooooo
4. A young boy brought flowers and a card to the police station for the dead dog (story in the newspaper) - booooooohooooooooooooooo

A bit of spotting

The last couple of days have seen me spotting a bit. In other words: bleeding! A bit scary, but nothing you can do about it. Without giving Too Much Information (TMI in pregnancy circles) it was pink and not red, which seems sort of okay. Only occurred once per day, but it's something you rather don't want to see.

Anyway, if plum decides to exit now, then it'll exit now, and we may be better off actually as something might be wrong. On the other hand, there is no cramping and I feel good, so plum might as well decide to stay inside. Bleeding can have heaps of causes in early pregnancy, from cystes to a torn mini blood vessel to whatever. Very common according to our midwife. I just rather wished it wouldn't have been in this week, as I have to go to Wellington tomorrow till Friday for a conference where I'll deliver a coaching workshop.

Some distraction may be good for me, although I'm not looking forward to my accommodation at the college, as I've been put in the baracks. Sounds awful, but it means your room is as big as your tiny single bed, and you have to share the bathroom with everyone else on the floor. This is where all the new recruits are housed for 5 months - and everyone else with business at the college. If you're high in rank or more important you can get a chalet - which I've had previously and which is quite nice, but due to the conference the college is packed!

I could take a hotel room, as there is a hotel close by (the college is located in a stupid part of Wellington, 30mins drive from town and there is just nothing close by, no shops, no public transport, no accommodation), but it's tacky and expensive, a lethal combination. There are some friends I could stay with, but they don't know I'm pregnant, I don't want to tell them yet and how much fun is there when I'm heading to bed at 8pm and wake them up at night because I've to pee ten times during the night? Nah, not a good idea. Sooooooo I'm thinking of changing my flight and flying up Thursday night actually. That feels a lot better :-)

Hungry!

I seem to have a nice appetite. But it's funny how some things suddenly don't go that well down. Like almond fingers for example (gevulde koeken). They look delicious, can't resist them, brain decides I should eat one. Half an hour after eating my almond finger I really wished I hadn't touched the bloody thing at all.

Same with almost all sweet foods, although that seems to change a bit now. I had some mega marshmallows yesterday and that was fine, as well as wine gums. No I haven't gained much weight yet, half a kg or so, I can see you thinking that there's a whale underway, but not yet.

So I got into the salty mode. Cheese crackers, yumm! Rice crackers, yumm! One thing with these crackers is that they are very crispy and crunchy. And make a lot of noise when eating them in bed in the middle of the night. Which makes DH wondering WTF is going on in our bedroom and then he starts whining about crumbs in his bed.

Last week I got really hungry around 2am in the morning. I had to get out of bed and make myself some nice sandwiches to take back to the bedroom with me. Luckily for DH he was in Oz...

I think these hunger pangs at night have to do with this crazy early bedtime. I crash into bed between 7.30 and 9pm, no wonder that after 6hrs of sleep my stomach starts rumbling! Perfectly understandable, isn't it?

DH

We all know men play their part in conceiving. So did DH, which stands for Dear Husband in pregnancy circles, although my man is not my husband but my partner of 14 years or so, but to make things easier we'll just call him DH. BF - boyfriend, sounds too teenish, and that's a stadium we've since then long passed. We're nearing the roaring fourties, and jeez will they be roaring if all goes well and baby arrives :-0

Anyway, it's funny how a lot of the available information seems to be true. That men immediately think about insurances, finances, and other earthy things as soon as they know they'll become a father. One of the first things we did was changing our life insurance policy!? I couldn't be bothered at all, but suddenly there was this man, freshly shaved and smelling (ooo my sense of smell could hardly keep up with the freshness of this man), who had to visit us at home after dinner (bloated!) and show us all the financial trends and issues of the last hundred years, with a laptop that decided to play tricks.

DH told me beforehand that this visit would take up max. 30 mins, but of course it didn't. Luckily (?) we had a double booking for the night, we would have a coffee (eeks - smell and taste) at the neighbour's, who is Dutch. Which means you have to be there ON TIME. I signed blindly for this new insurance and went to the neighbour's 10 mins late, while DH and insurance consultant were entangled in their trends and graphs.

Neighbour had made a huge apple pie (o god) especially for us, which went down surprisingly well (phew). After an hour or so DH arrived too, all in all a very pleasant evening :-)

Ankles and bloated

Well, nine weeks have passed so far and baby has reached the size of a prune today. I always wondered about pregnancy and how it would feel. How do you know you're pregnant? You can read everywhere about symptoms, but unless you're going through it yourself all the information in the world doesn't mean a thing.

I had read a thing or two about pregnancy and symptoms, as we were quite focused on conceiving in the last couple of months (the 'now or never'-syndrome? Interesting to spend some more words on that at some stage as we both are not sure whether we actually like kids!). I found out that a lot of women seem to feel very bloated in the early stages. Had to look up what that meant - it means exploding after dinner - and I could totally relate to that even before my period was due. I also could still see my ankles very well, as usually these disappear prior to my period. Two big red flags for me!! O and pimples, although these are a pregnancy symptom as well as a period symptom. And lower back pain, which also could mean either pregnant or period upcoming.

But to me these ankles and the bloated feeling were enough to tell me I could very well be pregnant. The test I did proved me right; EEKS!!!!! TOTAL PANIC!

Don't have to explain what this is