Baby Lessons Part I

Last week Giles and I attended our first NHS lesson on how to get through this pregnancy and birth malarkey. The session was a 1.5 hour session, focussed on 'Physio' and was to cover pregnancy physio, birth positions and getting back to normal post-pushing baby out. We arrived and found a seat in the boiling hot (not ideal for a bunch of preggos!) classroom with the other 15 or so women and their partners. It was the first situation that I've been in with loads of pregnant women and I found myself eyeing up all of their bumps, wondering how pregnant they were and making comparisons with mine! 

The session started with the Physio session asking us the following question: "Who is not in any pain at the moment?". Now, naive as it may seem, I thought that almost all of the women would be putting their hands up - and so I eagerly stuck my hand in the air. I was the only one!!! This led to me be asked to declare my secrets to the group! The next hour was a bit of a moaning session - we went through all the symptoms, aches and pains that the women were experiencing and talked about techniques to help - we had pelvic pain, muscle pain, ankle pain, chest pain, bum pain, thumb pain - the list goes on! 

It made me realise how incredibly lucky that I have been throughout this pregnancy - I've loved it! No sickness and almost no ailments, aches or pains! As for my secrets... the only things that I can think of are: 

• Walking: I currently walk 4 miles a day (2 miles each way to work). Even though I'm getting much slower... I am sure this must still be good for keeping the swollen ankles, stretch marks and cellulite at bay!
• Sleep: I've always needed a good 8 hours sleep... and I've kept this up throughout pregnancy. I've been going to be earlier and earlier in the third trimester - now asleep by 9.30/10 most nights! Pack it in now before the baby is here!
• Not reading too much: I have been so overwhelmed by the amount of books, articles, forums on what you should/shouldn't do during pregnancy/labour/child raising that I've decided to try and avoid reading stuff, apart from the essential literature provided by my midwife! I want to be able to make up my own mind about what to do and how to behave, so that I can feel guilt free about my choice during pregnancy and beyond.

So they are my top tips. In reality, I just think I've been one of the lucky ones! It probably means I'm doomed to have an excruciating labour or something - hopefully not!

The last bit of the session gave us some tips for birth positions. We came away with some leaflets with rather funny pencil sketches of recommended positions - and a scary leaflet on how to avoid "tearing"... Oh god! 

Alien Invasion

It's been a while since I posted. To those that are not me, not much has changed. Many people comment that they often forget I am pregnant, which I see as a good thing - I hope that it means that a) I am not too huge; b) pregnancy has not taken over my life/conversations! I do feel very very lucky that I have had such a straightforward pregnancy - I have felt pretty good all the way through - full of energy, happy and well. I know that others are not so lucky!

So since the last post...

17 weeks - I started to feel movement. I described it at the time as feeling a fist in your tummy moving from side to side. I didn't like it at first, but eventually got used to it. As the movement got more and more frequent, it became reassuring. 

20 weeks - the 20 week scan. So I didn't make the same mistake as last time and made sure that I went with a half full bladder, rather than painfully busting for the toilet! The scan was all fine - exciting to see the baby wriggling around and we were very pleased that everything was 'normal. We got a couple of alien looking photos from the scan, including a very cute one of the bottom of the baby's foot!

28 weeks - today! I've been continuing to feel tip top and now feel movement all the time. In fact, I see it wriggling around and trying to punch and kick it's way out of my tummy all the ruddy time! I understand now what people mean when they compare being pregnant to the film 'Alien'!! 

We are starting to buy baby stuff - I'm absolutely overwhelmed by all of the choices and things that people say that we need... but will save that for another post!