Tears of gratitude – 15 weeks 3 days

Eeeeep! I’m still here. Life has been pretty busy around these here parts of late so I’m behind on keeping you all up-to-date and not doing so great on reading all your posts either. I’m slowly slowly getting caught up. Phew!

We had some guests last week so that was all busy busy. It was my brother, his wife (also pregnant, 4.5 weeks behind me) and my beautiful 15 month old niece. Eerrrrr I’d forgotten that thing about 15 month olds where they want go out ALL. THE. TIME. Monkey was exactly the same at the age. It made me appreciate how much better he is at occupying himself now although he does talk non-stop which the niece did not do at all. So you know, both ages have their moments.

After the guests I was destroyed and I can’t say they were even that much work. I just hadn’t realised how much I have built down time into my life these days and you get less of that when you have guests. There’s more interacting and food prep and just busy busy doing stuff. When I dropped them at the airport on the Sunday I sped home and planted my arse on that couch and barely moved for about 6 hours, 1.5 of which included a nice nap with the AC cranked.

Anyway, let’s talk baby stuff. Things seem to be going really well. I had an OB visit this morning and baby girl was there waving at me from the screen. She looked SO CUTE. He printed me a pic but it was her bad side and she looks a bit like a monster so we might save that one for the baby books and not post it on the world wide web today.

I was in a bit of a panic pre this visit. Monkey had worms recently you see (fuck kindy and germ spreading kids) and they told me not to treat myself as well unless I definitely had them as it is a category B drug blah blah and I didn’t have them at the time but two weeks later of course I did. So I ended up treating us both at the same time and it was all good but then a week later I felt like I had signs again (already???) and I dosed us both again. My brain is going a bit mental with thoughts like “what if I’ve deformed my perfect baby?” but my god, I don’t know if you’ve ever had worms but they are awful and you just HAVE TO treat those fuckers.

(btw OB says it is ok to continue treating using the cat B drug if I have a recurrence but you know, get your advice from your own MD if this is you. Hopefully it is NEVER you.)

So basically I am cleaning like a mad woman at the moment even though we don’t have them just to try and prevent a recurrence. I want us clear for about a month before I will be happy. We wash towels after one use here, change sheets constantly, cut our nails short and scrub them with a nail brush each time we wash them (which is also constantly) to try and shift any eggs that may be caught under those fingers. It’s horried. The skin on my hands, ratshit and sensitive at the best of times, is totally giving up. Too much water, too much handwashing. Anyway my OB helpfully told me about a patient today who couldn’t shift them her whole fucking pregnancy. This better not end up being me.

The good (?) news is that baby girl measured almost 1 week ahead today. I had a slightly moment of hyperventilation about birthing her if she keeps growing like that but you know, at least the worms aren’t sucking all the nutrients from her. She is clearly getting some good shit in there.

I’ve booked the doula and our first meeting is next Thursday – so one week from today. I am really pumped about this. Also, I managed to drop 2 kgs since my last scan at 13 weeks which means my total gain so far is now 3.5kg instead of that horrific 5.5kgs. This is all through just making my eating a whole lot healthier. It is amazing what a difference that makes. Next week I actually start a 12 week fitness program specifically designed for pregnancy so I am really looking forward to that. I will do a separate post with all the details to keep this one a bit shorter.

And that, my friends, is pretty much it in this land. Oh except the part about tears of gratitude. Today just felt like a super emotional day. I hadn’t seen baby girl for 2 weeks (yeah I know, not long but felt long for me – have a 4 week wait for the next viewing) and with all the category B drugs and the like I was just so scared going into this appointment. When will that fear leave me? Will it ever go? I’m not sure. But anyway, I was driving home and almost bursting into tears all the way, just so grateful that she was still alive in there and happy and healthy and keeping me freaked out about getting her head out of my vagina. If that is my biggest problem for the rest of this pregnancy then I am pretty grateful for that.

(Ahem but secretly I hope she has a smaller head than her brother. He is ALWAYS in caps bigger than his age size).