September 2019 babies - thread #4

[Stroan]

Starting a new thread before the old one gets filled up!

I can't really fault the care I was given (if we ignore the awful night shift hca who "helped" me to manually express for dc1, she was horrific) I'm just not a great patient and like my own house. I was lucky enough to have my own room post cs too which makes a big difference.

I will be 21+5 when I have my anomaly scan, seems ages away so glad we have sexing scan at 16+2.

I am watching the pennies so no 16 week sex scan here!

Crazy though some places locally do from 15 weeks which i am tomorrow.......

My 20wk scan is on 24 April, I'll be 19+6. They gave me the appointment at the 12wk scan.

So 6 weeks today - feels like ages!

My private sex scan is only £35 so well priced compared to some later ones. My trust won't tell you the sex at the anomaly scan so we didn't have any choice but to pay for a private one if we wanted to find out. I'm too impatient not too, plus I need to work out how on earth im organising bedrooms.

Yeah my 20 week scan isn't until 30th April, gave it to me at 12 weeks scan. But got a sexing scan on 8th April when I'll be 17 weeks.

We don't need the sexing scan as we already know - but it is very tempting to have another private one in between to see how she is!
But I will try to resist.

£60 is our local price

So tempting but have two dc birthdays coming up plus want a holiday plus a nice pram. Haha. Want want want.

My 20 week scan isnt until 7th May which seems ages away!
No private sex scan for us - I’m still debating whether or not I want to know!

I can definitely feel him move now :). He seems to like bouncing around as I go to bed which doesn’t bode well for when he gets bigger 😂

@Karigan195 ohhh so lucky!! I want to feel my baby move😂 how far along are you x

@TwittleBee my 20 week scan is 30th April too!
Can't wait to feel movement, I hate this inbetween stage where I just look so bloated/like I've overdosed on pasta and can't feel any movement yet so over analyse every twinge incase something is wrong! Anyone else or just me? Haha.

I'm pretty sure I can feel movement too, first noticed it last Thursday.

I’ve been lurking for a while, thought I’d drop in to say that I’ve made it to 12 weeks which feels like a bit of a milestone to me (I know that’s probably a silly way to feel). Got my scan on Monday, feeling pretty nervous about it.

I’m assuming I won’t get my 20 week scan til the end of May as I’m out of the country from 19 -> 22 weeks so I think I might have a gender scan just before I leave to break up the time.

Ah snap StarLight10 then ey! Oh agree it be nice to actually look certainly pregnant! Although not sure if I need to keep quiet whilst job hunting about being pregnant!

I can certainly feel movement, those undeniable rice krispy pops!

Oh wonderful news and it is a milestone stormtrooperjulian wishing you so much luck for your scan

I had my scan today and all looks well! Put back 2 days so due 23rd September now.

I'm so happy . Can't wait to feel movements

His is a really weird question....but what’s the deal with wine tasting while pregnant?
I’ve been invited to a wine tasting thing with a few friends at a local vineyard. We get a tasting session with the house sommelier, and a 3 course dinner in their restaurant which was amazing last time I went!
Can I go, and smell/swill/spit? I won’t swallow any of it, I promise!!

I thought I felt movement yesterday but haven't had anything since so I think it was probably just gas or muscle twitch. I did get phantom kicks when not even pregnant so might be hard to tell what's actually real. Haven't had a letter for next scan yet but not really sure what my care will look like going forward now.

Loads of chat this afternoon!

I had a great post-baby stay in hospital - they thought one of us had an infection and I needed a blood transfusion so had to stay in for 3 days. My amazing midwife got me a private room and DH was able to stay with us - after he signed a form saying he wouldn't drink alcohol or be naked in front of staff! I'm sure I'll be desperate to get home to DD this time, but all stays are not necessarily bad.

I can feel some flutters, a bit like small bubbles popping. I loved the kicks last time, even if she kicked so hard I got bruises.

No sexing scan for us - although at my private on on Saturday the monographer showed us a 3d view of the baby and said she would need to be careful to not show us anything. So I guess it was possible to tell. I think we are still team Yellow and our hospital don't tell you the sex. I've got my 20 week scan booked, plus a 28 week growth scan which all feels a bit too organised!

I definitely want an ELCS, DD was a vaginal delivery but she had shoulder dystocia so got stuck at the very end after a wonderful labour. There's an increased risk of it happening again and I'm not comfortable with that risk. Slightly worried about what would happen if I went into labour before the CS date - my sisters 2nd labour was so quick that my nephew was born in my Mum's living room! A home birth was not in the plan.

@MyBreadIsEggy is up to you but after the first trimester I'm happy to have the odd glass of wine so would certainly think if you were swilling and spitting the majority it wouldn't be an issue. When I had the older two the advice was a few units was fine and I'm looking forward to enjoying a nice glass of red with a planned meal out next weekend.

@mybreadiseggy I would go, it sounds great. I'd probably swallow some too!

I want to go, but I’m not comfortable with drinking during my pregnancies (I’ve got an adopted cousin who was born with FAS). So I figure by just swilling and spitting I’ll only be ingesting teeny tiny amounts? I’d be going mainly for the food Had the most incredible banoffee cheesecake the last time I was there!

dustydoorframes I still haven’t been scanned either... mine is next Friday. That should be 13 weeks. Isn’t the waiting excruciating I actually took another test on Monday because we’ve started telling people but I feel such a fraud having not had any sickness! Stupid I know (it was still positive haha).

mybreadiseggy I went to a gin tasting last weekend because we’d booked it before I was pg. It was fun! I only smelled things. I don’t see why a bit of wine would be a problem though!

Do you all mind me asking the kind of problems you can have with breast feeding? I really want to try but just wondering what it is that can cause trouble? I only have one friend who’s had a baby and she seemed to have no issues.

heather omg gin

The biggest problem when it comes to breastfeeding is shitty support. Most physical problems or hiccups can be remedied relatively easily with the right support from people who know what they are doing!
For example - my first baby had a horrendous posterior tongue tie that went undiagnosed, so she couldn’t latch effectively and ripped my nipples to shreds at every feed. I switched to exclusively expressing. When she was 15 months old, a friend qualified as an IBCLC and looked in her mouth after we’d been chatting about it, and within a few second she said “well no wonder! She’s got a horrendous tongue tie!” So if that had been diagnosed at the time, it would have been quickly snipped and problem solved. But the support in my area at the time was abysmal. Most of the midwives I saw when I was still in the hospital didn’t even think to look for a tt, they just offered formula
With my second, I had a massive oversupply of milk. I honestly could have fed triplets and still had some going spare. It was painful initially because of the engorgement, and poor DS couldn’t latch onto my rock hard boulders unless I expressed off enough to soften them first so he could get a good gobful of boob and latch properly. But I had excellent support from La Leche League, and they told me what to do to remedy the oversupply and within a couple of weeks, we were plain sailing

Support, support, support is key. And understanding what is normal newborn behaviour. One of the most common reasons given for stopping bf is “I didn’t have enough milk”. When roughly 2% of women actually can’t produce enough. A lot of the women who think they don’t have enough milk, just aren’t aware that it’s normal for a newborn to feed every hour at the start, so they think their baby must be starving. All that stems from a society where formula feeding has become normal, so those babies do feed on a 3ish-hourly schedule, but that’s usually not the case for a bf baby. Breastfeeding is a supply and demand service, so the only way your body knows it needs to make milk for the next feed is to have milk removed effectively from the breast by your baby or a pump frequently.
(Sorry for the essay!!)

MyBreadIsEggy has summed it up brilliantly.

There really are so many wonderful things about BFing so certainly worth trying it if you want to. For me it was great being able to just leave the house without worrying about formula and next feeds. But what I struggled with was eating enough, i was constantly hungry and always being sick (I'm sick if I feel hungry which is probably why I get terrible morning sickness). Also mastitis is so horrid but can be easily treated. Then there's the whole enforcement issue and fast flow that I struggled with, nothing could get my boobs to calm down (and tbh I've still got leaky boobs now so think I just have freak boobs). I'd get through at least 2 muslins a feed just from my own boobs milk shooting like a loose fire hose. And not gonna lie, the cluster feeds are difficult and lonely sometimes. Energy is being sucked from your boobs whilst you're already lacking in sleep. Regardless of all that, I will be hoping to BF again though as I really did love the bond and the ease of getting out and about. This time I plan on expressing more though to get DH to help out earlier. Or might even try combi feeding earlier than last time too.

To add to what eggy said (which I totally agree with)- we are VERY good at telling each other about the bad times we and others have had breastfeeding, and how hard it's going to be. It's normal for it to be fine and easy. If it isn't, then- like with any other normal bodily function- the thing to do is to seek help (this is the bit that goes wrong in many places in the uk) who will diagnose and assist. If the help is dodgy or non existent, and especially as most of us have not grown up seeing people breastfeeding around us, so the ask-an-older-relative-for-help mechanism is not very reliable either, it can be harder to figure out what to do next.
Errr lots of essays sorry!

stormtrooper and heather looks like it's just us left- so by the end of next week we will all past that milestone, phew!!!!

Ooh eggy re booze- I've read in a lot of places (most recently in Expecting Better) that there is really no evidence that a glass of wine a day (or so) has any ill effect. FAS comes from binge drinking- getting more into your system than your liver can keep up with- so your wine tasting should be A ok!

Urgh- what a novel (and its taken me yonks to write with kids climbing on me...) so I've probably cross posted with everyone!