OCTOBER 2024 BABIES - Thread 4

[CluelessInLondon]

Just getting another thread going as we are about to run out of space on the old one - hope nobody minds me taking the initiative on it!

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/pregnancy/5028774-october-2024-babies-thread-3

Hi all. I'm nearly 16wks and wondering if anyone has experienced movement yet? This is my 2nd and I thought I'd feel it by now?

Thank you, it's incredibly helpful to learn about the number of follow-up appointments you're meant to have, at least on the NHS!

Does the NHS tend to classify IVF pregnancies as high risk automatically? Or is this assessment based on whether you develop certain conditions, including the ones you mentioned?

@Melian in my NHS trust IVF is treated as high risk (without much explanation tbh - I can only assume it's because women who have IVF tend to be older. Research shows there's a less than 0.5% increase in delivery complications). This means that I will also be under the care of an obstetrician. I have the first appointment with him at 19 weeks.

I mentioned on the other thread that unless there's a clear medical issue / reason I would prefer not to be induced or have any other medical intervention so I'll be mentioning this to the consultant.

@30somethingttc I'm with you with the anxiety, I have anxiety anyway and with pregnancy I have been worse as it's my first and I'm constantly worrying about something I hate it because it's not good for the baby. I think it's all the change what's happening

@LuxeBiscuit I'm doing okay at work at the moment, I'm quite lucky that I work from home 3 days a week so going into the office for 2 days is no big deal. I'm not sure how I'll find it over the summer if it's hot as most of my commute is on the tube, but fortunately my line manager is pretty relaxed so I think if I needed to do more home working he would be okay with that.

@30somethingttc I have definitely struggled with the lack of appointments and not really knowing what's going on in there. I had 3 scans in the first trimester so it's been a bit of a shock going from that to nothing for several weeks! I've just been trying to concentrate on some positive stuff, sometimes with more success than others - I've been thinking about the things that we need to do to get ready for baby, booking antenatal classes, making some nice social plans etc. Decided not to book anything private as I think if I start having private scans I'll fall into the trap of wanting one every few weeks and before I know it I'll have thrown away a load of money that could have been spent on baby stuff instead.

@Melian Welcome and congratulations on your pregnancy - I'm sorry that things are so difficult for you right now with being away from home and your husband. You will find a very supportive group of ladies here! Is your move to Asia a long term one or just for a short amount of time? Can your work help at all - private healthcare insurance or anything like that to make sure you get the best care that's available where you are?
Re: travelling, policies vary by airline but I think most airlines won't accept passengers who are any more than 36 weeks pregnant - so if you are flying back to France to give birth you'll need to factor that into your plans. Anything from 29 weeks might need a fit to fly note from your doctor to say there's no problem with you travelling, but again it varies by airline.

@AnxiousD I'm 18 weeks tomorrow and haven't felt any movement yet - or I don't think I have, it's my first so harder to know what I'm looking out for!

Has anyone had any joy finding decent bras that fit well in pregnancy? I have tried 3 different maternity bras now and they are all terrible for different reasons so I'm still having to squash myself into my normal bras - even though they are getting too small they are still more comfortable than the maternity ones I've tried! Any recommendations?

@3030somethingttc I also struggle with anxiety in general and it always gets terrible for me in all my pregnancies. I'm on a perinatal guided self-help CBT course atm with our talking therapies service. The other two times I left it and left it and then got so ill in late pregnancy and the postnatal period so this time I'm going to try and get a handle on things earlier and hopefully I won't end up as unwell.

Maternity bras - Bravissimo are fantastic and do a great range. The Cake ones are super comfy, but I don't wear them for work though as they're unpadded etc. Royce also do good ones.

Thank you for your kind welcome! In theory, it's a four-year posting, so I'll have to come back here after mat leave in Europe (6 months). I'm not even starting to think about the complexity of managing the baby here; just trying to get through the next few months...

I'd also be super interested to hear about other people's maternity bra recommendations (especially from larger chested ladies)!

@WeightoftheWorld Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check those out. Really struggling at the moment with finding something that's supportive enough - I have quite big boobs anyway which have got bigger in the last couple of months, and with maternity bras mostly being non-wired I just find I look a bit saggy in everything!

Ah @CluelessInLondon Cake and I think Royce too only do non-underwired ones. I had a quick look at Bravissimo and I think Hot Milk and maybe some other brands do wired maternity ones though? Honestly if you have a local Bravissimo I'd go in for a fitting and ask them, they're fantastic. Your size is likely to change again later in pregnancy too and then again post-partum if you breastfeed.

I’m 17 weeks and have started to feel flutters! It’s amazing how much more chilled out I am about everything second time round though, although it might also be because I am 4 days away from a PhD thesis submission deadline and 7 days away from moving house, all while looking after a toddler full time 😅 To say I’ve got other things on my mind is an understatement! Symptoms wise, I’ve been incredibly tired and also lightheaded - blood test showed slight anemia so am ramping up the iron intake.

@CluelessInLondon I went to John lewis and the lovely lady there suggested the John lewis basics range none wired bra . Think they were £18 . Brilliant I have 3 on rotation. Because they are small, medium or large sized they have grown as I have grown so to speak.

Well I have bought something for the baby. I have been toying with using reusable nappies this time. I have been through potty training if you can do that you can cope with messy nappies. Well that was the idea!

I have bought a few bimbles newborn nappies . I will be practicing on a Teddy.until baby comes!

@WeightoftheWorld I'll try going into Bravissimo one day after work - until then I've just ordered a whole bunch of different bras from M&S, just normal ones instead of maternity ones but bigger than I would normally wear. Hopefully one or two of those will keep me going and make me more comfortable until I can get measured for a proper maternity bra!

@CluelessInLondon I really rate the JoJo mama maternity bras. I’ve got a steady rotation of the Emma Jane ones.

@Bee49 A JoJo Maman Bebe bra was the first one I tried, it was awful! I don't like my boobs at the best of times because I think they're too big but this was like a surefire way to make me hate them! I think I might just try to stick it out with normal bras for a while longer and just size up, it's not like I need a nursing bra right now anyway.

I have loads of Bravado breastfeeding bras. They are really good and very comfy.

@spudnik1 we use reusables and love them, plus they look so cute on baby 🥰

Thank you all for being so nice about anxiety.
made me feel better and less alone in it ❤️
hoping I’ll start to enjoy this pregnancy soon! X

@Melian Its sounds like a tricky position to be in.

im just wondering if your work do a risk assessment now that you’re pregnant…as it would seem that it is potentially quite risky due to not being able to completely trust what you’re eating etc.
If there are risks then your employee needs to mitigate them, without penalising you as that could be classed as discrimination. That might mean that they pull you out of your current location (same pay, equally postponing etc).

Not sure if anything I’ve said is of any use but might be worth thinking about if the worry is becoming too much? xx

Thank you so much for the suggestion! As far as I know, they do not do risk assessments (it's definitely not in our HR policy), although there might have been previous cases dealt with on an individual basis. I work for an agency of the United Nations, so the philosophy is very much that we are supposed to be deployed around the world during our careers. Some places are classified as "non family", meaning you can't bring your partner/children with you, and instead you get additional leave to go see them during the year. I am currently in a "family" duty station with some hardship classification, which only means I get paid a bit more to offset the inconvenience of being here. You made me think it might not be a bad idea to find out how other UN agencies deal with this; maybe their policies are more thorough and could serve as an example... at the same time, it's hard to say my case is particularly bad when we have international staff in Kabul or Mosul...

Hey everyone!

Absolutely full of cold 😩 sore throat .. everything!

But , yesterday, we had a gender scan at 15wk & 4 days and discovered we are having a little girl 💕

Over the moon, we also got a sneak peek of her in 4d which was a little crazy and heard her heartbeat for the first time 🩷

Many others had an early gender scan?

Also, is there still a WhatsApp chat? I can't seem to find the link amongst the threads 😊 x

I dropped off the last thread too.

For those of you that have had previous (multiple losses) how are you feeling mentally? Because I am feeling totally disconnected from this experience, my lovely husband reads pregnancy books every night and I can barely bring myself to say that I’m pregnant. I don’t know if it’s a protective mechanism because of experiencing it going wrong before but I’m conscious that this may be my only pregnancy and I haven’t really spent any time enjoying / appreciating / getting excited.

not sure what I’m looking for really, reassurance that I’m not a monster?! That I’ll start to feel happy?

@cm3212 Lovely news, congratulations!

@Mitsky I had a loss last year (thankfully I have only had to go through it once) and felt very similar to you in the early part of pregnancy - in my head, pregnancies just ended at 9 weeks so until I got past that point I was very detached from it and was kind of working from the assumption that it wouldn't work out. You are definitely not a monster, this is just your way of protecting yourself because losing a baby is such a painful experience. I'm on another thread on this forum with people who were all on a TTC thread together trying again after loss, and we've talked a lot about having hope not fear in pregnancy, and that even though it can be hard to feel hopeful these little beans deserve our hope. So please don't beat yourself up for finding it hard to enjoy or look forward to things, but try to reframe it in a positive way if you can. Right now you are pregnant, this pregnancy is totally separate from your others, and you have no reason right now to believe that this pregnancy won't work out. ❤

I now need to go take some of my own advice, as I have been feeling anxious in a big way for the last 24 hours! I've almost felt like everything is going too smoothly in this pregnancy and it must mean that something is going to go wrong, so I've been spiralling into worry and anxiety that I'm going to get to my anomaly scan a week on Saturday and find that the baby has stopped developing. The big gap between scans has given me far too much time to get into my own head.

@ccm3212 aw hope you feel better soon and congrats on your little girl.

I needed that pep talk from Clueless too! Sorry app won't let me tag more than one person in a post again. I feel like I really need to tell our kids now that we are spreading the word as I can't risk them hearing it from someone else first. Well, my little one is only 2 so he won't understand anyway but eldest is almost 6 so would. But I'm still so anxious about a negative outcome when I have my anomaly scan (given the low papp-A). But Im only 15 weeks so could easily be waiting another 7 weeks for my scan and I just feel that's too long to wait and risk her finding out by accident.

Hey everyone, been quiet on here- had a horrible head cold/flu last week which just wiped me out.
Has anybody started to feel baby movements yet? I am 17 weeks today and still nothing. With my first baby I started feeling flutters at 16 weeks! So this is a bit worrying. Booked a reassurance scan for tomorrow, hoping all is ok🤞🏻