Anyone due Feb 2004?

[LucieB]

It may be a bit previous, but have done 5 tests - all positive (albeit faint lines). Am about 5 weeks. Anyone else out there who has just found out they are expecting?

Hi everyone, hope you're feeling ok.

Haven't posted for a while as our PC is suffering meltdown (really slow...)and I find it too frustrating. Also, dd (2.5) isn't sleeping well, so me and dh are really knackered.

Can't seem to find a comfy position in bed at the moment. Has anyone else got hips like an 80 year old (actually a bit insutling to 80 year olds come to think of it, as my grandmother was still doing aerobics at that age).

Have also just restarted pregnancy yoga - what bliss. Went on monday whilst dd was at playschool, and came home feeling really energised.

20 week scan next week (although I'm actually already 20 weeks. Good luck everyone with yours whilst must be about this time too.

Hi Utka ... good luck with your scan next week
I have problems with hips too ... but then I always have done and it only got better when we got a proper orthopaedic mattress for our bed ... it is a bit sore at the moment for me due to pregnancy and a touch of SPD ....
22 weeks today ... wow ... can't get over the fact that I am over half way now ...

Hi all,
its the first time im using this forum, it just looked so supportive- and somewhere where u can really let out whats inside u!
Im going thru quite a tough time, I'm only pregnant because my mother-in-law really wanted a child and she is not feeling to well- so wanted to see her grandchild before she passed away. Im really not motivated to do any of the things you all sound so excited about. I was so much more focused on my career before. Though im quite worreid and scared for my baby- i know i will love him/her a lot once i see him/her; but it just doesnt seem like it was supposed to happen now. I just hope i can be a good mother as its too late to do anything else now!
by the way people - one thing that cheered me up this week was that i heard there's new range of maternity wear thats launching next month. its called isabella oliver, and my freind tells me they really make you feel stylish and sexy1

Had my scan, all was fine and know the sex - pretty definite that I am having a little girl. Have to go back for a 34 week scan as the placenta was a bit low. Anyone else experience this?
Hope you are all doing well.

I'm just now being brave enough to post. I'm 20 weeks, and had an ultrasound and amnio at 17 weeks. I'm definitely having a girl (they were sure from the ultrasound it was just about the only thing she was really cooperative about but the amnio confirmed it). The amnio was fine, and the results were early, thank goodness, because the ultrasound showed a two-vessel umbilical cord (it should have 2 arteries and only has 1) and that's associated with really nasty chromosome disorders.

Because of the 2-vessel cord, I'm supposed to have a lot of extra ultrasounds to make sure growth is OK, and on Monday a fetal echocardiogram (the heart was not something she was cooperative about). I'm glad for the reassurance, but I wish I were in a country with a better health system; I wasn't expecting to get pregnant and was stupidly uninsured when it happened, and you can't get health insurance when you're already pregnant. So the amnio cost me as much as a perfectly nice computer (partly because she was so uncooperative that the senior perinatologist who would normally just do the amnio had to do an extra 30 minutes to verify the umbilical cord diagnosis and get some of the measurements of baby parts the original technician couldn't).

But all this thrashing around that makes the ultrasound difficult (and means I've been feeling her dozens of times a day since 18 weeks, even though it's my first pregnancy) makes people very optimistic that she's doing just fine.

Californiagirl and Krystlehardasani .... so sorry that it has taken so long for anyone to reply ... everyone seems a bit slow on the uptake on this thread ... not like the January and March threads which are constantly active!
California G ... you sound like you have had a hard time of it ... it must have been very scary ... Good news that your baby is doing ok though. I take it you are in the US (by your nickname?) .. but I didn't realise that maternity care was so expensive there. In NZ (where I live) there is a public health system which is reasonably good, but it does pay to have health insurance, but every woman is entitled to free maternity care - in fact maternity care is not covered by any health insurance so if you get pregnant you either have to go with public health or pay privately for it. It is interesting how other countries work isn't it.
Krystle ... sorry that you are not having the greatest time of it either ... I hope that the maternity range makes you feel a bit better - every pregnant woman needs to feel good about herself don't they?
Keep posting, the two of you ... let's get this thread going!!

PS ... when are you both due? I am due right at the end of Jan which is why I joined this thread as it is highly unlikely that I will give birth early or on time!
LucieB ... glad your scan was OK ... No experience of low placentas but I did read that if they are low at 20 weeks the chances are that as you grow bigger the placenta stretches up and is out of the way by DDay! My friend had to be hospitalised for 3 weeks with a very low placenta and then at 36 weeks they saw that it had moved up (or rather the uterus had moved up) and so she had a normal birth.
Utka ... how was your scan?
How is everyone else? Naughtynoonoo ... dino ... issywoo ... mutley??

Hi CaliforniaGirl and KrystleHardasani. Welcome to the thread.
Ghosty's right, we are a bit slow here. My only excuse is that after moving house I no longer have internet access at home (not in a broadband area...yet) and only actually work in the office a couple of days a week.
Californiagirl, I don't know much about 2 vessel cords but the fact that your baby is moving a lot and the amnio's been fine sounds pretty good to me. Reading what your saying about costs makes me grateful for the good old NHS.
Krystle, do you know where you can buy these clothes. I ordered my first pair of maternity trousers and they arrived on Saturday and are absolutely huge. Make me look like a clown and I can't image fitting into them no matter how big I get.

Just had the fetal echocardiogram. She was as uncooperative as ever ("some babies just aren't as echogenic as others" says the cardiologist) and as a result I feel a bit beaten up from being pushed on, but eventually they got all the views they wanted, even if some of them were fuzzy because she was beating up the transducer, keeping her heart as far away as possible. And the results were all fine, the cardiologist was very cheery about it.

My maternity wear triumph was finding a dress to wear to my wedding and to be maid of honor in a friend's wedding -- actually it's a salwar kameez, an Indian tunic-pants-scarf outfit, screaming red with lots of gold embroidery. I'm not Indian, but
a salwar kameez is unfitted and beautiful, and it's so much more fun than shopping in maternity stores full of black and pink in a size 6! Now all I have to do is find day-to-day wear I can stand, quick before I'm out of the last 3 pairs of fat pants I can still wear.

Good to see this thread getting a bit more active. I can't quite believe I am now over halfway - 21 weeks today! - although having said that, time does seem to be going very slowly during this pregnancy (no 2). Perhaps thats because I am sooo miserable at work and am having broken nights sleep with ds who is waking randomly in the night after being such a great sleeper.
Keep those posts coming in - mumsnet really keeps me going through my tedious and stressful days at work.

Hello everyone. How are you all. I'm in the office today so have internet access and I'm making the most of it. I really will have to try and get onto the internet again at home as I'm having withdrawal symptoms!
I've been feeling really tired recently, not helped by the fact that ds has been having bad dreams and has been waking us up several times a night. Also I'm still suffering badly from blocked up sinuses which doesn't exactly aid sleeping. On Friday night, I came home from work, had a Chinese takeaway and one glass of wine and collapsed almost comatose on the sofa. How sad is that!
Hope everyone else is okay. Keep in touch.

Not posted for ages - our PC is still on go slow mode.

Scan was OK, except that they picked up a potential problem with baby's kidney. DD1 has reflux on both kidneys (the valves don't work properly, allowing wee back up the tubes, and leaving her prone to urinary infections).

We had been warned to expect something, as there's a 50% likelyhood in subsequent children (it's genetic). Still, it was a bit of a shock. I'd actually rather know, because forewarned is forearmed.

We have to go for another scan just before Christmas, and if the anomaly is still there, then they'll scan the baby at 6 weeks. DD1 has been on daily antibiotics since the age of 11 months (she's now 2.5) and will be until she's about 4 or 5 when they can do a more invasive check up to see whether the situation is correcting itself. If baby 2 has it, then it'll be on the antibiotics too. I guess at least we know what we're doing, and this way it would be different from what happened with DD1, who ended up being hospitalised twice in 2 months with urinary infections.

The condition may correct itself as the baby develops, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. We didn't find out what sex the baby is (the hospital has a policy against this)
How's everyone else doing?

Hello everyone. I am finding this pregnancy really hard-going. I am working full-time, with ds in nursery 5 days a week, and we also have various DIY projects underway at home which we need to get on with. So this time, don't seem to have time to put my feet up or indeed any time to myself and am constantly feeling guilty that ds is getting short-changed. Anyone else have these dilemas? Not due to finish work till January which seems a long way off!
Hope you are all doing well

I can't tell whether I'm having problems with allergies or depression or possibly anemia or whether I'm just tired because I'm pregnant. I feel completely worn out for no reason at all. And when I do have reason I feel even worse, which is going to be a real problem soon as I have actual work to do.

Worse (better?) yet, after waiting nearly 6 weeks to find out whether it was all going to work, it is going to work, and I'm going to get married. In 6 weeks. In Australia. I ought to be thrilled, but mostly I'm worried about the paperwork and the fact that I now need maternity clothes for two different seasons in one month. Fortunately I have a wedding dress, but now I need something else to wear to his cousin's wedding the week before, and finding a dress to wear to a late spring wedding in the late fall is going to be a neat trick (and I get to Australia just in time for the all-day drive to get to the wedding, so no chance of buying it there, which I think will have to do for most of my other clothes).

And my father, who is my last living parent (his second partner died days after the baby was conceived) is probably not well enough to come to Australia for my wedding (it has to be there for immigration reasons). So I think it will be just me and all of dp's family, who are being very tolerant of his marrying somebody 14 years older and pregnant and moving to a foreign country, but it's not exactly what they were dreaming of. I just want to skip ahead to mid-December when it's all over and I'm home again with dp!

Not to mention at my last appointment I was at my pre-pregnancy weight, which everybody loved at 16 weeks but was not so happy about at 20 weeks. I have another ultrasound Friday and a dr's appt. Monday, and I'm just hoping they don't decide the baby is too small and freak. She's still hyper, so she can't be starving... And I'm really eating absolutely everything I'm hungry for and was already before they told me I wasn't gaining.

Californiagirl, it sounds like you have got an awful lot on your plate right now and thats probably what is making you feel tired and run down and emotional. As I said in my posting, I also feel tired constantly - probably through having to work full-time in a very full-on city job. Everything seems to be happening at once for you but try and look at each issue in turn and think about how best to deal with it. Breaking down the muddle of stress that is going round in your head will help, I am sure.
As for the weight gain, I was told by my midwives (SW London) that they don't weigh pregnant women any more as a matter of policy because different women gain at different rates, if at all. With my ds, I put on weight quickly, even though I religiously went to the gym 3-4 times a week. With this little one, (No2), I haven't put on as much weight either. My midwives said that weighing women creates too much anxiety and it is not a reliable way of determining how the baby is thriving. Some women put on miniscule amounts of weight, if at all and still go on to deliver happy, healthy babies.
HTH.
Hope the wedding preparations go well. Do let us know how its going and do remember we are here to listen!

Well, I'm still tired and cranky, but less weepy. The advantage of getting married in Melbourne is that DP ends up having to do most of the work, and being male, he's very decisive about it all. So when it turned out that none of the original plans would work, he managed to find a new location and celebrant on the new date in one afternoon.

And I have just come back from the follow-up ultrasound, where they said not only is she just about as exactly the right size as you could ever hope to see, IT'S NOT A 2-VESSEL CORD. That's right, all this fuss was caused by wiggly-baby making it impossible to see properly at 17 weeks. Today, she chose to do aerobics at 4 am, and I carefully ate nothing but protein and complex carbohydrates for breakfast, and she was only moderately wiggly, and they were able to get the critical cross-section view they couldn't get the first time, and it's a perfectly normal umbilical cord! I'm thrilled. And annoyed. Especially since they want to do another one in 4 weeks (what, going for best 2 out of 3 opinions?) which I'm going to talk to the OB about with a view towards ignoring it. I'm tired of lying around in cold rooms with my stomach covered in gel reading dates backwards in a mirror...

hope you've managed to sort the wardrobe dilemma californiagirl. If it's any consolation, I've had the opposite on the weight front - or rather, I look really big for where I'm at (6 months). All sorts of people keep looking really surprised when I tell them I'm due in early Feb, rather than before Christmas.

I feel really huge (it's all out front and my tummy muscles didn't really recover from the last one!). I also only feel like eating chocolate ice cream, maltesers and chunky kit kats. Last time I managed a healthy diet (until I went overdue, and then the maltesers kicked in). So many things seem different this time around.

I find it hard managing to be interesting and lively with my dd (who's going to be 3 in Feb). Not sure whether I wish I were still working full time, although I sympathise with lucieb over the city job pressure- I'm sure it's not all roses this way either!

One consolation is that I feel better prepared for the baby this time - I know what to expect from the birth and afterwards. As a result, I feel more in contact with the baby - last time it was all so unreal.

The wardrobe problem isn't sorted, I'm afraid, and the wedding is only about half set up (rather an
issue, what with it being on the 26th and a party on the 29th). But I gained 9 pounds in 4 weeks between 20 weeks and 24 weeks, so nobody's fretting about it any more. So much for my excuse for eating whatever whenever. And the OB agreed that I did not need yet another ultrasound. And I did find two pairs of maternity pants with pockets for day-to-day wear.

Majority opinion is that I still just look fat, not pregnant, alas. And either the morning sickness is coming back or having her smush my stomach makes me feel sick. My father is very sympathetic when people tell me I'm blooming with pregnancy, as being slightly tired and ill tends to make me pale with roses in my cheeks, it's a family joke (you look pretty dear, do you feel OK?).

I feel for those of you with jobs and/or other children to cope with. I'm actually job hunting, which is hard to work up enthusiasm for, not to mention its own wardrobe problem.

DP is fortunately a rock; reassuring, dealing with the wedding plans, enthusiastic about the baby. This is the man who managed to find genuine Saltines in Australia, after getting out of his warm bed at the crack of dawn because I was morning sick and couldn't eat or drink anything he had in the house but water, even though he'd tried to get edible things for me.

Is anyone enjoying this stage of pregnancy?!!! I am 26 weeks now and feel permanently exhausted and run down. DS is 14.5 months and I am working full-time in a very demanding job. Perhaps thats the problem....
Still, not too much longer at work - go on leave mid-January.
Hope everyone else is ok.

Hello there, new to this thread. Due on 3 Feb 04. Today I can say I'm enjoying being pregnant. Yesterday I'd have said it was hell on earth! I've heard other people are experiencing these highs and lows but I'm sure with a dd or ds it must be harder, no energy etc. I have nothing but respect.

Hi everyone. Sorry that i haven't come back to you all sooner. I am due on the 4th feb 2004, nearly 7 1/2 months pg. I am finding this stage also very hard especially when i can only sleep on my right side at night.
I am also huge but my midewife assures me that i am not as big as some women. I have put on 9kg so far and i have been having a lot of bad backs.
Does anyone seem to get a lot of stomach cramps. I dont know whether it is braxton hicks as this is my first baby but surely this is not normal as i seem to get them at least twice a day.
I thought that i had gone into labour on saturday. I was walking round sainsburys doing my shopping when i got these terrible cramps that kept coming on and off, but after i had gone to the toilet i was fine.
Any way i wish you all well
I'll be back more regularly soon as this is my last week at work. HURRAY

I get some stomach cramps, but not twice a day. I would be feeling slightly happier, since all my tests are now good, I'm only averagely uncomfortable, and things appear to be under control for both weddings, but my father's in the hospital. Aargh.

I am getting regular 'tightenings' of my stomach which I presume to be BH contractions. They often last quite a long time and are uncomfortable (not painful). I am now suffering from heartburn so am swigging Gaviscon after every meal and am also getting quite a lot of rib pain and breathlessness. The tiredness is the worst feeling though and can't really be bothered to do anything at work.

Hi there. I'm also getting the tightening, spasm-type feelings. They do seem to last longer than I'd heard and usually happen when I'm going up stairs for some reason. Also getting incredible stretching discomfort down the sides of my abdomen now and under-rib pain.

Roll on maternity leave. Is everyone feeling uncomfortable now? Any fellow first-timers going to antenatal classes yet?

Jamhead - my rib pain is excrutiating and its worse when sitting down. So having a desk job is great!!! Am also feeling more uncomfortable now and am really looking forward to maternity leave although it still seems a long way off. Hope everyone else is doing ok.

Hi everyone,
back again. At last we've got broadband internet connected in our new house. Not that I get to use it very often!
Funnily enough I'm actually feeling better than I have for ages, less tired/more energy. Don't know why but I'm not knocking it. Maybe it's because I've been diagnosed as an anaemic and have started taking iron tablets. I suffered from terrible sore backs last week and the week before but they've gone too. Only minor niggle at the moment is indigestion but even that's not too bad.
Like everyone else I'm looking forward to starting maternity leave. Unfortunatley that's not till the end of January, all going well, so that I can take the maximum time off afterwards.