Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • The case of the mysteriously growing baby

    If you’re a long time reader, you’ll know that I don’t grow big babies. Isaac was perfectly sized and born at 7lbs, but they spent a bit of time worrying that he was “small for dates”. The same thing happened with Amy, and we were told to expect a 5lb baby – only she was perfectly sized by the time she was born too, a lovely 7lb6oz.

    The defining thing here is that the babies I grow, while a great size for me, measure small against the percentile charts. Both children have measured anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks behind for my pregnancies.

    So you can imagine my slight bafflement when this baby measured around 10 days ahead of dates at my 20 week scan. No matter I thought, she’ll be here when she’s here.

    However.

    I had a growth scan today, booked during my 12 week appointment, due to a sub-chorionic haemorrhage and my previous history of small-for-dates babies. They just wanted to check that everything was going well and that she was nicely gestating away.

    Imagine my shock when we discovered that at apparently 33 weeks, my daughter is measuring 37 weeks at her head and 36.3 weeks on average. Her estimated weight is just a little under what Isaac was when he was born.

    I do not grow big babies.

    Not at all.

    Not in the slightest.

    Nor do I have gestational diabetes and the constant nausea has meant that my diet is super healthy too. My total weight gain is 2.5kg so far (I did lose 5 kg in the first trimester though and have gained that back).

    If you’re new here, I had a miscarriage before falling pregnant with this baby. In fact, I was pregnant again so quickly that there is doubt that I miscarried the entire pregnancy. I had blood tests done afterwards, but only to confirm that my HCG levels were dropping, not that they’d gone to zero – and the ultrasound I had done, she freely admitted that my uterus was too full of blood to see much of anything.

    For the actual miscarriage, I didn’t bleed for very long, or very heavily. My periods were worse, and hurt more too, which confused me a bit – I expected the bleeding from a miscarriage to be heavier than a normal period. Then I experienced early pregnancy symptoms 10 days later, with a positive pregnancy test soon thereafter.

    So, there is now a lot of confusion about my early dates. I’ve been pretty convinced that I’m further along than the doctors believe I am – based solely on how I felt in the very early weeks and when I got a positive test, plus how I measured at midwifery appointments.

    I have a follow-up appointment at the High Risk Clinic on Wednesday, at which I expect to have to explain myself repeatedly and refuse to be booked in for a Caesarean.

    In the meantime, I am having a minor panic about the fact that we now expect this baby relatively soon and that I have very little time to Get Things Ready.

    Suddenly, the prelabour symptoms I’ve been having this past week don’t seem quite so ridiculously early.

     

  • Internet, I have cabin fever

    I can’t remember when I left the house last. First it was the pregnancy making it too hard to walk and then we caught the ‘flu and now my mental health is suffering badly.

    But it’s okay! Because tomorrow I have an ultrasound to check on the growth of the baby, which means that I will be out of the house for a few hours at least, talking to real other adults in the real world. It shouldn’t excite me quite this much.

    Speaking of this pregnancy, the baby is violent. I think she’s on a mission to take out my ribs and cervix, with my internal organs as collateral damage. I remember that the other two kicked hard and that occasionally it hurt, but I don’t remember them having the sheer strength of movement that this child does. I keep expecting her to burst free all alien style, leaving me broken and bleeding.

    Needless to say, at 33 weeks pregnant, I am very much looking forward to being done. My internal muscles are bruised and my blood pressure keeps dropping out. It’s all a bit miserable. Worth it in the end, but utterly miserable right now.

    Because I have cabin fever, this space is suffering a bit. I mean, I could tell you all about how Amy woke me up by throwing up on Isaac’s bed, or how Isaac isn’t sleeping much past 4am lately, but it’s just easier to read a book for a bit instead.

    That said, Amy is declaring that she is goingto DIE if I don’t feed her breakfast IMMEDIATELY, which tells me that despite her ‘flu, her drama gene is still working nicely. I’m not feeding her cereal until she stops throwing up, so I guess I’ll have to take my chances with her drama.

    In conclusion: My children are conspiring against me and my body is falling apart. Also, eventually I’ll remember how to blog regularly again.

     

  • I’m not dead!

    You know that ‘flu that’s going around? Yes. Turns out that it IS as bad as they say it is. Probably worse if you find yourself bridging the gaps between “high risk groups” (pregnant woman, pre-existing lung condition, compromised immune system, etc etc).

    Nine days later and I’m able to get out of bed for a little bit each day and while I’m still exhausted, I haven’t had to lie down on the loungeroom floor on my way to the bathroom (yet) today. Of course the day is only young, but I thought I’d best check in and let you know that despite all odds, I am not dead.

    I suspect the only reason that I avoided hospital is that my GP was able to deliver me first prednisone, and then antibiotics when the pred wasn’t doing much more than keeping me breathing. This is the benefit to having a small country town doctor; I didn’t even have to leave my house.

    I’m torn between being entirely pissed that I caught this damn flu at all, and being slightly grateful that it happened now, rather than in three weeks, leaving me (hopefully) enough time to recover before this babe is due. Said babe did remarkably well considering how unwell I was and insisted on kicking at all hours of the day and night so that I didn’t need to panic that she’d succumbed to my oxygen deprivation.

    Really, that’s about it and I’m a bit ashamed that 260 words has been so bloody exhausting to write.

    I’m going back to bed.

     

     

  • 31 weeks

    31+4 weeks 2

    Here we are, counting down the days until this babe decides she can make her home outside of my uterus, rather than spending all of her time headbutting my bladder and kicking my ribs.

    I had a midwifery appointment on Tuesday, that confirms that at this point in my pregnancy, I am larger than I have been before, measuring 31 weeks. Shocking really, with both other children I was measuring 26 weeks at this point and everyone was getting a little twitchy about growth. This further shows that dates are probably inaccurate, as I’ve never measured on time or ahead for dates, ever. Not even in the early weeks of my pregnancies. I grow small babies, not large ones.

    Of course, no body listens to me and they continue to make plans for ‘when you birth in 9 weeks’ rather than Nathan and I (who know how this story goes) who realise that we really need to have everything in place in the next six weeks or so.

    Either way, she will arrive when she arrives and then I won’t need to argue my case with the doctors.

    I have a growth scan booked for early Monday morning in any case, this was booked at 12 weeks when I was still showing signs of my early sub-chorionic bleed (that, incidentally, caused no problems or bleeding) and we’ll see how big she’s grown then. If the kicks are any indication, she is healthy and strong.

    Occasional bursts of “HOLY FUCK I NEED TO ORGANISE THINGS” are starting – I’m medicating these with trashy books, chocolate and hot tea. Sadly, as much as I’d like to nest, I know that if I give into the urge I’ll get exhausted and that’s bad all around. Instead I’m imperiously demanding that Nathan do things for me. You can offer him your sympathies if you like, he’d probably appreciate them.

    Really, that’s it. My pelvis hurts, my back hurts, my hips hurt and we’ve been stricken with a god awful cold so my throat feels like it’s full of razors, but we’re all good here.

    How are you?

     

     

  • So quirky, even our animals are weird

    Last night I watched as our dog Maisy carefully slunk up to my desk, picked up one of my business cards delicately in her mouth, and walked past me looking guilty before hiding in the spare room. This morning I woke up and discovered that at least twenty business cards had been methodically torn to shreds and left in a neat little pile.

    It brings a whole new dimension to the excuse “the dog ate my homework” doesn’t it?

    We brought Maisy home from the Dogs Home almost two years ago now. She fit in perfectly – a quirky family needs a quirky dog. She’d been mistreated and finally found by council workers, wandering in the Northern Suburbs of Hobart – not the ideal home for a sheep dog.

    Two years later, some of her quirks have faded. She no longer hides from visitors, she will finally accept food from our hands and she doesn’t cower at loud noises anymore.

    However Maisy still eats paper, used tissues being her preference, these she steals from wherever she can find them. She still cowers away from the broom and she’s still worried that we’ll slam a door on her as she ducks inside and out.

    Some of the quirks she has developed since living here. She stalks the cats intently, pretending that they are her sheep. She likes the chooks to be neat and tidy in a tight little circle and she will herd them until they fall into line. Pretty standard things really, for a border collie.

    It’s not only our dog that is a little weird, it’s our hens as well.

    Hen #1, the lavender bantam – she has anxiety issues. Of course, she watched her entire flock get slaughtered dogs, so you can forgive her a certain amount of nervousness.

    Hen #2, the lavender araucana – she is agoraphobic. Before coming to live with us, she lived in a back yard, with paling fences and no horizon. She spent the first two weeks here hiding in the hedge and garden and when we first convinced her to go out into the paddocks, she had a minor chooky meltdown. She probably thought the sky was falling, with the wide open spaces and the horizon in the distance.

    The cats are however, pretty normal. This belies their harsh start in life, as they were dumped in parkland when they were six weeks old. An animal lover rescued them, offered them on freecycle and we collected the slightly feral kittens a day later. Cat #3 however – something happened to her before she came to live with us and she isn’t the biggest fan of people all around. I suspect a serious amount of taunting from her previous neighbours – what else makes a perfectly nice cat suddenly a little vicious? Worming her is a three person job and she frequently attacks my ankles for walking too close to her.

    Of course, none of this matters, as all of the animals fit in quite nicely with our quirky children and us, the slightly weird adults.

    All in all, we make a pretty interesting family.

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    Have you had any pets with quirks?