8 weeks and counting!

This week has been so busy, stressful and knackering I haven't even been on my laptop and I feel I have neglected it somewhat. Last friday my middle son came down with chicken pox and we ended up becoming prisoners in our own house. He has been absolutely fine with it and hasn't really scratched much at all. Just waiting for the others to get it now.

I went back to work on tuesday and ever since it has been hectic and every night I have returned home with aching feet from spending a good 9 hours on them. What was that about reducing stress??? I have worked  my little cotton socks off this week.

On thursday I had my first appointment with the midwife. Last time I had my appointment all sorted out and I miscarried on the tuesday just days before, so as you can imagine I have already been on edge this week. I almost dread going to the toilet how daft that sounds.

Anyways my midwife is lovely, I met her towards the end of my last childs pregnancy. Straight away she asked where I was having this child and suggested home birth. When she looked at the sizes of my last three children though she changed her mind lol. I would love a home birth as I never like going to hospital other than for work, but Pete is very against it. He doesn't like the idea of the mess ( he is a tad OCD) and also he is worried if anything went wrong there wouldn't be the backup of a hospital to use. I have tried to point out that this will be my fourth so I might not even be able to get to the hospital in time. Also there will be two trained midwives present at the birth who are trained and if anything happened the hospital is 10 minutes up the road.

I doubt he will back down though. I could see Oliver trying to get into the pool with me though if I did deliver at home. Regardless of where I give birth I already know that it will be another water birth as Oliver my third child was my easiest labour and the one I felt most in control of. I have also heard a lot about hypnobirthing so I would like to try this combined with my waterbirth. It does seem a bit odd that I am only 2 months into my pregnancy and I am already thinking about how I will give birth. 7 Months is a long long way away at the moment.

Everytime I have been pregnant there seems to be something different. When I had my daughter 11 years ago, I wasn't able to find out the sex at the 20 week scan. Then when I had Thomas 4 years ago this had changed so I could find out his sex. Then with Oliver 2 years ago the whole idea of waterbirths opened up to me. This was probably available before but I had never heard of them. This time around it is the scans. My hospital now offers nucal fold scans as part of the antenatal care now. It has always been available but only in high risk groups or privately.

I had to chose whether I wanted to have all the tests done for Downs. I had them with Charlotte and Oliver but not with Thomas. My midwife said I had to think carefully about having the tests because I had to be sure I could live with the results. If they came back as high risk I would then have to decide whether to go down the route of diagnostic testing such as amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling. I could just know I have a high risk and chose not to get definitive proof until the birth, as the diagnostic tests have a 1% increased risk of miscarriage.

In the end I decided to go with the tests as I would prefer to know if anything was wrong so I could come to terms with it rather than a shock at the birth. The tests involve simple blood tests and the special nucal fold scan at around 12 weeks. This is a special scan which looks at the size of the neck as downs have shown to have thicker necks. Then everything is amalgamated together and the risk of down's will be calculated. This will take place around June time.

So there you have it. Everything seems to be going well. I have passed my second target and well on my way to my third at 12 weeks. I have already thought of my birth plan and have an idea which I am sure will be reviewed more closer to the time. I am starting to panic a bit about work though. I said I would work til the end of November due to staff holidays but that means I will be 38 weeks pregnant when I finally go on mat leave. Im 8 weeks pregnant now and I have been so knackered and stressed this week. Hopefully I will have a bit of help when I am wobbling all over the place and the size of a heffalump. I doubt I will be able to rush anywhere lol. I guess people would be less likely to have a go at a heavily pregnant woman. :-)

Next installment in 4 weeks.....