Wednesday 17 June 2009

hello!


Yes, still here and still keeping everything firmly clenched until at least Sunday. Saw Jane today and all is well: blood pressure and wee both fine, baby still has its back to my left and still head down (but not engaged, hallelujah), measuring on time, and she estimates (with the caveat that palpitation is very vague at best) that the baby weighs around 7lbs at the moment. So now I think boy because Mia was only 6 1/2 lbs at birth but Jack was close to 8. Meh, who knows.

We had a really good chat about my labour/birth anxieties and went through some breathing and visualisation techniques. I've been feeling quite stressed about going into labour; memories of the negative aspects of Mia's birth have been coming back to me in flashes. Talking through it all with Jane helped enormously. I realised that much of what made my last labour so intense was the sense of panic (because my midwife was attending another birth and I had to wait for someone I'd never met), fear (never having laboured before), and the shock that labour was not at all like those fecking books said it would be like. Contractions don't always "ebb and flow", you lying bastards! But in all seriousness, I didn't realise that sometimes you don't get much of a break between contractions (particularly with back labour) and if you start fighting each one in a state of panic, it makes the pain much worse. I need to focus on the positive this time, and find a way to keep more control. I like having a strategy in place; it's making me feel more confident.

Still having a ton of Braxton Hicks, probably more so lately because I had a physically tough day yesterday taking care of poorly Mia. She's got a stomach bug (and good god, do I not want that) and I spent every 1/2 hr cleaning up, changing her, changing myself, and taking her up and down the stairs all day. She's much better today, thankfully. It's so very sad to see her unwell, especially when she keeps reminding me in a very tiny voice, "I'm poorly." My poor cuddlebunny.

And finally, despite having a rather spicy and utterly delicious meal at Cocum in Cambridge on Monday night, I didn't go into labour. Go me!

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