Somehow it is hard to believe that I am now more than halfway through the pregnancy! It seems like just yesterday we found out (on Mark’s birthday, nonetheless!) and now here we are, I am starting to get a proper bump and Little Doodle, at 22 weeks, now weighs a whole pound!
We went in for [...]
Somehow it is hard to believe that I am now more than halfway through the pregnancy! It seems like just yesterday we found out (on Mark’s birthday, nonetheless!) and now here we are, I am starting to get a proper bump and Little Doodle, at 22 weeks, now weighs a whole pound!
We went in for the 20 week scan extremely excited to not only see Little Doodle on screen again, but to also finally find out the gender of our baby. Despite many attempts by the ultrasound tech, we couldn’t see what Little Doodle was packing: the baby’s legs were firmly crossed. Not only that, but through the entire ultrasound Little Doodle had it’s hands up in front of it’s face, covering it! Thankfully, the scan did confirm the baby was healthy and progressing nicely, even if we have a very stubborn baby! We have one more scan at 34 weeks to try again for the gender. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling it’s a boy!
Little Doodle is getting stronger every day. What used to be a question of “Was that a kick? Was it gas? Am I imagining things?” is now a very definitive KICK. And Little Doodle loves to kick. Sometimes it’s marathon kicking (usually of my bowel or bladder… which is hella comfortable) for several hours before taking a break. But for as often as he IS kicking, it stops suddenly whenever Mark puts a hand on my tummy to try and feel. EVERY time! Then, shortly after Mark removes his hand, Little Doodle begins again. Difficult baby!
I’m feeling less tired and less hungry all the time than I did in the first trimester, which is good. I’m no longer falling behind on my schoolwork due to the tiredness. I’ve been busily burning through my holiday time at work before I go on maternity leave and I’ve got enough left to have a day off nearly every week until mid June! Which I plan on utilizing in that manner. I can’t go anywhere as the Home Office still has my passport and visa application (a rant for another entry) and it doesn’t roll over to the next year so… why not??
The maternity benefits in the UK are really awesome. For starters, everything is free. Doctor and midwife visits, hospital tests and scans, the birth of the baby, and the home visits conducted for weeks after the birth… all cost nothing. On top of that prescriptions and dental visits are also free to pregnant women during the pregnancy and, I believe, up to a year after the birth.
My maternity leave from work will be 39 weeks. Weeks 1-14 will be at 100% of my normal pay, and weeks 15-39 will be at SMP (statutory maternity pay), which is about 50% of my normal pay. There is no pay after the 39th week, but women in the UK can have as much as a year off and still be legally entitled to return to their job. I will then probably tack about two weeks of my holiday onto the end of my leave, giving me 41weeks with Little Doodle.
Socialized healthcare = awesome.
What this also means is I will be on maternity leave over the Christmas holiday, allowing me to spend longer than average in the US with family. I’ve already got my plane tickets booked, Little Doodle included, and I am staying for three weeks!
Sometime in the coming week I will get the ultrasound scanned and post it to my blog.
People have said that, alot of the time, new mothers can confuse what they believe to be first movements with the feeling of gas. To this I say no. Over the last week I have begun to feel Little Doodle move, and the sensation is so new, so alien, it could not be anything but. Because of the baby’s size, I only catch the occasional movement: either a definitive poke or a grazing feeling. But it is amazing. Up until now Little Doodle has been an invisible entity: something we could see when scanned or the cause of a number of symptoms. Now the baby begins to make it’s presence known. According to our books, Little Doodle has the ability to hear, and we talk to it. And, in just under a month, we go in for the the 20 week scan and will finally get to find out if our Little Doodle is a boy or girl.
This past week has marked alot of things: Christmas, the New Year, and me entering my second trimester. The first trimester came and went with all the usual symptoms. Fatigue, being the main discomfort, still continues as I find myself sleeping until one or two in the afternoon if left undisturbed on an off day. I was lucky in a sense I had nausea for only about a week and a half around week 7-8, but never once did I throw up. However, on the recommendation of a handful of people, I did buy up items containing ginger to help ease my nausea and whilst it does work, I feel it will have the reverse effect the rest of my life… just thinking about ginger ale at this point makes me ill. I can also feel my uterus as it grows, which feels like a stretching sensation in the abdomen.
When we found out we were pregnant, we figured we were about 8 or 9 weeks. Then, with the first midwife appointment, she calculated we were actually 11 weeks and booked us into a scan the very next week for the 12 week marker. Having looked at the photos in the wonderful pregnancy book Mark’s uncle Roland got for us, I could see that the 12 week old fetus would look like a mini human being already, complete with arms, legs, fingers, and toes.
Because frankly, Luke Skywalker makes a far better role model than this:
Look as the girls in the background watch wistfully as their hero Hanna Montana works the pole. How old is she again? Nevermind the already losing battle with the portrayal of women in the media, the endless march of underweight, over plastic fuckwits such as Jordan, Paris Hilton, etc being worshipped by every teen girl… but then to have a Disney kid march out on stage in short shorts and begin a pole dance on top of an ice cream cart at the TEEN Choice Awards really goes a long way to show how doomed we are.
You can certainly try to raise them as best you can but then what is stopping their poorly raised peers from shoving these types of values down their throats at school?
Do you know what 15 year old girls are doing nowadays? Having co’ed sleepovers that they’ve coined “shagovers” and drinking until the point of black out.
How am I supposed to raise another human being in this kind of world?!?
