Julie's Boggle

There are several options for antenatal classes in our borough. For us, the easiest (if you don’t count the slightly awkward hours and the long waiting list), was the one held by the National Health Service (NHS) at the hospital we’re going to. [An added bonus is that they're also free.]

So over the last two Thursday evenings, 5 — 8pm, we covered both of the three-hour sessions for new parents as well as a tour of the delivery floors.

The first session was particularly good. Delivered by a charismatic midwife with the doubtful name of ‘Iffy’, it covered all sorts of practical information up to and including the birth itself. Overall she did make giving birth sound like quite a positive experience (and she had live videos to show us!), but that didn’t stop odd snippets from lodging in my mind including little gems like “painful” and “lots of blood”. Ho-hum.

The hospital tour followed the first session. First off was the “Delivery Suite” which has 12 attractive en-suite rooms (all medical equipment hidden away inside pretty oak cupboards), some of which even come with a bed for Dad to use overnight before they send the entire family home the next day.

If all goes well, the midwives run the show in the Delivery Suite. If not, the doctors are all on the same floor (so are the operating theatres and “high-risk” rooms) and very accessible if required. If you were having an epidural for example, this is where you’d go.

Then for even less complicated births, we were taken for a look at the recently added Birth Centre unit which is exclusively led by the midwives. (Any problems, and there’s a dedicated lift to the Delivery Suite upstairs.) The en-suite rooms there, complete with a bed for Mom and Dad, were even more cosy and home-like — although the birthing balls, hammocks and beanbags might look a little out of place in the average bedroom.

Overall we were both very impressed by the delivery options. It all looks like it’s been carefully thought out and designed for purpose, and it’s greatly reassuring to know that our closest hospital — where they deliver 5000 babies a year! — is so well organised.

The second session last week went a little more slowly :yawn:, but it did cover the all-important breathing (by a sweet, but much less charismatic, physiotherapist) and then another midwife took over to pass on a whole swathe of info regarding post-natal care both at the hospital (generally minimal) and later at home.

So I guess you could say we’re all trained up now (just the final “breast-feeding workshop” session for me to go to in a month’s time) and about 7 weeks to go until we get to put it all into practice! Whee!

I was rather expecting that my free time would start to evaporate once the baby arrived… But it turns out that the little guy is using up a lot of our time right now while he’s still got weeks to go! (And not just for scans and doctor’s appointments either.)

Last weekend, for example, just vanished in a blur of baby business.

For starters, we painted the spare room (when I say we, I do mean mostly Tom), going over the yicky old cream paint with a nice clean white.

Sunday was more relaxed but still had a baby theme. Firstly, there was a mound of tiny clothes to wash and hang out — a generous loan from friends whose baby boy is just passing 4 months.

Then we had a great evening of boardgames with another couple who had their firstborn less than 2 months ago. This makes them perfect for sharing pregnancy and new baby experiences with, and they’re also keen to pass on a number of useful baby items to us as they’re out-grown.

Along came Monday, which we’d both taken as a day’s leave, and with it our (my) goal to finish off the long-postponed “baby shopping”!

Fortunately we had already taken care of a lot of the bulkier essentials (stroller, car-seat, Moses basket etc.) as well as some of the less bulky ones, like clothing, as loans or second-hand buys / donations from friends. But according to the list we got from the hospital and the books I’ve been consulting, this still left us with a whole host of goodies that we really should have on hand more or less immediately after the big day…

On the grounds that a branch of the Fine Burger Company is very close by, we chose the Mothercare in Oxford Street to start off our shopping. It’s their newest branch, and rather a large one, so I was quite disappointed with the selection they offered on many of the baby essentials. For instance, they didn’t sell single hats in a newborn size! Only as part of an expensive gift ensemble that also included socks, mittens, vest and a babygrow! And their breast-pump selection was abysmal.

Nevertheless we did find a lot of other things from our list there, and afterwards mopped up most of the remainder at a large outlet of Boots, just up the road, that also had a whole floor of baby stuff.

As a very last stop — following some yummy burgers and ‘shakes — we found a natty black changing bag, in the satchel-style I’d been after, at John Lewis. And from there we made our weary way home.

So I think we can conclusively say that we are pretty much there in terms of our equipment! Phew!

The painting of last week has been great for helping us to de-junk the baby’s room.  For instance we have finally made a move on getting rid of our three old computers that have been languishing in the cupboard for far too long (just waiting for us to find an environmentally-friendly way of disposing of them).

And as part of the putting-the-room-back-together process, Tom put up his
“Nerdy Baby ABC” cards, which do look very cute:

The weeks and months of a pregnancy have so many different way-points (scans, clinics, doctor’s visits) to mark off the various stages, that it’s easy to lose track of the ones that tie in more with day-to-day life…

For example, we had a new joiner in our team this week — my “maternity cover”. A stark reminder that my time in the office is down to its last 6 weeks. *gulp*

It all feels like it’s come around very quickly, but then things at work have been fairly manic these last couple of months.

We really do need to hold thumbs that I won’t need to go off any earlier than mid-June because I’ve still got a mountain-load of stuff to get through with the new guy… (It’s early days still, but I’m fairly hopeful that he will be able to cope. )

Aside from that, I think -sadly- that I am reaching the point where things are starting to be less comfortable generally than they were, say, a few weeks back.

Heartburn, for example, is becoming more of a feature of day to day life even when I do avoid pepper, spicy food and late suppers. And there is a general achiness around the bump peripherals — I’m guessing tendons and ligaments that are being stressed somewhat.

And then of course there’s still me doing the odd dash to make the traffic lights, or catch the train, which has various leg muscles crying foul for a day or two each time. Wusses.

But otherwise, I’d say things are going relatively well for the start of the third trimester…
Sleeping, for instance, isn’t an issue, and I usually get away with just one mid-night totter through to the bathroom on stiff and creaky legs. And when it comes to pressure from inside, our little guy still has a fair amount of room to play with down there, so he shuffles around quite a lot, but only occasionally biffing my diaphragm or bladder in his travels.

Long may that last…

As a final note on work, about two weeks back, I finally managed to find myself a decent (sensible design and reasonable price) pair of maternity trousers for work — only just in time really! (I was inordinately pleased with myself for managing to hem them — my first hemming ever! It took about 30 minutes per leg, way longer than Mom would have taken I’m sure(!) but it was successful, and they’re a decent length now which is all that really matters. )

We did promise to post occasional updates on the status of Julie’s girth. We haven’t been entirely idle on this score. The bump has been getting around and we have been taking photos. We just haven’t gotten round to publishing them. But here, at last, is a brief round up of the last few months:

11 March 2007, Shepherd’s Bush – Bump shootout, Julie is way behind.

31 March 2007, Brooklyn Bridge – Bump wrapped up warm in NY.

8 April 2007, Shepherd’s Bush – Bump well under way.

15 April 2007, Regent St – Bump now clearly visible to the casual passer-by.

22 April 2007, Prague – Julie resting bump on Petrin Hill.

Although we still have several more scans to come, this is possibly the last one that will give us a reasonable print-out.

I’m deducing this from the notice taped up in the ultrasound waiting room that suggests that after 30 weeks, you can’t fit enough of the baby into an ultrasound view to make a print-out worthwhile… (Implication being that you might as well save that £3.50 you were about to spend on a ticket for a print-out. )

So here’s our little guy (head and chest at any rate) at 24 weeks:

Definitely Tom’s profile…

At this scan, they confirmed that he’s growing nicely (meeting all their targets), and they estimate he’s 650g. Good to know. Just a little daunting to think that ideally he’s going to get 5 — 6 times heavier than that in the next several months! :zipit:

We still have the 32 and 36 week “growth-scans” to go, so I guess I’ll be getting to see a fair bit more of him. But it’s going to be a fairly disjointed viewing once things gets all bunched up in there, and the one above is likely to be the last prenatal snapshot.

We do have one more slightly unusual scan coming up at 28 weeks, which might yield a picture if the doctors are amenable. This one is a 3-D scan, specially to check on his lip.

The doctors are burning to know if the cleft goes any further than the lip, so while they keep telling us that it is really hard to diagnose a cleft palate in advance, this is their last stab at seeing if they can tell. Not that we’re complaining — another interesting scan, courtesy of the NHS, is certainly worth the minor effort required on our part! Watch this space.

09:54 this morning saw us bright-faced and cheery in the queue at the reception of the ultrasound department at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. 09:55 saw us being cross with ourselves for confusing appointments and subsequently being 15 minutes late for our 09:40 scan.

Fortunately the mix-up didn’t cost significantly and we were soon seen by a friendly sonographer who introduced herself as Sarah. This time, the ultra-sound department were not short-staffed and we had a lovely long scan. The sonographer talked us through the whole thing and we saw lots of our little lad. And indeed that is what he appears to be, we saw the evidence from quite a few angles so it’s fairly certain that it’s a boy.

One thing that became obvious was that the sonographer was very interested in his upper lip. He kept covering his mouth with his hands, but she kept returning to it. So it wasn’t a great surprise when she told us that he has a cleft lip. Poor woman, having to break such news and not knowing what kind of reaction to expect. Little did she know that we were already prepared for the news because cleft lips can be associated with Waardenburg Syndrome which runs in the Brazier family. And of course my mum herself has a cleft lip.

The most immediate consequence of this is that we’ve been elevated to a high risk level and so suddenly all sorts of people are interested in us. And in medical circles this, of course, means a lot of waiting around. We were sent upstairs to the Centre for Foetal Care where, presently, we saw the doctor. She confirmed the diagnosis and wanted us to see the consultant. He eventually arrived and also confirmed the diagnosis.

So the poor tyke will be having surgery somewhere around the 3-6 month mark and possibly another round or two as he grows older. Other than that, everything looks just fine. The medical professionals are slightly worried that the cleft lip may be symptomatic of some chromosomal abnormality. They’ve pretty much discounted Waardenburg because they don’t think it’s associated with cleft lips, but that doesn’t say much as none of them had heard of Waardenburg until this morning. We’re not overly concerned because even a casual Google search turns up plenty of articles which confirm the link to Waardenburg.

But enough about all that, isn’t he cute:

Hurrah! After two weeks of waiting for the elusive quickening movements that it was likely I “would have trouble recognising” because it’s the first time around, I finally felt something this morning that definitely WAS a movement!

It felt rather curious, like being gently prodded with a slender finger, but from inside. It happened about 4 or 5 times and then subsided. And more bump-nudging from the outside (ok-ok, there was provocation to start with! ) didn’t make it start again.

Then later I felt some other movements – more like the feeling of “bubbles” or fluttering I’d been prepped for. And some quite strong pulses fairly close together that felt very much like a real pulse, as it might beat after doing some heavy lifting, but coming from lower bump.

So after several weeks, or months even, where I’ve been going for long stretches without any thoughts of pregnancy even crossing my mind, I’m now getting rather frequent reminders! It’s quite amazing.

Feels like the start of a whole new phase. Can’t wait till it’s strong enough to feel from the outside so Tom can feel it too.

Queen Charlotte’s, the maternity hospital that we’re booked into, has a programme of 4 ante-natal sessions which I’ve dutifully signed up for. The first one, which I went to last week, was just for women, preferably around the 18-week mark, and was titled “Taking Care of Yourself”.

Our trainer for the two-hour session was a pretty young physiotherapist called Emma.

After a general ice-breaker where she got us comparing pregnancy notes with our neighbours, she had a go at getting the session off on a positive note, by canvassing the room in general for “things that we’re enjoying about being pregnant.”

Mmm. Lots of heavy thinking there. Turns out the enjoyment factor wasn’t that high for most of us. We eventually came up with ‘seeing the first scan’, ‘feeling movements’ (that one was from someone who was further along than most of the class), ‘telling our mothers/family/friends’ and ‘getting some common ground with people we wouldn’t ordinarily relate to’. Not a huge amount in it really.

Then came the list of pregnancy-related discomforts, and suddenly there was something for everyone. And about 5 additional items that we came up with that weren’t on Emma’s list! Looking round at the hands raised for the various complaints, it was good to feel one was not alone.

Aside from revising some rather specific biology, the main theme for the evening was learning useful exercises and ways of doing day-to-day things in such a way that we wouldn’t damage ourselves.

It seems that the hormone relaxin, which goes into overdrive during pregnancy, gives everything in the body just that little bit too much stretchability.

So while you can be incredibly flexible, the message is more that you wouldn’t want to be because it will still hurt later. And you have to be specially careful not to let it happen unconsciously. And you have to be even more careful once you’ve got a great big bump to tote around!

So we learned best practices for sitting, sleeping, turning over, standing up etc. etc. along with a whole list of good exercises to practise, and bad exercises to avoid (no more sit-ups!). All very instructive really. And good fun to exchange notes afterwards with other “expectees” with similar due dates who live nearby.

In between all the building work, we are occasionally reminded of other large events coming up this year. Julie is now at 16 weeks and beginning to show. As promised, here is the first picture of the bump, for comparison with the lithe figure pictured in an earlier post.

We’re not yet into maternity clothes, but Julie is reluctantly beginning to set aside some pairs of trousers which won’t fit her again until after the baby is born.

According to our pregnancy book, the baby will now be about 11cm from crown to rump. It has tiny fingernails and toenails and is growing hair. At this stage it will be practising breathing (inhaling and exhaling amniotic fluid). Assuming Dad’s genes haven’t been too detrimental, it can hear sounds and react to them!

It will also be moving around quite a lot and from now onwards Julie might begin to be able to feel this movement. Highlander fans will be delighted to know that this is known as “quickening”. We know from the ultrasound that it isn’t twins, so all I’ll say to that is, “There can be only one!”

To be fair, I think I got off pretty lightly on the whole morning pregnancy sickness front. It’s definitely been on the way out for the last two weeks, but while I did have it, I found that the only real “rule” I had to follow, was “Keep Eating”.

I hated the grotty nausea feeling, so followed the rule diligently. This had me feeling a bit like an addict going after my next fix at times. Not all foods worked either, but a typical day’s eating / meal-planning regime went a bit like this:

07h00: Alarm goes off. Sit up in bed and eat a Jacobs Hi-Fibre cream cracker trying to keep all the crumbs in the bag. A bit of a chore but very necessary.

07h50: Thanks to the cracker, I’m feeling well up for my big bowl of breakfast cereal and a cup of coffee. (Although I have to confess my coffee ardour, even now, has been somewhat affected by this whole pregnancy thing. Not enough to stop drinking it altogether – but I do prefer it on a full stomach.)

08h45: Wander around the Tesco near work buying the makings of mid-morning tea and lunch, and perhaps ingredients for supper.

10h45: Snack-time. Lashings of peanut butter on a crusty white continental roll. Mm-hmm. I guess you could count this as a ‘craving’ because, usually, just contemplating the fat content of peanut butter sends me haring off in search of something else. But for those weeks, it was the one thing that worked when fruit, yoghurt and cereal bars just didn’t cut it.

13h00: Definitely need lunch now. We didn’t get back our canteen at work until I was almost at the 12-week recovery period, so this tended to be the half-carton of fresh soup with a bagel or roll bought earlier.

16h00-ish: Bit of a struggle in finding something that will work at this point. I can usually squeak by till I get home with a couple of clementines and a cup of rooibos. Those little Babybel cheeses also tend to hit the spot but I need to remember to stock up the fridge at work.

18h30: Back at home. Tom won’t be in for another half-hour and supper will be another 30 minutes after that, so it’s time for a small portion (just 10 — 15g + milk) of microwaved Ready-Brek (instant porridge) to stave off any pre-supper sickness. Like the peanut-butter breadroll, a nice hot serving of thick, milky porridge works pretty well.

19h30: Supper at last. I’m not that hungry (real hunger doesn’t work for me any more because if it gets that bad, I’ve usually lost my appetite in the nausea) but this is definitely a case of eat or else. And as long as I have a good enough meal, that’s me all the way through to bed-time.

23h15: Lying awake thinking about food. All those meals that will send the grotty feelings completely away. Planning my grocery buying for tomorrow’s shopping trip and forcing myself to leave it alone and drift off just as the discomfort starts to come knocking again.

Fortunately, the end of week 12 heralded the return to some form of normality. I still tend to feel a bit off rather than starving, but it’s no real stretch to push past that. Now it’s just the adjusting back to more normal mealtimes and the ongoing debate with Tom as to whether the “bump” he’s seeing is the result of all that peanut butter, or the (still very small) body growing inside!