Welcome into Existence Baby Nelson #3!!

We found out that we were pregnant again in early May and we're feeling all kinds of things. I suppose that i don't have to tell you we're crapping ourselves? This is our last go at doing this, so in a way it will bring closure no matter what happens. If we loose this baby we will go to adoption as soon as we can and if we have a healthy baby this time we will still adopt afterwards. We would like a larger family and as much as i enjoy being pregnant i can't keep on having caesarian sections.



Sorry, trying to keep this light and positive so... Yeah, i took a test (ahem... *cough* 15 tests *cough*) early May and at first i didn't believe the feint line because the tests i had in 'stock' were out of date. I got me a trusty First Response though and the prettiest little pink line came up almost instantly! My heart started pounding and i silently squealed (Scott was still in bed). I put it down and then picked it up again and then put it down and did a dance and picked it up again and looked it in several different lights to make sure i wasn't seeing things.  When i told Scott he said "Oh, nice one." He's not one to get overly excited, but he was happy, if not incredibly cautious.

12 WEEKS



Of course we have just spent the last 10 weeks wondering if it was going to stick, but so far it has done okay. That does NOT mean that we are safe by any measure, but it does mean the chances of something bad happening are lower. On saying that though, who am i trying to kid!? Low odds hate me!

I have been feeling sick and tired and oh so pregnant and my belly is huge already. It's so big that i tell strangers who ask that i am due a whole month ahead of when i am really due so that they don't look at me like i'm a freak. We have heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time this past couple of days on the doppler i have at home, so that is reassuring. We had a scan at 7.5 weeks and it was wonderful to see that special little blob with it's heart beating away. I'm also due to go for another scan on Monday at a private clinic to test for a marginal cord insertion, which could lead to Vasa Praevia later on. I'll tell you how that goes - fingers crossed!

13 WEEKS

Wow! Rollercoaster of emotions this past few days!! I'll give you it in a "shit sandwich" as a great trainer lady once advised me when doling out negative things. Plus, there are some genuine positive things too and it's all in chronological order anyway, so keeps it neat.

Monday was scan day and we went to a private scanning clinic 2 hours away from home. It was a long day, but such a worthwhile journey! The guy that did the scan was amazing. So caring and thorough and genuinely concerned about what he was doing. He checked my placenta over and blood flow through the cord. He checked for Vasa Praevia, valamentous cord insertion and a succenturiate lobe on the placenta and gave me the all clear for all of those. He also checked the nuchal fold and other things for signs of down syndrome and then gave me a risk of 1 in 11000.

The best thing he said was that if he didn't know my history he would say that he was looking at a perfect, normal, low risk pregnancy.

Baby was moving the whole time he was scanning and looked beautiful. We could see it's fingers and toes and its profile. It's heart was checked and stomach etc. and its measurements were taken. It measured 12 weeks 3 days, which was 2 days ahead of the date i got from my ovulation chart. It's nice to skip a few days though, so i moved my due date. So i was then due on 16th January 2009!

We even got to see the baby in 3D!! And we got two pictures - a normal scan pic and a 3D one!! Then to top it all off we got a DVD of the whole thing!! I have watched it 5 times already and the family have had a screening.





When we got home i was knackered, but i 'facebooked' the pregnancy and called our families to let them know everything was okay. I really feel a lot lot lot lot better now. I feel like i can finally accept that this is happening to me and that maybe, just maybe we might end up with our healthy baby this time. I'm not getting carried away in unchecked hope, but i am feeling more positive, that's for sure.

Thank goodness i didnt experience the crap of Tuesday a day earlier because i would have murdered the person who spoiled that day for me!

Tuesday i cut ties with a friend. Funny how you think you know people and they turn out to be nasty.

So anyway, another positive is that i had a great dating scan yesterday and they put my new due date at 14th January 2009, making me 13 weeks and 2 days today! I skipped 4 days!! :o)

14 WEEKS



I've been relatively worry free this week really. I've heard the heartbeat a few times with my doppler and that has tide me over. Plus i've been busy thinking about organising the annual sales conference at work, so i haven't had time to worry! My next appointment with the midwife is on Friday.

It should only be two weeks at the most until i'm definately feeling the baby. I've had a few pokes here and there, but nothing to convince me 100% that it's the baby yet. I'm not wishing to time away though. I'm looking forward to it, but still cherishing each day i wake up and i'm still pregnant. :o)

15 WEEKS



We got all of the nursery stuff down out of the loft this week ready to set up in the back bedroom. There's so much of it!! I forgot just how many things a baby collects even before it's born! Ha ha!

16 WEEKS



Went to Mothercare with mum to get some more pieces for the nursery. The range we have was discontinued, so i managed to get the last few bits we didn't have. I heard the heartbeat nice and strong this week too and straight away when i putt the doppler wand on my belly. I've felt a few pokes too, but i'm waiting until they get a little stronger and more frequent before i start obsessing about that too.

I'm wondering when i will be able to feel the baby from the outside. I'm sure i remember feeling it at 17 weeks last time, but that feels awfully early considering how light the kicks are. I suppose i have a bit more "insulation" now though. HA! It's funny how baby kicks start out barely perceptable and keep getting incrimentally stronger slowly, day by day so you hardly notice them doing it. Then all of a sudden you're feeling proper pokes throughout the day!

17 WEEKS

My belly is HUGE! I reckon i'm bigger now than what some women get to at full term!!!



Mavis had babies!!! My guinea pig is a mum!! :o)



This is probably going to sound like the silliest thing ever, but i noticed that i actually feel like i have a womb with a baby in it on the front of me. It is a daft thing to say because surely that's what i should feel like, but i guess you won't get it unless you've been pregnant before. It's a wierd feeling.

18 WEEKS

I love hearing the baby's heartbeat with the doppler so easily! It's sooooo reassuring. Best money i've ever spent! The kicks still arent that strong or regular, but they soon will be, hopefully.

I'm not really bonding with this baby i don't think. Not that i'm worried about that. I'm sure it's a perfectly normal defense mechanism.

I did feel the baby kick from the outside! WOOOT! I was watching X Factor on TV with my hands on my belly and i felt it! It was only slight, but definitely definite!



I'm not doing so good. Every night for the past few nights i've had a bad dream where i've been crying, fighting, guilty and upset. I don't know what's happening to me! It's like all these feelings that i don't usually have are manifesting themselves in my dreams and it's awful. When i wake up it puts me in a depression from the offset and it's really hard to recover from. I know that it's quite common to have vivid dreams when you're pregnant, and i would much rather have these than the ones about loosing the baby, but they still suck.

Yesterday was a bad day. I just don't know where my mind is at anymore! I can't even say that i'm constantly worried about the baby, because to be honest i think i've managed to successfully detach myself from it at least some of the time. Maybe that's a sad thing, but i'll deal with that later. This is my coping mechanism and i'm sticking with it. That's the thing though, i don't really feel as if i'm coping with anything. I'm not coping at work, i'm not coping with the housework and i'm not coping with this baby. At work i do the bare minimum i have to, and i know that work have noticed, they're not stupid. I just don't care. I don't feel like i have the capacity to care right now. At home the house is a mess. I am usually a messy person anyway, but right now the bathroom is disgusting, but i can't be bothered to clean it. I am enjoying being pregnant and i'm getting excited about the baby and feeling it move etc. I even felt it from the outside the other day! It makes me smile when i think about it and i'm enjoying looking for names etc. but i am constantly holding back from it.

I feel like i'm holding back from everything. I'm trying to NOT do things - no work, no housework, no thinking too much about the baby. Why am i doing this? Is it some wierd form of excercising control where i can to avoid feeling so out of control? I have no idea.

So this morning i feel depressed. Yesterday i felt depressed. Yesterday at work i made a stupid error that meant i was investigating something for almost two hours that didn't need investigating because i'd made up the problem in my own head. I laughed about it then, but afterwards it just made me sad. I can be dizzy at times, but i care that little about anything at the moment that i didnt think to check out some dates. It's just not like me!! I hate this!

I think the reason i want to be off work so much as soon as possible is so that i won't feel as much responsibility to anything. I don't have major responsibilities at the moment thankfully, but each one that i do have weighs so heavily on me, it feels like a huge thing.

So i'm about to set off for work and i really really really really don't want to go. I have a meeting at work today about getting some form of a plan together to hand over my work to whoever is going to be taking it over when i'm on maternity leave. I'm hoping by some kind of miracle that they want me to just type slips (data entry) or something nice and easy that i don't have to think about and that i can do relatively easily and will make the days fly by... wishful thinking i believe. I really hope that they realise that this isn't my normal self at work. I really really hope that the previous six years of employment will speak out about what i can do, rather than these past few months. I do want to still have a job there when i go back.

Where's me gone? :(

19 WEEKS



Had stress at work over taking holidays before i go on maternity and ended up crying. It really doesn't take much for me at the moment. I wish wish wish i didn't have to go to work and could be a kept woman and a stay at home mum. Things would be far simpler!

Getting bigger kicks now, but it's sods law that whenever i put my hand on my belly to feel them i get nothing.

We have a girls name, but we are really struggling to find a name we both like for a boy. I'm scouring the baby names books though, so i am sure we will find something in the next... 19 weeks. EEP!

I'm feeling much better in myself this week. Hopefully the blues are done with for now. :o)

20 WEEKS



I'm really really tired! I think it must be because i'm working in York at the moment so i'm up at 6am. I've got heartburn and indigestion every night too. I have to just not eat anything for a few hours before bedtime, but then even drinking water gives me it and i sometimes get it when i'm hungry! Brilliant!

I listened to the heartbeat after work one day this week cause i got really scared that the baby had died. I know, i know! Good news though cause i found it right away.

One day i had to leave work early cause i'd got a headache. They're awful, especially since i can't take anything at all. They start off mild and just build up and build up. I was fine the next day and then the day after that i got one again. I considered coming home again, but i felt i shouldn't because i'd already left early a few days previous. Of course the headache lasted all night once i did get home and i went to bed with it and woke up with it. Why do i have to be such a chuffin nob sometimes?! I should have just gone home when it started.

I have a new obsession in the form of the Twilight books. I love them!!

Would you believe that one of my pair of maternity trousers is too tight for me already. They're the over the bump kind and they dig in too much. I'm a house!

21 WEEKS



I'm well over halfway!!! :o)

I had a 20 week scan on Monday and the baby is perfectly healthy thank goodness. The only worrying thing is that the placenta is fairly low and only 1cm away from the cervix. I had a "dildo cam" scan to make sure. The consultant was really nice and said that she will arrange for me to have a colour doppler scan when i next go in at 24 weeks. I'm researching what i need to be wary of and trying to come up with my own plan of care, so that i can hopefully get what i need from the NHS. It's great that my consultant is being so helpful to me, but it's sad too because the machine i was scanned on has a colour doppler function. I don't know if it was there two years ago when i was having Zane, but if it was... It's just a switch that they flip... that easy. :o(

I really can't bend forward anymore. I have to do this wierd swizzling to the side thing to pick things up.

Crap! I did my shoulder in! I was snapping a carrot to give to the guinea pigs and i felt it go and then i couldnt move it. Woke up the next morning and i was in agony! Totally couldn't go to work cause i couldn't drive or operate a laptop. No way! Thankfully it cured itself quite fast. I get the same thing every couple of years. Wierd.

I turned 28 this week too and had a lovely meal with the ladies at Number 8, which was gorgeous!! Then the next night i had a meal with Scott at Frankie & Benny's in Cas. It was lurvley!

Sunday was the one year anniversary of Ada's loss. We had a nice quiet day and i made sure i had no plans or obligations and we just chilled out. We released a helium balloon for her and i spent some time remembering my time with her. The wonderful ladies at preg.org from the December 07 birth board also helped to celebrate her birthday by releasing balloons of their own. I heart them!

I don't really feel it - the pain i mean - any more on those days than i do on normal days.  I was mostly filled with disbelief that it has been a year already. Then i was thinking that in just a few short weeks this baby inside me now will look like Ada did when she was born, and she was a proper little person! Just very premature looking. I miss her and i miss Zane. Every day.



22 WEEKS

I had a special moment today. I was laying on the sofa feeling quite dozy and i had Yoshimi, my most cuddly guinea pig laying on my chest. I was stroking her with one hand and she was laying all comfy and purring at me. My other hand was just laid over my belly and i could feel the baby kicking every now and again from the inside and outside. It was blissful!