I skipped my appointment at the hospital this week because I’ve had a cold and really just wanted to stay in bed instead.  The midwife was great, she asked all of her normal questions over the phone and is happy to wait until next week to see me again.

As you can see from the photo, my little Nudgie-bear still hasn’t dropped.  And I’m still wearing my regular bellybutton bar because I still have an innie!  Besides plenty of braxton hicks contractions, there’s really nothing else to report.  I’ve been feeling sad with the inevitable end of this journey getting closer and closer, and I’m finding it rather boring to be just sitting around at home all day.  I spent the first week of my maternity leave cleaning.  I cleaned everything that needed cleaning and everything that didn’t, then went back around and did most of it again.  The highlight of my day today was making a raspberry and honey semi-freddo.  It was a bit fiddly but dead easy.  The best part was getting to lick the bowls myself — that’s a treat usually reserved for the husband!

My grandmother came to stay last week and we spent a lot of that time visiting with other family, celebrating my niece’s second birthday and working on our family tree.  My brother and I have been working our way along different branches and have discovered all sort of interesting things.  Firstly, we’ve discovered that we are 6th generation Australians, and have some interesting connections to explorers, convicts and a bigamist but so far, no long lost inheritances!

I started my maternity leave on Monday — it’s weird being home during the day. Yesterday I put a massive effort into a client’s website redesign and only stopped because my feet and legs became so swollen. It’s hard to make fluid retention look sexy. I did try to rest and put my feet up but that’s a whole lot easier said then done. By the time my husband arrived home from work, I’d done some laundry, polished all the timber furniture, cleaned the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, made a pavlova and had dinner in the oven. No wonder my feet were so swollen.

My husband made me promise that I would try to relax today so I scheduled a mani/pedi for 9am then met with a friend for coffee (tea for me) at 11am. While waiting for the salon to open, I stopped in at Big W and found the most adorable baby mobile to hang over the cot. It has safari animals on it and plays “It’s a small world”. Of course I bought it, because it’s a perfect match for the nursery and because I am obviously mental. Why did I buy a mobile for a baby that won’t be coming home from the hospital???

Anyway, my toenails are now the most shocking shade of candy floss pink and I am full of tea and hot chocolate. Gillian and I started our catch up with a quick stop at Lindcraft. I bought two knitting pattern books (both baby clothes because, as already mentioned, I am frigging mental) and the press-studs I need for Nicholas’ burial gown. Meeting with Gillian was good but I was a bit miffed that she didn’t ask at all how I am, or about the baby. We’re both in pretty shitty places right now — a month ago she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and underwent surgery to remove it. She’s now having radiotherapy and chemotherapy but ultimately has a 25% chance of being alive in 18 months and 10% in 24 months. I understand that what she is going through is horrible and harsh and completely unfair; it just would’ve been nice if she could’ve asked me how I am, you know?

I have a hospital appointment this afternoon and came home to have a quick lunch and write this update. And now I have something else to mention. I’ve just started spotting. It’s super super light (two tiny bright pink spots on a liner, but nothing on the toilet paper) and I have absolutely no pain or cramping and I can feel some light movements from the baby. Egads. I am really not ready for this to be over. I phoned my husband at work earlier and he was telling me that it’s horrendously busy there so I won’t bug him with this new development. I’ll just go to my appointment and see what the midwife makes of it all.

Wish me luck.

__________

Edited to add:

I’m home from the hospital.  I saw both the midwife and the obstetrician; neither were impressed by my tiny two blood spots and neither think I’ll be going into labour before my due date.  This week the baby is measuring a perfect 37 weeks so the chunky monkey has bulked up a little since last his last measure.  He hasn’t dropped at all which explains the dreadful reflux I’ve been having – my stomach is basically somewhere over my left shoulder!

We invited ourselves to my brother’s house for dinner on Saturday night and my adorable not-yet-two-year-old niece was in her high chair, just finishing up her dinner when we arrived. I stood in front of her and we chatted, mostly about how her daddy was going to fix the puppy dog when he gets home (she had dropped one of those bobble-head toys, and broke it’s head off). She seems to get stuck on a particular event and uses it as a conversation starter for the following week. Last week her big conversation starter was “mummy fell in the bath!”. Poor mummy!

She was pushing pieces of pear into her little mouth when she looked me up and down, cocked her head to the side and pointed straight at my belly and said “Baby?”. Whoa. We’ve never mentioned it to her but the perceptive little miss worked it out on her own. I said yes, that it was Auntie Tamtam’s baby. She raised her chin at me and said “Show me the baby, I want to see it”. Umm? My sister-inlaw quickly explained that she just wanted to see my tummy, having been through a similar thing with her little brother (he is now six months old already). I showed her my tummy and she gave it a rub and exclaimed “Baby!!”. Happy with that, she finished her pears and I cleaned her up before bringing her into the lounge room with the adults.

She dug around in her toy box and pulled out a little dolly and brought it to me. “My baby”, she explained. Then she pointed at my tummy again and said “Auntie Tamtam’s baby” then she pointed at her little brother and said “Mummy’s baby”. That kid has it all figured out and isn’t even two yet. Un-freaking-believable. The next part just about killed me; she put the dolly up under her shirt and grinned like a fool before announcing that her tummy was the same as my tummy. Indeed.

I’m not sure how we will explain when Auntie Tamtam’s baby is gone. I hope she just sort of forgets about it…

I’m still pregnant (36wks today) but have been having some pretty horrible cramping. I was back at the hospital today for my routine checkup and the ob/midwife were both “happy” with the stabby-cramping – it’s not labour, it’s just my body getting ready for the inevitable. I had another ultrasound today because at my last appointment they really couldn’t tell which way the baby was pointing. As it turns out, he is firmly breech. He’s also measuring quite small; about 2kg (4lbs, 5oz) though the ob said these measurements are very rough because of his small chest and tummy circumferences, and because of the no-fluid thing so he may be a bit bigger though not by much. I’m due to finish work on Friday and am so glad for it because my feet and legs have been really swollen from the heat. I have a long walk to and from the staff carpark (about a kilometre each way) and that walk turned into a trudge around 32 weeks and now it’s exhausting.

My husband started a new job last week. We are both employed by the same organisation but now we both work within the same facility. It’s been a bit weird having him on my turf but I do really love driving to and from work with him every day. We’ve only managed the one lunch date together because his job is very very busy and quite high stress (he made me promise that if he keels over with a stroke/heart attack while doing this job, I’m to sue the organisation!) but it’s nice to know he’s just a few minutes away. My department is due to be relocated to the new building (there’s been some major redevelopment and construction going on since the middle of 2009) later this year but until then, his office is just one level above mine but on the other side of the building. Anyway, I only mention the new job because it kept him from coming to the appointment with me so he missed out on seeing the baby again. My feelings were hurt when he said he wouldn’t be there but I understand that he can’t just bail out early whenever he likes (even though he’s the damn director, whatever!).

So… a breech baby. I’m pretty sure the midwife said he was head down just recently but that was through feel and she did say that my stomach muscles are quite hard which makes feeling the lumps and bumps a little trickier. I don’t know whether he turned around or whether he’d just always been breech. Regardless, the obstetrician said that she wouldn’t do a c-section because as we don’t have any living children, she recognises that it is likely we will want to try again soon (either on our own or with donor tissue) and she doesn’t want to create other risks for us in the future. And to be honest, I’m not concerned about the prospect of a breech vaginal birth (even after reading a particularly blunt article on suturing, ugh). In reality he is very little (5th percentile) and I strongly feel that I’m in very good hands at this particular hospital. And one thing I have learned through each of my losses is that there is no point in stressing about things that haven’t happened yet.

I went back to the hospital on Tuesday for a check up.  Every is ok; fundus height is 31cm, blood pressure is fine, baby is moving about and his heart rate was good.  I saw both the midwife and the obstetrician, and they want me back next week for another check up and ultrasound.  They poked and prodded a lot but couldn’t tell which way Nudge was pointing.  If he’s breech on ultrasound then the midwife said she’d run me through the nuts and bolts of a breech labour.

I bought the fabric for Nudge’s burial gown on Saturday and am trying to get my shit together enough to start sewing.  It’s harder than you could imagine.  I also contacted the funeral home and have sorted out some of the finer details for his funeral.  We can’t do anymore until we buy our burial plots, but the husband has just started a new job and it’s virtually impossible for him to get any time off right now to go and look at patches of ground.  We’re not even sure if he’ll be able to leave early next week to come to the hospital for the ultrasound.  :(

Tonight I’m trying very hard to ignore some fairly full-on low cramps.  I’ve done a stack of googling and it seems that the pains are just more Braxton Hicks contractions.  The husband keeps looking over at me with this very worried look on his face.  Poor love.  Neither of us want this to be over yet.