Fourteen weeks

Well, the last week has been fairly hellish. I can't sell my house in the UK. The market has collapsed and my estate agents are useless muppets. If I can't sell my house I'm fucked. I'm relying on that money to live on when I am at home with the baby. Moreover the rent doesn't cover the mortgage, it's costing me $230 dollars a month. I actually cried down the phone to my agents. I'm just so worried about how I'm going to look after my baby if the house doesn't sell. But I have found new agents who seem keen and say they can sell it quickly. I've dropped the price £50k of asking and hopefully if will sell.

I've also been sick for the last three days. Sore throat, headaches, cough and then abdo cramping and bleeding. So back I went to the emergancy department at Mercy. In tears, again, terrified that not only was I bankrupt but the baby was in trouble. It was that unfriendly midwife again but this time I saw a lovely gynae and his boss, who is from Northern Ireland. We had a look at the baby, who is still cute and wriggly and fine and they looked at my cervix, which is very unhappy indeed. It seems that some of the inner cervix cells have grown onto the outer cervix, because of the pregnancy hormones and they aren't happy there, which is why they are bleeding. It also looked inflamed, so they have given me some flagyl just in case it's infected too. They don't think it'll do any harm to the baby. It's a nuisance but not concerning.

I so need this long weekend.

Sexy back

This week I've been feeling more and more like myself, or perhaps I'm just becoming used to the new me. I spent another $250 on maternity wear, as now nothing from before fits and work was becoming a bit of a nightmare. So I'm two pairs of maternity jeans richer and have several new tops. I definitely look sexier, there were looks from random blokes on the tram, before they notce the bump and look a bit confused. Maternity wear helps to make me look pregnant, rather than just blobby. And it is all bump, well, bump and boobs. My boss actually stroked my belly this week, which was weird. I reckon I'll have to get used to that. The pregnancy 'glow' is settling down to be less like teenage hormonal skin and more actual glow, thankfully.

I'm working my way through recipes from 'Feeding the Bump' and I've just finished realing Adele Parks' 'Larger Than Life', which I found oddly cheering, for a book about a pregnant woman's relationship breakdown. I'm truly becoming a pregnancy bore, but try as I might, nothing else is as interesting and just about anything can be related to pregnancy and childbirth! I've mostly had a low key, relaxed weekend. Mooching round town buying clothes, breakfast out with the flattie, admiring my baby scan DVD on his HUGE, living room eclipsing, big screen tv and providing intensive care to yet another sick goldfish. I do hope my lack of success with fish isn't indicative of my maternal instincts. The stupid bugger just kept cramming himself up against the filter until he damaged his swim bladder. He was obsessed. Now he's looking very sad in a mixing bowl of salty water, which I have my doubts will work, but I don't want the others to see suicidal fish go belly up.

I think I felt a Braxton Hicks contraction in the bath last night. It felt like an involuntary clenching low down and was very weird. The bubhubbers say they felt them about 16 weeks, so I think it's probably that. My breasts have grown again and I'm finding myself in the plain but oh so comfy maternity bras more and more. I also bought some comfy, but sparkly knickers and should probably put away the glam stuff til there's somebody to appreciate it. I've had three sonographers now comment on my pretty knickers, so I think I'm in the minority and all the other women are in comfy pants! My nipples are pointier still, and definitely look like they could achieve a purpose. To think I spent so many years being concerned that my nipples were flat, inverted and impractical. I had no idea they would change so much. The hundreds I've seen have always been at the other end of pregnancy, so I just assumed those women were born like that. Justine is going to explain breast tissue differentiation to me tomorrow. I'll buy one or two of the sexy maternity bras later on, when it becomes clearer just bow big I'm going to get.

I bought the baby a rabbit. A small, brown, soft rabbit with long ears that Matt thought was a kangaroo. I considered a few baby gowns and bunny rugs but I still think it's too early. The cot shop was closed. I've looked on line and picked out one with a very sweet mossie net over it. It'll be a spring baby so I think the mossie net is a good plan. I doubt he'll have his own room for a long time, but I'm thinking a green theme for his sheets and blankets. I'm really not into gender specifics at such a young age. I'll make him an origami mobile, maybe with a range of animals, maybe just cranes. Then he'll need a capsule for emergency taxi rides, a play mat and a sling. Clothes, cloth nappies, muslins and washable wipes. That's all to begin with, I think. I'm not sure about a baby bath. Maybe somebody will give me one. I've been promised a baby bjorn and some clothes already.

I think he just rolled over.

Thirteen weeks

I'm finally beginning to understand my new body. Feeling queasy means I'm thirsty. Abdominal pain means I need to pee. Feeling dizzy means I'm hungry. And if I can't sleep...well, let's just say my sex drive hasn't been affected! I think the strange prickling sensation just behind my pubic bone may be the baby moving, as it happens when I've been running for the tram or as I'm falling asleep. Sometimes I feel a sort of tightening too, like a fist clenching low down in my belly. It's so weird, having this vastly changed organ making new sensations. My uterus used to be the size of a walnut or a hen's egg, and already it's at least a grapefruit and growing daily.
Tomorrow evening I'm going to hop of the tram early and look in the Northcote baby shops. One has a very lovely cot in the window. It's oval and very plain but quite elegant. It looks expensive. Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to spent my baby bonus on cord blood saving, [$3000!], and the plane fare to Mauritius for a conference in January. We just checked the weather today for Mauritius in January and it's cyclone season. Thankfully I'm taking a highly decorated, [I've seen the medals], army trained paediatric emergency nurse with me. She'll mind the baby whilst I give my talk and I'll cheer when she does hers. If Jane weren't coming I doubt I'd have the courage to go. The girls at work were asking about a baby shower, so I'll put in a request for mossie proof baby clothing and a travel cot.
Hmm, so on the one hand I'm saving cord blood and on the other taking my two month old infant half way round the world to a tropical island during cyclone season. I've thought long and hard about cord blood. Not only for this baby, but any other children I have, or me or even his father; any of us might need some HLA matched stem cells in the future. I think it's worth the investment.

Picture

The tweleve week scan was much more detailed and clear than I expected. Anne came with me and was just as excited as me. I was suddenly in a good mood this morning, which I took to be a good omen. The sonographer started with a whole spiel about what was going to happen but soon worked out that I had insider knowledge and started showing off her skills instead. So...he's cute. He wriggles a lot and seems to be keen onlying on his side in a corner where we couldn't see more than his bottom. So I had to cough a lot to make him roll over.
He has a brain and a nice round skill, eye sockets and a nose that looks rather like his father's. There is a nose bone, which means he's much less likely to have downs. His nuchal fold was 1.8mm, which is within the normal range. He has a beautiful spine and ribs and long legs, five finger on the one hand we could see and he is exactly the right length for his age. He has four chambers in his heart, which was beating at 170bpm. He has two kidneys and a bladder that works. His diaphragm is in the right place. All in all, he seems to be just about perfect.
It's very odd to think that there's somebody the size of a hamster inside me, wriggling about, and I can't feel a thing. I do feel some little prickles, low down, but I'm not sure that's him. No gender yet, but I think he looks like a boy. The sonographer wouldn't be drawn on the subject. We had lunch at the Richmond Hill larder to celebrate and Anne is making me go ringing tonight because she says it's good for my mental health. She's a clinical psychologist, so I reckon she's probably onto something. We just need to rig up some sort of play pen at St Pius and the small person will have ten grandparents to coo over him, when we're not making a racket with the bells.

And down again...

So Friday was actually a pretty good day, I had a good meeting with my professor and put in a grant application, but then Justine comes into my office and drops all sorts of ominous hints. She wouldn't tell me what the problem was only that 'I had a right to know' and that Phil was going to talk to me. Phil had spent all afternoon in the meeting where they were shortlisting for the Level B post I've applied for. Justine can be really inconsiderate sometimes.
Then tonight my mother called from England and I had to break her heart. She had decided that she was coming for three months when the baby is born and that I'd have to go back to work and she'd stay home and look after him whilst I worked. Um, no. I wouldn't have decided to have this baby if I couldn't look after him myself. I'm going to cash in a lump of my house equity and stay at home and breastfeed my baby for a year. More importantly I don't have a spare room for her to stay in and I don't imagine Matt would welcome my mother crashing on the sofa for weeks when I also have a new baby in the house. She was obviously really upset, and I feel horrid. She knows how I feel about my family and my friends, she knows why I'm in Australia and she knows the lifestyle I lead and yet she seems to think that having a baby will make me into somebody else entirely. I think she was planning on spending Christmas here, but I spend Christmas with the other gay orphans and just because I have a straight baby doesn't change that. Things are the way they are for reasons that go back before I was even born and that's why I came to Australia, to be able to bring my children up without them being effected by the rest of my crazy relatives.
And my aunt, Ruby, died today. She was nearly 90 and had pancreatic cancer. She was a grump woman who terrified me my whole childhood, and she was very old, but it's sad all the same.

Twelve Weeks

Twelve weeks is supposedly the big milestone. Three months. The end of the first trimester. The baby is now much more likely to stick. The placenta has taken over from the corpus luteum and the baby is now semi-autonomous. So just to remind me that I'm pregnant, today I've been hit by a return of the nausea and new levels of vagueness and exhaustion. I had to wimp out of teaching a class of first years how to make beds because I felt faint. It's actually quite embarrassing, but luckily my boss is very sweet. I hope she is still sweet when she interviews me for that promotion.
This evening Matt moved in his DVD collection. It's huge and diverse and probably going to be my best friend in the next six months. He didn't seem very pleased with Bruce, though. Bruce is my new huntsman. He lives on the cornicing in the living room and we're happily cohabiting, mainly 'cos he's only small and too high to reach with a swat. I think he's growing quite fast, which may mean he's eating cockroaches. I am pleased with the idea that he may be eating the cockroaches, because the venues fly trap appears to be a vegetarian.
I've been reading "The Story of V" by Catherine Blackledge, which is a sort of a social, anthropological and zoological history of the vagina. It's fascinating and, I think, has gone some way to explaining my pregnancy. It seems it's not entirely my fault for being absent minded and careless. There are a whole range of chemicals and muscles and crypts and hormones and sexual techniques and histocompatibility and stuff that all orchestrated themselves to caused me to ovulate. Histocompatibility explains a lot.

Homesick

One of the first thing most people ask me is if I'm going home to have the baby. In all honesty it hadn't occurred to me til people started asking that. I migrated here, and planned on having a family here...eventually. However, at this time of year, when it starts growing darker and colder I always pine for London. Late Autumn in London is the best time of year; there's Halloween, bonfire night, my birthday and then Christmas. The lights go up my mid November, and the shops put up their displays. Then there's mulled wine, casseroles, gingerbread and country pubs with a roaring fire. Winter in Australia is one long drudge of poorly heated homes, people in denial that's it's winter at all and like Narnia Chirsitmas never comes. I'm definitely going to go up in the mountains for Christmas in July. Even if I'm hugely pregnant and it's icy I don't care; Winter needs Christmas.

And up again...

Yesterday was a bad day. I was so tired and emotional that I was nearly in tears in a breakfast meeting with my very serious professor of nursing. Luckily she took it all in her stride and gave me an hour long talk on how great I am, how well I'm going to do and how I shouldn't listen to, [Justine and Tarnya et al], who keep quizzing me on exactly how I think I'm going to cope. After that I felt a little better and decided that I should try and achieve something positive, so I spent the afternoon completing my application for the level B post.
My house still isn't selling and it looks like I'm going to have to take $120k off the asking price, which is the money I was planning on living on while the baby is still breast feeding and I can't work. I'm going to have to buy a much smaller house, I suppose, but it's a depressing thought. The agents aren't much use, [utter muppets to be frank], and don't seem to act on anything that concerns me. I wish I could just fly home and sort them out; I'm at their mercy and they could just flog it to one of their mates for next to nothing and I'd be none the wiser. I have Amy checking up on them by pretending to be a potential buyer.
After a good night's sleep I woke up today feeling much better. Matt came over with his Dad to pick up keys, so I baked some scones. Matt had told his Mum about me being pregnant but it turns out he hadn't told his Dad, but neither of us realised this until they left. I thought he'd looked a bit confused about my being so happy about being able to eat cream and jam on my scones, as it's one of the first nice things I've found I'm still allowed. I imagine poor Matthew had to answer some tricky questions in the car on their way home.
This evening I finally found somebody to come to my 12 week scan with me. I feel like such a Billy Nomates. However, I went ringing tonight, the Cambridge Major Suprise practice, [campanology, it's not a religious thing; google it], and Anne, who gives me a lift, agreed to come to my scan with me. She's a clinical psychologist and British and had kids and grandkids. I don't know her that well, just from ringing and the odd dinner with the ringers, but she doesn't work Mondays and she can come and I'm really happy with that. She seems quite excited because she's never seen one and she's so very down to earth that I know I'll find her a reassuring prescence.

Eleven weeks

My twelve week scan is next week and it looks like I'm going alone. Lyn is on honeymoon, Susan is working, as are Amanda and Charlotte. Justine is covering my classes and that only leaves Adam, who is yet to call me back but will probably be working. Sometimes being single sucks.

Flattie

After several weeks of living solo, and amazing myself by being quite happy, I took a look at my bank balance and decided that a flattie would, in fact, save me thousands of dollars before the prawn arrives in October. I interviewed five very nice but deeply dull girls and then Matt came along. He has Foxtel, a huge TV and a massive DVD/CD/book collection, perfect for the woman with no social life to speak of. He cooks, [he's promised to roast me a chicken], and writes and seems very happy about me being pregnant, but not in a creepy way. He writes very long, very funny emails and is extremely tall and thus able to change the last remaining non-energy saving light bulb that I always forgot to have the boy do, as I was too busy being distracted by his...well you get the idea. Luckily he has a girlfriend, [taking it slow, she has kids], so I don't have to worry about how very attractive he is; it'll just be so good to have a bloke around to kill the spiders and take out the bins.

I bought my first maternity clothes this weekend, a dress, a jumper, a skirt and a top, which apparently will be suitable for breast-feeding with. It was all shockingly expensive, but the sort of things that will look OK with a flat tummy too, [I do wonder if flat is something I'll see again this decade]. It's cooler now and that means it'll be easier to disguise the growing belly with big jumpers, but honestly, it's protruding so much that after lunch there's really no hiding it. People are asking me how things are going outright, rather than in stage whisper, so it'll be great to have the 12 week scan out of the way and be able to be openly pregnant rather than having a lot of nudges and winks. 13 days til the scan. Susan is coming with me and the midwives will probably come too. I'm not worried about it, I'm looking forward to being told everything is OK. So that probably means if there was a problem I'd be inconsolable, I can't even think about it.