Of course I want the baby to have his or her due, I have not yet worked out the implications for me .... this will be worse than when Rafi was born, or when Saamia's birthday was less than a month away from mine and so the family decided we had to share (yeah, I know ...). The way if worked out, having Rafi and Saamia in my life far outweighed the decrease in love and attention coming my way ... not least because Rafi and Saamia both showered me with love from the start. So I suppose the baby will be the same, perhaps more so as we will be bound by our unique bond, all being well. I guess I have to wait, as I can't tell how it will be now.
Waiting is such a bore.
So on Sunday the 3rd we went to Asif Bhai & Rumana Bhabi's to spend the night before making our way to Guildford. It was great being there, we had fun chatting and listening to the Manah Manah song again and again - it's an Ahmed family favourite at the moment, and I found the Muppets clip for Asif Bhai in YouTube, he hadn't seen it before. They had a few horror stories to share about giving birth at St Georges Hospital ... not sure how helpful horror stories are, but I understand the logic behind sharing them. Certain things that go on in hospitals are unacceptable to me - when I'm sick as well as now I'm pregnant. I need my own strength and allies to protect me and work with me. I have 8 months to prepare for battle!
Monday the 4th was our Guildford day. As it turned out, I saw the dietician Anne Heriott, then had a blood test to check my Beta HCG, and was about to have my ultrasound when Miss Whitcroft realised I had just had one and said no need then, and she whisked me away to her room and we had our consultation right away and were done before lunchtime! Brilliant! We then went into Guildford, shopped at the cookware shop we like (we now have a very big tin for baking a big loaf of bread) and I got Iain a mug that said 'Daddy' all over it. We met Sam Searle for lunch at Giraffe, which was jolly nice of her as she has so much going on right now. It was a nice day out in the end. Good meal too, although when the food came for a moment I wasn't sure if the sick feeling was from the Met, the hunger or the smell of the food ... all was well though, no worries.
The dietician was very pleased with my weight loss and the inches I've taken off in the last 5 months, and obviously it's all worked. She's happy with my diet, but I need to stay as strict as possible while pregnant and when the baby arrives too. Not as strict as possible considering i'm pregnant - but as strict as it is possible to be. I have to stick to my 3 meals, only go up to 4 if I have a lot of morning sickness, or at the end of the pregnancy when I am hungrier. I am to go back down to 3 when the baby is born. I need to be strict and cut out all the biscuits and sugar, go back to avoiding high GI fruits, avoid all cereal except porridge. So meals look like this:
lunch/dinner - meat or fish with vegetables (green leafy), perhaps some quinoa. Maybe a piece of fruit, a square or 2 of dark chocolate after, perhaps a milkshake - this would be bad though as there's sugar in my preferred milkshake mix. Cheese is also fine as part of the meal. In reality, the meat is often casseroled, or cold meat like Abba used to make. The fish is fresh from the market, marinaded in teriyaki sauce or Nandos sauce and grilled or baked, or I have fish fingers. I can have as much white fish as I want + kippers once or twice a week for the Omega 3. I'm having homemade bread made with stoneground wholemeal and ground linseed, which is also my Omega 3 source and a good source of insurance for my gut, which is already taking a beating from this pregnancy. I can't have much of the bread, but it sure is yummy! Oh, and I'm having prunes too.
Breakfast - is so much more of a challenge. On paper, omlettes, fried egg on toast, egg-mayonnaise sandwiches, porridge, kippers - what could be easier. You try eating any of that first thing ..... In reality cheese on toast is fast becoming a staple, and vegetable soup with chicken stock is going down well too, specially with bits of meat in it or cheese on the side. I think cheese is gonna be my best friend.
The good news is it doesn't matter how little I eat, and I can ignore the fact that all the pregnant ladies I know of are on the crackers and sweets. I have my instructions. All I have to do is -
- have plenty of iron - my beef intake takes care of that, and my green leafies and fruit/veg do too, I just have to have a source of vitamin C at the same time - tomatoes with the meal or an orange after are perfect, which is a big reason why I cook like that. My prenatal multivitamin has iron too.
- have plenty of calcium - my supplements take care of that, I have calcium with 2 of my Metformin doses and the prenatal multivit with iron and folic acid with the other Met tablet - that way I don't forget to take them and they don't interfere with eachother's absorption. All the cheese I'm having should help too - I have one or 2 cheese small servings a day now.
- take my folic acid tablets regularly and have food rich in folate too.
- keep my fluids way up - this is hard, but I can have as many sugar free drinks as I want so my choices are not bad.
Miss Whitcroft was over the moon about the baby and my progress. I know what to do with all my medicines, I'm to stay on my Met, 3 or 4 a day, I can have my Cinnamon, my Cranberry if I want, I'm to have my aspirin every day forever, and my oemeperazole is the same as before - I'm going to ask Dr Middleton about the dosage though. I'll see him on Tuesday the 12th. Basically now it's just waiting, following al the advice, going to all my antenatal appointments and scans etc etc. She said I might want a scan after my 12 weeks and before my 20 weeks ... lets see.
I'm pretty pleased with how it all went. Waiting is still hard, but I do have a lot to do!
Oh after lunch Iain took me shopping and we got me a few novels to see me through the next few weeks - I'm bored and restless but can't focus on work. He's so sweet. We also went to Lush and I bought my Therapy massage bar which is fabulous, but not oily enough to ward off any stretch marks in my opinion so I still have a choice (or 2 purchases) to make.
Then I pretty much stayed in, at home, sleeping and resting, thinking, not really doing much, pondering why my symptoms have all gone ... till Friday the 8th, when I called the Hypnobirthing/Doula lady and found out more about the coffee morning - I'll miss the one in Feb as my midwife is coming that morning, I'll go with Iain to the March one. I think I'll like her. I failed to find an NHS dentist, and then finally it was time to get ready and go to Rafi's birthday drinks in Camden. It was nice to get up, get dressed, go out! Alia was there, and Saida, and Anushe and Jake turned up too - she looked great. It was nice talking to my cousins about our news, and I felt encouraged by their good wishes. I far prefer the goodwill to anything else out there. My sickness appears to be back, on and off, and was particularly bad in the car.
Ate my last stick of Twix in the car on the way home with lots of lactase tablets - it was not worth it, I'm so over Twix .... sad to say good bye like that, my erstwhile favourite snack x
I slept as much as I could last night and this morning as was so exhausted. It was really nice to hang out with Iain, he's getting very excited about the baby. He said last night he thinks when we had the ultrasound he saw a dot in the yolk sac for a bit ... not long enough for the sonographer to get a good shot (why didn't she try harder...) but still. I'm glad. That's good news. Roll on Monday!
Today, Saturday the 9th, I expected to see Chris - but he bailed on account of his new lady, he describes himself quite astutely as a 'bounder' because of this, true, true, very unchivalrous to leave a lady with child all on her lonesome, with chocolate biscuits to eat and no one to share with ... my plan had been to ritually eat the last of the chocolate bourbons with Chris and then let them go as per the Herriot Decree (above). Hmmpphh. Dunno what to do now. Will I ever be free of the dreaded (but delicious) Bourbons Creams? Let us never forget they are the less harmful substitutes for my true nemesis - Oreo cookies. Freedom seems far beyond my reach at this moment ....
Tomorrow Sunday the 10th should be nice - we're going to Mamma & Abba's now to join them for lunch as Tina and her family are going to be there. I'm to make a steamed pudding and custard so I can have dessert too (what would Anne Herriot say). Maybe I should just not have dessert and ask Mum to serve Ice Cream which I would not touch anyway.
I have another scan on Monday, and then we were going to pop over to tell Nani & NK about the baby but we might as well spill the beans tomorrow if we are going. I also have a great talk to go to, one of the early modern society ones, on witchcraft, I might get some reading done at the Warburg too. Tuesday afternoon we see Dr Middleton, I want to know what my game plan should be with my gut during this pregnancy, what my bag of tricks could be, and how I'm to live with the crazy acid. I seriously doubt he'll have anything useful to say, as if he starts saying useful things now it will be such a big surprise. However he is all I have access to and this is his last shot, everyone deserves a last shot. We're going to ikea after (Milton Keynes) to check out
possible furniture options. After that there's nothing on the cards till I see the midwife on the 19th.
Ok, I really do feel sick now....
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