Friday 11 August 2017

14 Weeks

Today's been a bit of a landmark day today for several reasons.

Firstly, I'm now officially into the Second Trimester. This means I'm supposed to be seeing an end to the sickness, fatigue and sore boobs.

Of course, the steroids and ondansetron are taking care of the sickness right now, even if I am still suffering with crazy nausea; I'm not sleeping through the night so I'm still pretty fatigued; and my boobs didn't hurt much in the First Trimester but they're ramping it up now.

Oh, and you're supposed to stop needing to pee all the time. Well, dehydration had put paid to that for most of the last two months but now I'm drinking reliably, I'm in a constant state of wanting a wee. It seems worse when I lie down, which is helping neither the sleeping, nor the fatigue.

On the whole though, I am feeling a little more like myself. The other night I sat in bed and played with my watercolour paints. I might even try reading again this weekend.

The second milestone is the fact that I went to work every day this week.

Now I'm actually ashamed to admit that I don't remember the last time I managed a full week at work. Okay, a couple of times those partial weeks have been down to holiday or appointments, but mostly I've been too ill to go in. This Monday was the first I managed in I don't know how long!

This has been frustrating for several reasons. One, I never used to have absences. I was two years there before I took a sick day and it was because I was in hospital after narrowly avoiding being airlifted off the island. Two, I actually enjoy going to work and I like my colleagues, missing work makes me feel out of the loop and like I'm not doing my best, and I'm nothing if not an overachiever.

But I managed it this week. And apart from one 3am puking session on Tuesday, I managed it with only a few retches and no puking in the ladies' loos. This was actually cause for celebration with my team leader this afternoon; she clearly believes in celebrating personal achievements.

And thirdly, our final milestone of today is this:


Our first official Baby Bo purchase! And it was an absolute bargain!

I've said all the way along that it's cost us enough money to actually get Bo, so we're being pretty frugal about buying stuff for him. And with that in mind I've been keeping an eye on a local Facebook group where people on the island pass on or sell unwanted items.

In the last three months two cots have cropped up there, which I passed on because it seemed a little too early. But I still keep checking, just in case.

And yesterday that beauty showed up. It's a Clair de Lune moses basket, with a rocker stand, for those of you in the know about these things. So I guess we can make sure Bo gets over any tendencies towards sea sickness nice and early which'll come in handy living on the island. This was listed for the handsome price of £20. And that seemed like too good an offer to reuse.

After a quick discussion with the spousal unit (via Facebook Messenger, since we were in different rooms and are a thoroughly modern couple who weren't even in the room together when our child was conceived so why should we deal with this face to face?) He agreed we should go for it. And we did.

All that's left to spring for is a mattress which will bring the full thing to well under what we had been planning to pay for a basket, basic stand and all.

Oh, and you see the beautiful crocheted shawl I've oh-so-elegantly draped over the edge for the photo above (you can tell I'm getting better, I'm staging photos again)? That was handmade by Bo's Great-Nanny. It'll be hanging out in the basket for the next six months, waiting for Bo to join it.

Friday 4 August 2017

13 Weeks Pregnant

No, I'm not a day ahead of myself. Bo is. We had our dating scan this week and our due date has been bumped up by a day!

Speaking of which, Hello World:


I've not posted because of a combination of reasons; I got sicker, my Mum came to visit, I got even sicker.

I've had a bit of a battle to get further treatment for the hyperemesis which saw me hitting complete rock bottom on Monday but luckily I saw a brilliant consultant on Wednesday who spotted signs of liver damage, got me on more medication and started treatment for malnutrition as well. I narrowly avoided another hospital admission but all this is for a much longer blog post.

Bo has been totally unaffected by all this. If anything he's been thriving, possibly because he's doing everything I have. He's now a day ahead of schedule and expected to arrive February 9th instead of 10th.

He's got arms, legs, a brain, a stomach and a beautiful little beating heart. He had a little stretch and a wiggle, then got bored with the whole being scanned thing and rolled over to turn his back on us. Of course, he may still be a she, but for now we'll go with he for simplicity's sake.

We next get to check in on him at the end of September which seems at once both really near and an an eternity away.

I'm hoping I continue to respond well to the new meds and as I'm now able to do more than just lie in a dark room, perhaps I'll even be able to get caught up on blogging again.

Keep everything crossed.