Niblet update.
Oct. 6th, 2008 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaTomorrow I will be 22 weeks pregnant. According to babycenter.com, the Niblet weighs about a pound and is about 11 inches long. This is the threshhold of fetal viability: if, God forbid, a disaster happened and the Niblet were born next week, he'd have a 25% chance of survival. Two weeks from now, a greater than 50% chance of survival.
I feel him kick every day now. It's probably too early to identify any sleep/wake patterns or responses to external stimuli; most of his kicks are light enough that it's easy to miss them if I'm doing something else. But at least a couple times a day, I feel kicks like little fingertip touches, deep in my belly. It's nice.
Speaking of belly, I have one. I am visibly pregnant, although not yet to the point where people who don't know for sure are comfortable asking about it. My maternity clothes are fitting better; I'm past the awkward stage when neither kind of clothes fit right. I'm guessing that when I go to the midwife next week I will have gained a couple of pounds, and my belly will have grown the correct number of centimeters. And my belly tends to ache and itch - definite signs of more growth on the way.
I am hungry. I am craving protein. I had a big bowl of Cheerios with milk this morning, and on the light rail suddenly found myself fantasizing about the hard-boiled eggs in the hospital cafeteria. So I stopped off on the way to my office and bought a hard-boiled egg and a cup of mixed fruit. Now I'm kind of wishing that it had been two eggs. In general it seems to work best for me to eat about every 3 hours.
I have started having episodes of exhaustion, shakiness, and emotional overload which can be 100% cured by protein.
I am starting to notice pregnancy-related limitations. I can walk as much and as comfortably as I ever could, which is good, given that during an average workday I walk 18-28 blocks (1.5-2.3 miles). But climbing more than one flight of stairs sets my heart racing, and I have trouble carrying Alex or a laundry basket - I wind up gasping for breath. I am starting to have trouble getting up off the floor, which is a problem, because as a parent and a preschool RE teacher I spend a lot of time kneeling or sitting on the floor.
Now that Niblet is regularly checking in with me (i.e., kicking), my terror and fatalism have subsided. I'm starting to let myself expect that there will be a baby at the end of this road. It's a good place to be.
I feel him kick every day now. It's probably too early to identify any sleep/wake patterns or responses to external stimuli; most of his kicks are light enough that it's easy to miss them if I'm doing something else. But at least a couple times a day, I feel kicks like little fingertip touches, deep in my belly. It's nice.
Speaking of belly, I have one. I am visibly pregnant, although not yet to the point where people who don't know for sure are comfortable asking about it. My maternity clothes are fitting better; I'm past the awkward stage when neither kind of clothes fit right. I'm guessing that when I go to the midwife next week I will have gained a couple of pounds, and my belly will have grown the correct number of centimeters. And my belly tends to ache and itch - definite signs of more growth on the way.
I am hungry. I am craving protein. I had a big bowl of Cheerios with milk this morning, and on the light rail suddenly found myself fantasizing about the hard-boiled eggs in the hospital cafeteria. So I stopped off on the way to my office and bought a hard-boiled egg and a cup of mixed fruit. Now I'm kind of wishing that it had been two eggs. In general it seems to work best for me to eat about every 3 hours.
I have started having episodes of exhaustion, shakiness, and emotional overload which can be 100% cured by protein.
I am starting to notice pregnancy-related limitations. I can walk as much and as comfortably as I ever could, which is good, given that during an average workday I walk 18-28 blocks (1.5-2.3 miles). But climbing more than one flight of stairs sets my heart racing, and I have trouble carrying Alex or a laundry basket - I wind up gasping for breath. I am starting to have trouble getting up off the floor, which is a problem, because as a parent and a preschool RE teacher I spend a lot of time kneeling or sitting on the floor.
Now that Niblet is regularly checking in with me (i.e., kicking), my terror and fatalism have subsided. I'm starting to let myself expect that there will be a baby at the end of this road. It's a good place to be.
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Date: 2008-10-06 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 03:26 pm (UTC)N.
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Date: 2008-10-06 03:46 pm (UTC)I saw the post on baby boy clothes, is there anything you know you still need? I could take a look at what I still have in the basement. (Stuff has gone out and come back a couple of times, so I would need to go through it to know what's there for sure.)
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Date: 2008-10-06 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 06:39 pm (UTC)Hooray for settling down and not being as afraid any more.
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Date: 2008-10-06 08:43 pm (UTC)I always needed actual, solid protein at every meal while pregnant. Cheerios and milk wouldn't have cut it at all.
But then, it's no different when I'm not pregnant.
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Date: 2008-10-06 09:38 pm (UTC)Do you expect to get your breath back for a while, based on your experience with Alex, or did that not happen for you?
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Date: 2008-10-06 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 02:56 am (UTC)I'm sure you can just tell the kids you have to sit in a chair because of Niblet. It always works when I tell people I can't sit on the floor because I have to fall to get down there.
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Date: 2008-10-08 02:16 am (UTC)P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I read a really cute children's book at the library the other day. It is a book on manners (usually I say "eesh" to kids etiquette books, but this one was actually very well done, IMHO) called "Do Unto Otters," so naturally I thought of you. It's about a bunny who gets new otter neighbors and is worried that he won't get along with them, but an owl friend encourages him to think about how he likes to be treated and treat the otters that way. I found it a little hard to read to Tamsin because it's a very graphically designed book (I had to skip around a bit), but it was silly and fun and the values were presented nicely. Anyway. Otters! Yay!