And stretch....

We started our ante natal classes a couple of weeks ago and so are learning all that is necessary to get through birth and the first few weeks with a new baby. Yeah right! Actually they have been really helpful and enjoyable, mostly for the companionship and the socialising afterwards (I pity the people next to us in the cafe - a table of 8 pregnant women who have just spent two hours learning about labour and birth - you can imagine the conversations we have!) but I have learnt a few especially helpful things, the most important are related to the stretching and strengthening of various intimate parts of the female body...

Pelvic floor exercises...in case you don't know these are when you squeeze down below like you're trying to stop the flow of urine, and are nothing to do with your pelvis or lying on a floor or anything nice like that, anyway... these exercises are crucial it seems unless I want to spend months after the birth wetting myself every time laugh or sneeze or run to catch a bus. Or in really bad cases just for no reason at all. The cure for post birth stress incontinence (as it's known), as well as more pelvic floor exercises of course, is a course of torture with a physiotherapist. The torture is mainly of the psychological kind involving excruciating embarassment and goes something like this: the physiotherapist gives you a large rubber tampon like thing(hygienically sterilised of course) and instructs you to go into the loo and insert it into your vagina and hold it there. It will fall out. You go back and are then given a bigger one - repeating this process until you get one that you can keep in! Then you have to keep this one in and do exercises. Over the course of a few weeks you downsize until you can hold in the normal tampon sized one and by then in theory you can manage not to pee when you sneeze. This really should be enough to make ANYONE do the 50 pelvic floor exercises per day that are suggested! Although oddly enough it is actually quite hard even knowing the above. You have to do them in sets of 5, that means remembering, and having a suitable moment to do them, 10 times a day! Quite a lot for a pregnant brain to manage.

Having spent all this time strengthening the pelvic floor muscles, we must next prepare to stretch the skin covering these muscles in order to help prevent vaginal/perineal tears during delivery, which obviously would be very painful, and can also lead to even worse incontinence issues. To do this we use Perineal Massage, which should more accurately be called Stretching the Hell out of your entire perineal area. There is massage oil involved but apart from that it doesn't sound pleasant! You probably don't really want to know what it involves, but to get an idea you could try putting a finger in each side of your mouth and pulling outwards in opposite directions - that is the kind of stretch we're talking about. Five minutes every day for the last month of pregnancy. Hmmm, looking forward to that.

Short but very sweet

We made a very cute discovery the other day - if the baby is lying in the right position, Mr Squeak can hear its heartbeat when he puts his ear to my tummy. The look of amazement on his face when he heard it still brings tears to my eyes a few days later. I just can't describe how sweet it was!

Squeaks and whistles

I had a funny experience this weekend - funny and also kind of embarassing as it involves farting - but I share it here (partly for cakefox and anyone else with a special appreciation of toilet related humour) because in the end the humour won out.

I am not usually a particularly 'farty' person. Not saying I never do, just that I don't that often, or generally keep them to myself where possible! Pregnancy has changed that somewhat, OK a lot. So, where once just doing a loud fart would have been enough to make me laugh, lately I've kind of gotten used to them and they mostly pass (hehe) by un-noticed. Until last night, when the strangest fart I've ever done made its entrance into our world. This fart - if you can even call it that - was so high pitched and dare I say it squeaky (although I'd like to point out that this is NOTHING to do with me being called Squeak!) that it was hard to identify as intestinal gas escaping from a human body. I was by myself at the time but laughed so long and hard that my husband came running in from the other room to see what was so funny. I couldn't give him explanation enough, 'I just farted' didn't seem to cut it, and it really wasn't a noise I knew how to describe any other way. But later that evening (to his infinite joy) my body was kind enough to offer a repeat - then he realised why I had been laughing just so hard. Thankfully he at least was then able to form a description that sort of comes close: it sounded like the fart equivalent of a person talking after they've just taken a big suck off a helium balloon! We called it the Helium Fart. It was a special moment.

Third day on the blog

Is it just me or does that sound a bit rude? Maybe it's just a kiwi thing, or perhaps just the immature sense of humour I share with the rest of my family, we've never really gotten past toilet jokes! Actually I think toilet humour is funny, it's just that most people try to pretend they're above it. This being, as previously mentioned, a blog that will contain a lot about pregnancy and babies, I suspect there will be quite a lot of toilet speak. Only I can't oblige today as nothing remotely interesting has happened in that department. Not even that good old standard 'pregnancy constipation', which so far (fingers crossed here) has not visited this house. No three day sessions required.

All in all there's not a lot to report today. I've been feeling fine: no strange pregnancy niggles, no random emotional outbursts, no strange cravings. How dull!

I think the baby might finally be moving higher up in my tummy, where apparently it should be by now, as today I think I felt something under my ribs and couldn't lean forward as far as usual, and last night I actually woke up feeling breathless, which is quite a strange sensation when you're lying down. (And no, there was no sex involved - I'm pregnant - that doesn't happen anymore. For the record: increased hormones do NOT make you feel more sexy!). So far I haven't had the indigestion that seems to plague other women at this stage, but only - at least as far as I can tell - because my baby is mostly hanging out in my lower abdomen taking great delight in jumping around on my bladder like it's a trampoline. Not really that cute especially when you have to wee for the 10th time of an evening. It also makes me suspect that it hasn't put its head down properly like a good baby as those kicks to the bladder are definitely kicks, not gentle little taps with a baby hand. I am giving it another few weeks to work out that it needs to be in a head first position in readiness for departure. I guess there is plenty of time for that, really it's just that I want a bit of variety in my discomfort and, although I'm happy to pass on the heartburn, I'm keen to experience some of those foot under the ribcage moments I have read about. They can't be worse than the feet on bladder thing. Famous last words?

The joys (or not) of pregnancy

Yesterday I was waxing lyrical to anyone who would listen (which actually just means I was boring friends and family in NZ stupid with emails) about how lovely it is being pregnant. Yesterday my little unborn baby was my best friend, wriggling around and generally seeming incredibly cute even though I clearly can't see it, and bringing me to tears of joy just at the thought of meeting it soon (don't like the sound of those 'its', but we're being old fashioned and haven't found out what flavour baby we're having). Today however has not been quite so rosy. In fact today has been a BAD DAY. In that at 30 weeks pregnant (that's about 7 months for those who you who have never been through this thing - believe me it's all about the weeks), when I should be well past this stuff, I have been laid up with horrible nausea and pretty much unable to function all day. I spent two hours this morning feeling like I was going to have to run to the loo any minute either to throw up, or with diarrhea, or both. In the end neither eventuated, which is a good thing for sure, but it was an incredibly frustrating start to the day, which never really got going again afterwards. Perhaps not the best day to begin this blog? Oh well, there's never a perfect moment is there.

I am living a strange kind of 'in between' life at the moment and feel (though not for the first time in my life I should add) like I'm in limbo - I am not working and am too pregnant to find a new job, but don't know quite what to do with myself and all this time I have! I could be going to my studio and making art, but the hour long bus journey to get there, combined with the freezing cold rain we're having this week, puts me off. It really does seem that the more time I have the less I actually manage to do, what is it with that? I am also currently living on the other side of the world from most of my friends and family, so haven't got that many people I could convince to waste time with me (and somehow wasting time and generally mooching around sounds like fun with company but seems depressing on your own). The idea of sitting in a cafe and drinking coffee whilst reading magazines is fun if you should be working instead, but, apart from the small thrill of maybe overdosing the baby with caffeine to see how much it will move, it doesn't hold so much appeal as a solitary activity! Neither though does spending all my days in a studio wondering about the social, financial or just general merits of making art, especially when if I break it down, even though I do sell paintings from time to time, it still costs me money to make rather than earning me some. Hmmm. And I do this because...?

So instead I have become a sort of housewife, preparing for my soon to be status as a SAHM. For those of you who don't know that's: Stay At Home Mom, although I personally prefer the version: Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker, as given on my favourite website www.dooce.com. Many thanks to my sister for putting me onto that particular joy and thanks also to the writer of aforementioned website who very often makes me laugh so much I cry! (I hope it's ok to mention another website here, I'm unsure of the etiquette involved so apologies to all concerned if this is not the done thing). The problem is that despite, or more the point, WITH, all this time on my hands I manage to be quite ineffective and generally can spend my days doing basically nothing! Amazing how quickly the hours pass while researching the benefits of various different brands of cloth nappies. Or running important errands like buying flour because I suddenly need to bake muffins for the first time in my life! So, the house (well ok, small flat) could probably do with a clean, and there is washing waiting to be done, groceries that could be bought, meals that could be made, and instead I manage to find time for worthy activities like an afternoon nap (pregnant though so that one's justified), uploading photos onto the computer, sifting around on the internet and generally mooching or reading books in the comfort of my warm living room, watching the rain fall over a very grey London skyline. (suitably tongue in cheek depressing picture required here me thinks, will have to add one later!)

Maybe the rest of the week will be better. Although, in London at least, the sun will not be coming out tomorrow... I know, as I especially took time out from my important research - ie non stop watching of Discovery Home and Health Channel's 'Baby Week' - to watch the 6 oclock news and weather.

New Beginnings

First blog, first baby on the way... yes take that as a warning - there will probably be a lot to come here about the fact that I am pregnant and then probably a lot about the baby - so if that ain't your thing then probably time to look elsewhere.

This is a test post really, as I have no idea what I'm doing or how this whole thing works. Bit like being pregnant and then dealing with a new baby, or so I gather, you just have to figure it out as you go along and will no doubt make mistakes along the way. At least the mistakes I make here will only result in a little public embarassment rather than any long term damage to another person's emotional or physical well being. Unless they are really bad mistakes of course and I guess anything is possible.

Baby is due in about 11 weeks or so.

In the meantime here goes with this blog thing...