The 3 Trimesters of growing a tiny human...

Its just come to my attention that the reason I started this was to kinda give an update on my ‘preggo journey’ from conception to contractions (shouldn’t really say that if you’re a hypno-birther, but I like to be a rebel and break the rules now and again, plus ‘sex to surges’ just sounds all kinds of wrong!) and so far, I haven’t really done that so, I’m going to try and cram the past 8 and a half months into this without it turning into a novel (I'm not making any promises about that), so here goes:

Conception: 

I won’t go into too much detail – I’m hoping you all know how this works because I haven’t got time to be explaining about the birds and the bees! Now, I’m not going to undo all the great work that is done by numerous healthcare providers about contraception etc, because it is very important for a variety of different reasons, and if you’re not ready for a baby you should defo be using it, because if you’re not you are just a complete moron – however in my case (and I must stress here that everyone is different) if I’d have known how long it would take to get pregnant and the fact you have a 48 hour window to get those bad boys fertilized, I wouldn’t have panicked so much about forgetting to take a pill one day, or not taking it at exactly the same time each day as the little info booklet says. This may have been down to being on the pill for 14 years and my ovaries becoming lazy little fuck bags and only working in sync with medication, but it took a good few months for them to come out of hibernation and start working again properly. Now, I’m sure every couple who is trying for a baby thinks more or less the same thing after the first time of ‘doing it’ without any protection. This was what was going through my head and I laid there with a pillow under my ass and my legs in the air to allow gravity to do its job: ‘OMG this is it, it must be, there’s nothing stopping this from working, it must be like my egg is an all you can eat buffet and S’s sperm have been starved for the past 14 years so will just swim as fast as Michael Phelps straight to it and dive in for the prize.’ How wrong was I?! Anyway…after about 6 months of trying, 2 boxes of ovulation tests, 4 negative pregnancy tests, a sprinkling of self doubt from both sides about whether our bits actually worked and one night of ‘can we actually be bothered to ‘do it’ again, knowing full well we HAD to because our 48 hour window had shown up via a smiley face on the ovulation test and if we didn’t we would have to wait a whole 28 days to see that patronising little shit appear again’, we finally got the news we were hoping for. On the 29^th April we had our first positive test showing ‘1-2 weeks’. We cried, we screamed (S probably more so because he was actually really hungover at the time) and then I just laid there and thought ‘Shit! I’m supposed to be going out tonight, what excuse can I use for why I’m not drinking?’ First world problems right there.

First Trimester:

So I’m going to be one of those annoying, ‘I want to punch you in the face’, type people who actually didn’t get any symptoms other than about 3 days of nausea throughout the ‘worst’, I mean first, trimester. For many people they usually start their day with their heads down the toilet throwing up last nights pasta bake but I was starting each morning with a bowl of coco pops and as much energy as someone on a cocktail of speed and redbull. I already thought I had a bump at 8 weeks and was getting paranoid that people would start to notice – looking at me now I don’t know what the hell I was worried about! We had decided that we weren’t going to tell anyone until after our scan – so luckily I could get away with wearing baggy dance wear at work and floaty smock dresses at weekends as the weather was getting warm. Those first 3 months dragged like a worms penis…I don’t actually think worms have a penis, but if they did I can just envision it slowly dragging along the floor under their slimey bellies…ANYWAY…it felt like a lifetime and I was running out of excuses not to drink – I realise I am making myself out to be a complete alcoholic here, but if you know me you will know I am quite partial to the odd glass (bottle) of prosecco every now and then, so not ordering a glass of bubbles with a meal, or having a *twinkle at a girls night in was quite out of character.

*recipe for a Twinkle:

Fill the bottom of a champagne flute with vodka

Add a dash of elderflower cordial

Top up with prosecco

Repeat

Drink both

End up on your ass

Now, I’m not going to thank the 3 years of acting training I had on my Musical Theatre degree, because those of you who studied with me will know I hate acting so much that I improvised my Shakespeare monologue for a very important assessment in front of the acting tutor who absolutely bones Shakespeare and could probably recite every single one of his plays with her eyes closed, hands tied behind her back whilst hopping on one leg. I’m a dancer, not an actor, so I would rather spend my free time choreographing than learning that rubbish (no offence Shakespeare/Shakespeare fans, I know he was very talented, but I just don’t get it!) That aside, (I went off track again, sorry) I think I did a pretty good job of hiding it as everyone who we told literally had no idea whatsoever, which made each of their reveals absolutely hilarious – except my nan who, in true Doreen style, replied with ‘well I did think you had put on a bit of weight and that explains all the floaty dress….oh how wonderful….that must also be why you’ve got really spotty too!’ – Cheers nan, nothing like an honest reality check to keep me in my place! On that note, I’ll move onto the spots. JESUS CHRIST, they would not budge!! Having been very lucky through puberty and not really suffering, I realised now was my time to look like those two girls from ‘Kevin and Perry go large’ who stand in front of the mirror bursting their volcanic pizza faces whilst getting ready to go to ‘Amnesia’. I tried tea tree oil, clearasil face wash, sudocrem, clearasil pads, witch hazel and about 7 other ‘spot remedies’ off Pinterest and they all just sat on the bathroom windowsill laughing at me like ‘Babe, your hormones are fucked, you’re eating coco pops every day… I know the adverts say we’re good, but we ain’t THAT good!’ I thought I was supposed to be glowing by now, but the only thing that was glowing was the collection of red bumps all over my face and neck which literally made me want to throw the towel in. I had about 4 mental breakdowns in the space of about 4 weeks (pre scan)  because of the spots, not being able fit into my favourite jeans, not being able to tell people,  not having enough money to go out and do things (which when I look back now, I clearly did have enough money to do stuff but I was in ‘guilt spending’ mode thinking ‘this baby is going to cost us a fucking fortune so we need to save everything we have and not spend anything on ourselves!’ (7 ASOS orders, a babymoon to Kos, holiday to Spain and several meals out later that passed).  I was crying for no reason, S must have thought ‘who the hell is this emotional wreck and what’s she done with my wife?!’ He tried to calm me down by hugging me, stroking my hair and asking what was wrong, to which I remember replying ‘I don’t know…everything…nothing fits me, I look like shit, you can go out with your friends and do whatever you want and I can’t…blah blah blah’ he then reassured me that I was doing the most incredible thing in the world by growing our baby and that he was so proud of me for dealing with it so well (did he even listen to the shit I was just screaming in his face?!) He told me I looked beautiful and that he loved me more than he ever has because I was able to do something for us that he couldn’t and he wished that he could take all these feelings away and have them instead of me so I could just enjoy the experience of growing our baby. Well….I was crying for a completely different bloody reason now, realised I was acting like a complete dick and that I had the best husband ever! (sorry for being gushy, but I do). Hormone explosion over, I felt much better and just got on with it. We had our scan booked for the following week and we couldn’t wait to see what was cooking up in there.

10 tiny fingers and 10 tiny toes, along with the other necessities a baby needs like a head, body and limbs (lol) were all present and Baby S was growing well. The measurements were spot on for the amount of weeks I was and it was so weird seeing it on the screen knowing it was setting up camp inside me for the next 6 months. I will be referring to Baby S as ‘it’ until eviction day, not because it resembles a child snatching clown or hairy monster from the Addams family, but because we have no clue whether it’s a boy or girl. We wanted to keep it a surprise, because let’s face it, you don’t get many of those in life and I want S to be able to tell me what it is once it decides to painlessly slip out like a bar of soap when you squeeze it too hard in your hand…wishful thinking I know!

Second Trimester:

Emotional breakdowns and spots were now a thing of the past; I had a visible bump, maternity jeans in the wardrobe, a list of things ‘to buy’ and a sudden, yet delayed, realisation that I was actually carrying a human around with me 24/7. Work was good, well as good as it can be when your teaching dance, choreographing and doing admin from 9-5 everyday, being a personal therapist, shoulder to cry on, argument settler, crowd controller and general ‘do everyone else’s job as well as your own with no extra time or pay to do it’. I also had a PBF (Pregnant Best Friend)….big shout out to LH for getting fertilized within 4 weeks of me…which was great for moaning whatsapp sessions about midnight peeing, dickhead students (she is also a teacher of performing arts) and general pregnancy crap. She messaged me one evening about pregnancy yoga and how she thought it would be a good to meet other mums-to-be in the area and also to have a relaxation session each week and to actually do an ‘active’ class rather than teach one for a change. We booked onto it and turned up for our first session with maternity leggings and cushions in tow. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, it was pretty basic compared to what we were used to, however to be fair there was a woman about to explode sitting in the corner trying to get into downward dog so I suppose it couldn’t be too strenuous for obvious reasons. At the end of the session we were asked to lay down on the floor in a comfortable position for relaxation. We were all ready to go, the room was silent, you could literally hear a pin drop and the lights were off. We were deep breathing to get into ‘the zone’ when all of a sudden I heard this noise. It was kind of like the noise you hear when someone is starting up the bagpipes before the actual bagpipe sound comes out. At first I thought it was just another one of the instructors weird songs on the playlist, but as I opened my eyes and took a sneaky peak at the her she was sitting with what could only be described as an accordion briefcase. She looked like a cross between a London business woman and a busker – opening and closing the ‘briefcase’ to make some weird, elongated (very annoying) sound. This went on for 15 minutes…I was literally pissing myself. I must have looked like I was going into anaphylactic shock on the floor I was shaking so much from trying to ‘silent laugh’. As the weeks went by, PBF had to miss some sessions due to work commitments so I happily toddled along on my own. The relaxation part of the session had progressed a bit form the ‘briefcase accordion’ and we now had relaxation scripts, aka story time, which the instructor read out accompanied with some hypnotic music. I usually fell asleep by this point A. because it was 8.30pm and I was knackered and B. because we were in a pitch black room, lying on a yoga mat deep breathing ourselves into a trance. There was one story, however, that kept me awake, not because it was interesting, but because it imprinted an image on my brain that I still haven’t been able to shift. She was going on about being connected to your baby via the umbilical cord and how you are giving your baby life etc etc blah blah blah, then she started talking about my belly button and how that was connected to my mum, then my mums belly button and how that was connected to my nan, then my nans belly button and how that was connected to my great nan…you get the picture…so now all I have, whilst lying there trying to relax, is images of mine, my mums and my nans belly buttons floating round in my head, which when you actually stop and think about it, is pretty fucking weird! Then I had a flashback to a tutorial I had given about religion at work which was linked to terrorism and stereotypes (yes, I really do get all the fun jobs, shout out to the government for making ‘PREVENT’ and ‘RADICALISATION’ part of the curriculum!) and it made me recollect a picture of Adam and Eve. They BOTH had belly buttons, but who was their mother? Did God just give them one to set a trend? If they did have a mother would it have been the same woman? Is the entire human race based on incest? Of course I know we evolved from Monkeys…but what about their belly buttons?! I was going into a deeper sense of confusion and unanswered questions that I left feeling like I should start doing some research into belly buttons and provide a thesis for some well respected professor somewhere that could actually give me some answers. I got in the car and BBC Radio1 Xtra was on. I listened to a bit of grime for 10 mins, choreographed something in my head for my urban class the next day and forgot about ‘belly button gate’….until now. Shit, I probably shouldn’t have brought it all up again.

As well as pregnancy yoga, I booked S and I into hypnobirthing. Ill save that for another preg-post, because that is an essay in itself! For those of you who are interested though, I would highly recommend it! I probably wouldn’t recommend Katharine Graves affirmations CD though as S pointed out she sounded like Teresa May at our first hypnobirthing session and put all the other couples off listening to it…nothing like ruining an experience for everyone 5 minutes after you’ve met them! 

Our 20 week scan was fast approaching, however I was actually sunning it in Spain with the Witches when I was 20 weeks – I would write a blog about that holiday, but its already been covered on my facebook page with a day by day account of the ridiculous events that occurred so I won’t repeat myself, for everyone’s sake. 

At 22 weeks we finally got to see our, now pretty massive and more ‘baby’ looking, baby! It was sleeping upside down, as you do, when the picture first appeared on the screen, but after a short ‘shake’ from the lady doing the scan, it soon woke up - probably thinking, ‘leave me the fuck alone, I’m sleeping you inconsiderate bastards!’. It was floating round like an astronaut for a while, before it decided to have a wee, yawn, tug at our heart strings and roll over to go back to sleep. Everything was fine and dandy, it was growing well, no problems with any of the organs and it even managed to keep its legs closed so we couldn’t tell the gender – we wanted to keep it a surprise so we were absolutely thrilled it didn’t start ‘windmilling’ or ‘slut dropping’ to spoil the reveal on delivery day!

Third Trimester:

I realise this ‘preg-post’ has turned into a novel (again!) so I will keep this one short. To be honest not much has really happened in the third trimester except me growing to the size of a house, the joys of sacroiliac joint pain returning, heartburn that has made me want to rip my own throat out, pregnancy insomnia and round ligament pain which is just a delight – think of a constant muscle pull/ache right on your flaps that won’t go away – I’m really selling this to all of you thinking about having a baby, aren’t I! All that crap aside, I also had my baby shower which was organised by The Witches, mama-tron and Big (little) sis.  I was kept completely in the dark about this – all I knew was the date, the venue and who was coming. The control freak inside me was having a mental breakdown about what was about to happen but I knew deep down it would be a civilised occasion with my nearest and dearest…how wrong was I! I walked into the Theatricool studios (this is available to hire at a very reasonable cost – visit www.theatricool.co.uk for details – another little plug for you there Sally!) and was faced with a wonderful set up. There were decorations everywhere, a nappy cake full of miniature bottles of disaronno, baby essentials and nappies, food, drinks and lots of balloon – when on closer inspection read out ‘Goodbye tight vagina’ so it definitely set the classy vibe I was expecting. I noticed a cake box on the table and was told to close my eyes for the reveal. I was thinking to myself ‘awww, this will be something cute, maybe a teddy bear or a sleeping baby, you know, the usual baby shower style cakes, but no…I was presented with a miniature iced version of me on a hospital bed with a baby emerging from my vag and S collapsed on the floor breathing in the gas and air! It was honestly the most hilarious thing I have ever seen, and once again, really set the classy vibe I was expecting! Big shout out to Kate Bull for making it, you are fabulous! I was showered with an abundance of beautiful gifts and baby necessities which was pretty overwhelming to be honest so I would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone again for making the effort to be there and share this special time with S and I and to everyone who helped to organise it, photograph it and just made it a day I will never forget!

The day after the shower, S and I had our maternity photos taken by the absolutely fabulous Jo from Summer Love Photography, who photographed our wedding. We were going for a woodland/forest/natural feel and managed to get some amazing shots. Bearing in mind it was late November, it was about 5 degrees and I was standing in the middle of a forest with barely any clothes on, I feel I did pretty well not to catch hypothermia, stand in dog shit with my bare feet or fall off a log when trying to get into position for ‘The perfect shot!’.  We ended the shoot by the lake, I was freezing my tits off by this point but I knew it was nearly over so I just braved the cold and embraced the open front dress and stood there with my bump (and probably baby maker) out – I was wearing underwear, but to be honest I haven’t even been able to see that area for a good 3 months so god knows if it was contained or not! I managed not to fall in the lake from all the shivering, which was a bonus, and literally let the biggest sigh of relief go when Jo said ‘Ok, I think that’s a wrap!’ I put my coat and 6 inch heeled boots on (as you do when your 36 weeks pregnant) and waddled back to the car. We got the pictures back after 2 weeks and I am IN LOVE with them. I will be posting a few soon on my Instagram and Facebook page, but will upload a sneaky couple on here too.

 

 

 

So that’s basically it so far. In regards to midwife appointments everything has been going swimmingly. Baby S is growing nicely, the head is engaged and headbutting my cervix (on a daily basis), the limbs are all at the back and the heartbeat is steady, so it’s in a good position to just ‘slip right out’ (again, wishful thinking I know!) Now, as much as we cannot wait for mini S or mini me to arrive, we would prefer a birthday as close to the due date as possible – if it decides to come on Christmas day I will have no other option that to call it Jesus, not matter what the gender, and I do not want to be held responsible for a life time of bullying! So if the powers that be could make sure it just stays in there until January, that would be amazing! (fingers, and legs, crossed!)

Merry Christmas everyone!!

L xx