Sleep...or lack of it.

It's one of life's little paradoxes that being pregnant makes you more tired, but it can also make it more difficult to sleep.  You wake up to pee a lot more than normal (or at least I do).  Once you start feeling your baby kick, they'll probably decide that the middle of the night is a good time to practice their baby kick boxing.  By the last weeks you're big and it's hard to get comfortable and awkward to move around in bed.

Here's the thing though: I'm only 12 weeks along.  I don't look pregnant yet, and my baby's too small for me to feel their movements.  For some reason, though, I've had a really hard time sleeping this week.  There's no obvious reason why.  I feel fine; I'm not stressed.  I just can't sleep.  I'll toss and turn and then when I finally do fall asleep, I'll wake up and look at the clock--only to discover that it's only about 20 minutes later than the last time I looked.  All of this not sleeping and restlessness has made my neck stiff and sore.  It does seem to help to have a wheat pillow.  I have one of those roll shaped pillows filled with wheat and lavender.  The great thing about it is that you can pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and then go to bed with it warm and soothing against your neck.  I still didn't get a good night's sleep with it, but my neck hurt less after using it.

Here's hoping that I can start sleeping again soon.

Here are a few articles I found about sleeping difficulties during pregnancy ("Ways To Cope With Insomnia During Pregnancy" and "Sleep During Pregnancy") .  Hopefully they'll have some helpful advice.

Pregnancy Test (backtracking a few weeks)

Surprise!  Obviously this was how I found out, but when I took the test I didn't expect it to be positive.  Luckily this is a good surprise.  According to the early scan, it was way more than three weeks.  In fact, I'm now 12 weeks pregnant--almost finished with the first trimester!!!

First Meeting With My Midwife

Today I had my first appointment with my midwife.  Mostly it was just administration stuff.  We filled out a bunch of forms and my pregnancy records, which means that I spent a lot of the appointment repeating my date of birth, address, etc. and explaining all of my past history.  Yet again I had to explain that it wasn't helpful to ask when my last period was.  She persisted, so I explained that it was last May.  She looked at me in shock because that would make me significantly further along.  Once again I explained (she'd already written this down in my notes at this point) that I had an ectopic pregnancy and underwent surgery in July, and hadn't had a period since before I got pregnant with that pregnancy.  So my last period gave us dates for my previous pregnancy, not this one.  She wrote down May in my notes anyway.  Later, though, she wrote me down as being two weeks earlier that I actually am (not as far along).  So anyone who sees my notes is going to be extremely confused about how far along I am and when I'm actually due.  Who knew it was so complicated?

Otherwise she seems fine.  It's good to finally have a point of contact and know that, if I need to, I do actually have a midwife.

Maternity Clothes

In the past, I've always known that I was pregnant really early (before I was due to start).  With my first daughter, I was pretty thin when I got pregnant, so I started showing really early.  It was a bit later with my second kid.  The third time I was pregnant I busted out the maternity clothes really early (partially because I was just in need of a wardrobe boost).

This time, I didn't even know that I was pregnant until I was over 9 weeks.  Since I didn't know I was pregnant, before then I was still doing everything as normal (including riding my bike most days pulling my kids behind me in their bike trailer).  My normal clothes fit like normal.  I was a bit annoyed that I was doing all of this cycling without seeming to lose weight, but otherwise it was fine.

Even after I found out, I was pretty pleased that my normal clothes still fit.  We're not really planning on telling people until after the 12 week scan, so I was hoping not to wear maternity clothes until then.  So I was getting ready this morning and told my husband how glad I was that all of my clothes still fit me just fine.  My jeans were getting a bit snug at the front and a bit loose at the back (I guess the cycling did something after all).  I go to put on my jeans, and the first pair (my tighter pair) won't zip up.  Serves me right for being proud.  Overnight I can literally feel a difference in the shape of my stomach.  Most of my normal clothes are still fine, but as I'm just going to be at home today I went ahead and pulled out my maternity jeans. 

The only problem is that my maternity jeans are still too big and so they keep sagging down.  I've spent more time yanking up my jeans today than doing just about anything else.  I wish I could find a belt.

Pregnancy Confirmed

After taking the positive pregnancy test, I called and set up an appointment with my doctor's office.  My husband came into the appointment with me.  The doctor kept asking when the first day of my last period had been, and I kept having to explain that I hadn't had a period in a long time (when was it?  Last May maybe) since I hadn't had a period since before I got pregnant before and it was ectopic.  So we had no way to date this pregnancy.  As we had no idea on dates and needed to make sure that it wasn't ectopic again, she immediately booked me in for an ultrasound at the hospital.  Once again I was booked for a vaginal scan as they are clearer in earlier pregnancy than abdominal scans.

We went to the hospital and were shown into the exact same room where we had been scanned last time before I was rushed into surgery.  I was terrified of having a similar experience again.  Luckily, this time the sonographer could tell us almost immediately that it was not an ectopic pregnancy.  This pregnancy is in the right place and everything (so far) looks healthy and normal.  And (here's the big surprise) I was already 9 1/2 weeks along!!!!  That means that we conceived just 2 1/2 weeks after the ectopic pregnancy surgery!  So that was definitely a shock, but we're excited.

Pregnant?!

After the last post, I feel like I should backtrack a bit and explain...

I'd mentioned before that I hadn't restarted my period yet after having an ectopic pregnancy end several months ago.  I knew that it would take a little while for my cycle to get back to normal, but hadn't expected it to take more than a couple of months.  So I was putting things away in the bathroom cupboard one day, and found a pregnancy test.  I took it.  As we have used contraception 100% of the time, I was expecting to just rule it out.  Instead, after a very long minute, the test came up positive! 

It was one of the tests that dates as well, so it said that conception had occurred over three weeks ago (the longest time on the test).  I was in shock.  I wanted to be excited, but part of me was scared that it could be something residual from my last pregnancy or (even worse) that it could be another ectopic.

I called my husband to tell him, and then immediately called to set up an appointment with my doctor.  At this point I was still just kind of literally in shock because I didn't know exactly what was going on or what to expect and how to respond.

Surprise!