narrating kayoz

A kicking baby! (or Seventeen weeks pregnant)

Seventeen weeks pregnant today. And I just felt a really big kick.

I didn't feel anything like it this early in the other two pregnancies, so it felt different to anything I did feel - lower, I guess, than it would have been the other times. But also really strong. I was just starting to bend to get up off the couch, and maybe the baby was surprised or something. It almost felt like someone jabbed me from the outside - didn't hurt, but gave me quite a shock. But a good one. :)

I've been feeling subtle movements for a week now. At first I wasn't totally sure if that's really what it was, but over the past few days I'd become more certain, and today I've been feeling heaps of movement. People talk about bubbles, or fluttery movements, but for me it's more like the baby turning, or slowly moving across my belly, which is how I remember the early movements with the other two as well.

I don't remember if I blogged this already, but when I saw the midwife at 15 weeks she couldn't find a heartbeat. If my GP hadn't found one the week earlier (though it took him forever, and she didn't try for as long, knowing that I had heard it the week before), I would have been seriously paranoid.

As it was, I was a little paranoid. I had a dream a few nights ago that I saw my GP and then a nurse when I was exactly 17 weeks, and the nurse *still* couldn't find a heartbeat, except that she barely tried at all, and kept moving the doppler around too quickly to catch anything anyway. I remember being more annoyed with her than worried, but still a bit worried!

Anyway, now I can really rest easy, which is very, very nice. The midwife did say I could drop in sometime in the next couple of weeks to give it another try, but I don't feel like I need to now. I have the 19/20 week ultrasound three weeks from today, which I am really looking forward to - hard to believe now that I didn't even have that when I was pregnant with Liam, and wasn't worried the whole time. 

In other pregnancy news the 'morning' sickness is almost completely gone now (which is much earlier than it did with Kaely, about the same as with Liam, maybe slightly later), as long as I don't get too hungry. I felt sick moreorless all day Sunday, but barely at all Friday or Saturday or today (which is Wednesday, BTW). When I do it's usually only in the evening. The reflux is also better, oddly, though I remember that with Mikaela too - it was their more 1st trimester than 2nd, then back in 3rd. It's not gone, but it's better.

Aside from that I am feeling really pregnant now. And looking it too. Can no longer possibly be mistaken for merely putting on weight. Plus my skin is stretching (meaning, I can feel it feeling stretched), my belly is getting in the way, and I can feel the slight discomfort of the baby on the cervix from time to time (nothing like it feels in the third trimester though!).

I also have more energy, but I must say I am still easily worn out - more so than I remember in the second trimester last time. Then again, I've always joked that the second trimester doesn't start for me until about 20 weeks, when the nausea is truly gone, so maybe more energy is on it's way. Hopefully. Also I've had a mild bug on and off (maybe two different ones?) for the past couple of weeks - passed on from the kids - so of course that reduces energy.

But I guess the best thing of all is that the first trimester depression is completely gone and I'm feeling rather happy indeed about being pregnant, even though I know how much work children are! And that feels very good.

The Spring garden

I found some self-seeded oregano this morning, while out of the front planting out a few clumps of violets pulled out of my cousin's garden, and a purple daisy cutting from my own. Also a self-seeded grape hyacinth and a tiny violet plant - all on the edge of our so-called 'lawn'. I think I'm going to cultivate the un-lawn look just there and see if some more will come up next year.

I love when things come up by themselves. It's good when things we plant deliberately flourish, of course. But when things come up by themselves - and in a good spot - it seems as though we must be doing something right. It feels like that's how a healthy, productive garden should work. Permaculture, really.

On a separate topic - I can't wait to be eating fresh tomatoes out of my garden, instead of the tasteless shop-bought ones. If that's all we grew every year, it would still be so worth it.

Kids, garden, worms and more!

A post in dot points.

What? It's Spring, and I'm pregnant. I don't have time to do better than this! But lots of things are happening.

• Mikaela, for instance, has been out of nappies (except at night) since last weekend. We picked an awful time to do it, given she was sick - quite sick by Monday - but oh well. It's going reasonably well so far. A few more accidents than we had with Liam, but she is six months younger than he was. I know some people do it about a year or more earlier than this, and put up with accidents for longer, but I just don't have it in me for that. I'd much rather deal with nappies than accidents! But she was more than ready, and the weather is warming, so we've taken the plunge.


• Liam started Hapkido last week. He was over the moon with excitement about it afterwards. He's gone along to his second class today. Chris has been doing Hapkido on and off for a few years (though his real background is in Taekwondo), but mostly off for the past couple due to various injuries (not to mention ankle surgery). However, he is back for his first class in a year today and very happy about it. They have a 'parents & kids' session - two classes side by side - so we're hoping that will work out for the two of them for a while. I am more than happy to have it not be an after school activity that I will have to drag Mikaela and the baby to next year.
  
  Getting Liam into a martial art has been something Chris has always been in favour of, though he agreed with me that he shouldn't start too young, so he's happy too. And I've ruled that it's going to count as his summer activity (instead of cricket, tin pin bowls or basket ball, which were Liam's other plans), so I'm happy. I'm a bit strict about limiting out of school activities - he's always had swimming on Sundays, but aside from that, the AFL this winter was his first regular extra-curricular commitment.
  
  I'm mean about it partly out of a philosophy that really wants to limit those sorts of structured activities, and partly out of an awareness that eventually there will be three of them to ferry around.


• Liam also started knitting at home this week. He's been knitting at school since the start of second term (ie about April), but on Friday he convinced me to buy him some needles (5.5mm) and wool from the Orana shop, and he's been working on a 'stick holder' (don't ask) enthusiastically since. One row at a time (or less), but almost all his own work. I was a bit worried that he would end up asking me to do most of it, but so far so good.


• It is Spring and the gardening fever has hit. Well, in theory anyway. In practice I'm trying not to ask too much of myself, given I'm only just getting over the morning sickness part of pregnancy (despite being 16 weeks now, and a few days).
  
  I was looking at my vegie garden the other day, and realised that if I did nothing but maintain it (weed, water and harvest) we'd most certainly have silverbeet, parsley (both of which are still there from last year), and volunteer tomatoes - at least tom thumbs - peas, maybe snap beans, and probably potatoes. Which wouldn't be so bad. Oh, and cos lettuce, some of which have already come up, self seeded.
  
  However, I don't plan to leave it at that. So yesterday Kaely and I got out and planted some sugar snap peas (seeds) and some rocket (seedlings). Next month we'll get in some zuchinnis and tomatoes, and hopefully between now and then I'll sow some carrot and spring onion seeds. Oh, and I really want to get some basil in this year. And Liam wants corn.
  
  Pretty basic. I'm not going to bother with beans this year - unless maybe one or two plants - because we just couldn't keep up with them last year. We're not really bean eaters, except raw in salads or straight off the bush. And having realised that if I do nothing, we'll still have some harvest, I now feel that anything is a bonus. But I have set myself up for better success this year by not planning too much.
  
  Same with the rest of the garden. We've got weeds galore coming up out the front, so I must get out and pull them up after the next rain, but aside from that if I get nothing but maintenance done I'll be happy. We put in a second apple tree and a medlar at the very last gasp of the bare root tree planting season (or slightly beyond, if the truth be known), and next year we'll try for some more fruit trees. But I remind myself that we will shortly have three young children, and that neither one of us has (or even really wants) a good protestant work ethic. We like to read, rest, sit around and chat, that sort of thing. So if we don't get the garden to look as good as my parents' garden does, well, it's nice to remember that theirs wasn't anything close to what it is now until I was in high-school. So as long as we get some more fruit trees in over the next couple of years, we'll be right.


• Also on the gardening front, I got a garden bed worm farm last weekend, which we are planning to use to process all the poo Lochie produces. Seriously, that dog is just a pooing machine! Obviously we won't haven't put it near any food plants, but I am hoping that we can move it around the garden to a different spot every six-twelve months and really build up the worm population in our soil, as well as deal with the poo problem. The worms supplied with it are a mix which includes both composting worms, and a kind of earth worm which will work more to take the goodness of the worm castings down into the soil. It sits directly in the garden bed, so there's no need for us to remove the castings ourselves. Lovely system. Hope it works!
  
  Unfortunately Chris wormed Lochie right before we got the farm, so we've had to wait a week to begin feeding them the poo. And that's going to be an issue for one week of every month. But processing the poo to be useful (instead of polluting) three weeks out of four is still a huge improvement over what we've been doing.


• I'm 16.5 weeks pregnant. I *think* I've started feeling the odd movement - as of Wednesday morning - but I'm not completely convinced yet. I know that with both the other kids I had a similar experience, and then later when I was sure I decided that's what I'd been feeling all along. But I also know that there've been times between pregnancies when I've felt some gas moving around in my gut and thought it felt exactly like the baby moving around in later pregnancy. This early it's a different feeling, but still, I'm withholding judgement. It's still exciting though.


• Edited to add: And Liam's reading is coming along in leaps and bounds. I got him some new Zac Power books from the library, not realising these were longer with smaller text. At first he struggled a little (though not as much as with Harry Potter, of which we are still reading a couple of pages at a time in between Zac Power books), but a few days later and he's doing really well with them.

Okay, I'd better start getting dinner organised now. I promised Kaely we would make pancakes for dinner, so she's been agitating to get started for half an hour already.

Baby Mikaela

Some time last year Mikaela went from being a self-declared baby, to a 'big girl' - no little girl time in between.

But for the past few weeks she's back to being a baby. A baby named Baby, no less.

I'm assuming this is something to do with me being pregnant,* although I suppose it could equally be just her latest phase. She also spent quite a bit of time being a baby dog and a baby kangaroo before she decided to be a baby human again - I can't remember if that started before or after we made the pregnancy announcement, but I think before.

A friend (of mine) recently asked Mikaela what was in mummy's tummy, to which Kaely quietly (she's always quiet with people she doesn't know extremely well) replied 'A baby.' So she knows what's going on, moreorless. But generally she's more interested in talking about how she was inside my belly.

Having said that she is keen on having the baby - it's going to be hers, you know. And it's going to be just like whoever the most recent baby she's happened across is. Or, if she hasn't happened across one just lately, it's going to be Charlie (my sister's baby) or Riley (another friend's baby).

___________
*I forgot, I haven't actually announced that on this blog yet. I was keeping it all sort-of secret - didn't want it on facebook basically - and so started a separate blog called 'Big Fat Positive'. I must import those posts into this blog soon. Anyway, I'm fifteen weeks today.