So the injections are not getting any easier and I’m pretty sure I will never get used to them. I have now done 29 of them, finishing my first prescription tomorrow! I have found that getting the right amount of pressure is tricky, many times I have plucked up the courage and jabbed the needle in only for it to stop after only the tip has gone in and have to take it out and start again, then there is the fact that the stuff still hurts. Not every time now, and I haven’t yet worked out what happens different when it does hurt, but sometimes the liquid stings like bees and sometimes I can hardly feel it! And lastly I have the fact that sometimes the injection bruises, and I don’t mean a little bruise, I mean a massive great bruise that swells to a lump and really hurts! Obviously the injections are thinning my blood, making me more likely to bruise, I have noticed this down my legs, a little knock and I have a bruise to show for it. I was warned about this side effect, however the bruising around the injections goes dark purple within minutes and keeps growing for hours! To start with it was only occasional injections that were causing it, and then it was after every injection, more recently however I have noticed I am not bruising so much! Work that one out! I haven’t changed how, when or where I inject, but for some reason I don’t seem to be bruising at the moment. Maybe my body is being nice and giving my sides time to debruise themselves before starting again!

As you can see from my previous post ‘Bump Photos’ my bump is steadily growing. I love showing it off and it’s starting to get past the ‘is she just realllly bloated’ stage. I am pretty sure people in the street must be able to see I am pregnant, atleast I hope they can! I wore a dress last night that used to be able to conceal my bump, but noticed that it just made it more obvious. I was so happy!
I have got a posh do to go to in the next few weeks and I haven’t thought about buying a dress for it yet, as I didn’t know what size I would be, whether I would be the same size I was last time at nearing 20 weeks or bigger or smaller or god forbid, not pregnant any more. Considering all this I have put it off ’til now to get a dress, and now I am panicking as I am really fussy and don’t have a massive budget and it seems if you add the word maternity to things you instantly add a whole lot of money to the price tag! I am going to drag my mum into the city in the next week with one aim – to find me a dress – and we shall suceed! I think I will also look at empire line non maternity dresses as I am sure that I will be able to still fit in them without the hem line going funny and atleast that increases my choice a little! I shall add updates to this dress hunt – I’m sure lots of pregnant ladies have exactly the same problems as I am having, I’m sure there is a simple and cheap solution (apparently cutting the stomach out of one of my dresses is not considered a sensible budget option)

For the last few days I have been trying to feel Shrimp move. During my last pregnancy I never felt what felt like butterflies like everyone else describes it, I only felt her kicking when I held my hand against my belly and it felt like gas bubbles popping in my gut. I am finding myself hyper aware of my stomach, feeling for anything that might be a kick or a shuffle or a hiccup. I have taken to sitting there on an evening with my hands clutching my stomach in the hope I will feel a little kick. I half convinced myself Tuesday/Wednesday that I was feeling kicks, they seemed constant and concentrated in one area, but by Thursday morning I sat all morning clutching my tummy and nothing, absolutely nothing! Obviously my first thought was that I was clearly wrong about the previous couple of days, that I must have been really gassy (great!) then my mind started to wonder and maybe Shrimp is just asleep and will start kicking again soon… Then I began to panic that maybe this was exactly like last time, that maybe those last couple of days was Shrimp kicking, only they would be the only ever kicks I would get to feel. Last time, being my first baby, not knowing what I was feeling for I was feeling the kicks and in my heart I knew what they were but it wasn’t until I stopped feeling them that I KNEW what they had been. That couldn’t be happening to me again could it? I grabbed my Doppler and half panicking, half excited, turned it on, moving the probe around my stomach listening for a heartbeat, I moved it right round my stomach, panic rising in my throat, not again, not this time. Then there was a quiet dumdumdum, moving the probe slightly it got louder and clearer, then moved away again, I moved the probe around and found it again, listening with relief and finding myself relaxing to the sound. Without having my own home Doppler I would be a nervous wreck by now. Having not felt any movements since then either, I would have been ringing the midwife this morning asking her to listen for baby’s heartbeat.
I am going to be one of those women who will panic about every little thing, and without a home Doppler the midwives would probably be getting so many calls from me, they’d probably block my number!! I am pretty sure the sudden moments of panic won’t change until this baby is in my arms and not in danger of my body any more!

So this morning my phone app informed me that my baby is now 17 weeks (yeah, my phone didn’t really need to tell me, my head has it’s own counter!)
This gives me:
Just over 2 weeks until the posh do.
3 weeks until my scan when I can hopefully find out if I’m having a little girl or little boy.
4 weeks until I reach the point that last time it was all over (I shall not think about that, I shall not think about that – who am I kidding? It’s all I can think about, then I feel guilty when I catch myself.)
7 weeks until baby is viable.