Weeks pregnant: 39
Baby size in fruit: 🍉
By the time you read this blog I may very well have given birth to Little O since his eviction date will have come and gone or I might be in labour. One way or another by the end of the week he’ll be out in the world. So this is quite possibly the last you’ll hear from me for a while since I am imagining that the amount of free time I will have as the mother of a newborn baby is approximately… none.
Nope… not scared at all… I mean look at it… it’s tiny…
Weeks pregnant: 38
Baby size in vegetables: Leek
Friday was my last day of work, which was kind of awesome and totally weird all at the same time. I went for a lovely lunch with my closest colleagues, was given a touching leaving speech with an absolutely hilarious leaving card and I made a final visit to the roof terrace bar of my building for a bottle of water. And then I said goodbye and went home and cried little because work isn’t just work to me. It’s my second family and I love what I do. On the other hand I have had quite a few bouts of really bad nausea over the last week or so… kind of like my morning sickness has come back and I can no longer pretend that I am not really… unwieldy… so not having to make the journey across the city isn’t the worst.
A vastly underrated vegetable
Weeks pregnant: 37
Baby size in vegetables: Swiss Chard
In the last week or so my bump has “dropped”. This is something that happens in the last few weeks of pregnancy where the bay starts to move downwards ready for its final journey to the outside world. There are definite plus sides to this. With the baby being lower down it doesn’t compress your lungs as much, so that feeling like you’re going to pass out the top of the sixth flight of stairs eases off. However there are cons too… when the baby heads down it becomes “engaged”, which means its (not so little) head is settled in your pelvis. This can mean increased pressure and a feeling a bit like your bones are grinding the aforementioned head. It also means your bladder capacity is about one tablespoon. Little O is currently 3/5 engaged. I am currently spending 3/5 of my time in the bathroom.
I don’t think I have ever tasted a chard… Swiss or otherwise
Weeks pregnant: 36
Baby size in vegetables: Romaine lettuce
Last week we had Little O’s last growth scan to check that he is on track to be a normal sized baby and that his important parts (head, belly, femur) are all in proportion because this is what decides how early I will be induced.
Something I can actually eat
Weeks pregnant: 35
Baby size in fruit: Honeydew melon
According to my BabyCenter app my uterus is now 1,000 times the volume it was before Little O took up residence in there. (Good job, uterus!) I can well believe this as I really do feel “full of baby” at this stage. This became very evident when I was doing my post lunch walk up and down the ten flights of stairs to my office last week. I do this because it helps lower my blood sugar levels (and to prove I can… and because some of us have been racing each other). Last week I got to the sixth floor and got super out of breath and a bit dizzy. Apparently this is because Little O is compressing my lungs. Well that’s my excuse over and above just being soft. I have also had my first experience of pregnancy heartburn as he’s also pushing on my stomach. Yay for good old sugar free, pregnancy safe Gaviscon!
Are honeydew melons very different from cantaloupes? All melon is disgusting so who knows!
Weeks pregnant: 34
Baby size in fruit: 🍈
I have now achieved a stage of pregnancy where my bump is absolutely unavoidable. It’s like an entity of its own. I realised this when I started catching people doing what I call “the bump look”. First they look at your face and then they look down at the bump while trying to be subtle. It’s a bit like the way people attempt to surreptitiously look at your breasts if you are (un)lucky enough to have big ones. Sometimes there is a slight widening of the eyes. Sometimes there is a request to touch it. When people ask I almost never mind. But I can promise you that there are exactly no pregnant women who want you to touch their bump without asking unless you are a close blood relative or the kind of friend you’d phone at 4am. If you wouldn’t grab someone’s boob and give it a jiggle, you shouldn’t grab their belly and do the same.
Little O’s size… if a cantaloupe was a football
Weeks pregnant: 33
Baby size in fruit: 🍍
For the last week and a bit Mr O and I have been attending NCT antenatal classes where they teach you important things like how to know you’re in labour and how not to kill your baby within the first few weeks of its life. We could have gone for some free classes at the hospital but so far it has definitely been worth paying for the privilege of a smaller more intimate group and more one on one time with our incredibly calming teacher. Although I think we all had a little wobble when we passed around the pelvis model and realised just how tiny it is…
Sweet, spiky little baby
Weeks pregnant: 32
Baby length in vegetables: Kale
Last week we had Little O’s first growth scan. Once again there was confusion at the hospital. The sonographer looked at my notes and said, “31 weeks? we don’t do growth scans at 31 weeks!” So I said, “Well the registrar booked me in.” And she said, “Well she should have but you’re here now so I might as well do it.” As much as I appreciate the amazing healthcare I am receiving all for free at the point of access (because the NHS isn’t technically free to anyone who pays UK tax) I do kind of wish that the different departments would occasionally communicate with each other.
It appears kale is now such an impressive hipster superfood that we’re even measuring babies with it
Weeks pregnant: 31
Baby size in fruit: Coconut
I remember when my friend, Mrs W, was pregnant she told me she never really felt pregnant until she hit seven months and then it all kind of caught up with her at once. I think at the time I didn’t really get it. Then suddenly last week I woke up one morning and… bam… I felt pregnant.
Hopefully Little O is much less hairy than this
Weeks pregnant: 30
Baby size in vegetables: Cabbage
Last week I finally got to see the diabetes midwife at my hospital and I have to admit that despite my initial misgivings she was actually very helpful. As hard as I have been working to keep my readings under control, there hasn’t been an improvement in my fasting numbers because the hormones are just too much. This means I am now taking a drug called Metformin, which will hopefully bring things back to normal within a few days.
A nice, green, leafy baby
Weeks pregnant: 29
Baby size in vegetables: Butternut squash
Little O is now what I would class as “massive” and I feel like I have achieved a size that could comfortably be referred to as Orca. Up until now my pregnancy hasn’t really affected me all that much physically but my bump now feels heavy for the first time to the point that my PT, who is notoriously tough, has softened up a bit on the Sumo squats and lunges since the sheer girth gets in the way. I also inadvertently knocked over my colleague’s water bottle the other day because I had lost track of the end of the bump and I am forever finding a bit of whatever I have been cooking on my top at bump level because it’s been interfering in the food.
Butternut squash… my favourite
Weeks pregnant: 28
Baby size in vegetables: 🍆
Mr O has always wanted to be a dad. So as soon as I told him that Little O was a reality he was immediately over the moon and even when Little O was barely even the whisper of a human he started looking for ways to communicate with him… mainly though making mix tapes to “educate” him.
I swear babies are only measured in purple vegetables
Week’s pregnant: 27
Baby size in vegetables: cauliflower
I have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, which is a condition that affects approximately 1 in 20 pregnant women. What happens is that pregnancy hormones interfere with the body’s ability to process insulin which makes your blood glucose level rise too high.There are certain women who are more likely to get it than others – being overweight, being of a particular ethnicity,having a family history and being over 35 being the most common causes. When I went to be tested I thought my chances were pretty low since my only risk factor is my age but it turns out that 1 in 10 older pregnant women get GD and I am one of them.
Little O is now cauliflower sized
Weeks pregnant: 26
Baby size in vegetables: Red cabbage
Being pregnant has turned me into a much noisier women. I know my husband and some of my colleagues might not have thought this was possible but it’s true.
Yet another purple vegetable…
Week’s pregnant: 25
Baby size in vegetables: Swede
Over the last couple of weeks we visited with Mr O’s family this weekend for mother’s day and his dad’s 60th. We saw loads of the extended family including his cousin, Marc and Marc’s wife, Sam who have a little girl and five month old twins. Being as broody as I am and considering how cute the twins are, I spent a fair bit of time with one or the other on my lap. Little O clearly felt that he was being left out and attempted to aggressively boot whichever one I was holding at the time. I think he wants to play. Unfortunately he won’t move on command for anyone but daddy so no one else got to feel him participating in the party.
Little O is now the weight of a swede and apparently just about as purple… but hopefully less lumpy
Weeks pregnant: 24
Baby size in vegetables: 🌽
For those who don’t know my day job is as a Product Manager. This means I work with a a group of web developers to build cool (and sometimes less cool but functional) things for the group of websites my company owns using a delivery methodology called Agile. In Agile we have something called a “MVP” or “Minimum Viable Product”. A MVP is the simplest release of your product you could do. It’s not the final finished thing you want to take to market but it’s something that you can demonstrate to others and nurture into something amazing through further iterations.
Little O is now the length of a corn on the cob or as it’s fondly known in one of his many ancestral homelands, a mielie
Weeks pregnant: 23
Baby size in fruit: Large mango (I swear there used to be a mango emoji!!)
As Little O starts getting bigger and more kicky (honestly sometimes it feels like he’s trying to tunnel is way out through the front) I have started picturing what it will be like to hold him in my arms. To see his little face and feel his warm little body against me. I imagine what it will be like to stroke his little head and watch him sleep and listen to him make all kinds of weird little baby noises. I realise that this will be happening in between vomiting, poonamis and screaming for hours but it’s still an image that fills my heart with joy and in many ways I can’t wait.
Little O is now a mango… if mangoes had legs
Weeks pregnant: 22
Baby size in vegetables: Spaghetti squash (WTF is a spaghetti squash? Do we get them in the UK? Has anyone ever purchased or consumed such a thing)
For the last week or so I have been wearing maternity jeans. I can still just about wedge myself into my normal jeans but they were starting to get a bit uncomfortable. Initially I tried raiding my closet for some of my fat jeans but they were all too big in the legs/arse and they still sat uncomfortably on the bump.
Apparently this is a spaghetti squash
Weeks pregnant: 21
Baby size in vegetables: Carrot (all these new emojis and no carrot)
Today Mr O and I went to the hospital for our twenty week(ish) anomaly scan. This is where they check that the baby is growing as normal, that all the organs and extremities are correctly developing and that the blood flow to the baby is strong. It’s also where you can find out the gender of your baby if you want to.
Fortunately I am only carrying one carrot… not a bunch
Weeks pregnant: 20
Baby size in fruit: 🍌
So Little O and I are officially halfway through our journey together and he or she now weighs approximately 300g. This doesn’t surprise me since my bump is getting bigger by the day. This is also the first week that Little O is being measured from head to toe rather than “crown to rump” AKA head to arse. This is because he or she is no longer curled up with his or her legs against his or her body but rather able to move around a lot more. Hence the description of a long fruit rather than a round one. I can attest that Little O is definitely taking advantage of having more freedom of movement and doing plenty of kicking especially at night.
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