Happiness and Relief: Off to the Best Start

I’ve just come out of my Week 16: ‘Off to the Best Start’ appointment with the Midwife where I heard my baby’s heart beating!

It was nerve-wracking as it took a while for the Midwife to find. She joked that the baby was shy and must be a girl, while Jake and I looked nervously at one another. You could hear my heart beat really clearly, pounding away, and then suddenly, layered underneath it was this fast little beating, about double the speed of mine. The relief!

The baby kept moving around while we were trying to hear and the midwife was chasing it with her stick. She said it was like a little fish swimming around in a bowl.

Other things that were a relief/surprise:

1. I don’t need to freak out about waking up on my stomach or back, it doesn’t cut off the blood flow to the baby and sleeping in any position is fine – it just gets optimum blood flow when you sleep on your left.

2. Putting on no weight yet is also fine, and I shouldn’t expect to show for another 4 weeks.

3. The ‘bump’ I’ve got at the moment is actually my bowels. They’ve been pushed up and out by the baby which is sitting above my public bone where the bowels used to be.

3. The stuff coming out of my nipples is called colostrum and she’s advised harvesting it before the baby is born.

4. It’s not a surprise that I can’t feel my uterus. The midwife said she wouldn’t even be able to locate my uterus if she tried.

Now I need to keep my end of the bargain and relax. The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day, so I really am off to the best start.