Baby number three! Due 11.9.12

As I announced on Twitter and Facebook last week, I’m expecting baby number three! It’s all very exciting and the first 14 weeks have now passed in a blur of pregnancy sickness, exhaustion and food aversions. I’ve been keeping a pregnancy diary so I’ll give you a quick flavour of the last few weeks.

We decided over Christmas to start trying for a baby, and by the first week of January my pregnancy test was positive. Husband spent every day joking (as he is just sooo funny) there would be three in there this time – as your chance of having non identical twins rises from around 1 in 80 to 1 in 14 when you already have one set. If one of your two eggs then splits, you’d end up with triplets. Pretty high odds so it was no wonder I felt a bit green at the thought. Secretly though I loved the idea of having another set of twins to complete our family, even though I knew that realistically it would be very challenging to add another pair of babies to our already hectic lives.

I was diagnosed with suspected gallstones two days after finding out I was pregnant and my GP referred me for an ultrasound scan. They agreed to hang off and give me a scan at seven weeks so we could see the baby at the same time.

When the time came I was a bit nervous that we wouldn’t be able to see anything as it was so early, but there were no problems viewing the baby. It was such a relief to see a heartbeat, but there wasn’t really much to see, it was more of a blob than a baby. But it was our blob. And it was a singleton. Phew. As soon as I saw that I relaxed and realised how pleased I was that there was just one to concentrate on this time. I feel so special to have twins but this time around I was looking forward to a bit of normality from the pregnancy, birth and the early weeks.

Then the sonographer moved onto my gallbladder. As we expected, it was “packed full” of stones. It was no wonder that I’d been suffering from agonising attacks over the previous few weeks. I’m now in the referral system waiting to see my consultant about my pregnancy (after having lots of complications last time that add to the gallbladder issues) and also waiting to see a surgeon. I’m sure I won’t be having surgery while I’m pregnant but I’m looking forward to speaking to somebody so that I can get my head around what it means. In the meantime I have to steer clear of fat, dairy, red meat, spices and anything that is nice. Boooo. When I find a spare minute I’ll do a blog post about it all as the only reason I realised I had a gallbladder problem myself was after finding a really helpful blog post someone had written about it.

Time dragged so slowly from the seven week to the 13 week scan. I couldn’t keep food down and felt like death most of the time. I also had a huge bump which was a dead giveaway – as your stomach muscles are weaker in your second pregnancy your bump pops out much quicker. As I was constantly sick I stayed indoors most of the time and didn’t really see many people, so keeping my pregnancy a secret was fairly easy, but I did have to make up a lot of excuses to get out of playdates and days out.

Last week the day finally arrived for our scan, and it was such a relief. I guess it doesn’t matter how many babies you’ve had, you will always hold your breath at the start of a scan and pray there isn’t a problem. Thankfully Baby Bleakley is looking absolutely fine. The blob has turned into a handsome little bouncing baby. He had so much space compared to his brothers who spent their whole time kicking each other in the head (you can read about the day I found out we were expecting twins on my guest post on Christmas Pie Crafts). I’m so excited to be expecting just the one this time as it will be a completely new experience. Here’s to a (fairly) normal pregnancy and fingers crossed it’s an easy and relaxing one!