Pregnancy: Second Trimester Update Weeks 12-16

So after the amazing response from my IVF story, here by popular demand is my first pregnancy update. Again, thank you so much for the messages of support and love – I’ve truly been touched by all the amazing comments – you guys are the BEST 🙂 Right, onto the post – I have decided to breeze over the first trimester as really nothing needs to be said about that, it was grim. I was nauseous, I was tired, I was anxious – thats all I can really say. I just want to forget about it! Now I’m in the phase they call the ‘honeymoon‘ period, I feel like we’ve got something to finally write about, so here we go…

Week 12 felt like a real milestone, it’s the week everyone breathes that huge sigh of relief as the risk of the ‘M’ word drastically reduces to something like 2% chance (in a healthy pregnancy) and I couldn’t have felt better about that. Finally, after a long exhausting journey and then 12 weeks of worry (with a few scares on the way and one emergency scan) we were finally out of the woods. We also had our 12 week scan, which made pregnancy feel so real as the baby was actually baby shaped! Two things I’ll always remember from the scan were:

• Having to go an empty my bladder as I needed to go so badly I’d squished the baby into a tiny ball and our first glimpse of him/her was this crunched up mass of arms and legs underneath a vast expanse of my bladder (the letter did say arrive with a full bladder).
• The baby doing star jumps and stretching once I’d emptied my bladder. So cute, poor thing must have been crushed! Now every time I need the loo, I think of that little crunched up ball!

Everything went well with our 12 week scan and the extra checks they do for things like Downs Syndrome. Although just when I had started to relax we got a letter through around a week later with a consultants appointment at the hospital, with absolutely NO explanation as to why. Understandably I felt pretty worried about it and had to wait 3 weeks until the appointment date. Luckily, when it came round, it was nothing to worry about at all and the Dr even asked me why I’d been referred(!). Insert seething face here. He said as I had an IVF pregnancy it’s assumed I would be ‘high risk’ but in my case it wasn’t – what a stressful 3 weeks worrying for nothing!

In the pic: Pregnancy Milestone Cards

Anyway, let’s put that aside – onto the good stuff – Weeks 13/14/15 seemed to go by like a blur, everything quietened down and I’ve just been watching my bump start to show and to grow gradually week by week. Now we are at week 16 this seems like a magical time as two AMAZING things happened:

• One: We had an early private scan (at Window to the Womb, who haven’t sponsored me in any shape or form, I just think they were fantastic!) The scan gave us so much more time to see baby and get a good look of everything. It’s so relaxing with soothing music, comfy chairs and they talk you through everything – so different to the NHS. Baby has now grown significantly and looks more and more like a real life, cuddly baby. Baby Peaches is also major wriggly and danced about the whole scan, being totally akward always facing the wrong way, waving his/her butt in the air, it was hilarious! So now baby has the nickname ‘Little butt’ which I think will stick for life – Poor kid. Most excitedly, WE FOUND OUT THE GENDER! But, being the tease that I am I’m keeping it to myself whilst we are on holiday, this is also code for secretly plotting our ‘gender reveal’ post. WATCH THIS SPACE!
• Two: A couple of days ago, whilst on holiday in Malta, I felt the baby kick for the first time! To be honest I’m not surprised as I’d just been swimming in some relatively cold seawater and I’d probably kick someone too if they immersed me without my knowledge too. It certainly got baby wriggling. I wouldn’t say it was a hard kick though, baby is tiny, more like a tap of disgruntlement from the inside.

So, thats where we are up to. I’m super excited about the next few weeks – feeling proper kicks and also it’s time to get my Bellybuds out as baby is starting to hear us. We are currently debating babies first song, which we’ve narrowed down to Madonna, but can’t decide on the track – suggestions please?

I’ll leave you with this cute but slightly bizarre glimpse of the baby in 4D – not sure what to think of these scans, they look a bit weird – I’m 100% sure baby is cuter than that really!