I feel like we haven’t been updatey enough on this blog. We post tantalising little bits of ourselves, but so much goes unreported. The biggest thing at the moment that we are totally failing to convey is how much B1 has become a true, alive, wriggly presence in our household. It’s not just the two of us anymore - there are three in the bed, three on the couch, and sometimes I can’t fit through the door at the same time as bean because there are two of them in the way, not just one. B2, on the other hand, is still in the realm of theory, even though ze is apparently about 6cm long and wriggling too, if imperceptibly (and the nausea is finally beginning to subside - hurrah!).
So, these are some of the things that we have been noticing about B1.
I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again - B1 is a wriggly little bugger. Ze kicks and squirms and generally keeps hirself busy in the rapidly shrinking space available within bean’s tummy. My favourite thing is to lie in bed, spooning with my bottom hard against bean’s tummy, feeling the kicks on my lower back. Luckily though, ze sleeps when bean does, and mysteriously wakes up when she does too. It’s weird. And hopefully it will stay that way when B1 is in the outside world.
B1 also often kicks when ze feels pressure from the outside - for example, almost every time I put my ear on bean’s tummy to hear B1’s hearbeat, I get a good punch or kick to the head. I somehow have a monopoly on the heartbeat finding - I can almost always find it, with a bit of poking around to work out where B1 is hanging out first, but bean is frustrated because she can’t ever seem to find it no matter how hard she looks.
We often try to work out which way B1 is lying - transverse, head down, etc - and try to give positive feedback on the rare occasions ze is head down and anterior (back facing out rather than in), because this is the preferred position for childbirth. All this working out where B1 is necessitates a heap of poking and prodding by us. Come to think of it, it is no surprise that B1 is so wriggly and kicky - after all, we have both been poking pretty incessantly ever since there was something to feel, so I guess ze is just trying to communicate back!
The other gorgeous way that B1 makes hirself known is by getting the hiccups at least once a day. It’s hilarious! bean and I can’t believe that the hiccups can make such a tiny baby make such vigorous movements.
So B1 feels very real and alive. And we are both getting more and more excited about the day when ze decides to join us on the outside. Last weekend we went to a very intense, very amazing pregnancy and birth workshop, run by the delightful if slightly zany Lina Clerke. bean and I are probably more well informed than your average pregnant couple, what with bean being a midwife, and me reading piles of her better midwifery books during the time that we were trying to get pregnant, so there was a lot of the workshop that was a bit repetitive for us. But despite that, we still got a helluva lot out of it, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they want a natural birth. Most importantly, we both feel really excited and motivated about birth, especially about making choices that will increase our chances of having a natural, physiological birth rather than the highly managed, intervened in birth that most women in Australia end up with (mind you if anything does go wrong I will be utterly grateful that I live in a place where we can get advanced medical help in a matter of minutes - we have a tertiary maternity hospital only 5 minutes drive from our house). Lina was full of great ideas about positions, ways to manage pain, and the emotional intensity and physicality of the process. She also had a lot of really great videos that were pretty honest about the pain and the poo and the sheer hard work that giving birth involves, but also about the rewards and the joy too. So now, rather than being a bit scared of how I would support bean through labour (not to mention do it myself), I now feel excited and empowered and ready. It’s going to be such an amazing couple of days, whatever happens. It will our babies’ birthdays!
Another exciting thing is the collection of amazing baby things we are amassing. The latest joy was a parcel from bean’s mum in Germany, who bought us a collection of pure organic wool pilchers to put over our cloth nappies, and a set of exquisite organic cotton rompers with the most gorgeous printed patterns. So beautiful - I was so touched. We’ve also received a heap of free baby stuff from friends and colleagues, like two bassinets, two change tables, a pram, a cot (we may end up needing it, who knows!), loads of clothes, um, heaps of other stuff that I can’t remember but that bean knows in itemised detail. We feel very blessed at the moment (especially now the nausea is on the wane - hurrah! It’s exciting enough to mention twice at least).
So yes, a lot going on, every day, often in small ways, despite our lack of attentive blogging.
