My pregnancy 0-12 Weeks

Weeks 0-12

I was around 4-5 weeks pregnant when I made the discovery I was expecting, read my experience here

From the moment I found out I was terrified something was going to go wrong and I would miscarry. I was desperate to get to the 12 week stage, have the scan, see and hear my baby’s heartbeat and be told everything looked normal. So of course the weeks dragged on and here are a few of the things I experienced.

Morning Sickness
After hearing and reading about other mum to be’s morning sickness traumas I was very lucky with my experience! It must have been around 7 weeks I started to get nausea. It would come on as quick as it would go. I’d be teaching my class and all of a sudden I’d feel sick and start to retch. Some of the kids would notice and look at me like I was nuts. It would last for a couple of minutes at most and then disappear. I noticed being very hungry at this stage of pregnancy and I would get nauseous if I got hungry. I found dry cream crackers helped and had a pack on my desk at work. I was lucky it never got worse than this. The hunger would wake me in the early hours and I would get up to chomp on a cereal bar or something like it. 

Cravings

I was always asked by friends and family if I had any cravings. During this time period I remember fancying strawberry milkshakes and would pick a bottle up on a jaunt to the supermarket.

Scares
When I thought I was around the 11 week mark, I went to the loo and noticed brown blood when I wiped. Naturally I panicked and thought the worse especially when over the course of the afternoon it increased and I saw red blood.
I was extremely upset and my other half went into panic mode too. I looked up early pregnancy clinics and my bf called our local hospital who booked us in the following day. I was due for the booking appointment with the midwife around the same time so had to call and cancel. She tried to reassure me as I wasn’t experiencing any pain. It was a long rest of the day and night and I became quite hysterically upset at one point.
The next day the bleeding had seemed to have worn off and we made our way to the early pregnancy clinic.

There were several other people there and I waited anxiously. They took a urine sample and my blood pressure, then there was more anxious waiting for a scan.

When we were eventually called I explained what had happened to the doctor and got ready to be scanned, petrified of what the outcome might be. She prodded and pressed as she rolled the scan wand across me then said she needed to do an internal scan. My heart dropped. But soon after the internal scan had started she said ‘I can see the heartbeat’, what an overwhelming sense of relief and happiness I felt and shed a few tears. The doctor dated me at 10 weeks, so a week earlier than originally thought. She told me if I experienced similar bleeding in the next couple of days not to worry but if it happened after that then to come back.
A week and a half later I went to the loo on my lunch break and the same thing happened, there was brown blood. I burst into tears and called the early pregnancy clinic. They told me I needed to get there before 4pm to ensure a scan. I got hold of my boss and she agreed to let me go early. Thankfully all was ok and this time little bubba was bouncing all over the place. They did struggle to take blood from me at this appointment but were eager to get so they would know if I was Rhesus negative as this would impact any future bleeds and I would need an anti d injection. It turned out I am Rhesus negative so would need anti d in the future.

Midwives
I had my first appointment with the midwife I’d spoken to when I had my scare. She explained that at my GP surgery there were a team of midwives and over the course of my pregnancy, I would meet them all with the idea that one of them would deliver my baby. The midwife was called Annie, I really liked her, she was honest and straight talking, someone who I would’ve been happy with delivering my baby. It was a looonng appointment, going through the maternity notes book and answering several questions…I thought all my midwife appointments would be  that length! She decided to let the phlebotomist (jeez I can barely say the word, never mind spell it!)  at the hospital take my blood when I went for the 12 week scan, as I explained my veins weren’t very co-operative and I had an aversion to blood tests. My ‘aversion’ stems from when I had an operation in my early twenties. The anaesthetist couldn’t get a vein to put me to sleep so I was constantly having a needle inserted, in the end they put me out with the gas as I became hysterical. Then they were successful eventually… I woke up with several needle marks all over my hands, arms and back of wrists. It’s not really the needle that bothers me, it’s the process of finding a viable vein that I find extremely creepy!

Scans
So we had seen our little miracle at 10 and 11 and a half weeks but I still couldn’t wait for the all important 12 week scan. I went for the blood tests first and sat very unhappily waiting for my turn with the phlebotomist. What a surprise and relief when after checking both arms he got blood very easily. After almost shedding a couple of fear tears, I expected him to say he needed to try the other arm but nope he’d done his job perfectly and extracted some of my blood for the purposes required! He told me my ‘best arm’ for future tests and off we went to wait for our scan. 

When we went in I perched on the bed I was both excited and anxious, even though bubba had appeared ok in the two previous scans I was still paranoid! This was short lived when the grainy image appeared. Our little bubs looked chilled laying, back and raising its hand to its mouth. The sonographer told us that everything appeared to be normal at this stage, what a relief.

We were overjoyed and left with scan photos for us and grandparents.

Our little bubs at 12+4