Pregnant

I took a home pregnancy test this morning and it's official - I'm 4 weeks and 1 day pregnant! This pregnancy was planned and Phil and I are very excited. Whilst I am going to write about my experiences of the first trimester in my blog, I am not going to publish the entries until I am in the second trimester. If, God forbid, something goes wrong with the pregnancy then you may never read the words I am writing now. My reticence is down to the two early losses I suffered before getting pregnant with Michael. Although carrying him to term has made me far more optimistic of a similarly positive outcome, miscarriages leave a scar on the soul that will never heal.

I took the test after Phil had gone to work and called him with the news. I attempted to fool him into thinking the test was negative so that I could go "Ha ha! Fooled you!" but I had forgotten how rubbish I am at fibbing. I am just disgustingly honest. He knew immediately from my tone of voice that the test was positive. With my first pregnancy I felt very different, almost like an alien was inhabiting my body in the beginning, but this time the pregnancy feels completely natural and normal. I have to keep reminding myself that I am pregnant when my mind strays to mundane thoughts like sorting out the remainder of my Christmas shopping.

Michael is now a *very* active toddler and I am hoping that I don't have the horrible morning sickness that I had last time. I had it from about 5 to 17 weeks and lost quite a lot of weight. My mother and grandmother both had much worse morning sickness with their second pregnancies and I have to hope that this bad luck ends with me. I registered (online! progress!) with the local midwife practice this afternoon and informed my doctor by phone at lunchtime. You might think that this is quite early, and I would agree with you, but the reason for this is that my second miscarriage was possibly ectopic. I therefore need to have a scan at around 6/7 weeks to check that the pregnancy is developing within the womb. This is rather bad timing because it means a scan right before, or after, Christmas when many hospital staff disappear off on their holidays. I'll probably get a private reassurance scan if I can't get a hospital one.

One thing I forgot to mention... the baby's due date is August 13th 2008. The day after Michael's second birthday. No, we did not plan this ;o) August is going to be a very expensive month for us! I barely have any symptoms at the moment. Nothing more than the odd growing pain and infrequent feelings of nausea. I came across the most fantastic and mesmerising pregnancy ticker on my antenatal club that I have to show you:



How cool is that?!?