Pregnancy Diary 26 Weeks

Pregnancy Diary 26 Weeks

Pregnancy Diary 26 Weeks – unfortunately this week has started by being totally consumed by last weeks featured topic – back ache.

Pregnancy Diary Week 26

Glucose Tolerance Test

I had my second glucose tolerance test on Monday. They are the longest two hours ever sat in the waiting room watching everyone else coming and going. I got a bit of a fright when another lady who had also had the GTT collapsed. I’m a feint risk at the end of my pregnancies and know how scary they are. She was also on her own but the staff were brilliant and took her off to lay down for the remainder of her two hours.

I took a book to read to pass the time, but clearly didn’t read much past the title (The Knackered Mother’s Wine Club by Helen McGinn) which I thought would be a humorous read. Turns out that it’s actually about wine and the best types of wine to buy for any given situation. Not much use to me at the moment then!

Back Ache

After this weekend I knew that I had to contact my midwife to see what I could do to ease the back ache. I’m quite opposed to taking any kind of medication drying pregnancy but top of the list of suggestions was to try some Paracetamol.

The pain is in my lower back and at the end of the day it’s painful to even sit in an upright position. My midwife suggested that I have a bath, take Paracetamol and rest in the first instance.

When I told her if the awful pressure that I feel when walking, she gave me the number for the pregnancy physio as a back up just in case it doesn’t ease off. This was quite reassuring since I’ve still got another 14 weeks to go which could be torture if it doesn’t go. I made contact with the physio department and left a message. I’m still waiting on a reply, but given this past weeks weather I didn’t expect them to get back to me just yet.

As such I took the day off work and plan to have a bath and relax.

I’ve used up my whole stash of Lush bath bombs and bubble bars so will need to stock up on some more.

Due to the predicted but unexpected downfall of snow I stayed in this week. I would have loved to have gone for a bit of a trudge in the snow but I couldn’t risk slipping and hurting my back even more than it did so the only snow that I experienced was through the window.

Leg cramps

Yey these have seriously eased off which I’m going to put down to slathering my legs in the Peppermint leg and foot cream from Lush every morning and evening as well as stretching my legs out. I’ve also increased my water intake which was one of the recommendations but it also means that my visits to the loo are more regular than normal.

Movement

Wowsers I forgot how much babies wriggle around. This one, like the other two is super wiggly and has now got to the stage where a single kick can stop me in my tracks just from the sheer oomph of it. When I look at my stomach it moves around in the weird alien like way which is lovely but also makes me cringe a little bit.

Eating

You will be pleased to know that I haven’t been sick for a couple of weeks now. I still can’t eat chicken and cooked veg is still a bit iffy but most things are okay now. I’m getting really horrible heartburn so I’ve got the jumbo sized bottle of Gaviscon which I swig straight from the bottle in the usual lady-like-pregnant way. It’s a definite lifesaver as heartburn is nasty!

We even had a little tea-party on Thursday to try and cheer up Isabelle after World Book Day was cancelled and school was cancelled due to the snow complete with cupcakes which went down very nicely.

I’ve been taking pregnancy vitamins since I found out I was pregnant and I’ve been testing out an American brand called Mother’s Select which will hopefully give the baby all the essential vitamins that I’m most definitely not giving it through eating alone.

Leaving the Second Trimester behind

This pregnancy is definitely going really fast. I head on into my third trimester on Sunday which will make me 27 weeks. I’m sure you can work it out, but that means I only have 13 weeks left and 11 weeks of work left. Not long at all!

I think I look and definitely feel further along than 26 weeks. I’m waddling. It’s more like an old lady walk because of my back. My bump is huge and I definitely feel like I’ve hit the heavily pregnant bracket. I got off the bus the other day which was really busy and this lady moved forward a bit and asked me if I had enough room to squeeze through – erm no! I did have my coat on so she was forgiven for not realising that I was pregnant.

I’m getting lots of comments now which at the moment I don’t mind too much. My bumps were really big with my other two pregnancies so I expected this one to be the same.

Development

My baby is around the size of a swede, weighing around 1.6lbs and about 35.6cm long.

He or she will start practice breathing in preparation for when they are born.

They will also start to open their eyes (I wonder what they see) but their vision is still underdeveloped.

They baby will respond to sounds as well as increased pulse rate from me. I think this is true as I’ve felt quite a lot of stress this week and the baby has been more active than it ever has previously.

If they baby is a boy (Isabelle is still requesting a sister) the testicles will begin to descend into the scrotum.

 

Apparently I may suffer with feelings like hot flushes which I’ve only had a couple of times. I’m still really feeling the cold, in particular my feet are freezing. I normally wear flip flops around the house, but these have been replaced with wooly socks and slippers (I usually hate slippers) and quite often I complete this look with a granny lap blanket as well.

 

Until next week.

Lisa x