I am 17 weeks pregnant and starting to feel better in the evenings. I
haven’t suffered too much with "morning" sickness but the
"evening" sickness starts about lunchtime and lasts until I go to sleep.
Interestingly enough, my sister has "evening" sickness too, Jim, my husband,
seems to think it is because our internal clocks are still on South African
standard time, 9 hours ahead.
I have been feeling the slight
rolling movements of the baby when I’m quiet, or lying on my left side. It is
reassuring and comforting, to know that there is life in there. Appointments being one
month apart, when you don’t feel that baby move, can make you anxious.
I asked my doctor if the cramping in early pregnancy, associated
with the enlarging uterus, is like after-birth pains, which get worse as you have more
children, and he said that it was so. Sometimes, they can be pretty intense. And boy am I
growing. I can feel the top of the uterus by my belly button and I definitely am beginning
to look pregnant.
On Friday we’ll be having our sonogram and perhaps find out the
sex of the baby. I have had mixed feelings about finding out this time, but to be
able to give Joseph (5) and Miriam(3) an answer one way or the other, which we hope will
put an end to their argument about whether this baby is a boy or a girl. They were both in
time out at 6:30 a.m the other morning because the way the argument escalated.
From crown to rump, the baby is about 4 inches long and looks like a
perfect tiny human being, sweet.
This week was crazy! Monday night, we ended up in the emergency room
with Caleb, our youngest who turns one this week. He swallowed a penny! When he did it, I
grabbed him because he started to choke and then he acted like it had gone into his
stomach but then he started to throw up. We immediately took him into the emergency room.
He threw up on the way there, and while they were examining him, he swallowed hard
frequently and then the x-ray revealed that the penny was lodged in his throat. Using live
x-ray the doctor slid a pipe down his throat and past the penny, inflated a small balloon
and then pulled upward, popping the penny out of his throat. I couldn’t be with Caleb
during the procedure because of my pregnancy, so Jim was. I sat in the next room and
bawled, reaming myself with guilt. We got a photocopy of the x-ray and glued the very
shiny penny in place and showed the children. We have been preaching choking devices to
the children but the truth didn’t sink in till this happened. Now they run around
like little Choke Prevention Policeman. Caleb is fine, although he did have a sore throat
for a day or so.
