Monday, September 28, 2009

More weight loss :-(

Got weighed at the OBs today and I am still loosing weight. I have now lost 13% of my 5 week pregnancy weight. I am nearly 15 weeks.

I was struggling so hard to loose weight before I got pregnant but nothing shifted. I was training for the Calgary Half Ironman and cycling, running and swimming! I have realised that i was eating to much, I do love food. How weird to loose all this weight.

But apart from the early hikes I have been sedentary. Bed bound in the week and not much more at weekends. I do eat porridge, banana and toast and banana at the moment. I have the occasional 'fluffy patch' when I can eat or drink a bit more than usual. I am suprised that the weight is still falling. I am still producing ketones though which means weight loss....

My doctor is not worried about the eating but he is concerned about my fluids and says that I am dehydrated again. I can only drink fizzy water recently. No tea, nothing but San Pellegrino and he is not happy with this.

We talk about going on Zofran continously and not just when I get IVs but he wants me to get to 16 weeks first. I had been grovelling to my new family doctor for Zofran too (as he is nearer my house) but he would not prescribe it either.

For now I am stuck on x8 diclectin a day and x2 ranititsomething Zantacy. I think Zantac is good but diclectin does nothing! Half the time i am sick just taking the pills.

For now they both want me to get Zofran from the hospital when I have IVs and wait till 16 weeks...who knows the HG may go by then anyway.

Contractions?!


So recently has HG been bad again and medical intervention has once more been needed. I have been fed up with it as it makes me house bound SO....

.....My brilliant other half took me to a five star hotel in Banff as a treat to cheer me up on Saturday. He bundled me in our car and we hit the highway. I love the drive from Calgary to Banff. You have to negotiate the most stupid slip roads onto the highway (feeder lane?? no! lets just chuck slow cars straight out on to the highway!). But Bug is driving so I can relax :-)

As soon as I started to breathe in some fresh mountain air I perked up. Where we live in Cowtown it stinks! We live near this inner city chicken processing plant that all the locals want to shut down. Often the air stinks of rotting poultry and you have to stay indoors with all the windows shut. It.is.really.bad. There is also an open sewage pit down the road and they are tarring the roads and lying new railway track so the mingling scent of rotting chicken, poo and tar makes me heave.
(Below is the Pit)
(Above is on Johnston Lake trail of bliss and sweet smells)
Autumn in Canada is stunning. The trees in Banff National Park were a vivid yellow set against a deep blue sky. The smells in the national parks are also amazing, trees smell sweet, piney and woody scents that are ever so subtle.

We spent a lot of time on the trails around Lake Minnewanka and Johnston Lake, Bug cycled and I did some sketching or slowly walking and staring at the views. We loved it so much that we grabbed our tent out of the car and pitched it at Tunnel Mountain for an extra night.

Uhohh later that night I start to get these cramps, they are an extremely strong and a very painful spasm/ contraction of my abdominal muscles. I cannot even breathe as it reaches a peak and then starts to subside. When it has eased I feel ok again...only 25 mins later another, then same gap before another. The pain is getting worse and after 3 hours of this and we are really worried. Bug bundles me into the car and we visit Banff Springs Hospital. They get me straight into a room with a belt on my belly to measure the contractions as a peaking graph. The doctor does and ultrasound of my uterus and it is OK. The problem is not affecting or anythign to do with the uterus and juniors. PHEW.

The thing is I am really tough about pain. I can pull an ergo! I used to row until I had tunnel vision. This pain was different and it makes me think that I need a new level of tough as child birth will be worse - the contraction graph machine will be off the scale!

We decide eventually to go back to the campsite. It is the wee hours by now and with hardly any campers the campground has a calm silence that I rarely have ever heard as I have always lived in cities. I stay in the washrooms to sort out what I now suspect is a bowel problem.

Let's just say that when the moment came I was luckily sitting down in the right place. The final contraction was so immense that I screamed and my arms jerkily punched each side of the cubicle spontaneusly! I left the washrooms a much lighter but quite shaky woman.

I had no idea that the bowels can get this painful. I rarely need a number 2 these days so not sure what is going on. Pregnancy is a learning curve!

I really perked up this weekend and although I was pretty sick my nausea was ok.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

HG is back but the 13 week scan was amazing


(I look cute from the side)
(But really spooky from the front rah!)

Really bad HG over the next 11 days darn it!

I am vomiting lots of blood again and have turned yellow skinned! For some reason I do not want to go to hospital. I have to sleep in a separate bed from bug as even his smell makes me sick. Now I know I am ill as he actually has NO SCENT! I have always thought that he is like the scentless Grenouille in the book Perfume but without the murderous villan bit.

However, a good thing in this time, a great thing was our 13 week scan. It feels like a long time ago that I last saw them both and I was very suprised at what we both saw today. No, don't worry it is not triplets! They were moving, dancing in fact. I did not expect this as I have only seen static pictures before. They looked like teeny tiny babies as well with lovely cute face profiles. We were gobsmacked. We saw tiny feet and long legs it was amazing!

The point of the 13 weeks scan is to see if there is a chance that the fetus could have downs syndrome or another chromosonal problem. They measure the thickness on the back of the babies neck and also take your blood. With the combined data from both tests they can give you a statistic on the likelyhood of your baby having downs.

As our is a twin preg we could not have the blood test as statistical data so we were just given the nuchal test to measure the back of the neck. One of the juniors kept dancing away in there and the sonographer took a very long time to capture it's neck! One was very well behaved and pretty still. Guess who takes after who hmmm?

The outcome of the test was a 1 in 1646 chance of twin B have downs and a 1 in 455 chance of twin A. That is over average for my age and the doctors said it was a positively good result and did not recommend any further test! Yippeeeeee I feel 10 stone lighter!

Seeing them also makes HG easier to cope with. I cannot feel the junior yet and I do not look pregnant, I just feel ill so to see two moving active babies is a massive joy and boost.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Back from holiday


(NO! that is not Bug's pale and shriveled Great Grandma on the far right of his parentals, it is I at Elbow falls where we cycle from alot - 45 mins from home :-)

So we are back in Cowtown and I am over 12 weeks 'along' :-)

You know what? I was OK on this trip. I had very, very green days and one or two really bad days where I stayed in bed and did not go on any trips but all in all I have had a 'fluffy' time.

I ate more than usual. It always included porridge but my food repertoire expanded. A lot of things worked and some didn't. I was able to eat bread with bland cheese and sometimes tomato so Bug's Ma made me lots of nice cheese sandwiches to eat and we hid them in restaurants where I steathily ate them! I did also try more restaurant food. I liked a potato chowder in Lake Louise and apart from porridge stuck to that. I also discovered iced black tea - yuuuuuum! Fizzy water was the only other drink.



(ahhh this is the life! The Shuswap Lakes in BC...bliss :0)
(Map of the gino lakes system, it would take weeks to explore)
My favourite meal and time was a cheese sandwich in the middle of the Shuswap Lake in Sicamous, BC. Bug's pops hired a cool motor boat and we spent the day exploring that wonderful lake. It was bliss.


(There are many houses and cabins nestled among the trees in the shores of the Shuswap and access has to be by boat. What an adventure!)

I did fail at one meal in a french style restaurant in Revelstoke and paid the price all that night and the next day. That restauranter must hate my guts (literally). I was a fussy 'off the menu' customer in a fine place who loudly asked if
"they had any really bland cheese"
"erm no madame sorry"
They were actually thinking 'idiot, we are a fine diner with expensively imported cheeses from France, do you really think we would serve bland %@#*ing cheese'

Basically the bland cheese sandwich and home made quiches were a success. I did not eat a lot but I am pretty sure I maintained my body weight despite being more active than the past few weeks.

(Obviously I did not take this photo but this shows Glacier off in style!)

On the way home the weather was stunning and we had much better views of Glacier National Park. Glacier was stunning. The mountains rise steeply and wildly from the roads and you have to drive under avalanche tunnels - it is so wild in winter and no one lives here. We must come back to experience the back country here one day....with the juniors!


(Bug's parentals are very photogenic, here they are on Moraine Lake. Ned rowed for Cambridge Uni - the whole uni so this got competitive haha!)

It just goes to prove to me that I was eating waaay to much in the last two years. I am such a foodie. I love food (and wine) with a passion and love cooking. 77 kilos for my 5 week preg weight was too much (I am 5ft 10) and I was trying to loose five kilos. 3 1.2 years ago I weighed below 70 kilos constantly without even trying.

On the drive home we had to stop twice for me to puke and I started struggling with food again. Hmm I still wonder if I am mental as well. I know I have HG but how did I manage the last 2 weeks only to start to slide again???

Monday, September 7, 2009

The naked psycho

Bug's parents are due today. They are lovely and very civilised but it will just not do that a naked psychopath is being chased by the police around our street.

They cannot find him and knock on our door asking to search the garage. He is not in there of course but they sit outside our house for an age. Do they think it was Bug!? Does he fit the description? Did we just laugh too much when they told us? Maybe saying 'cool, where?' was a bad idea.

I keep looking out for him but he does not make himself known to me and eventually the police drive off.

So anyway Bug told his Ma about the babies last week. Apparently she was not suprised but had some reservations. Not sure what they are but that becomes clear when they arrive - looking very fresh for a long haul and almost immediately ask if we can get married before the juniors arrive.

Ah. Ooops.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Annoying people

I had an annoying stranger find out that I was pregnant. She was trying to get us to join her jazz club...so anyway she would not shut up and we said about kids etc not going out blah blah

I wanted to say that I hate jazz. It makes me really itchy, especially the freestyle stuff YUK!

Then she started telling me that I have to eat spinach, lots of spinach with fruit, oh yes, fruit is very good but not too much sugar you know that is bad for me blah blah blah.

We both had out fixed grins on and nodded along. Bug gave me some squeezes, he knew exactly what I was thinking. ggrrrr

I am going to have to get used to 'been there done that' people, I might only strangle one of them though, but do not worry I will blog about it.