Tuesday 23 February 2010

28 weeks - this week I have been mostly...




(Thanks to BabyCenter.com for the image)

…starting the third trimester…
Very pleased that I’ve made it this far - somehow I never quite believed it would happen. The babies are just under 15 inches long, from head to toe - hard to imagine that there are two of those in me! They’re about a kilo each now.

…feeling much less back pain…
I started sleeping with two pillows (under my head) instead of one for the first time ever, and somehow it seems to have done the trick! No longer in agony when I wake up, and much better for the rest of the day. However, sleeping in general is still not great, and I’m disturbing Ross quite a lot…whoops. I’m secretly glad we haven’t got round to buying another bed, so he has to stay with me, because it would be very sad-making to wake up in an empty bed. I will try to get one of those bean-filled pillow this weekend, because I’m taking up ¾ of the bed with all the pillows at the moment. Still getting leg cramps, but circling my feet lots, and standing on the little spiky ball before bedtime help to minimize them.

…trialing a helper…
Actually this will happen tomorrow. Luningning is coming over for a few hours, so I can check that we get on well together, We still have another couple of interviews set up over the weekend too. It’s Chinese New Year, so two days off next week, yippee!! Kung hei fat choi everyone!

UPDATE: since I wrote this, Luningning has been - she was ok, very cheery and thorough, but absolutely no concept of time passing, or of how to do tasks a, b and c by 5.00. In fact she left about 6.30…We also had Lorna over for the same thing - bit less cheery, but much more efficient. Watch this space.

…going to our first ante-natal class at the TsanYuk hospital…
The class was hilarious - funny mix of waaay too much (gynae) detail for all the boys (I know more than I ever thought I would about the difference between a Caucasian perineum and a Chinese perineum), and really dumb advice on how to be a good human being, like "when you visit your wife in hospital, be nice to her". Anyway, it was v funny, and the nurse didn't really get sarcasm, so she asked all the husbands if they had noticed that their wives had different moods now that they were pregnant. All the boys laughed nervously and said jokingly "No, can't imagine what you are talking about!" and shifted a bit further away from their wives. The nurse obviously thought they were all super-insensitive for not paying attention to their poor hormonal wives. So funny. She also advised against fashionable clothes, and showed us several hilarious vids from the early 80s (you can imagine the perms) which seemed to have very old nutrition advice, nothing about 5-a-day, plenty about 8-portions-of-bread-a-day! It turned out to be not a class so much as a talk, we all just sat there on v uncomfy seats for 2 hours while she talked at us.
Also found out that the visiting hours are 6pm-8pm - which seems quite rubbish to me. What's the standard in the UK? I’ll be in for 3-5 days, and Ross can only see me and the babies for 2 hours a day - I can go out of the ward to meet him at other times (once I’m up and about) but the babies cannot leave the ward. There’s a giant, scary alarm system attached to all babies (there was an “incident” a couple of years ago when a baby was abducted, so now they are very cautious)

…handing in my maternity leave proposal…
This was tricky. Things are very emotional here, no easy open discussion, lots of guessing how people will react / think / feel. It would be much more straightforward if I didn’t get on so well with my boss. I feel a bit like I am letting her down. I have asked for 6 months in total, so my standard 10 weeks, plus 16 weeks’ unpaid. I don’t think she was expecting to get any cover for me while I was off, so 6 months is probably a bit of a shock. She stayed v neutral when I gave her the proposal, but she hasn’t really spoken to me since, and we usually chat lots. Anyway, it’s ok, I owe it to the babies to make sure that they are happy and safe, and that the arrangement suits everybody. But that doesn’t stop me feeling guilty.

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