Pregnancy Update week 30: Counting Kicks & Maternity Leave.

This week I am 30 weeks.

I had my whooping cough jab on Wednesday, the nurse advised me to have it in my left arm because I'm right handed, and that seemed like a pretty good idea... until I got home and tried to lay down on my left side! The injection was done nice and quickly, and after a ten minute wait to ensure I didn't have any sort of reaction I was allowed off on my way. I've had a cold this week (kindly supplied by my husbands work) so I felt fairly rough, and the whooping cough jab didn't make that much worse. I do have a piece of advice for anyone who's yet to have their jab: sleep is way more important than the ability to write!! I'd rather have a slightly dead arm and find my writing suffers for it for a few hours in future than not be able to sleep because the side that I normally lay on feels like I've been punched repeatedly!

I had a bit of a scare at the weekend. I managed a whole day with pretty much no movement, despite all of my usual tricks to get it back on track, cold water, fizzy drinks, spicy food etc. I dutifully phoned the delivery suite expecting to be told that because I felt well in myself everything was fine and was instead told to go straight to the hospital with my notes. Of course the little madam is fine, just seemingly having a lazy day, but I spent a good long while strapped to a monitor with a movement clicker in one hand and a gallon jug of icy water in the other before they were happy for me to retreat back home feeling like a complete waste of everyones time. Especially my Father in Law who had to race over to take me to the hospital just as he was about to go out for the evening...

I was vaguely aware of the charity Count the Kicks and I'd even bought a kick counter band, but having had no problems with Boo I hadn't actually taken it out of the packet. The scare at the weekend however gave me a kick up the bum, and the band is firmly on my wrist! I'm now obsessively marking periods of movements like a parent of a newborn checking for dirty nappies.

There is a lot of conflicting advice out there with regards to 'normal' foetal movement, and if you ask older relatives or friends with older children you're likely to hear about the '10 kicks' by which you have a cold drink and then lay down on your side for 2 hours or until you get 10 kicks. This advice is however on the way out, it is now thought that you should keep an eye on the movements you get day to day to establish a normal pattern, some people have a very active baby, some people have a comparatively quite baby, and any significant decrease (or even increase) in movements could be a sign of foetal destress. With this in mind the use of a doppler at home is not indicative of the health of your baby, it's possible to hear the heartbeat even when things in the womb aren't as they should be. Any change in your regular movements past 24 weeks should be reported to your midwife, or to triage / the delivery ward depending on how the system work sin your area, and it's a good idea to make sure you know who you should be calling before you're in a position that you need them. Check out the CTK website for more information.

If you do experience a significant change in movements it's likely you will be invited to go to the hospital for monitoring. When I went my temperature and blood pressure were checked, and I was then hooked up to a monitor to assess the baby's heartbeat over a half an hour period along side any kicks or movement that I felt. There was no rush, and I wasn't made to feel at all like I was wasting peoples time (even when once they'd set the monitor up bump started to shift and kick to her hearts content!) I was also advised that next time I was concerned about movements, whether it was the next day, the next week or the next month, I should phone up and arrange to go in again, it's better to be safe than sorry!

Tomorrow is my last day of work, then my holiday starts, I'm using up all of my annual leave before I go on maternity leave because if I take the full year then I won't be able to carry it over to next year. It will be a bit strange, and feels far too early. I'm kind of regretting basing my maternity leave around a vague potential induction date from my 12 week scan now, as I still have ages to go until this baby comes and not having work at the weekends to break my weeks up makes it feel like an endless stretch! In actuality my last day of work is 9 weeks before my due date, and with Boo my last day of work was a whole 12 weeks before my due date (though 8 weeks before she arrived) so I'm leaving later than I did last time round, and I have considerably more holiday to use this time round, so I'm chewing up less paid maternity leave.

My local Mama's and Papa's store is closing, and Boo is off to my parents for the weekend, so my big plan for today was a trip to the city to check out any bargains (I'm on the prowl for more giant muslins) but it was pretty well picked through already, so I have no idea how long it had had a sale on before I noticed. I did manage to pick up some cute newborn sleep suits that were £6.60 from £22 and some Lansinoh hot and cold therapy pads for breastfeeding which were down to £8.40 from £12, but there wasn't a muslin in sight! In the end I contented myself with some Summer Infant giant muslins from Jojo Maman Bebe so I have three new muslins to make up for my lost two and got my last stamp in my loyalty card, which means next time we go in we can get Boo's Russell the Sheepdog for £20 which is a serious bargain!

This week I got my Project B and Sassy Bloom boxes through and you can find my reviews for them further down the blog.

That's the round up for this week, see you next week when I'm officially on maternity leave!

#CountTheKicks #Pregnancy #ThirdTrimester