Double-figures, Scans, and Sickness

Big day today – I’m 10 weeks! I’m really more excited about reaching double-figures than I probably should be.

My “morning” (Ha! She says – if only!) sickness has carried on unabated for the last few weeks. It has started getting me down a bit now. I am trying to tell myself that it’s all for a good cause and should stop soon, but I am struggling. I’m only being sick in the morning, but feel very nauseous for most of the day, with a brief respite in the late afternoon and evening, but then I am feeling sick during the night which is waking me up (as if needing to get up to go to the toilet constantly wasn’t fun enough!). I really hope I am one of the lucky women who finds the sickness improves around 12 weeks. I have the utmost respect (and bags of sympathy!) for anyone who suffers really serious sickness, I don’t know how I would possibly cope with a serious condition like hyperemesis gravidarum.

Things I have found that help with my sickness/nausea are:

• Don’t fight the urge to be sick – drinking some plain water and emptying my tummy first thing gives me a bit of relief
• Twiglets
• Liquorice
• Grapes and apples (fruit is meant to be easy to digest, not sure if that is true)
• Eat what you fancy, not what you think you should have
• If you struggling cleaning your teeth (it makes me sick) try and do it when your tummy is empty

Tiredness is still here in full force, and the last couple of days has been accompanied by a terrible headache. Yay! I am positively glowing right now.

On a happier, less whiny, note - last week we had our first scan. We went to our local branch of Hello Baby and paid for a reassurance scan, for that very reason – reassurance. I had been feeling increasingly anxious and was convincing myself that something was wrong, or that I wasn’t really pregnant (I know, I’m mad!), so we decided it would be £80 well spent, which turned out to be correct. 

My nerves before the scan were at an all-time high, I haven’t been so nervous about something for a long time. There was one horrible moment - as the sonographer started scanning me - when I saw what looked like an empty sac, with no baby in – however this was due to the scanner (technical term?) not being in quite the right spot to find the baby. Shortly after I could see a little blurry “jelly bean” shape within the sac. Honestly, I am known for being a bit melodramatic (shocking I know!), but the relief was immense. The baby had a strong heartbeat, which as clearly visible and we even saw some wriggling (which was just amazing and made my - generally unemotional - husband well up) with tiny little arm and leg stumps flailing. I fully expected to burst into tears if everything was OK, but I think being in front of a stranger helped me keep it together, at least until we left the clinic. The baby measured bang on 9 weeks during the scan, which is what I expected, based on when I ovulated, so that was also reassuring.

Here’s the blurry little jelly bean!

Next scan (12 week NHS scan) is booked for the beginning of December, when I will be 11+2 so will be interesting to see if the dates match up from the initial scan. Needless to say, I am very excited to see the little lump again.