I think me and this baby are really tightly packed in my body together. Today, I was just brushing my teeth and afterwards glanced at my tongue pre scraping and the middle was lightly bleeding. I scraped and the blood flow appeared to increase a bit, so I stopped. ??? I’ve also had a lot more blood spots on my skin this pregnancy it seems. It makes sense, we’re getting close to the end. Lots of blood in here with us!! I think the older nurse in NST jinxed me yesterday with her statement (which I know is true from experience) that natural redheads bleed a LOT. Oh, well!! Lol 😝
I started having Braxton Hicks contractions two days ago. Yesterday’s NST confirmed this, and I was 1cm dilated. Today, I’m having looser stools. While all of this may mean nothing, I’m hoping I’ll go into labor naturally before my induction date! 🤞😅
@cpk3535 my nose bleeds when I blow it in the morning but only one side and I think I have an ulcer in my mouth and can taste blood! No red hair here lol
@karbaud hoping you get to skip the induction. It’s so hard to predict what is going to happen. I’ve been having Braxton nicks contractions pretty regularly and had signs I might be losing my mucus plug. But baby is still breech so hoping it stays put until we can attempt to move it.
Omg, I just need to rant: I had a rough night last night. I played tennis in the evening and my hips and sacrum were incredibly achy afterwards for the first time. I woke up at 2am to pee. And even though I drank some electrolytes last night and was relatively hydrated, I ended up with not one but TWO leg cramps (one from each side, both along the shins) at 4 am and had to pee again. Dozed off for the rest of the night. Luckily, I don’t have much scheduled for today and can go easy on myself.
@ttc3y oh that’s awful! The achy hips are killing me right now, I’m impressed that you’re still playing tennis. I’m still playing ping pong with my husband in the evenings but that’s about it for athletic competition for me these days 😂
I’ve been having way more instability in my pelvis, with more frequent cramping/Braxton Hicks contractions, frequent/loose stools, and just general misery of a sort. I kind of suspected he was starting to move, or at least hoped that was why I was feeling so rough. As of this morning, I’m at 70% effaced and 1 cm dilated, so we’re getting ready at least. I would be thrilled if he came sooner rather than later, but I know it can still be a while.
@fertile-turtle I think tennis is now on hold until after the baby arrives at this point. I even cancelled my Pilates class this morning because I didn’t want to strain my body too much but I plan to return to that next week. I’ve also been noticing more Braxton hicks contractions too. How exciting that your body is changing to accommodate for the labor and delivery! You will meet your baby so soon! 🥰
I used to workout 4-5 times a week and have done nothing since I got pregnant. I feel like a lazy lump. So good for you guys!! I can’t wait to get back at it.
@amccurls my return to squats lasted 3 days and I gave up afyer a pinched nerve. I totally get it. I made the mistake of looking at my butt in the mirror today just to see what I'm dealing with. 😳
On another note, I’m wondering if I’m having very slow leakage. Sorry if tmi, but I’m seeing wetness in the same spot of my underwear every time I look. No blood, not really smelly like urine, but it’s not centered in the middle of my underwear. Could that mean it’s a leak? Odd 🤷♀️
@cpk3535 I’ve been wondering the same! But also same circumstance and it’s not all day long that it’s like that. Could just be an incline in discharge being this close to the end
@cpk3535@amccurls I also thought I was leaking fluid, especially when I found out that my amniotic fluid index level was so low two weeks ago, so I requested the test you can take to see if your water has broke and it came back negative. The nurses in L&D were actually not very supportive when I was telling them about my symptoms and why I was wanting the test, but my OB was out of town so I had no one to ask and coach me. They gave me grief that L&D was full of women who were “actually having their babies” so I had to take the test in the antepartum department where I have my NST done.
The nurses in L&D told me when your water breaks & it’s not a huge goosh, it’ll be a steady and constant stream to where it’ll soak through a maxi pad and it won’t stop dripping even after you wipe. Hope that helps!
@cpk3535 I have that too and I'm pretty sure I have in other pregnancies. It may be a leak but maybe not significant enough to worry about because I doubt we would all be in that danger. But I was also a little concerned.
@kb1322 that’s basically what I went through at my NST last week when they took me over to L&D. The NST nurses were the panicked ones, and then the test came back with no real trace of fluid. I’ve definitely not been having a gush. Like @seeds_of_joy said, I’m sure we’re all so close, we’re probably all trickling out trace amounts of fluid at this point.
@kb1322 So upsetting when the nurses are not supportive. How hard is it to do a swab just to make sure everything is ok? I wonder if they are burnt out. Usually the attitude and unsupportive behavior is because they are tired and are dealing with compassion fatigue.
I'm feeling strangely hesitant about breastfeeding my baby when he is born. I breastfeed my first until she was a little over 2 years old. It was a great bond but it was a lot to bear at the same time. I had postpartum anxiety with my first, so I'm sort of chalking the apprehension up to me being nervous that I'll have the same experience again. Any thoughts or advice with this?
@lucygracelaluz2020 there were probably other factors involved that were making it "a lot". I mean caring for another human is a lot to bear and on top of that you're going through so many hormonal changes. I got such a high from breastfeeding every time, especially those early days and the benefits for both baby and mama are numerous.
@lucygracelaluz2020, I’m also very hesitant to nurse and feel like I’ll do a lot of pumping and bottle feeding. I’ve never nursed before, and I plan to try. However, I’ve never been interested in nursing or bonding in that way. I’ve known kids who refused a bottle for three years, and that terrifies me. I want to have control over my own body again, and I want my husband to be able to feed at times. I’m going to try to do a mix of nursing and bottle feeding early.
@karbaud I'm in the same boat. After my maternity leave, which is only 6 weeks, my husband is going to have the baby most of the time. I want to breastfeed but because of work I will be mostly pumping to bottle feed. I found a list of best bottles for breastfed babies and bought them all because I'm also worried that she won't take to the bottle. I don't want that for me or my husband. Hopefully she takes to one during the 6 weeks so there won't be a hard transition. 🤞
@kamays54@karbaud I had the same concerns, and I looked into what little data I could find on nipple confusion and bottle refusal. Based on what I found, there are a few things we’re going to try in order to (hopefully) be able to breastfeed without fighting bottle refusal when I go back to work. Nothing is really evidence-based because there haven’t really been great studies on this, but bottle refusal would be a much more serious problem for us than not being able to breastfeed at all.
The first thing is to not delay bottle introduction, even though that’s the current recommendation from lactation consultants. Basically as soon as my milk comes in, I plan to pump and immediately feed one bottle each day. The goal is to take advantage of the suck reflex while it’s still there and give the baby a chance to learn how the bottle works as well as how to latch on the breast, and to only feed breastmilk (assuming I’m producing enough) so that the supply and demand stays in balance while my supply regulates. There is a study that shows differences in suck patterns between bottle-fed and breastfed infants, but also that those that started bottle feeding early are able to switch between the suck patterns depending on what’s being offered, so I’m hoping early exposure to both can help our baby to be one of the ones who can switch easily.
The second thing is to use paced feeding with slower flow bottle nipples. Instead of holding baby on his back with the bottle more or less pouring into his mouth without much effort, we’ll be holding him more upright with the bottle horizontal (just vertical enough for the milk to fill the nipple) so that he has to do a little work to get the milk out. This style of feeding produces a more breastfeeding-like motion, and hopefully will prevent the bottle from being so much easier that he refuses the breast.
Last, we have a few different bottles to try, so we’ll see which one he likes most, because refusing one bottle doesn’t always mean refusing all bottles.
Of course, it might not work, and the data suggests that he’s more likely to prefer bottles than to prefer the breast. But for us, that’s fine, because we can live with exclusively pumping or using formula, but I do have to go back to work where I can’t go back and forth to daycare to feed him. Plus in general, I’d like to have the option to have someone else feed him on occasion so that I can have breaks and go do things on my own.
@fertile-turtle thank you for all of that information! I had no clue about the sucking patterns but it make sense. I'll also have to remember to try the more upright position and have my husband try as well. What bottles did you get? I would love to have as many options as I can. The one's I already have from the list I found are: Comotomo Silicone bottles, Lansinoh Momma Breastmilk Bottle with Slow Flow Nipple, and Dr. Brown's Natural Flow Anti-Colic Bottle.
I’m in a strange boat on this one, too. At the moment, because I’m going to try for a VBAC, I’m scheduled for a c-section the day after my due date. I’d really love to wait for this guy to come naturally, but my notoriously comfortable uterus hasn’t gotten anybody out before 40 weeks in the last two pregnancies. Because I’ve had a c-section previously, I’ve been told I’m not really a safe candidate for induction, which also stinks. Less and less choices due to age and prior circumstances. If my fluid levels look safe and I can wait it out, I’m going to try my best to avoid the c-section. We’ll see…
@kamays54 those are the same bottles I got, along with the Philips Avent Natural. It’s got a somewhat similar shape to the Comotomo with the wide base to encourage a wider latch, which seems to encourage a more “breastfeeding like” suck pattern in some ways.
@ttc3y youre definitely welcome. I wish there was better research on this, because there’s a lot on just giving a bottle disrupting breastfeeding, and there’s very little on bottle refusal in general. And only a few papers that compare the mechanics of sucking and different bottle systems and nipples, so I’m definitely winging it, but with at least a little research behind me that I spent way too long tracking down for it to feel this inconclusive 😅. And I’m definitely going into it knowing that for me, prioritizing the ability to bottle feeding over the ability to directly breastfeed is the right choice, so introducing a bottle early and risking problems with breastfeeding isn’t necessarily the right right choice for everyone.
@kamays54 I should also have mentioned that the Avent Natural Response nipples are incredibly low flow, so you may want to actually buy a size 2 to start instead of a size 1 like you would with other bottles. It seems like they tried to design them so that active sucking is necessary, but they went a little too far.
@fertile-turtle thanks for the info! That’s super helpful! I ended up getting Nanobebe bottles and dr. Browns but will definitely look into these others 😊
I will be required to pump to start with in order to feed him breast milk and am hoping to transition to breastfeeding after a while.
My daughter was exclusively breastfed so I am super lost on the bottles 🤣
I swear that if I have to poop one more time today and this baby waits another week or more to be born, I might have a meltdown 😂. As if the waiting wasn’t bad enough on its own…
@fertile-turtle 🤣🤣🤣 I’m with you! I go about 3x a day (which 1x a day used to be a struggle). I thought surely she’d be here by now with how much I have to go! These babies need to go ahead and evacuate!!
Poop is a good sign that it's just days away or less!!
I've got the worst insomnia. Every morning I wake up around 3 and just lay there for 2 hours. But lately I use the time to pray because I'm overwhelmed by all the things and sad people I can't get off my mind.
@amccurls when I wrote this I was on round 4 for the day 😂 I’m glad I’m not alone in that, and at least it’s the weekend so I’m at home.
@seeds_of_joy that’s what I’ve read, which is exciting, but it almost makes me more impatient 😂 And that 3 am insomnia is ROUGH, but I’m glad you’ve found a soothing and productive way to use that time.
@fertile-turtle I think it was always the final week or less that I remember emptying of all the poo. Pretty exciting!! I'm not there yet but I'm super excited for you pooping mamas. 😂 Gives me something more optimistic to ponder at 3 am.
Re: January Symptoms
37+3
The first thing is to not delay bottle introduction, even though that’s the current recommendation from lactation consultants. Basically as soon as my milk comes in, I plan to pump and immediately feed one bottle each day. The goal is to take advantage of the suck reflex while it’s still there and give the baby a chance to learn how the bottle works as well as how to latch on the breast, and to only feed breastmilk (assuming I’m producing enough) so that the supply and demand stays in balance while my supply regulates. There is a study that shows differences in suck patterns between bottle-fed and breastfed infants, but also that those that started bottle feeding early are able to switch between the suck patterns depending on what’s being offered, so I’m hoping early exposure to both can help our baby to be one of the ones who can switch easily.
The second thing is to use paced feeding with slower flow bottle nipples. Instead of holding baby on his back with the bottle more or less pouring into his mouth without much effort, we’ll be holding him more upright with the bottle horizontal (just vertical enough for the milk to fill the nipple) so that he has to do a little work to get the milk out. This style of feeding produces a more breastfeeding-like motion, and hopefully will prevent the bottle from being so much easier that he refuses the breast.
@ttc3y youre definitely welcome. I wish there was better research on this, because there’s a lot on just giving a bottle disrupting breastfeeding, and there’s very little on bottle refusal in general. And only a few papers that compare the mechanics of sucking and different bottle systems and nipples, so I’m definitely winging it, but with at least a little research behind me that I spent way too long tracking down for it to feel this inconclusive 😅. And I’m definitely going into it knowing that for me, prioritizing the ability to bottle feeding over the ability to directly breastfeed is the right choice, so introducing a bottle early and risking problems with breastfeeding isn’t necessarily the right right choice for everyone.
I will be required to pump to start with in order to feed him breast milk and am hoping to transition to breastfeeding after a while.
I've got the worst insomnia. Every morning I wake up around 3 and just lay there for 2 hours. But lately I use the time to pray because I'm overwhelmed by all the things and sad people I can't get off my mind.
@seeds_of_joy that’s what I’ve read, which is exciting, but it almost makes me more impatient 😂 And that 3 am insomnia is ROUGH, but I’m glad you’ve found a soothing and productive way to use that time.