After one very emotionally stressful week, I went for another baby check up yesterday morning. Last week, I was told by my midwife that I’ll most likely have to have a c-section done, as I am starting to show signs of a beginning gestosis and that’s obviously potentially very dangerous for me and our little one.

I was shocked - of course I know that I should always be prepared for a c-section to happen regardless, but here I was told flat out that they would not even wait for me to go into labor, but much rather schedule a c-section ten to seven days before my actual due date. So many things started racing through my mind at that…it’s posssible I’d have to get this done under general anesthesia (as getting a PDA can be difficult at my weight), meaning I would not get to see my baby being brought into this world (and neither would the Laddie), would not be able to move around for a while, etc. Not exactly as I’d planned…I spent this past week trying to come to terms with the fact that this is just how it’s going to be and frankly had a really hard time doing just that.

Yesterday then, I was at the doc’s again - I was so stressed out, my blood pressure was through the roof - I hadn’t slept at all the night before and threw up a little while before the Laddie and I went to the practice. As always, I got checked out before I got to see the doc and was told my values unfortunately hadn’t changed. I’d also lost 1.5 kg/3.3 lbs over the course of the last week, which of course I am not complaining about. Anyway, the CTG scan showed no signs of contractions and our fella seems to be doing fine, so it does not seem like she’ll be here any time soon.

When I talked to the doctor about the c-section, he said that he would let me try to have our fella naturally, but if anything should happen - that’s if my values should get worse before or during labor - he would perform a c-section immediately. I think in my position that’s all I can hope for, so I am happy with this. Now I need to see that things don’t get worse over the next little while and hope for the best. There’s not much I can actively do to change things, but I was told to keep drinking a lot of water and rest as much as I can, so I’ll focus on that. I’ll be back at the doc’s next week Thursday, at 38+1. Our little girl is now 52 cm/20.5 in and weighs ca. 3100 grams/6.84 lbs.

Hey there peeps,

Sorry for the long time no see. As the birth of our first child draws closer, it’s been quite hectic, to say the least. Things have sort of calmed down now, so we are having a little time to relax.

I am going to get geeky now, so I will say sorry in advance! But this is site news, so please continue…

I use a system called Joomla. This is much like Blogger and Wordpress. It’s the system that keeps the sites running. Well, I have thrown in the towel on trying to get Joomla to do what I want it to do and now I am going to have to change a whole lot of things to get everything up to date and fully functional.

A while ago I promised that you as a reader would at some point be able to log in and get the behind the scenes look at what we think and are doing. It would not be making out blog private, but it would rather mean that trusted readers that comment and then are able to log in can see our photos of the baby and all the places we have been going.

Well, as I touched on before, Joomla is a B***h to allow this to happen. So I have to upgrade the site to the new version and also create a new template!!

*puff* *wheeze*

So what will this mean for No Magic Pill…Well, we will release the new site asap, with all the blogs merged into one site again. Here you can either view (or have the subscription) to see all 4 blogs (Life, Baby, Weight and Tech Pill) in one site. Or you can view and subscribe to the Pills you like the most, cutting out all the other bloggles. Merging everything, to be honest, is what I should have done in the first place, but I am only human.

This time round you will be able to log into our site, but don’t worry, you won’t be spammed! In fact, you won’t get any mails from us at all, unless I am quick enough to get this running before the baby comes and I can mail you guys to let you know the Lassie and the baby are ok.

So in short…Watch this space, as No Magic Pill will change into something bigger and better than ever before…hopefully…

Geez, things have been crazy busy around here lately! We’re still trying to get everything ready for the baby, but it’s not that easy, seeing as how little space we actually have available. So I have decided to just focus on getting the place organized and have given up on vainly trying to create more space. The Laddie and I will start looking at new apartments once our fella will be about 6 months old.

I unexpectedly had to go into the hospital last week, because Munchkin had decided to squeeze some of my organs quite uncomfortably - I could not walk upright, so bad was the pain. They took all kinds of tests and in the end I was just given painkillers, as unfortunately there is nothing else that can be done when the fella swishes around like that. In any case, the doctor obviously wrote a report and, as I found out only later, stated in it that I was suffering from pregnancy diabetes and that the size of our baby’s belly was three weeks ahead of what it should be, while everything else was developed normally. I was quite shocked, as my own doctor said before that my blood sugar was fine. I was really worried and went to speak to my midwife on the next day, when we attended a birth prep class she was giving.

Talking to my midwife, it was suggested that I get monitored for gestosis from now on and that I go to get my regular check ups once a week as well (it’d been once every two weeks before that) to catch any potential complications early on. She said all that because I’ve also started to gain weight rather rapidly, although I have not changed my eating habits and had only lost weight until a few weeks ago. By the time of the following check up, I had gained 2.5 kg/5.5 lbs in two weeks! Obviously I was really worried about all this, but the midwife said it’d be fine for me to get checked out properly during the next regular check up, so long as my blood pressure was ok.

The birth prep class was fine, btw. I still feel very uncomfortable about the whole PDA business, but I suppose I will try to keep an open mind for it. There is not much else out there to relieve the pain for a little while which won’t affect the baby in the process, so…I am just worried they will do more harm than good because I am so freaking overweight. My midwife said that it would be good to be open to it and that she’s only extremely rarely seen anything go wrong (and none of it involved paralysis), so I am really trying to be calm about it. In the end, nothing will be done that I don’t consent to, anyway.

I found out today that a girl who also was in our prep class and who had exactly the same due date as I do is already in hospital giving birth to her baby boy. Scary, that…things are getting very real now. I will only be able to give birth at my desired clinic starting with the 24th of April, so I am hoping our little girl decides to stay in my belly a little while longer.

Last week then, I finally had the first check up in my pregnancy where I felt actually taken seriously and reassured. I told my doc about the hospital worries and what the doctor there had written in her report. He took quite a while explaining things to me and measuring our baby’s belly, etc. - right when he looked at the belly he said everything looks just fine, but that he would measure things to make sure. He showed me how he did it and said that our baby is perfectly fine - her belly and all. Such a relief!! He even said that some babies just do have different parts of their bodies developed differently - just like everyone does not look like everyone else. It wouldn’t necessarily have to mean anything bad if the belly had been bigger - besides, he said the important thing here is to trust my other doctor. This doctor sees me on a regular basis and if he says that there is nothing to worry about with regard to my blood sugar levels, I should trust him.

Other than that, The Laddie and I are due to get a CD with new pictures of our little fella - I went and got some Baby TV done privately, as we haven’t gotten any new pics since week 22 of the pregnancy. Unfortunately, the new pics aren’t that great - I am just too far along in the pregnancy to get proper pics any more, but I wanted to try anyway. We also got another CTG scan done and the Laddie was able to hear our fella! It was all eally exciting and touching - even though our little girl on that day chose to kick and make waves in my belly quite wildly, making the midwife laugh, we could hear her fast little heartbeat.

I’ll be back at the doc’s on Thursday - I wonder if Sophie is getting ready to move out yet…

This week, I have the first pregnancy-related weight gain to report: 0.8 kg/1.76 lbs over the last two weeks. I knew it would happen at some point, but it’s still kinda sad for me to see the number go up again. I just need to remind myself that I should be happy if I manage to get through the remaining weeks without going over my start weight of about 135 kg/297 lbs. I am at 126.5/279 lbs right now, so I am not quite there yet. Next weigh in will be in two weeks.

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In food news, I have rediscovered oatmeal for my breakfasts. I don’t know why I ever stopped eating it, as it really makes me feel good when I have it. I do use a little bit of sugar and usually put in an apple, too - so yummy!

Other than that, I am seriously craving fruits and greens right now. Unfortunately, most stuff I want is not yet in season, so I am impatiently awaiting the arrival of strawberries and asparagus. There’s another yummy dish I would LOVE to eat right now, but can’t really get in Berlin (it’s a very popular dish in Hessen, where I grew up. Goethe’s favorite meal): Grüne Sosse (green sauce). It’s basically a sauce consisting of either yogurt, schmand, quark or cream (or rather a combination of them), a load of very finely chopped herbs, hard-boiled eggs and a bit of seasoning. You eat the sauce cold, along with boiled potoatoes. There’s no taste quite like this and it is so, so, so lovely in spring and summer. Must. Have. It. I’ll maybe try to get the individual herbs here, so I can make it and be merry.

Just a short post to let you guys in on some pictures.

I have been a busy beaver making some things for our Munchkin and I wanted to finally share them with you guys!

First, let me introduce Fred, Daisy and Louis:

Then, also to two other friends we have yet to name. The one to the left is a cover to hide the horrible cut out dolphin logo on the front of Munchkin’s bed and the other one is for her pacifiers (in German it’s called Schnullerparkplatz), so we can hang them up safe and sound.

Don’t ask why the obsession with sheep, but it’s cute and at least when the fella can’t sleep, she can really count the sheep.

This morning, I had the urge to kill and here is why. We went to the doctor’s for the regular baby check up.

So we got in and we were to get a CTG scan where they check for contractions and the baby’s heart beat. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to this. The Lassie was directed into a room at the back of the practice which holds the lab and operating theater. Normally it’s women only, so the Lassie checked if it was ok for me to go in. The nurse said no! I was not going to get to hear my baby’s heart beat. I was angry and crushed!

From the waiting room though I heard them looking for the heart beat, where the speakers give off a rustling sound, but when it came to the heart beat, all the nurses seemed to start banging and walking around loudly. If I were to treat a printer at my work like they did their equipment, I would have been fired! So again, I was angry and crushed.

We got into the doc’s office and he asked “How is the baby?”. Well, we don’t know, how about you examine the Lassie and find out! Then the Lassie asked about the iron issue.

Now, the last post I had made about the doctor was when I said that we asked about the chest pains. Well, afterwards we found out what it was. The Lassie’s iron count was too low (11.0), meaning she was getting anemic (at 11.2 it’s beginning anemia). This is what caused the chest pains and the doc should have seen that. I was at another doc’s for other reasons and asked him about the 11.0 - he was surprised that the Lassie’s doc did nothing (a friend of hers got iron supplements at a count of 11.8, btw).

I digress, the Lassie asked the doc if it is ok to take the iron or not…he mumbled something that sounded like “yeah, this is not a problem” or “this is not bad” (translation)…He then left it like that. No “yeah, you can take it” or “oh no, you can’t, because of X,Y,Z”! He then said that the Lassie had some bacteria and at that point the nurse came in and scrunched up her face, like she thought we were nice people and that is a bad thing happening to us? So the Lassie gets examined with the ultrasound. He gave us the stats this time without us asking much and he was done.

“Everything is fine, Mrs X”

“What about the bacteria?” the Lassie asks.

He mumbles “It’s normal, nothing to worry about..Bye..” and he was gone.

The Lassie still had more tests waiting (blood taking, etc), so we return to the waiting room out by the lab. I am waiting and then see the nurse pass by that is taking the Lassie’s blood to get another nurse. It’s always difficult to get blood from both of us. So the two nurses start walking back to the lab and the original nurse in front of everyone whispers to her colleague and puts her hand sort of over and around her arm, basically saying the arm is too big…with the silly look on her face, too, I knew she was being offensive and to do that in front of everyone in the waiting room was a complete joke!

So, as they are poking more holes in my wife, I hear a man’s voice come from the lab area…Yeah, the place I was not allowed to go!

I want to burn that place to the ground!

Am I overreacting?