Pregnancy for Fathers : Week 34 October 2, 2006
Posted by Rambling Man in Fatherhood.trackback
Overall, this has been a pretty rough week. Our pregnancy is starting to head into the home stretch and the effects of this are taking their toll on the good wife (TGW). Add into the equation that we are first time parents and don’t really know how to properly recognise “normal” symptoms and aches and pains, and you have the environment for a wee bit of panic.
During the last week, my wife’s symptoms (call them side effects of being 8 months + pregnant) have steadily increased for the worse and become such an annoyance that she cannot sleep. She has very swollen hands and is uncomfortable at night with itching and restlessness. This, coupled with a perceived drop in the amount of baby movement caused us to call the local hospital in a bit of a flurry and to land ourselves on them at 8am last Thursday morning.
I cannot say enough good things about the midwives and doctors there – they took us seriously and started from scratch with tests and screens and so on. We hadn’t really being getting anywhere with our local GP when TGW complained of not being able to sleep due to the increasing discomfort. We were very impressed by the labour room and ward and were monitored for over 2 hours. Blood was taken to rule out the liver being the cause of the itching and a scan was done to ensure everything was OK. White coat syndrome kicked in big time of course, and the bairn woke up and started kicking the tummy off his mother ! (or her mother). We were ever so thankful that we simply had someone to talk to and explain to us what was going on. We even found that is medication TGW can take to try and alleviate the problems.
On the up side, there is plenty of baby activity, TGW is sleeping better and we’ve finished painting the nursery. Next weekend is set aside for some sure to be disastrous DIY projects like putting up shelves in there and setting up the cot … bring it on !
Technorati tags : fatherhood : pregnancy
The Rambling Man 
Our little ‘un never liked having scans done. We never got a clear image of her head in all the scans we had done.
Just a little tip we found useful: If there’s a branch of Mothercare near you, they probably do prenatal evenings, which cover the essentials you’ll need once Junior arrives like how to fit a car seat, etc. But they also give you a 10% discount card, which you can use for up to nine separate purchases in their stores, which is very handy.
Best wishes to both of you!
thanks for the info gerry – can they cure intolerable itching ? i feel so useless at the moment
Does your wife read rollercoaster.ie? My missus was an avid reader during the pregnancy and found it very useful, particularly for health tips and so on.
i’ll let her know – i thinks shes abandoned all types of literature that claim to be “the answer”
[…] We painted the upcoming child’s nursery a couple of weeks ago with the wrong type of paint. Now I didn’t know it was the wrong paint of course, having relied on the sure to be gigantic paint knowledge of the spotty sales assistant. Having painted the room and left it to air for a few days we were concerned that the smell wasn’t dissapating. In our worry that the poor child would be choked with the smell of paint fumes, it was recommended to us that we cut 2 onions in half and place them in a bowl in the middle of the room. […]