Pregnancy update: Week 21

the usual symptoms continue: nausea, acne, and pelvic girdle pain
new symptoms: had my first leg cramp in my right calf in the morning during my sleep. prior to this already had some "almost leg cramps" that were resolved with me flexing my foot. and some fatigue over few days... took a 2 hour nap on sunday depsite already sleeping 8 hours. then on monday i slept 11 hours and woke up still feeling tired...

weight 54.4kg (+0.8kg in the past week, overall +7.4kg)... hmm why is it going up so quickly when my intake has not really increased? omg the weight gain is so scary...

for this week the most happening day was 19 May 2017 (Friday).

it all started off in the morning when i dreamt that i had given birth already. Atty has my eye shape, a combination of mine and K's nose...wide but with a sharper tip. her lips were a bit thinner than mine. anyway from the nose downwards she looked like K hehee.

in my dream i'm quite frustrated as K keeps running out of the house to buy this and that to make different types of food and i'm not getting much help while trying to get Atty to latch and breastfeed. i'm trying to breastfeed in the room in front of the house and the windows are all open but i can't get to close it as Atty is attached to me. later i seem to leave and by the time i get back to the room i find Atty sleeping in the infant capsule by herself and i'm so upset that K left her alone to sleep there and did not bring her back to our room. when i get to our room, we don't have the cosleeper bassinet there and it seems there's no safe place for Atty to sleep. in another dream scene i'm breastfeeding and my milk supply comes in but it seems i'm also pumping? suddenly the flow of milk is too quick and i worry that Atty may choke. i don't know if it was the malfunction of the pump or she was sucking too quickly...then milk explodes everywhere and Atty is not moving. omg i'm just freaking out and trying to check her breathing... then i wake up.

what a dream! perhaps it's a reflection of the many anxieties i have and the general unpreparedness currently. makes me want to quickly buy all the baby stuff needed!

that morning i had my first appointment with my midwife from the Midwifery Group Practice program, which i got into eventually. initial they said i didn't get in but later another letter came to say i got in! quite excited as it seems to be a good program. this day actually i was supposed to go to the Outpatient Midwife Clinic at WCH but we just changed the appointment to seeing my MGP midwife and we had the appointment at the birthing suite so had the chance to see how the environment is like. that particular birthing suite we were in was overlooking a little park with trees painted in the autumn colors so that was nice. it also had a huge tub for water birth. apparently most birthing suites come with the tub. hopefully it's not 100% occupancy rate when it's my turn to give birth hehe.

everything seems to be progressing well, midwife just asked some questions, checked my vitals, fundal height and Atty's heart rate with the fetal doppler. she said the fundal height will more or less correlate with the week of pregnancy you are in, that's cool to know. Atty's heart rate is about 150 beats per minute... midwife had to keep trying to find a good spot to hear Atty's heart rate as Atty kept kicking the fetal doppler hahaa! Atty seemed to have been disturbed by the check up, usually she is rather quiet in the morning but she started moving around and kicking after the check up.

after the midwife appointment we had lunch in the city. finally got to try Star of Siam's pad thai...not bad but not the best. then we grabbed bubble tea after lunch before going to explore different parks for my 30 minute walk of the day. we stopped by a park (unable to recall the name anymore) nearby the city but it was too small (finished walking around it in 10 minutes) so we moved on to linear park. weather forecast said it was going to be a rainy day but it turned out to be a sunny day perfect for a stroll :)