Being open and transparent can be difficult sometimes when I’ve made my life into a job and things don’t go all that great. But none the less eventually I will share it. As most of you know, the past week or so has been pretty hectic and shitty and I’d taken some time off to just recuperate and focus on my body and Ophelia.
I just want to say how thankful I am for all your messages, I literally received over a hundred and I wasn’t able to reply to all of you, but I read each one and it was so lovely that so many of you wished us well.
So, to fill you in fully on what’s been going on, (if you haven’t been blessed with a rambling stream of consciousness with a dog filter on my face already) I had my 28-week growth scan and everything was fine, she was even weighing just on the edge of too big. But about two days later I stopped feeling her moving around, before she would be constantly winding me or kicking my bladder to the point id leak a little (So glamourous).
But I’d noticed I’d not felt her move in a few hours, so I called up MAU (Maternity Assessment Unit) because I know how important the movements your baby shows can be. Any change in your baby’s movements can be a sign of a problem, even if they are still moving but not at the same rate as before, or it feels different, they could be at a serious risk. A reduce in movements can be directly linked to still birth, which is any expectant mother’s nightmare, so it doesn’t matter if you feel like you’re pestering people, it is better to be safe than sorry.
The MAU midwives told me to come straight in to be put on the CTG monitor and
arranged for a doppler to be done the following day. Every midwife I see reassures me that it doesn’t matter how many times I call them or how many times I visit and get checked i should always never hesitate. But still, you feel like you’re constantly pestering them like a buzzing gnat. Still, I went in the following day for my doppler.
A doppler is an ultrasound scan used to measure the blood flow to the baby, the uterus and the placenta.
It turned out that she hadn’t been moving much because my placenta was not working sufficiently, and the blood flow was not getting to her fully. Sort of like a hose, if you bend a hosepipe the water can still trickle through but at a slow pace and at a decreased amount, this was what was happening with the blood vessels, they were providing her with enough oxygen to survive but not enough for a normal pregnancy. Therefore, my pregnancy very suddenly became high risk and a happy hopeful me turned into a blubbering, paranoid, psychotic.
The midwives and doctors all talked me through what it meant, that it doesn’t necessarily mean the worst or that she’s suffering, just that they need to watch her constantly and be prepared that at any point she might need to come out.
I was 30 weeks pregnant exactly. At 30 weeks Ophelia is around the size of a large cabbage (although considering she was chunky she was probs more like the cabbage in Wallace and Gromit) and weighed around 3lbs. She is fully developed but there is some fine tuning to be done in order for her to survive without intervention, her lungs still need to mature and intricate details are still being worked on like the grooves in her brain. However, if she was to be born now she would have a 97% chance of survival with medical intervention, she would have to stay in ICU until she could breathe without machinery but there is no guarantee she wouldn’t have problems or develop serious conditions later on in her life.
Still 97% survival was all that mattered.
From then on, we have been going to the hospital every single day to be monitored. The CTG shows she is still fairly happy being inside my womb and although I cannot feel her moving as much she is doing fine. We have been having doppler scans twice a week and the most recent one we had showed a significant improvement. The blood flow to her is increasing each time we go to the hospital and she’s just started to move around like she used to before.
We can breathe a sigh of relief now knowing that we still have a few more weeks 
(hopefully) before she arrives so can hurriedly start painting the nursery. The blood flow to her is consistently being monitored and her heart rate is being measured daily to make sure she is not in any distress and that is all we can do. All we can do is wait and hope that everything will be fine, but I have a positive view and think it will be fine, she will just be joining us a lot quicker than we originally expected!
In the meantime, I’m literally exhausted, I’ve been napping repetitively and managed to get through 13 reasons why in just 3 days (which to my sister would be an absolute failure). There literally isn’t really much more to tell, we are taking each day as it comes but each day she is moving around a bit more and my body is showing signs of improvement.
Again, thank you all so much for your messages over the past week, its meant a lot! And I’ve actually rather enjoyed not being on my phone or on social media for a while, its been quite refreshing for me, but as much as I wanna lie around watching reruns of Come Dine With Me I have to get back to doing normal work.
But it is important to take time away sometimes, and these past few days of recuperation have been revitalising and enabled my body to continue to grow my chubby cheeked and large nosed Ophelia.
xoxo
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If it’s a work from home kinda day, then ill be lucky to be arsed to do my makeup cause that is commitment usually only saved for leaving the house. Joggers on, messy bun (that looks more like a sparse turd on my head because my hair is too thin to do a proper messy bun) and eyebrow-less. Our post lady (despite being half blind and unable to tell what number our house actually is) delivers my ‘blogger mail’ (again this is NOT something that happens EVERYDAY) with the same astonished expression that Michael Jackson really hasn’t died and is living at number 11 in her home town when I greet her. I spend a couple hours doing the house work and talking to the dog like a mad woman who has had no human contact in years whilst debuting my new album at top volume and a well-choreographed cordless vacuum dance to accompany it. Then by lunch time I have finished boring mundane chores and sit down to go through my emails. I argue with a few collaborators about how I deserve to be paid for advertising their brand or products and write up briefs or ‘pitches’ to them with my set fee in the hope they accept and delete all the spam about how I need a penis enlargement for my non-existent dick. Then if I have Instagram or blogging jobs to do I try to do them whilst its still light outside, setting up the brands product in some shitty layout and blab on about what I think of them in painstakingly unnecessary detail that the company are happy with. Although this proves to be a lot harder than anticipated because there are only so many flat lays or backgrounds I can use for variety within the four walls of my house (and yknow, eyebrows off means I ain’t leaving the house unless for emergencies).
work so I usually just chill, watch some shitty American tv show and sleep because by now im exhausted. Im exhausted every hour of the day thanks to Crohn’s but when my tasks are done that’s when I reward myself with a nap (it’s the best part of everyday). When john gets home and ive awoken like someone having a nightmare in a horror film, wondering what year it is and where ive been for the last decade, we take luna out for a run. She has developed a keen talent of finding any way possible to get into the River Trent and swims around for a little bit providing the current isn’t strong. If the current is strong, I turn into a crazed mother running after her screaming like she’s the kittens in the ‘Aristocats’ about to be swept away but she never is because y’know, shes a dog, shes a good swimmer. When ive finished having heart palpitations and accusing john of not caring or getting in the river after her, we head home and argue about what we want for tea. The system is fairly simple, ‘Did we have pasta yesterday?’ ‘No?’ ‘Pasta it is’. If the answer is yes its, ‘Okay think of something today and we’ll have pasta tomorrow’. I cook tea and we watch some shit tv before retiring like an old age pensioner to bed at like 10pm where I kid myself into thinking im going to finish my book tonight but instead end up falling asleep to family guy.
baby inside. Our baby was kicking furiously and their heart was beating rapidly, I couldn’t even take my eyes away from the screen to look at john cause I just wanted to watch every second but I think I fractured his fingers from squeezing it.
expensive? Especially when we find one that’s just right and some other dickhead turns up with more money and decides to steal it, like bitch i’d already planned my colour scheme for the bedroom. So besides failing at buying a house and being too poor to afford to go out i’m sat with the dogs with ear plugs in like an old woman as the rain falls (EXTREMELY LOUD) onto the conservatory roof – which is my bedroom – wishing i’d just stayed in kings heath. But it’s not all bad because although i enjoy my own company i like the fact that i 
don’t have to sit on my own everyday and when my sister is off i have an excuse to watch shit tv shows i’m too proud to admit i secretly like, so when john comes home and thinks wtf i can blame my poor tv choices on her and it’s easily plausible. As a 21 yr old who’s planning on buying a home and having a kid i can’t be publicly seen watching ‘Victorious’ and singing along to the songs, declaring my love for Ariana Grande. 
However, on another note, if Luna wasn’t bad enough when she was in season, constantly humping everything and costing us hundreds of pounds, i am now left to practically babysit the other one, margo, as she wipes her giant bloody bits all over my bedcovers. Not gonna lie it’s bigger than her head, imagine a baboons arse been dragged over your pillow and brand new slippers? Yeah that’s what i’m dealing with because my bedroom is downstairs and mom hasn’t taught her boundaries (unlike my perfect luna of course…ha..ha…ha.. Shes staring at me demonically now i feel like one of those people in horror films where there is a demon inside the dog 
that controls their every move when people aren’t looking – if you haven’t watched those films seriously watch them they are shitily great).
why i cannot seem to get to 12 weeks. I have an appointment at a recurrent miscarriage clinic which will hopefully enlighten us as to possible reasons although i’m pretty sure i’m going to hear “nobody knows why this happens but it’s fairly common and most people have miscarriages without even realising,” i practically hear that sentence in my dreams, so many people have said it to me. My GP does seem to think that it is linked to my crohns and the immunosuppressants i am on as a result of 
the crohns though, so we have a long way to go and i think my dream of actually being able to hold my baby before christmas 2017 is slowly becoming less realistic, all i keep telling myself is that when it finally happens and i get to see and hold my baby for the first time i’ll know that this hardship will all be worth it.
can’t get a huge toned ass and slim body whilst just sleeping and eating mac n cheese (which i really wish you could do at the same time). 
