40w2d

Dear Belly Bump,

Very soon you will no longer be there when I look down. I have treasured these last nine months of pregnancy. I love resting my hand on my bump and feeling the wiggles inside. I loved the chance to buy a whole new wardrobe to show you off to the world. I love the feeling of being pregnant, of growing life inside me. Though it has sometimes been disturbing to see my body change so dramatically, I feel so truly lucky to have had this experience.

I think that soon I will have a very lonely belly. But a very full heart.

40w0d: Due date

According to Franz Naegele's 1812 calculations, today is my due date. It has been 266 days since conception.

I can still feel the little guy wiggling around inside, but no painful contractions or other signs of labour.

My docgtor says that as my gestational diabetes is under control, she won't induce for another 10 days. So we still don't know if he'll be a July or August baby.

Truth be told, I'm a bit terrified of the next stage. Not so much the birth, but the whole being responsible for a new human being thing. It seems like such a huge responsibility, and I've never even held a newborn before. Now I'm supposed to be a mother? There are so many unknowns - soothing, breastfeeding, playing, nurturing...

After everything we've gone through, I really hope that I'm good at this.

New bump photos here.

39w0d: Full term

Still pregnant, no signs of labour yet. Feeling so thankful that we have made it so far with relatively few problems.

My maternity leave started today, and as I can barely walk for 5 minutes without discomfort, I am spending a great deal of time on the couch.

I have another fetal monitoring session tomorrow - 30 minutes of listening to the heartbeat and watching my painless Braxton-Hicks contractions that are coming every 10 minutes or so.

We have a big, posterior baby, so labour is not going to be short or easy. I am planning on taking as many drugs as possible to get me through.

All in all, very happy and thankful, still in disbelief that a child will be joining our family and we are soon to be parents. We both feel that it is much more likely that I will just remain pregnant forever.

36w0d: Still moving along

And here I am, one week away from being considered full term, one month away from my estimated due date.

Firstly, I'll get my complaining out of the way. I managed to stay vegan for about 24 hours before I resorted back to the deliciousness of eggs, cheese, and meat. I am still unable to resist cake, even though I know it is bad for both me and the baby in my gestational diabetic state.

My feet and ankles are terribly swollen, my belly and hips have erupted into a swarm of stretch marks, and I get a painful sharp cramp/round ligament pain sensation whenever I have to walk for more than 10 minutes. Turning over in bed is an effort, and the heat is not helping. We are still on the waiting list for all our creches, and they have yet to confirm availability for 2012.

However, apart from all that, things are pretty good. I am feeling really happy most of the time, finally starting to embrace and celebrate this pregnancy. I had a wonderful baby shower and felt very spoiled by all our friends who brought beautiful gifts for the little guy.

He seems to be doing very well - still measuring one week ahead, and my gestational diabetes doesn't seem to be affecting him too much. His head is down and the placenta has moved up, so it is likely that we will try for a vaginal birth.

I have a feeling the baby will come early as he is measuring ahead, my husband has statistics on his side when he says the baby will come late as he is our first. Either way, I can't wait to meet our son and see my husband holding him in his arms.

30w3d: Gestational diabetes

The good news is that the little guy is doing well. He is moving a lot, the placenta is moving away from my cervix, and my fundal height is on track.

The bad news is that I have gestational diabetes. I am diabetic. I rang my doctor to confirm my "no news is good news" theory, and she told me that I had failed the one hour test. Then I failed the fasting two hour test. They took another 7 vials of blood from me this morning, and I have my first meeting with an endocrinologist on Monday.

As soon as I got my diagnosis I went to the shop and bought three books on diabetes, and I have spent this morning reading the literature on randomized trials of diet and diabetes.

From the studies that I have read, it seems that the quickest way to get my diabetes under control is to follow a low-fat low-GI vegan diet. What is the evidence for this?

• After adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, physical activity, television watching, sleep habits, alcohol use, and BMI, an observational study found that vegans (OR 0.51 [95% CI 0.40–0.66]), lacto-ovo vegetarians (0.54 [0.49–0.60]), pesco-vegetarians (0.70 [0.61–0.80]), and semi-vegetarians (0.76 [0.65–0.90]) had a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. N = 60,903 ¹
  
  
  
• A prospective cohort study (N = 3,158) and a case-control study (N = 596) found that compared to no egg consumption, adjusted relative risks for gestational diabetes were 0.94, 1.01, 1.12, 1.54, and 2.52 for consumption of ≤1, 2–3, 4–6, 7–9, and ≥10 eggs/week, respectively (P for trend = 0.008) ²
  
  
  
• A randomised trial (N = 99) found that type 2 diabetics allocated to a low-fat low-GI vegan diet (rather than the 2003 American Diabetes Association diet) had significantly lower HbA1c and cholesterol levels ³

I had always thought that the vegan diet was only suitable for self-righteous stinky hippies, but it looks like this is what my plate will look like for the next ten weeks:



1. Tonstad S, et al. Type of Vegetarian Diet, Body Weight, and Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes. Diabetes Care May 2009 vol. 32 no. 5 791-796
2. Qui, et al. Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in Relation to Maternal Egg and Cholesterol Intake. Am. J. Epidemiol. (2011) 173 (6): 649-658.
3. Bardard, ND, et al. A low-fat vegan diet and a conventional diabetes diet in the treatment
of type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, 74-wk clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr 2009;89(suppl):1588S–96S

28w5d: Third Trimester

I have finally arrived in the third trimester, and things are still going well. I have puffy ankles and constant heartburn, and the occasional backache, but no major problems.

Last week I had my glucose test. I know that a lot of women complain about it, but for me it felt like a right of passage. It's an experience that I had read about so many times, it seemed surreal to be sitting there with all the other pregnant ladies, drinking my sugar drink and waiting the hour for my test. I haven't heard back from my doctor, so I'm figuring that no news is good news.

The little guy is wriggling all around, so reassuring to get a little poke every hour or so to let me know that he's doing okay. I love sitting on the couch with my hand on my belly, feeling him press against my skin. It is so difficult to refrain from doing so while in business meetings when I can feel him bouncing around in there.

The nursery is finished - cot, rocking bassinet, changing table. Some friends are throwing me a small baby shower next month, which is very unusual in Europe - many people consider it bad luck to give gifts before a birth. Sometimes I feel a little presumptuous too, decorating a room for a person who has yet to arrive in this world, and it's hard to believe that in less than three months we could be parents.

Ye every day his chances of survival increase if he were born prematurely, every day his kicks feel stronger, ad every day I can feel my womb expand as he grows.

Eleven weeks to go.