Glorious day here yesterday, last blast of summer maybe. Got another couple of loads of washing out on the line – the third bin liner from old house contained some of my old maternity gear, so I’ve now got lots of winter weight trousers, which is pretty good 🙂 Of course, it would have been even better if I’d got the washing in at the end of the day, but it turns out that walking to the midwife and then to and from swimming is too much for the hip/ back combo and there was no way I was getting washing in as well last night.
Guess I’m going to have to cave and start using the car a little more. Just really annoys me to use it for short journeys, and to some extent keeping mobile helps with the swelling and twitching. It’s a balance, that’s what it is.
So let’s see. There was putering and tv watching and much playing of an involved game around a boarding school. Strangely this wasn’t Hogwarts based, but was something to do with Ben 10, who is also a popular character here.
I had a midwife appt, where I was told that according to the hb levels in my blood, I’m anaemic. The midwife wanted me to take iron supplements or I might not be able to have my homebirth. Sigh. Got home (via the red cross, see t’other post from today 🙂 ) and started doing research on the whole thing – very educational. Due to the effects of haemodilution (ie the increase in blood volume during pregnancy) just looking at the concentration of Hb in the blood doesn’t really tell you a lot. Apparently there are other tests that can be done which offer more information, but this area is running somewhat behind the times. Can’t quite decide whether to print off a load of stuff and educate my midwife, put in a complaint to the PCT/ midwifery service that they are giving at best dated advice, and at worst, dangerous, or just ignore them all and go my own sweet way anyway.
Did buy myself some dried apricots on the way home though 😉
And after I’d been home long enough for a belated lunch, it was time for swimming. Yet another lesson without Small’s designated teacher, although he said he really enjoyed it. Big’s friend C has finally got the nod on moving up, we hope, and Big had another good lesson as far as I can tell.
Home, where Tim cooked the kebabs I’d prepared earlier, and we had a lovely family tea.
Dunno what I’m going to do tonight though!
The full blood count blood test, of which the haemoglobin conc is a part, also contains measurements of the Hb content and average size of the red blood cells, which can give a clearer picture of iron deficiency vs haemodilution. In iron deficiency the cells are smaller and paler.
Floradix for the win 😉
.-= Gill´s last blog .. =-.
Is that the MCV thing Jan? Will it have been done and just hasn’t been written on my notes?
Gill, I’m already taking a standard pregnancy multi vit which has 121% of RDA iron, I’ve now cut even my beloved decaff tea out, will increase my iron rich food intake, but I’m slightly concerned that some of the research I’ve read over the last day or so implies that iron supplementing can actually have risks of its own.
yes, mcv is mean cell volume.
I let then give me an iron prescription. Iron supplements seriously upset my stomach and as I had spent sixteen weeks vomiting I wasn’t about to put up with that. In the end I just took half of what was prescribed, which seemed to be fine. My s-i-l was fine with just Floradix.