Pregnancy

Reading back on this post before I publish it I realized there are few positive statements. Although pregnancy is hard and mostly crappy (let’s be real), there were a few really wonderful highlights over the last 9-10 months… so to start off on a happy note, here they are!

• Gaining a greater appreciation for bodies and their incredible ability to change and adapt.
• Stronger connection with Lucas – Seeing him cry at our first (8 week) ultrasound because he is so excited to be a father.
• Feeling an outpouring of love and support from friends and family.
• The look on parents’ faces when we told them they would be grandparents! (1st for Brook side, 5th for Jones side)
• Getting to pick out nursery/baby items and finally buy that West Elm crib I’ve been dreaming about for years! And all the free stuff companies send when you make a registry!
• Catching up with friends I haven’t seen in forever at my baby showers.
• Not being judged for sleeping in and taking frequent naps.
• Laughing with Lucas when trying to decide on a name. We both have long lists of names we like but none of them overlap! Except for… : )
• Deciding now what attributes we’d like to prioritize instilling in our child – Lucas hopes he will be curious, I hope he will be kind.
• Winning FREE Chick-fil-a for a year! I’m convinced the fact that baby was due in 3 days at the time of the drawing overpowered my unluckiness and is the reason I won!
• So many wonderful, lazy Saturday mornings sleeping in together and making crepes or pancakes. – – fatigue forcing us to slow down.
• A baby moon to Tahiti!! Such a fun trip. And the perfect place to mozie around and relax. A true vacation spot.
• Deciding to purchase a mom car! We’ve been shopping and thinking about this purchase for 3 years and we finally made it happen.
• And I’m sure there is more… I’ll add them as I remember them…

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Back to the original post.

I recently saw an Instagram post that said, “My postpartum is not your postpartum.” I’ve thought about that a lot lately. We all go through similar life experiences but ultimately each life experience is 100% our own and unique enough that no one else can fully relate. Even though some elements of our life experiences may match someone else’s element of a life experience, we can’t compare them. Which is so hard to do.

It’s estimated that over 3 million women are pregnant (just in the US!) at any given time. And each pregnancy is a unique combination of the common (and less common) situations. Although I know that logically each experience is unique, I still find myself comparing and asking, “If _____ happened to her during pregnancy, why isn’t it happening to me?” or “Why doesn’t my pregnant body look like hers?” But I’m trying to be better. In attempts to gain a general understanding we use the experience of others to build a frame of reference and gauge how relatively “normal” our situation is, but that makes it easy to judge both ourselves and others unfairly when we don’t match up with what we perceive as “normal.” I’m done judging. Just here to remember what my personal experience looked like.

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I feel blessed to have had a healthy, relatively typical pregnancy. But it was/is still really hard. I had just barely started to get a grip on my regular health when I got pregnant so I had to re-learn what my body needed to be healthy and set new habits to adapt. Like everything on this blog, this post contains photos and facts about my pregnancy because I don’t want to forget them.

I don’t want to forget how hard this experience was. I don’t want to look back and think, “pregnancy wasn’t that bad. People do it all the time so it isn’t an accomplishment.” It was hard for me to get pregnant. It is really hard for some people to stay pregnant. Just being pregnant, going through all the changes and dealing with such intense discomforts/pains, in general is miserably hard and annoyingly unpredictable. Pregnancy is a crazy, natural experience and a difficult accomplishment. I hope I look back on this time of my life and feel proud of what I accomplished.

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Funny things Lucas said during the last 10 months…

• Your belly button is definitely not centered. Has it always been that way?
• (while showering) It’s getting a little crowded with 3 of us in here.
• Me: Pregnancy is hard. (after losing it emotionally) Lucas: Yes, but you handle it with so much grace (said w/a sarcastic smile).
• How much bigger are you going to get?? (at 29 weeks, again at 33 weeks, and every week after that ha)
• Me: Lucas, there is a brownie in my purse. Can you please get it for me? Lucas: That’s the most pregnant thing you’ve ever said.
• At 36 weeks: We need to get the go bag ready! Do we have snacks in the go bag?
• If you use laughing gas at the hospital, will you share it with me?
• I can’t wait to get to the hospital so we can get one of those big cups! Could we get two??
• Do you think it will help start labor if I try to push the baby out? (pretending to push on the top of my belly)
• When we’re parenting, I’m the good cop and you’re the bad cop, right?
• When do you think the baby will come? (asked probably a dozen times)

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We planned a road trip around the Grand Canyon before we knew I was pregnant. Although the sites we saw were beautiful… the trip was rough. We were both sick the entire time and had little to no energy to run around and see everything. Lucas had a bad cold and I was nauseous and fatigued 24/7 then caught his cold and couldn’t take any cold medicine (#pregnancy)… We ended up changing our flights and coming home 2-3 days early. Since I was only 7 weeks along at this point, no one knew (not even parents, just my doctor), so we blamed the shortened trip on the colds.

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Expected & unexpected situations broken down by trimester:

1st Trimester

• EXPECTED
  • Constant nausea – so real. I thought since I’ve dealt with chronic nausea for years that being pregnant wouldn’t phase me. It turns out that pregnant nauseous is far worse than any other kind. It literally never goes away so you never get a break from that gross, unsettled feeling. Thank goodness for unisom and zofran. I usually avoid taking medicine if I can, but I wouldn’t have survived the first trimester without these nausea medications. Although the nausea was much less intense during the 2nd and 3rd trimester, I still had to take something every day. The few days I tried to go without were not good.
  • Food aversions – didn’t happen. I’m typically a picky eater, so I expected to have all kinds of food aversions while dealing with morning sickness. Thankfully that didn’t happen! I didn’t crave sweets like I usually do but I wasn’t grossed out by them. Also, after years of not being able to eat dairy without getting sick, my body somehow changed and I was able to eat whatever dairy I wanted! There were a few days were I over did it on the dairy… but that was my own fault. I don’t think two milkshakes in one day is good for anyone’s digestive system.
  • Vomiting – didn’t happen as much as I expected. Since my mom, older sister, and basically every woman in my extended family all threw up a ton, I expected I would do the same. I hate throwing up more than almost anything so I think I mentally powered my way through (and was blessed in this department) so I only vomited a handful of times. Once was in the middle of the night… It woke me up and I immediately sat up to get out of bed but by the time I was upright it was already coming out so I made a pretty gross trail to the bathroom… I’m grateful Lucas woke up too and cleaned it all up before I could. He’s the best.
  • Lots of doctor’s appointments & ultrasounds – didn’t happen. I didn’t know that for the majority of a pregnancy you only see the doctor once a month and that there are only 2 ultrasounds (1 at the very beginning and an anatomy check for the baby at 20 weeks). However, if you have twins or a high risk pregnancy of some sort, then they schedule frequent doctor’s appointments and lots of ultrasounds. It is weird in the beginning (actually the whole time…) constantly wondering if the baby is developing okay. With monthly appointments all you get is to hear the heartbeat which tells you they are alive but not much else… Luckily, because of my history of being underweight, I got to have a second anatomy ultrasound at 32 weeks to make sure baby’s growth was on track. It was so nice to be able to see him again!
  • Belly to start showing by the end of first trimester – didn’t happen. Even by 20 weeks my belly (that I thought was big ha) wasn’t even big enough to be noticed. It wasn’t until the end of the 2nd trimester that I had a legitimate baby belly but even then it wasn’t 100% clear I was pregnant (not just heavy) until the 3rd trimester.
• UNEXPECTED
  • Intense fatigue. Since I was able to, I took a nap every day for several weeks. I could barely make it through half a day. I guess it makes sense that your body is intensely fatigued because the baby is developing so quickly in the first little bit, but it still is surprising to experience.
  • The most intense sneezes of my life. I have no idea why but my entire pregnancy, my sneezes have been “holy crap I have to hold on to something while I sneeze or I’m going to trip on myself” intense.
  • Having to pee all the time / Not being able to sleep through the night without getting up at least once if not twice to pee. I always thought this happened later in pregnancy due to a baby sitting on your bladder. But the frequent urge to pee is strongest in the beginning and then comes back at the end.
  • Hyper sensitive sense of smell. I think I expected to be sensitive to smells in the sense that they would easily make me nauseated but I didn’t expect to have a sense of smell almost as good as a dog’s!
  • The fact that the first trimester doesn’t end until 14 weeks! I was counting down the days until 12 weeks so I could be done with the miserable nausea and constant fatigue, but when I got to my 12 week doctor appointment they said, “almost there, just 2 more weeks!” I was crushed. I knew the symptoms for each phase or pregnancy wouldn’t magically change on the trimester or week marks but in my mind it was a soft deadline that I could look forward to (and hope for).

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2nd Trimester

• EXPECTED
  • To have lots of energy – That didn’t happen. People kept saying it would happen but it didn’t.
  • Magic of feeling the baby move – not exactly magical. The first time this happened I was a little freaked out… Just imagine having a creature in your tummy moving around! It’s weird. But it is also kind of amazing. The larger he grew the more I could feel it but the more you can feel it the less magical it becomes because it is highly uncomfortable. Now that I’m at the end, I feel like he won’t stop moving and it is crazy to watch him move from the outside but often painful on the inside. My torso is only so big so he has little room to kick that doesn’t hit ribs or organs.
  • Hemorrhoids – too real. I’ve had digestive issues my whole life so hemorrhoids unfortunately were not new to me, but this severity was new! Since there is nothing you can do to get rid of them other than lay down, I had to lay in bed for almost 3 days straight two different times (a few weeks apart) because they were so bad. Like I can’t walk without being in a crazy amount of pain bad. Lucas moved my iMac from the living room to my night stand so I could work on projects from bed.
  • Discomfort sleeping. Thankfully my mom got me a pregnancy pillow for my birthday that has minimized the discomfort 🙂 But even with the pillow it seems like there is no magical position that allows you to wake up feeling refreshed, not lethargic. I can’t wait to sleep on my back again!!
• UNEXPECTED
  • Losing the minimal pelvic floor muscles I did have. So rude.
  • The dark vertical line down the middle of the belly. I don’t see a lot of naked pregnant bellies, so I didn’t know I would likely get a dark line. My doctor said they don’t know why it appears but it goes away after delivery. It slowly faded in so it wasn’t noticeable until the end of the 2nd trimester.
  • Belly not being round all the time. I had no idea that the abdominal wall has to split to make room for a growing belly (although it makes sense). I also didn’t realize that with your abs on the sides and no muscles in the center, anytime you clench your abs to pull yourself up from laying down the belly shape looks like a mountain peak, not a round ball!! The first few times this happened it really freaked me out. Also, depending on which direction the baby is resting, the belly adapts to that shape so I often had a lopsided protrusion more than a round belly. The middle of my belly is super sensitive too. I accidentally hit it on the edge of the counter or when I close a door (because it sticks out so far!) and it is always surprisingly sensitive.
  • Maternity clothes not fitting well until mid 2nd trimester. It was fun in the very beginning to buy maternity clothes but then I had to wait several months to wear them. Also, the maternity clothes start getting tight (some way too tight) by mid 3rd trimester so there is a really small window of time where clothes designed to fit a pregnant body actually fit.
  • Loss of patience with people and general irritability. Don’t worry I always kept my thoughts to myself, but they were typically angry thoughts. I’ve never had road rage (or really any kind of rage) in my life but for some reason I became an easily irritable person for a little while… I wasn’t a fan of getting irritated but I felt like I couldn’t see it coming so it was hard to manage. Glad that’s over! And I’m sure Lucas is glad too : )
  • Unexpected crying for no reason. I’ve never been an emotional person, so my inability to control my emotions during pregnancy has been a source of frustration and uncertainty. How am I supposed to confidently go into a job interview if I know there is a chance I might just tear up for no reason?!?! Also, I’m putting this under trimester 2 (the middle) because it happened all 3 trimesters.
  • Sensitive feet, specifically my heels. I’ve often heard about pregnant women wanting to raise their feet because they get swollen but my feet didn’t swell (well not until 37 weeks…) my heels just hurt all the time. It felt like they were always bruised.
  • Super dry skin (I’ve always had dry skin but this is the intense, going to crack and bleed if you don’t fix it kind) but only on the outsides of my boobs… I still can’t figure this one out.
  • Acne on my shoulders... What?? How?? Why??

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3rd Trimester

• EXPECTED
  • Stretch marks. I expected these to come way sooner, but it took until week 37 for them to show up on my belly. The doctors say stretch marks are 100% genetic so you can’t prevent them, but I put lotion on my belly every single day (and body scrub occasionally) and I do think it helped postpone their arrival.
  • Braxton Hicks contractions. My doctor said these can start as early as 24 weeks… but since they are mild at first then grow in intensity that most people don’t feel them (or don’t have them at all).
  • Comments from strangers. I’ve heard a lot of people say that strangers talk to you about your belly when you’re pregnant but I didn’t anticipate just how often it would happen. I didn’t realize how much I like to keep to myself until random people started talking to me all the time!
• UNEXPECTED
  • Difficulty breathing. They say your lung capacity decreases when pregnant because the baby is squishing all of your organs, including your lungs. I didn’t expect to be woken up in the middle of the night because I’m out of breath. Sitting down too fast (aka normal person speed) or baby kicking in the right spot literally knocks the wind out of you. Wheezing when laughing. I guess this goes with limited lung capacity. It makes me laugh harder.
  • Reflux. I didn’t have heartburn (thank goodness!) and my guess is that heartburn is worse, but reflux is still awful and there is nothing you can do to fix or relieve it. Just imagine anytime you recline or lean to one side (don’t even think about actually laying down!) it feels like a stomach full of food is coming back up through your throat because there isn’t enough room for it in your belly.
  • Getting puffy. I thought my feet might swell a little, but I didn’t think at the end (around 37 weeks) I’d start getting puffy everywhere… feet, legs, arms, face… can’t wait for that to go away!

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My official due date is tomorrow. I thought for sure I would have had the baby by now. Even my doctor guessed the baby would come 3-4 days early. I have a scheduled induction in 4 days… so if baby doesn’t come soon he will in 4 days! I hear that postpartum is the hardest part. Honestly I’m ready for the new discomforts that are on the horizon because I’m pretty tired of the current ones. Also, I like change : )

My doctor also guessed the baby would be 7-7.5 lbs but I’m thinking if my belly size is any indication of baby size he will be bigger than that. Wish me luck on getting him out! But seriously…

The best part of the movie “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”…