Pregnancy Thoughts Thus Far...22 Weeks

Current Week: 22 weeks

Current Month: 5 months

Date: 01/23/20

So pregnancy thus far has been.... well.... pregnancy. You always hear the adorable “OMG I loved being pregnant! It was the most amazing time of my life! I felt so amazing carrying my sweet baby!” Well.... don’t get me wrong, pregnancy is an amazing and miraculous thing; but it is most of the time far from “beautiful.” From gas that smells like a newborn’s stinky diaper to random stabbing pain in the lower region, there are many interesting and unpleasant realities that come with being pregnant. Keep in mind though, every single pregnancy is different. Do not go off of my experience as the “textbook” idea of pregnancy. Some women endure pregnancy in some of the most harsh conditions while others fly through it as if they’re not carrying an extra human in them. Let me say that one thing that gets me through the not-so-glamorous days is my husband. He is my rock and a giant support system for me. I can be a flat out awful human being to him and he still puts up with me. He will throw in the occasional humorous “quit your whining,” but in reality, it does help to calm me down.

Let me preface that I was also on edge the entire first trimester since we had experienced a miscarriage at around 7.5 weeks with our first baby (just a few months before). It was honestly the biggest emotional rollercoaster I had ever been on. On one hand I was so excited to have this tiny human growing in me that my husband and I made, but I was also so scared that I would get my hopes up just to have another baby taken from me. I never understood why women got so emotional over a miscarriage even early on. My thoughts were “Hey lady it was super early and if you’re like most, you may not have even known you were pregnant if it hadn’t been for certain symptoms.” I was very wrong. I had switched to a different type of birth control and so I thought all of my symptoms were hormone related from the birth control; not being pregnant. My husband and I had just gotten married and we were certainly not trying. My husband for a few weeks thought I was pregnant, but of course I shrugged it off and ignored him. Well, my symptoms got worse and I started bloating in my abdomen a ton and was having lots of tell-tale signs that it may not be my birth control. So, I finally made an appointment with the doctor to see how far along I was. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office as my urine results came back positive. For the first time, I got super excited thinking of a tiny human growing in me. Except.... when she brought the ultrasound machine in, they couldn’t find a heartbeat or any sign of the baby. There was a gestational sac, but no baby. She called it a “chemical miscarriage.” My heart sank. I always watched in the movies where the women broke down in the doctor’s office after being told they couldn’t find a heartbeat, but I honestly thought it was completely staged. How could someone immediately get so emotional for something they had never met or seen? It is not staged. I remember feeling complete anger and hatred towards God. I thought, why would you let me get so excited about a baby, when I did not even want one yet, just to take it away from me?! I broke down in the doctor’s office. The worst part... my husband was sure I was pregnant and even though we weren’t ready, I could tell he was excited. I couldn’t bear to tell him that night that there was no baby so what did I do- I lied. I told him that it was just the birth control and that everything was fine... but I was not fine. I was far from fine. I was so emotional that night that I blew up on him over a stove burner needing to be replaced. Later the next day I told him what had really happened because I quickly realized that from my actions the previous evening, I was not going to be okay and I could not act like it had not happened. My husband is not an emotional person at all; unlike me, who wears their emotions on their sleeve. Telling him the news of the miscarriage, I saw how it affected him. He expresses emotion through music and his songs were heartbreaking. It was one of the hardest and most painful times of our marriage, simply because something awful happened that neither of us could have controlled. I learned to love him even more than I did just a few months before at the altar. He became my confidant and safe haven. Flash forward to September 16, 2019. Here I was sitting in my living room looking at the multiple pregnancy tests in front of me ranging from the + sign to a very strong double line. I couldn’t believe that we were pregnant; again. Even on birth control. I was very excited but super nervous to experience this ride again. I figured since God allowed us to get pregnant a second time WHILE on birth control, (again), then he must have decided that our plan to have kids in five to six years was going to be more like seven to eight months.

You know that feeling when you have just gotten your car all cleaned out and maybe splurged to get the interior and exterior vacuumed and washed, just for your child or in my case, my dog, to destroy the cleanliness of your hard work? Yea well the first trimester was like that for me, except it wasn’t because of my dog, my child’s dirty fingers everywhere, or my husband’s left-over Chick-fil-A; it was my constant need to vomit. So think about a really drunk person throwing up in your car. Now multiply that by 2x a week; at least. It gets to the point where you just say f*** it and bring along the giant soup pan in your car. No, I am not going to a potluck guys; oh and I recommend you don’t eat anything out of that for a while until after its been bleached a few times (haha). Everyone says that morning sickness is the worst when you’re pregnant... well that’s a given. But, what NO-ONE tells you (believe me, there’s a lot of stuff that no one tells you when you’re pregnant), is that not only are you throwing up constantly, but you just feel like you have the flu 24/7. Most people say that after they ate, the morning sickness went away.... well, I suppose I just wasn’t that fortunate. I was to the point where even the thought of water made me sick. I guess I am just a little more of a wimp when it comes to throwing up. I rather have shoulder surgery awake rather than throw up. Even though the throwing up was awful, I did find a few tricks; one of which I got from my grandmother whom of which was kicking cancer’s a** for the third time (and beat it)! So what was grandma’s secret? Sea Bands. They saved my sanity along with my stomach. A lot of people where them on cruises, but I worse mine on a daily basis to the point where I needed up styling my watch and outfits around them. They are not the sexiest thing out there if I am being honest. I suppose I could have gotten them in a cute pink or white color, but either way, they are stick the thick bulky sweat-band like material that goes on your wrists like a bracelet. Normally, you only have to wear one, but since I was throwing up every single day, I wore both of those bands with hope. Another trick I learned was to suck on Jolly Ranchers. Yes, I know they’re probably not the best pregnancy snack, but they helped so much. It was just having something to suck on that I assume helped relieve the non-stop awful saliva in my mouth. Oh, that is another thing that a lot of people don’t tell you about pregnancy- you will have the most awful tasting saliva in your mouth at times to the point where you will wonder if you’ve brushed your teeth in the past decade! Back to the tricks... I also found that even though I couldn’t stand water, I loved chewing on ice. I don’t know how or why it helped with nausea, but it did. While the morning sickness (sorry, all day sickness), wasn’t great, as long as I wasn’t in a car I was fine. About two months into finding out we were pregnant, my husband got a job offer in St. Louis, MO. We had a weekend (literally), to look for a place to live and get a UHAUL booked. We drove down to St. Louis around 6:30AM on a Friday morning and returned to our house around 9:00PM that evening. I have never understood why traveling while in early pregnancy is so bad... something with a moving vehicle and a stomach that decides to do cartwheels every five seconds might have something to do with it. I was so thankful to get to look at a few places, just to get out of the car that I literally threw myself out of the car into the grass so that I could throw up. (Sorry to the house in Kirkwood that we did not rent). With all of that being said, the most amazing part of the first trimester was getting to see our baby girl go from a little “gummy bear” to a little itty-bitty human. It was absolutely fascinating seeing how much she changed in just the first few months. I would love to say that the first trimester was full of much more excitement, but it really was not. Even though being sick constantly was not the best part of pregnancy, I was thankful for it. I learned to lean on my husband more than I ever had and to ask for help (which for me is extremely hard). More than anything, as the trimester went by and my baby kept getting bigger and healthier at every appointment, I found comfort in knowing that God seemed to have me on the right track for something amazing to come in seven short months.