You peed on a stick- now what?
So you peed on a stick and two lines appeared – congratulations! If you’re anything like me, you peed on multiple sticks just to make sure you got the same result and then did the happy dance. Cue tears of joy, wonderment, staring at the mirror trying to visualise the growing little person inside of you and then asking the whopping big question – now what? The answer? Nothing. Nada. You wait.
No one ever talks about the first 12 weeks because by the time you find out someone is pregnant they’ve past those 12 weeks and have already had their first scan to make sure everything is ok and on track. What I didn’t realise is that you do nothing in those first 12 weeks except pick a doctor or hospital and 12 weeks is a Really. Long. Time.
Why is 12 weeks the “safety” mark?
Until I was pregnant I never paid much attention as to why 12 was the magic number. I have since learnt that this is the most important part for a foetus’s development as all their major organs are being produced and growing, so if something is going to go wrong, this is the riskiest stage.
Morning sickness – or should I say, all day sickness – does not necessarily end at 12 weeks…
Some women are lucky and don’t get morning/afternoon/evening sickness, if you are one of these women count yourself lucky (and we of the Morning Sickness Club secretly hate you). If you are one of the women who does get sick, for most of you it well end at the 12 week mark (something to do with all those hormones and growing organs part). I had no such luck and at about the 6 week mark, nausea that felt like the hangover from hell kicked in. By week 8, I was running on a new schedule: set alarm earlier than normal so the following could commence: Eat Breakfast One (it didn’t matter what I ate it was going to come up regardless) lose Breakfast One, Eat Breakfast Two, keep Breakfast Two down, get ready for work, go to work. I was super lucky and I managed to keep this routine for 23.5 weeks. For some women (think the Duchess of Cambridge) it never goes away and drugs and a visit to the hospital are needed, and for others it goes away but comes back in the third trimester (woo hoo!).
It got to the point where my husband and I were counting how many days I had been vomit free. Each morning of managing to eat and keep down one breakfast was a massive milestone. Everyone knew about it! I was so proud! I would talk to my bump and try and reason with it – ‘Come on little one, mummy and you really need this food, so let’s try and keep it in, yeah?’ The kid’s stubborn, as is my body, and neither of them cared.
If you do get sickness during pregnancy can I make the following suggestions: avoid breads; it’s hard to bring back up as it coagulates and it gets stuck (it’s not pretty and it hurts). Don’t drink orange juice; that shit stings and is like acid coming back up. I can recommend Coco Pops, although not the healthiest cereal (who cares you’re going to lose it anyway) but at least it tastes like chocolate and was the nicest of the food groups to expel. Peppermint and Ginger tea do help, but if you’re going to be sick, tea ain’t gonna help you, but it might help you mentally, so cheers.
Everyone is different – pregnancy is the same
This was my first pregnancy and I have been lucky enough to share the experience with a handful of friends; this has been a good and a bad thing. Good, because we could discuss and dissect what was happening to our bodies and our growing babies and supply high fives when we reached milestones – 12 week scan, 20 week scan, beautiful baby.
But this has its drawbacks too. When you are surrounded by pregnant women you can’t help but compare yourself to them; tummy size, asking yourself how come they don’t have to have two breakfasts/stretch marks/gestational diabetes etc. The tummy size was the worst. My due date is sandwiched between two friends who are having their second babies, with us being only weeks apart, yet, despite the fact they have in theory “room to stretch”, I still managed to become WAAAAY bigger than them. Like, a lot.
Concerned that I may in fact be carrying an elephant, I asked my obstetrician if everything was okay. He smiled and shook his head (no doubt having had this conversation many times with his patients) and told me I can’t compare myself to other women. There are a number of factors why I may look bigger and everyone is different. I knew mentally I shouldn’t compare, yet how can you resist when your friends have these lovely little bumps and you look like you went nuts at an all-you-can-eat buffet?
There are a number of factors of why women carry differently, the main ones being height, genetics (yours and your partners), fluid, size of placenta, size of the baby, gestational diabetes, weight before and during pregnancy and the list goes on and on. Like bodies when you’re not pregnant, everyone has a different body shape so carrying a baby during pregnancy is no different.
You lose ownership of your body and EVERYONE has an opinion
From the minute that little jelly bean starts growing your body is no longer yours. Once you know you are pregnant gone are the days where you can eat or drink what you want. Your boobs get bigger, your tummy starts to stretch, you may go up a shoe size or two (travesty if you’re a shoe fanatic like me) but what I wasn’t prepared for was that I no longer was Clare, I was Clare, pregnant lady and apparently that was all people wanted to talk to me about.
Although it may not seem like it, I have loved being pregnant. Sure, the first 1.5 trimesters sucked due to how crappy I felt, but even when I was vomiting I was still amazed at the amazing thing my body was doing. I have loved watching my belly get bigger and I love my pregnancy boobs, but what I wasn’t ready for was the day-to-day onslaught of people’s opinions, and like shadows, everyone has one.
I was questioned for what I ate, wore, size, where the baby sat, if I thought it was a boy or girl, if other people thought it was a boy or girl, how was I feeling, how was the baby today EVERY.SINGLE. DAY. Now, I know people mean well, but everyone has a horror story, or advice (mostly good, some just ridiculous and others plain out scary) but for some reason, you carrying a baby is a green light for people to be more opinionated then they normally would be and you cease to exist as a normal person.
Your partner will feel helpless for most of your pregnancy
Nothing really prepares you for pregnancy and that goes for your partner too. The pregnancy was planned and we were thrilled when we found out, but apart from the initial help by the male, it sort of ends for them there. The only downside to my pregnancy was that for most of the time my partner watched helplessly as I went through changes. Until about week 18 he had no real connection with the baby like I had and that made me, and I’m sure him, a little sad. I had watched my belly swell and felt the first few flutters of the baby’s movements. When I realised I could feel the movements inside and out, I grabbed my husband’s hand and his reaction to feeling the baby move for the first time was beautiful.
Here was this big bloke reduced to giggles and wide eyes as he couldn’t believe he was feeling his baby move for the first time. Until then he had watched me feel tired, swollen, vomit and eat like it was the last day on earth. But apart from that, he/she have no real connection and he felt helpless that there was nothing he could do to ease my tired, vomiting, moody form.
I asked for the occasional back rub, certain foods (“baby really wants a cheeseburger”, “baby really wants peppermint choc chip ice cream”) and he was wonderful, but in reality, once the seed has been planted, it’s up to the mum to nourish and tend to the baby and they can only hold your hand when you’re swearing at them, cursing the day they had been born because they have done this to you.
