On the craziness that is pregnancy

When you are trying to get pregnant and are in the dreaded two week wait it’s impossible not to symptom spot:  Are my boobs more sore than usual?  Am I feeling extra tired?  Is that an implantation cramp that I just felt?  And then of course you google pregnancy symptoms as though the internet may hold the key to giving you a positive result before any pee stick stands a chance.

On the two occasions that I turned out to be pregnant the biggest symptom that I had was a complete lack of symptoms.  I felt totally and utterly normal.  It felt like my period was just around the corner.  I felt slightly crampy and my boobs felt exactly the same as they always do – indifferent to the prods they were receiving.

And that’s when I started to realize that pregnancy is different for everyone and that I was one of those oddities who would get more of the bizarre symptoms and none of the ones you hear about all the time.

I never had morning sickness!

About 7.5 months pregnant before my foot got too fat.

When you’ve invested so much in having a baby you expect to feel sick.  I never did and whilst I was grateful I was also a little disappointed that I didn’t experience it!  The only thing remotely similar to this was my myriad of food aversions.  If it weren’t for Jarlsberg cheese and Granny Smith apples, I don’t know how I would have survived!

I work in a restaurant and it smelled like a sewage farm to me when I was in my first trimester.  It didn’t make me feel sick, just repulsed.  It was hard to be chirpy when the horror that people could actually eat there was constantly lurking!!

I wasn’t tired.
My energy levels didn’t shift at all during my first trimester.  Maybe I was running on the adrenaline of finally being pregnant… who knows.  I kept waiting for the waves of fatigue to overcome me but it didn’t happen until the last 6 weeks or so and I blame that more on the searing heat of our Summer that year.

Pregnancy Rhinitis.
Imagine having a cold for 6 months with post nasal drip constantly.  That was me.  It was gross.  I was so horrified in myself as I became a secret spitter.  It was the only way to expel the copious excess fluids rolling around in my sinuses.

Photosensitivity
Ever been sunburned at the beginning of April?  I ate my lunch outside on a beautiful (rare) sunny day.  I was out there maybe 30 minutes.  I got so sunburned!!!  I was peeling a week later.  Under normal circumstances this would never have happened.  Lesson learned – I stayed in the shade for the rest of my pregnancy.

2 weeks before birth. Guilded in gold and feeling like a Greek goddess!

I didn’t love feeling the baby move
I was one of those anomalies who felt their babies super early.  In fact I first felt him move at 11 weeks.  I felt crazy so didn’t tell anyone but I can remember it vividly.  I was having my flu shot when I felt an intense tickly sensation down my side in two movements.  It wasn’t until 3 weeks later when that sensation became constant that I realized it had been my baby.

There is something wonderfully reassuring when you feel the life you’ve created moving around inside of you.  I also found it scary.  Plus I’m very ticklish so I didn’t love it.  When he was really active I would silently tell him “thanks for letting me know you’re safe, do you mind keeping still now?”

Fat Foot
Some women blow up like a tick when they’re near the end of their pregnancies.  Water retention is no joke.  Apparently the only part of my body that wanted to participate in this rite of passage was my left foot.  I only have half a uterus and it’s the left half.  Maybe that means that I carried more weight on the left and that’s why I swelled on that side?  It was very painful.  Flip flops were my friend.  Work became tough and I ended up stopping when I was 34 weeks pregnant as I just couldn’t be on my feet anymore.

And that was it.  Being pregnant felt remarkably like not being pregnant except I had crazy alien movements going on in my belly.  I was really lucky!  But then I’d been very unlucky for the past couple of years so I deserved some luck finally.