The Third Trimester and Unpleasant Surprises

So here I am, almost 37 weeks along now, and still not feeling how everyone I know told me I would feel when I was pregnant. Every time I run into someone I'm asked how much longer I have left and then that is always followed up with, "you must be so ready to be done!"
The truth is I don't feel "done" at all. In fact I keep getting my weeks messed up and shock myself on a daily basis when I realize just how little time I have left. I'm not overly huge.... Or at least most of the time I don't feel like it. I still go on the treadmill everyday and try to work out as much as possible. I'm not waddling yet, which could be courtesy of how the baby is sitting. I'm also not experiencing any pelvic pain or pressure of any kind.
In a way this trimester has reminded me a lot of my first trimester. I've experienced days where I'm so exhausted I nap twice a day; granted my nightly sleeps have diminished to merely 3.5 hours on average. I've also had some cravings that I experienced in the early weeks of pregnancy. Currently it's DQ double cheeseburgers where as my very first craving was for teenburgers. My feelings of disbelief have also returned. Maybe it's because we tried for so long to get pregnant but I can't believe it's actually happening. I know when we get to meet our little baby it's going to be the most significant and exciting moment of our lives!

Although I consider myself fairly lucky with how smooth pregnancy has been, there have been a few unpleasant surprises. First of all, the constant worry I've felt in regards to babies health is something I never thought I'd experience. I thought getting pregnant was stressful but it turns out pregnancy is even more so. It took 21 weeks for me to feel baby move and ever since then I worry that I don't feel it as much as others do. This could be due to my anterior placenta, but at this point when baby has lazy days I still get freaked out. The doctors have also detected a bit of an irregular heartbeat over the past few months. Sometimes there are extra beats and sometimes the heart skips beats. It was never bad enough for them to send me for further testing but the baby may need some tests after it is born :( I'm praying this will correct itself when the baby is born and there is no underlying issue.
As thoughts of giving birth begin to fill my mind I kind of wish I looked into getting a midwife. This was the year my family doctor decided to give up delivering babies so I was referred to an OB when I was 3 months pregnant. What I didn't expect is how long it would take to get in! I didn't end up seeing her until I was 30 weeks pregnant. I have only met with her three times and have virtually no relationship with her. The appointments were maybe 10 minutes long and I feel like she always has to refresh her memory regarding my file when I go in and has no idea who I am.
One thing that is kind of funny is how many hours I've spent worrying about labour and birth, it probably works out to weeks of time spent over the course of my life worrying about this. As it turns out baby is breach and I'm not going to experience labour. Due to the baby's position and the blood thinner injections I'm on, I will have a scheduled c section approx 2 weeks before my due date. Originally I thought this sounded like a sweet deal but now that the surgery is only 1.5 weeks away... I'm TERRIFIED! It's hard putting your trust in someone you have only met three times to keep you and your baby alive through the procedure. As someone who has always struggled with anxiety and panic attacks and hates taking any kind of drugs, I'm worried about my mindframe as I lay awake being sliced open. I also have this weird worry I will feel them cutting me open or stitching me up. Perhaps my biggest fear is that there will be complications, or I will start bleeding excessively and be awake to hear all the panic in the OR.

Hopefully in my next post I will have a positive birth story to tell you. Regardless of how this baby gets here I have some really great pleasant surprises about pregnancy to tell you and I know the list will only get bigger after this little one arrives.

The First Trimester

I know pregnancy is different for every woman. There are a huge list of potential symptoms expecting mothers can experience and none of them are all that great. Overall looking back on the last 34 weeks I can honestly say I feel I've had it pretty easy. For the most part, my visions of what a nightmare pregnancy was going to be like have been far from the truth.

After the doctor confirmed I was pregnant I was still in disbelief. Maybe it's because I found out really early, between 5-6 weeks. I didn't feel any different until about 8 weeks along, but even then I just felt like crap for no reason. This was the point where I started to experience 24 hour nausea. Thankfully, I only ever threw up once. However the fight to keep things in my stomach where they belonged was excruciating. Many scents including laundry detergent made me want to hurl. I actually had to get rid of some of my clothes from early pregnancy because just looking at them made those feelings come back. I also can no longer eat vegetable soup for the same reason. At this point I also slept a lot. Not just because supporting your baby before your placenta is fully formed can be exhausting, I was trying to avoid having to face the nausea. The other major symptom I noticed at this point was bloat. I didn't look pregnant I just looked like I had gained 5-10 pounds overnight! I longed for the days when my bump would pop so it was obvious I was pregnant and not just over eating.

Some of the other surprising and unpleasant symptoms I experienced were:

• Excess saliva. I felt like a drooling baby. Every time I talked I would have to wipe my mouth!
• Sensitivity to the sun. Any time I tried to sit in it I felt sick and as a former beach bum this made me really sad.
• Migraines. I had to leave work a couple times due to spotted vision and flashing light in my sight.

Perhaps the worst part of my first trimester was when I learned I had to be on blood thinner injections. I had suffered a blot clot in my leg a few years earlier and now, as a precaution, I was told I would have to inject blood thinners into my stomach EVERY SINGLE DAY for the next 10 MONTHS at least! The needle was bigger than I expected, I was hoping for just a small one like diabetics use to check their blood but the ones I use are about double the size.

There were no really good surprises in my first trimester aside from my first ultrasound. However I still didn't find this as a defining moment when It finally hit me that I was pregnant. The baby was so small it looked like a seahorse and I didn't get to hear a heart beat until about 15 weeks.

Pregnancy

The truth is I have many reasons for being absent from this blog for over a year, but I have chosen not to go into detail about why I've been missing and just start writing again.

As I sit here, I'm currently 34 weeks pregnant and on my first official day of maternity leave. I am no longer employed. It takes a minute to sink in and for a second I feel a surge of fear run through me. My life is about to change in so many ways and in just 6 short weeks I will be faced with so many of my hopes, dreams and fears. The road to get here has been completely different from what I had previously imagined. Pregnancy is very interesting to say the least. Over the next few days I plan to share with you my experience so far, what's surprised me the most and what I have found to be the weirdest symptoms no one ever told me about.

Growing up I wasn't sure I wanted children, in fact it wasn't a decision I made until a couple years after I married. When I was about 24 I began to explore the option. Even though up until that time it was never something I had considered, I had always wondered what it would be like to be pregnant. I found the idea terrifying and the thought of giving birth could almost paralyze me with fear. After my husband and I decided to try to get pregnant I convinced myself I would be the most miserable pregnant woman anyone had ever met. I pictured myself glued to the toilet bowl unable to keep anything down. I had visions of blowing up like a balloon and gaining 50+ pounds. I thought work would be out of the question because I would be too tired to get out of bed. Certain I would get stretch marks all over, I wondered how different I would feel about myself after giving birth and if I was even capable of raising a child and being a good mom.

The minute I saw the positive pregnancy test on my bathroom counter was the minute I realized things were not always as people tell you they will be. We had been trying for quite awhile to conceive and all of my mom friends told me I would know the second I was pregnant, that it was something you could just "feel". All I felt I was disbelief. Nothing about me seemed different and since I didn't "feel" like everyone told me I would, I was convinced I was witnessing a false positive. Because of this there was no screaming and crying or surprising my husband with our result. Instead it was more of a, "babe can you come look at this? Don't bother getting excited I'm sure this isn't real. I will let you know in a few days." Well 5 days later and about 8 pregnancy tests later, the doctor confirmed the news. I was finally pregnant.