My pregnancy wasn't a bad one, but it wasn't a great one either. The first six months were marked with serious nausea. Luckily for me, and my co-workers, it did not hit until the evenings. In the early months, I craved lemons or anything lemon flavored. I probably drank 20 gallons of lemonade during the first three months. My biggest issue wasn't the nausea though. It was the meat aversion. Mostly because I was in my early stages of pregnancy in the summer. Summer=BBQ. BBQ=meat. I couldn't drive around with my windows down without getting a nose full of tummy gurgling meat. Poor Josh was banned from cooking any type of red meat in our house. Burgers, I don't think so.
My first trimester was largely formed by my inability to eat after 3 pm and my horrible headaches that accompanied it. My energy was zapped and I was in bed most nights by 8. I lost almost 15 pound in the first few months because I was so limited in what I could keep down. My diet was mostly different types of cereal, some pastas, and sour patch kids. It was rough, but we kept on trucking. I remember just wanting to get to 12 weeks because thats when the nausea goes away...for most people...Not me. I enjoyed it for another month-month and a half. But slowly things started changing. I checked the mirror everyday to see if my belly was there. It was there, but not the way I wanted it to be. I wanted people to know I was pregnant, not just toting around a permanent food baby.
Slowly the nausea dimmed and I was ok with some forms of meat in my diet. Which was good because my iron count was incredibly low. I struggled through out pregnancy with low iron and eventually had to be on a supplement. My second trimester was my best one. The nausea had faded enough that I was able to start eating actual dinners, as opposed to the saltines, ginger ale, bland cereal diet I had previously been enjoying. My energy was back up, not a normal level, but I could make it to 10-sometimes 11 pm.! PARTY! I really enjoyed starting to grow, gaining back those lost 15 pounds, and daydreaming about what was in there. We celebrated our one year anniversary and couldn't have been more excited about where we were heading in our second year. My cravings shifted to sweets, garlic and anything starchy. It was the hardest to stay away from sweets because this was right around halloween. I powered through some serious amounts of kit-kats. E started wiggling about inside. A LOT. Every night, he would squiggle around, all legs and elbows. *He actually still wiggles around outside at the same time he wiggled around inside*
My last trimester went by so fast, mostly because it involved the month of Christmas, which means work gets crazy and December flies by! It was kind of nice because I was able to really focus on things going on around me, as opposed to in me. Which was great, because the braxton-hicks were really firing up. Everyday they started getting more painful and more prevalent. But I knew from our birthing class, this was just practice! We started birth class mid November. It was awesome! I absolutely loved our class. We learned so much and it gave me the strength and knowledge I needed to meet our little guy. It was around the beginning of this trimester everyone started noticing that I was pregnant, including people I saw weekly! It was a great ego boost ;) Though the nausea had faded, I soon developed seriously swollen feet, ankles and lower legs. It was horrible. When I would get home from work, I'd scrunch way down in the chair, hike my ham-hock legs up on a pile of four pillows, and slap on a bag of frozen veggies on 'em. Helpful, eh..sort of. But not really... Luckily, December flew by, but January cccrrrraaawwwllleeedd by. SO slowly. I started anticipating E showing up early. Like early-middle January. Each day that I woke up, I thought maybe today! Nope. So, I was pretty sure I was going to make it through all of January and nearly all of February (I figured I would go well past my due date). Fortunately E had other plans and poked on out February 3rd!
It was a long road and there were times I never thought it would end. There wasn't ever a point where I felt done, but as we drove to the hospital early that morning I knew I was ready. I remember when people asked how I was feeling and did we have everything ready or our bags packed, I said I dont care anymore. I wasn't trying to wish him out, but I I had released my body to begin its journey. I held no more fears or anxiety about his arrival. I was ready for him to show up, whenever, where ever, how ever.
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| 10 days before his arrival. |
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| Our thoughtful baby boy. |
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