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Baby L is peacefully sleeping in his crib and I’m finally enjoying some me time, what do I do? I scroll through my most recent pictures of him like I didn’t just see him 5 minutes ago, get a nice little rush of dopamine, decide to keep scrolling through memory lane and I go back all the way to when my pregnancy journey started. This has been happening since baby L was born. I love being able to see him and hold him now but I miss all the little feelings I had when I was protecting him in my belly.
Watching the pictures of my pregnancy journey is always a little bittersweet. I’m relieved I’m no longer pregnant but I also miss so many moments and emotions I had thanks to baby L.
I get relieved knowing I no longer have a diet restriction, I can sleep in any position I want to, and I don’t pee every 5 minutes; but I also miss experiencing all those first time feelings when baby L was growing in my belly.
I still remember the moment M and I found out we were pregnant like it was yesterday. We were not planning in getting pregnant but we were ready if it happened. We were just “letting the process happen.” We both had the mentality of “if it happens it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.” We were both getting ready to go to a friend’s wedding and as we were both finishing up I started thinking that aunt flo was late a couple days. Usually I wouldn’t have been worried about it but for some reason that day something was telling me to just take a quick pregnancy test to make sure I wasn’t pregnant and feel at ease drinking at the wedding. I looked at M and asked him if I should take a pregnancy test since I was late. He looked at me and said what every man would say in that situation, “It’s up to you babe.” I grabbed the left over pregnancy test strip I got at the 99¢ store, peed on it, and set on the side while I did some last minute adjustments to my hair and make up. Five minutes later I checked the strip and my heart stopped. After having a pregnancy loss earlier that year I immediately started to have a semi-panicked inner monologue with myself on whether or not I had seen the two little pink lines on the test trip. I went from being excited to anxious and worried because I immediately went into “what if we experience another loss” mode, and started questioning whether or not I should get excited now or wait until we’re in the “clear.” I must’ve had a terrified look on my face because I heard a muffled voice in the background a couple times. After what felt like the longest minute I heard M asking me what was wrong. I looked at him and I just showed him the pregnancy test strip; his puzzled face was priceless. He was trying to decipher what this tiny strip with two pink lines and no positive sign meant. The last pregnancy test had a big “+” sign on it, and was the size of a marker. Maybe he was expecting something like that as opposed to a paper like strip with no straight “-” or “+” sign. I managed to say, “It’s positive, we’re pregnant, and I can’t drink at the wedding tonight.” M was smiling and excited but I was able to tell he was also worried. Probably having that same inner monologue I had.
We're having a baby!...
first trimester
I wasn’t feeling any nausea nor was I puking my guts out and that worried me. I mentally prepared myself to receive the worst news on our first appointment because I didn’t feel any different than how I felt with the previous pregnancy. The days leading up to the appointment were filled with anxiety and sadness because I kept thinking this should be an exciting time but instead my brain was taking me in the opposite direction.
I was finally 8 weeks and the appointment day came, after answering a million questions in that little hospital room, the RN brought M in to join me, and fired up that ultrasound machine. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I heard it beating extremely fast but it wasn’t my heartbeat I was hearing, it was baby L’s heartbeat! I felt a sense of extreme relieve and euphoria followed by some water works. I was grateful but I was also shocked! On the ride home I kept looking at the ultrasound picture and thinking that I was really pregnant and M and I were going to have a baby.
We were so excited and eager to tell the world that we were expecting but we decided to just tell our immediate family and close friends
I was feeling a little nausea here and there but nothing too drastic until week 10 came around. The last 2 weeks of the first trimester I felt bloated all the time and like I was hungover. Spells of exhaustion and nausea would hit me briefly in the afternoon and after work around 4pm.
Naps, ginger + lemon grass tea, ginger ale, and ginger chew candies became my life for the last 2 weeks of the first trimester.
CRAVINGS:
I craved a lot of salads, carbs, fruit, and carrot juice with ginger. M would go to jamba Juice twice a week sometimes just to get carrot juice!
AVERSIONS:
Fast food, specially cheeseburgers, were a big no no. The smell of food from some fast food chains would even make nauseous. I didn’t care too much about fast food before so this aversion was not a big deal. I did feel devastated when I finally got an appetite and was craving beef ribs but baby L was not having it. The minute I opened the container and that BBQ smell reached my nose, I gagged a little. While I was devastated, my dogs were pretty happy that night.
The smell of body ordor when a person drinks was a huge aversion. M would go out with friends or to happy hour with his coworkers and would have a couple beers . Every single time he came back after drinking I had major nausea to the point that I would almost puke because the smell was way too pungent for me. I remember asking him to shower or sleep on the couch because I couldn’t handle that smell.
Second Trimester
This was by far the best time I had during my pregnancy. I felt so happy and grateful that baby L made it to the second trimester milestone. I also started feeling more energized and my nausea was triggered only by certain smells. I was feeling so good physically that often times I would forget I was pregnant.
M and I got the greatest news at the beginning of the second trimester. When I was 13 weeks, we found out we were going to have a baby boy! I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world. I’ll never forget the look of happiness M gave me in that little room when he saw the light turn blue behind the screen where we watching baby L sitting crossed legged and was covering his face with his tiny hands. We really thought we were going to have a baby girl, so when we found out we were going to have a boy we were both ecstatic but equally shocked. This was also the first time I noticed baby L moving around in my belly. I was amazed at how much this tiny little human was moving in there but I wasn’t feeling any of his movements.
Besides finding out the gender of our baby, some of my favorite moments during this pregnancy came when I was about 19 weeks and 23 weeks pregnant. At 19 weeks I was laying on the bed getting ready to fall asleep and all of a sudden I felt like a had butterflies in my stomach. It was a quick feeling that I happened two more times that night and I knew I was actually feeling my baby boy moving in my belly. I would spent the rest of my days waiting to feel that feeling again but they would only be noticeable at night when I was trying to catch some zzz’s. Every time I would feel baby L moving, I would feel a rush of intense euphoria rushing through my body and I would feel so connected with this tiny stranger I was growing inside me. It was bizzare but I loved every second of it.
At 23 weeks, M felt baby L’s kick on my belly. He looked at me with his mouth and eyes wide open and asked me if what he felt was a kick or if it was me messing with him. Once he realized it was his son, he let out a huge smile that made me fall in love with this man a little bit more than I already was.
Another favorite moment was when I felt baby L’s hiccups for the first time around week 27th. At first I thought they were kicks but after realizing these constant little jerky movements were actually hiccups, my heart melted. After going through a pregnancy loss, I had moments where I would get worried and anxiety would creep in throughout this pregnancy. Feeling baby L’s kicks, and hiccups would always make me feel at ease.
M and I started decorating baby L’s room little by little. I drove M insane looking for the perfect dresser. I blame that on the hormones!
I had to get creative with my pre-baby clothes since my belly and boobs were getting harder to dress around 25 weeks. I started using Bump Butter belly cream which helped me avoid stretch marks when my belly decided to make a quick entrance this trimester and later on in my third trimester when baby L got really big within a week. At the end of this trimester M’s sweatpants and t-shirts were no longer just his, they were OURS now since they were the most comfortable pjs.
I depended more on M some days to help me get out of bed or getting up from the couch because the belly was growing faster than my body was adapting to its new gravity center.
Around 20 weeks I started getting pains here and there. I started getting migraines and would wake up in pain due to calf cramps in the middle of the night. M would massage my calf while I was biting the pillow in agony. I wasn’t able to lay on my stomach at this stage anymore. As someone who loves sleep and loves to sleep on her stomach making a figure 4 with her legs, this was the part of pregnancy I struggled with the most. I not only lost sleep because I was starting to pee more frequently but I also lost more sleep because I wasn’t able to get comfortable in bed. I will definitely not miss this part! I also started having numbness on my right hand. At first I just felt numbness in my index finger and my thumb but as I approached the end of the second trimester, I had to wear a wrist brace to bed because the fingertips of all my fingers would get numb and I would wake up in the middle of night in pain because I felt like my hand was on fire.
CRAVINGS:
At this point my appetite was back and I was eating just about anything. I was still craving salads, fruit, and carrot juice. Coconut meat and water as well as pistachio ice cream, Cajun style crab legs, and cereal with a lot of milk in the morning were must haves during the second trimester.
I also started craving foods I don’t usually eat but my husband ate all the time like chocolate chip muffins, blueberry muffins, and bean & cheese burritos.
AVERSIONS:
A few fast food places and people’s BO after drinking were still the only things that would make me really nauseous and sometimes ga
The last stretch...
third trimester
I felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster during this trimester. This whole pregnancy felt surreal and time was flying by. I was eager to meet baby L. I wanted to hold him and kiss him but I also knew that once he arrived he was not just going to make us a full family but he would also change the dynamic of our current little family so I wanted time to slow down to enjoy the last weeks with M and my fur babies a little bit more before he got here. It was a strange feeling and sometimes I would feel guilty for even thinking like that because baby L was enriching our lives already.
I had an intense nesting feeling at the end of the third trimester. I felt like I needed to get the nursery ready before baby L’s arrival. I finally stopped driving M crazy after we finally found the perfect dresser for the nursery and assembled the crib together even though baby L was going to sleep in a bassinet next to us for the first few months.
Four weeks after the due date M and I had an amazing co-ed baby shower thanks to my mom, sister, sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law. I couldn’t be more thankful, these women were amazing at getting everything done in such a short amount of time. M and I were having too much fun talking to our friends that we totally forgot to take pictures of all the baby shower details. A huge thanks to everyone that came for making us feel so loved.
One of my main struggles at the end of this trimester were rolling out of bed and getting up from the couch. Brain fog was pretty bad for me too! I’m already a pretty forgetful individual but when I got pregnant I was way worse! I used to forget simple words! Having a conversation with someone was sometimes frustrating because I couldn’t think of certain words. I would also keep forgetting I had a basketball for a belly and I would bump into almost everything (Sorry baby L).
I was working for majority of my third trimester and every now and then when I had to park far and walk to my department, my watch would congratulate me for working out because I would get so out of breath just walking from point A to point B. To top it of, since I was on my feet for work majority of the time, braxton hicks made an appearance early in this trimester and round ligament pain was horrible! At one point, I got both and I felt like I was in pre labor. The contractions were so painful that they would stop me on my tracks. After feeling like this I decided to take it slow and I thankfully never got that pain again. I used a pregnancy belt around 30 weeks which helped immensely.
I took maternity leave 4 weeks before my due date and I’m so glad I did. The last 4 weeks of this trimester were physically challenging. I started to get this horrible pain in my pelvic area, every time I would get out of bed I would hear a popping sound followed by pain for a few seconds but that was enough to make me dread rolling out of bed every time I had to go pee. Since my belly got a way bigger a little too fast for my body to adjust, the pregnancy band I was using for work was no longer working so I had to upgrade to this support belt, this was specially helpful when I took the dogs on long walks.
At this point, everything was getting bigger except my bladder.
Seeing my body change so much in less than a year made me feel extremely thankful and in awe of what my body was able to do so far. I was growing tiny organs! My belly continued to grow and stretch to fit my growing baby boy. My ribs adapted to move outward to make room anytime he decided to stretch his tiny legs. My organs made themselves so compact to allow more room for him to grow. My bladder took majority of the heavy lifting inside my body since my baby boy was constantly using it as a pillow while my legs and feet were taking that extra weight like a champ. I was peeing every 5 minutes! Getting out of bed was such a struggle so I would wake up M almost every time I would go to the bathroom. We were team “no sleep” already.
I was also scared of all the upcoming changes my body was going to have to face in L&D and even postpartum but I remember thinking that if my body can adapt and evolve the way it had so far, I trusted it to do it again during those challenging times to come.
AVERSIONS:
People’s BO after drinking was still a big no no for me.
Baby L was not ready to come out to see the world by his due date. We had to schedule an induction date to meet him since he was very comfortable in my belly. Click here to read about my birth story.
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