I was dying of thirst and wanted pickles (the good kind, the refrigerated ones!) and I was so tired I kept taking naps after work. This was all before I took the test and got the positive result! Those sound like typical symptoms right? Well… if you aren’t looking nor expecting them there are many other things they could mean!!
In the beginning, once I got weighed for the first time, I noticed that I lost 15lbs from the last time I was weighed!! Overall my net pregnancy weight resulted in a negative 3lbs (before birth)! My OB was not concerned because I was a bit bigger then I’m suppose to be anyways. She said it would be good if I only gained at most 20lbs. So I gained 16 lbs during my pregnancy, lost 22lbs after delivery and gained 10 back after wards (I blame it on starving from breastfeeding and craving.. carbs!). I’ve stayed around the same weight but have really tried to eliminate all those bad carbs… and well I should be exercising more!
The pregnancy..
Overall it was a very easy journey! I had some days of miserable nausea, the kind where you don’t want to move from the lovely couch. I was very very sensitive to smells! Which triggered some nausea while at work mostly (due to retail!). Tons of blood drawn! I do not like having my blood taken! I usually pass out =( Needless to say the only time I went completely out (yay me) was at my doctors office for the confirmation test! The other times I would get so sweaty and clammy and have semi-grayed out vision. Poor lab people soon learned to lay me down =) It seems like every time I turned around they wanted my blood! I had to have the 3-hr blood glucose test… 4 times they took my blood. Ugh! After the second though I didn’t even get sweaty or clammy! Yay me.. =) Thankful it was negative er well I was within the normal ranges!
I had one scare during the endless doctor visits, the appointment right after seeing her for the first time so it would have been 16 weeks I believe. They couldn’t find her heartbeat with the listening thing. So they did a belly scan. Turns out little miss was dancing all over the place ( I drank some juice in the morning… oops, no one told me not to do that before an appointment!) You could see her legs going all over the place!! We also did the down syndrome test which came back positive. Neither A or me were overly concerned with that result, we still weren’t’ fully convinced they had our due date right and after much research about the test we found that it really was a time sensitive thing. Anyway, at the full in-depth 20 weeks ultrasound the tech looked at everything very carefully looking for tell-tale signs and there was nothing wrong with her. We went back again at 30 weeks for another check and she was doing great, we also saw hair during this test and learned that she was head down and ready to come out. I loved seeing her on the ultrasound (I’ve always been rather interested in the whole baby development in the womb).
Little thing was a night owl. Well her mom had turned into a night owl too after she stopped working! A is a night owl, he easily stays up until 3 to 4 in the morning (his mom & brother are both like that too). She loved to kick mom’s ribs, it seemed like her feet were permanently up by my right side ribs! Ouch. It was very cool though seeing this impression pushing out of my skin! She even kicked back at me! (aww writing this has me missing those times.. uh oh A this might just cause me to want another one already!) It also seemed like when ever I laid down to sleep she decided to be awake and moving all over the place in there!
She did not like carbs, in fact eating them made us feel nauseous! Good thing A is gluten-free anyway! She really loved beef jerky & any other meat! Other than that I didn’t have any odd food cravings. The pickle craze went away sometime in the 2nd trimester. The jerky phase was gone sometime in the 3rd trimester.
At 36 weeks they hooked me up to the monitor because I was worried about her. It was very interesting to learn that their heartbeat goes way up and way down over and over while they are in there! The more it changes drastically shows that they are busy moving around and what not. That made me feel better =) At my 39 week appointment (Thursday) the doc went up there and felt around (measured and what not). Jee did she cause a lot of bleeding (only lasted the rest of that day, very light)! I was 1cm! But she said to keep my 40 week appointment because nothing may happen.
Well I don’t know what happened but she caused something! I broke out in a rash on the top of my right hand that evening. Found out later that it was caused by a drastic change in hormones! I went home and A was tell her to wait until Saturday afternoon after 2 (because of the football game!!). Well I think all she heard was Saturday by 2pm because she was out in the world @ 1:02 pm =)
Labor?
I woke up at 3ish in the morning thinking man my stomach hurts! It felt like indigestion and like I need to have a bad bowel movement! Well after trying and only get a little out I laid back down. About 30 minutes later it felt like the same thing! So up I go again. Then it changed to every 15 minutes after that! By 4:30 I decided that I might be in labor. After reading everything I had I knew to wait until they were closer together and lasting long and all that jazz. Well by 5 they were happening every 2 to 3 minutes! I was also peeing a lot! So around 5:30 I got up and walked around a little and looked online at the symptoms. Well shortly after I stood up and walked some of my water broke! So problem solved, she is coming! I was going to take a shower because I felt so gross but it was starting to hurt too bad so there goes that idea. I start getting dress and A wakes up and asked whats wrong, whats going on? I said I think its about that time! He said huh? I said the baby! He was like oh! really? Okay! and gets up and dressed. We were on are way by 6. Got to the hospital shortly after (omg signing in and what have you while cringing in agony every 2.5 minutes.. !)
So there I am laying in the triage room feeling like my insides were very very angry at me. It is truly hard to describe correctly it. It is like no other feeling (menstrual cramps? worse! and different in my opinion!). So after laying on the bed (mentally breaking Minecraft dirt blocks, I had been playing that game and building a mountain so it was stuck in my head, but hey it really helped to zone out with something!) my water fully broke, wow was that a weird feeling! Feels like a flood for sure!!!! She checked me and I was 4 cm along around 7:30ish. There was much confusion with the changing of shifts and what not so I finally got to my room and set up and checked by 8ish. (everything starts becoming a blur, wow the pain!!) It isn’t like a crying pain when you hurt yourself, it was more like a UGH deep down body curling pain. So I was 6cm+ along before they got my epidural in (yay!) and wow did mine really work (can we say heavy weights as legs?!). They put me on my side and I went to sleep. They come in shortly after 10 in a rushed state, apparently her heartbeat had gone down. They quickly move me and put me on oxygen. They check me and it turns out (little over an hour later) she quickly dropped almost all the way down and to 9 cm! They were happy to find that that was the reason, and reassured me it was normal and it happened because she dropped so quickly. At this point the shakes were never ending. The shakes.. ah the shakes. I hated the shakes! Does any one tell you that you are going to shake endlessly? It was horrible!
They sat me up and we all waited around to start pushing. I never felt an urge (heck I couldn’t feel much of anything, yay epi) I couldn’t even move my legs haha. Finally got put into position and started to push. You think holding your breath for 10 seconds is easy? Haha wow pushing takes a ton of energy and concentration and breath! I found it very nice to have some one hold/support my back while I curled forward to push. I thought I would want to see (with the mirror) but I found it distracting. A looked down there and well lets just say I don’t think he plans on doing that again =) It took awhile to get her head out, they had to cut down there and she finally decided to come through! She had her hands up by her mouth making it more work to get her out! The doc & nurses said they had never seen a baby come up with their hands clasped in front of their face. Poor A was too busy trying to distract himself by pacing around the room during all of this but he saw it, just failed on the picture part!
Next thing I knew there was my sweet girl laying on my chest!! What a huge wow moment. Looking at her for the first time =) She was declared a 9 on the apgar score. She left Mommy a beautiful present before they took her off to get cleaned up and checked over (her first of many poops on me!) She was declared a 10 at that point. Wow we had made perfection in all possible ways!
J was born on Nov 13th @ 6lbs 4oz @ 1:02pm @ 39 weeks
