I haven't written anything about being pregnant besides in my journal and today I decided it was time to share. All of you are probably thinking that my pregnancy has been a dream full of butterflies and fairydust, but the reality of it all is that pregnancy for me hasn't been without its downfalls. I'll admit, being slightly overweight did not help me on my journey to having a baby and I've pretty much had massive stretch marks from day one. Funny story, so Jordan broke our full-length mirror shortly into my pregnancy, which is probably a good thing now. Let me explain: I am a well-endowed girl in the upper chest department and some nights lying on my side I would find that I couldn't breathe and I was super uncomfortable, not to mention that I was finding my old bra just wasn't cutting it anymore, and so I waddled on over to Motherhood Maternity and they literally gave me 20 bras to try on! As I was there in the changing room, I had my first look at my swollen belly complete with all my stretch marks....I had my first pregnancy breakdown that day. I cried on the phone to my mom and told her Jordan would never like the way I looked again (something he denies up and down, telling me I'm beautiful no matter what), and that I was completely ugly! It was a hard day, but the next day I woke up and I felt a lot better and my focus had shifted away from the drama of the previous day. It has been a struggle for me, but I'm learning to find the beauty in pregnancy and I'm also learning that like Tinker Bell, pregnant women also have very little room for emotions (one minute we're happy and the next we're completely bawling our eyes out, and one minute we're nice and the next it's like we've been possessed by a demon).
This pregnancy has also been filled with disaster, luckily my sweet baby Olivia Jewel has been unaffected, but her mom might be crazier for all that she had to go through. Between April and May, I was involved in not one, but TWO car accidents in the span of three weeks. I won't go into the details, but both times I was sent to the hospital to be monitored and have the baby monitored. The second time I was having contractions, but I didn't even notice because of all that had happened. I'm not to the end of the road yet though, and although my baby looks beautiful on the monitor and in the Ultrasound pictures, I'm expecting to give birth to a 3-headed dragon who won't stop crying. I guess a mother will never stop worrying about her children...
Some of the little things I've gone through are the normal things you hear about, difficultly sleeping in the last trimester: check. Acid reflux: check (Oddly enough the only thing I felt could cure my acid reflux is root beer; it doesn't make sense, I know, but man that root beer is good stuff). I'd also like to give a shout-out to Tums (the generic berry flavors are disgusting and the real-deal regular Tums are good, but both are just as effective) and to Pepcid AC. Without either of these, I could not get through my day. Nausea and vomiting: check. I didn't have too much sickness in the beginning, but I do remember that a certain, strong-smelling soup made me vomit on our way home from a party. Swelling in my ankles and feet: check, but not too much thankfully. Feeling extremely hot: check. I'd suggest NEVER doing the Fourth of July in your ninth month of pregnancy, it is just miserable. Crazy dreams: check. Back aches: DOUBLE CHECK!
Yesterday, I had my first false alarm labor attack. I knew I probably wasn't in labor, but after spending the afternoon shopping with my sweet mother-in-law, I guess I kind of overdid it and became dehydrated, although I swear I had been drinking a lot of fluids that day and it just goes to show it's never enough when you're pregnant and almost a hundred degrees outside. Anyway, so as we're walking around the mall I start to feel pressure in my lower back kind of like the ache you get when your hips are separating, but the pressure doesn't go away, it just gets worse, until nothing I do to try to relieve the pain makes it go away. The pain builds to a point where I can barely talk and then goes in and out like waves. It felt like the worst back period cramps I've ever had, but strangely I'm not having any regular contractions. My mother-in-law encourages me to call the doctors' office and so I do and of course they tell me to come in and get checked out, even though they tell me it doesn't sound like real labor. At that point I didn't care, the pain the was so excruciating and I just wanted some relief and answers. So I go in and sure enough it's not real labor, even though I am having some contractions, but they straight cath me and get a urine sample, which shows that I was dehydrated and may even have a UTI, hooray isn't pregnancy FUN! Well, after they're done monitoring me, I go to the bathroom and it seriously kills to pee and there was even some blood in my urine, so I'm a little distressed about that, but no big deal, I'll just go home and rest and drink the 2 liters of water they told me I need to be drinking. BAD IDEA to try and drink all 2 liters of water in four hours because 1) It still hurts like mad to pee, and 2) I have to pee like every half hour. One thing I tell everyone I wish they had told me about in pregnancy is that yeah, you have to pee A LOT in your first and third trimester, but especially in your third trimester you may not be able to pee! WHAT??? Sometimes I sit on the toilet forever, my bladder feeling like it's going to burst and then when I finally do manage to pee, only a slow, annoying trickle comes out that takes forever to empty. Last night, after my wonderful experience with the catheter, I woke up in the middle of the night, needing to pee super bad, so I roll out of bed, and my bladder goes into spasms, that send me almost to the floor, clutching the chair and nearly screaming bloody murder. Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the lovely things about being short and pregnant, is that a full term baby really has no where to go and can crush your ureter, making it harder to urinate. Also, anatomically, everything down there is a lot closer together due to the excess pressure of baby sitting on my bladder and it can give me spasms down there, making it hard to lay on my side (the suggested way to lie during pregnancy) and making it even worse to pee.
So these are all the things I've had to deal with while being pregnant, and as I'm praying to God to just put me out of my misery, I'm also praying to him that he will send me a healthy, happy baby and that in the end, after all the suffering and crying and breakdowns, that I will just be happy to have a beautiful baby girl in my arms. Yes, pregnancy can be hard, and yes, I've had my fair share of complaining, I mean my body has literally been taken over by a parasite, and let's face it, I will never be put back to the way I was before I was pregnant. But, in the end, I know all of it will be worth it when I look into my baby's eyes for the first time. I may have had a horrible night, but it's a new day, and God has granted me the strength to keep going, even though sometimes I wish I could just give up, but it's the trials that make us stronger and if we can just hold on for a minute longer, our troubles are often over in the blink of an eye. The human body is an amazing creation. I once heard a statistic saying that the human body can only handle so much pain, but a woman in labor suffers more pain than a normal body could cope with. What an amazing thing it is to be able to birth a baby and to give life to such an extraordinary creation. Can there be anything closer to God than witnessing the birth of new life? I don't think so...
