Pregnancy & Me | Part 1

For many women today that are hoping to start their families, pregnancy is one of the first things they think about and what it will be like. What will my cravings be? How big will my bump get? Will the morning sickness be bearable? But most of all, will everything be okay? Honestly that last one is the question that is held onto the longest and for good reason; Every pregnancy is different! Today I'm going to tell you the story of my pregnancy with my son.

To start off, lets get this out of the way. This pregnancy was not planned. It actually was quite shocking when I took that pregnancy test and it was positive. You see, about a year beforehand, my doctor told me that it was unlikely that I would be able to get pregnant due to some of my health problems. It was suspected that if I wanted to have children that we would need medical help. Now that you have the background, lets hop into the story.

Finding Out

If I remember correctly, it was a Tuesday morning around 10am. I had not been feeling quite right for a few days, with being tired, having no appetite, and lots of brain fog. Those things aren't super uncommon in my life due to health issues, but this time things seemed different. So I decided to check my calendar to see when "Aunt Flo" was supposed to be paying a visit, only to find out that it was a couple days late. Not unusual for menstruation to fluctuate timing by a few days give or take, but the pervious five-ish months I had been 28 days on the dot regular. It made me a little suspicious. So off to my pregnancy test stash I went, grabbed one and went for it. You know how tests say things like "results in 1 - 3 minutes"? Well I didn't even get to set down the test before a big ol' PLUS symbol was showing up telling me "you're pregnant".

I was in shock to say the least. What was worse though, was that I had to go to work that afternoon and wouldn't be off until 9:30pm! So basically I had to be at work, thinking about the fact that I'm now suddenly a mother, without having had the opportunity to tell my husband, for several hours until the dark of night, also while working alone. What tops it is that the main computer crashed as I was closing up the store, which left me stuck there until after 10pm. So I didn't get home until close to 10:30pm that night, 12+ hours since finding out.

During the day I had been thinking of cute ways to tell my husband, but first I wanted to go to the doctor to make 100% sure this was happening. There were so many ideas going through me head of what to do, then I walked through our old house door and saw my groggy husband making a snack in the kitchen, he smiled and asked me how I was, and I couldn't take it. There was NO WAY I was going to be able to keep this under wraps for another day. So I excused myself, ran downstairs to get the pregnancy test, called my cat and put a onesie on her (the reason why we had a onesie on hand is a story for another day) that said "you've got this dad" and took her upstairs. I held her out in front of him so he could read what it said. Now remember how I mentioned he was groggy? Well he looked at our cat in a onesie and did a little chuckle (like awe that's cute), then it hit him! "Are you pregnant?" suddenly burst out of him, and I handed him the test. Afterwards it was a straight half hour of him going "huh.... um.... well..... huh...". Just trying to process this information in his tired mind after a long day at work, and right before bed.

First Trimester

Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Those are the words that I hope no mama has to hear. Unfortunately for myself, this was my life not only for the first trimester but throughout the whole pregnancy. This extreme form of morning sickness left me nearly unable to eat, drink, sleep, drive, and I had to take medical leave from my two jobs at the time. I knew morning sickness was going to happen, but I never expected anything like that!

At 8 weeks, I had to have an ultrasound because there was unusual spotting happening. This was heart wrenching because all I could think of was that my baby was in danger. The ultrasound revealed that there had been a slight hemorrhage near the implantation site. For now nothing detrimental had occurred, but I had to take it easy for several weeks until my next ultrasound. It wasn't so serious as to go on bed rest, but I was told exercise would have to be low impact only, no strenuous activities for work or moving furniture in the house (something I often do), and to try to keep stress under control.

The best first memory that I have from my first trimester was hearing my baby's heartbeat for the very first time. 147BPM! It was so amazing. Honestly, it made me feel so honored to be carrying this life. Before I heard that heartbeat, I was so lost in what I felt. Was I happy? Sad? Scared? Or all of the above? But hearing that sound, made me know that it was a privilege.

Now, that doesn't mean there weren't problems. Pregnancy is amazing, but it's also a full time job that takes up so much energy even when you are doing "nothing". I spent so much time in bed and in my recliner during those first few months, because I just had zero energy for anything else. Cooking was near impossible most of the time because it just took too long, and I swear the brain fog made me forget how to cook. We had a friend over for supper one night and part of the meal was mashed potatoes. Simple enough right? Apparently not! The ended up being the worst I've ever made, like so runny that it would have been better to make it into a soup instead. So as a bit of a perfectionist with cooking, that drove me nuts. I essentially lived off of potato chips, water, and oatmeal. Not very nutritious. Thankfully I was regularly taking my prenatal vitamins, and would try to eat fruit and any other actual food whenever I could manage it.

Some things that helped me were keeping warm, because it was winter and all the extra pressure of pregnancy on my body was wreaking havoc on my joints. Using a warm water bottle on my hips (not too hot or too long), then moving it onto my upper back or knees, was super helpful. Some days when the morning sickness was especially bad, that warm bottle right on my chest/stomach was just the thing to make it bearable. Making sure to stay hydrated was also absolutely key, especially with losing so much hydration to all the sickness plus frequent pee trips which start way earlier that I expected!

Then there was the second trimester. Please subscribe here or follow my Instagram @rhys.and.ellice for updates on Part 2 where my second and third trimester's will be covered! Thanks for reading!