I wrote this post months ago but have debated about actually posting it. In the end, this blog is the closest thing I have to a journal so if I'm going to preserve my thoughts and feelings, I have to post it. This post is pretty brutally honest, but it's the truth.
I feel like I should also preface this saying that I absolutely love my baby Bear and he was worth everything. I couldn't be more grateful for him and the blessing that he is in our lives.
My pregnancy was rough. I'm amazed at how the memory can forget things and sometimes I'll think back and say, it wasn't that bad, was it? I've really forgotten what it felt like, but I remember most of my thoughts, or the facts of the matter. And then I think ... maybe it was that bad ... or Matt will tell me , no, it was that bad.
I actually wasn't planning on saying anything about my pregnancy because it's in the past and I've moved on but for some reason this past week I've really felt like I needed to document about those 8ish months.
Here's the facts and thinks that I remember:
For about the first 19 weeks, I threw up everyday probably 15-18 times on average....sometimes more, sometimes less. I could usually keep 1 meal down a day ... it was a miracle if I kept down 3 at this time. I became accustomed to throwing up like it was no big deal ... which kinda weirded me out. Once we figured out that it was my acid reflux kicking into gear, the antacid I was put on made all the difference in the world. Up to that point, I was actually getting worse on a day to day basis. I had to eat saltine crackers in the morning while I was still in bed, or I'd throw up just minutes after getting out of the bed. Sometimes I was in the bathroom for hours at a time, and there were nights that I fell asleep on our bathroom floor because I was too nauseous to get up or I was in too much pain and too weak. I remember being too weak to finish my make-up...I would get nauseous if I tried to put my normal make-up on ... so I pretty much never did. Salad is the absolute worst thing to throw-up.
I finally reached breaking point right around 19 weeks - I went several days without keeping any food down and for 2nd night in a row I was up in the middle of the night, couldn't stop throwing up, and I was in excruciating pain. There was only one other time I had felt like that, and it was when my parents took me to the ER in the 9th grade and it was discovered that I had ulcers. I could hardly breathe because of the pain or get a breath between throwing up stomach acid and dry heaving. I went to the Dr the next day and we were able to figure out it was my acid reflux acting up and I got an IV. That first IV was amazing. I remember telling Matt after, "I actually feel like I could eat something and keep it down." I got another IV a few days later because 24 hours later I was back to throwing everything up. After the antacid got into my system, I would still throw up about everyday for probably the next month and then it became pretty rare after that ... as long as I took medicine everyday. I had to take zofran (anti-nausea) and prevacid (antacid) everyday through the pregnancy or I would start throwing up everything.
There was about a month of the pregnancy where it was like, oh, this is what a regular pregnancy feels like. That was a glorious month. I feel extremely, extremely blessed that my back held up throughout most of the pregnancy. I wasn't expecting that. The pain really started kick in around 31 weeks. Up to that point, it was just the normal pain I was used to from the bulging discs in my back. I feel like Heavenly Father knew I wouldn't be able to handle both the sickness and back pain at once and so he relieved the pain in my back for the first half of the pregnancy, which was a huge tender mercy.
Once the pain kicked in though, it got worse, exponentially. Every day the pain seemed to increase two-fold. I feel very blessed that Bear came early. It was painful to move and there were days that I was stuck in bed or on the couch for hours because it hurt too much to move. I really don't know if I could have gone many more days being pregnant. I was pretty much at another breaking point when Bear was born. And it was also a huge tender mercy that I had a really fast c-section. I was only in labor for about 10 min before the doctors decided they needed to get Bear out. My doctor even said to Matt after that he didn't know if my back would have been able to hold up through a regular labor and he considered the c-section a blessing for me as well.
I got soo swollen! Obviously, this is normal. I retained a
lot of water, not sure if it was more than normal. I was so sad when I couldn't wear my wedding ring anymore and the only shoes I could fit in were my flip-flops. Ha. Swimming was the best thing ever. It was the only thing that would make me feel somewhat normal ... it relieved some of the swelling and would take some of the pressure off my back. I totally waddled ... bad. I got made fun of quite a bit at work and from friends.
The best part of the pregnancy though - feeling Bear move around. I loved poking back at him when he would kick and just feeling him shift around. He was a big mover and was always shifting around. It's a crazy feeling to have something alive moving around in your belly that you don't have any control of. The miracle of life is amazing.
Cravings: Eggos. I ate Eggo waffles basically everyday for the last half of the pregnancy. I haven't eaten them since having Bear, but I had to have them while I was pregnant ... so weird. I would randomly crave Icees and hot dogs too. At the beginning, I ate a lot of soups and bread. Matt became kind of disgusted by how much I ate in the last trimester. He was normally gone to workouts before I was eating breakfast. The first time he saw how much I ate, and I ate more than him at breakfast, he was so disturbed. He looked at me and said, "Really?
Another one?" It was pretty funny though. I had to eat tons though, or I would start to feel sick.
Perspective and faith in God's timing. I think these are the 2 things that I've really learned from my experience with pregnancy, but I think I am still learning from it. I complained a lot before getting pregnant about my back pain. I still do from time to time, but in a different sense. I was always annoyed that I wasn't 'normal' or 'like everybody else' that could go day to day without any pain. I still envy that, but after my pregnancy I have a greater appreciation for the health that I do have and that I am still able to do just about everything despite the pain that I have. My back pain is actually worse than it was before the pregnancy, but I've developed a higher pain tolerance from how bad my back became in the pregnancy. However, I feel that I have more energy now than before. I think this is mostly because of my attitude, and my newfound perspective ... and I think not working as much is a contributing factor as well.
God's timing ... not my timing. It took us over 1 1/2 years after going off birth control before I became pregnant. Matt still makes fun of me when I came home sad one day from work after finding out my employee's wife was pregnant and I said, "Everybody's pregnant, but me." When I actually was pregnant at the time and we just hadn't found out yet. Hindsight is always 20/20 though. I don't think I would have been able to handle it if Bear had come any earlier. I honestly don't think I could have done it through football season and things that coincided with that and there were some other things we went through that I just don't think I could have handled emotionally. I really believe God blessed us with Bear at the earliest possible time for us. I mean, I really started to get sick while Matt was away at Hawaii, the last football game of the season.
I think I've become a stronger person because of it all, but I'm still reflecting and learning from the experience ...
30 weeks
Just days before Bear was born
