Once you've done it once, you think you can do it twice.
Alright, here we go. I am going to break these bad boys down one pregnancy at a time. First off, look at that picture. Right off the bat, you know I'm fucked with a capital F with my second pregnancy. That bump is HUGE, even being two weeks behind. Now you might think that it is the depth perception or some shit. But that little, turned out to be little boy, was always measuring ahead, and I felt shit sooner so...maybe the due date my docs gave me was off....who knows. But let's get started.
My pregnancy with Zoe was a bit of a shock. We had gotten married in January. I went off birth control beginning of March I suppose. Julian and I thinking we got some time to burn! (Sorry family reading this #TMI) But somehow we got pregnant at the first kick at the can. Julian jokes he has super sperm and my eggs are big slutbags just waiting for those little bastards in the shadows, ready to pounce! I don't really like to tell people we got pregnant so quickly, simply because I know that people can have such a hard time getting pregnant. I don't mean it to sound like I am gloating that I got knocked up quick. I feel ya on the disappointment when another month rolls around and you get your RAG. We definitely got lucky the first time around. We found out the day before our honeymoon. A coworker suggested I take a pregnancy test in case I wanted to get bombed down in Disneyland...first of all, who gets tanked in Disneyland, that shit is expensive. Add alcohol and I'm declaring bankruptcy. Anyway, test came out positive to our surprise. It was cute. Our honeymoon sort of turned into a really early on babymoon. It was nice, to just soak in the excitement, just the two of us.
I know it was a surreal feeling for me being pregnant the first time. Once we got back from our honeymoon, went to the doctor to confirm we were pregnant Pee in a cup, blood test, all the fun stuff us poor woman have to do. Then it's dating sonogram time. You have to drink your weight in water and then hold it while someone stabs you repeatedly in the area that really tests your ability not to piss your pants. When are they going to find a way to see inside our situation without having to play Russian roulette with our pants!! Anyway, I remember waiting for the tech to come in, thinking they were going to say "bitch you ain't pregnant" But they did confirm I was about 8 weeks pregnant at that time.
Now the first few weeks with Zoe, was breezy. Just looked like I needed to lay off the french fries. Then the gross, yucky feeling hit me like a freight train. Like I've said before, I did not vomit in the first trimester. Lucky me. But I always had a box of wheat thins on my person at all times. Like a grandma carries mints. Just to curb the nausea a little. I waited so impatiently for my second trimester, because I read that I would start feeling closer to normal. I guess I did not realize my normal was feeling like an enormous pile of garbage covered in vomit! The day I reached my second trimester I fucking threw up. While brushing my teeth. Actually, I was done brushing my teeth, I was cleaning my tongue, you know, so I would be smelling all minty fresh and then like freaking Mount Vesuvius, erupting mint lava. Not to mention at 4:30 in the morning, when I worked early shifts at the airport. Waking up my dog and husband like it ain't no big thing!!! And at dinner time of course. Cause you know, I'm not hungry after working all day or anything. That lasted basically up until delivery. She was a rude little baby in the uterus...she still is...
We didn't find out what we were having while we were pregnant. Either time. Not judging people who do. I get the need to plan the nursery and get clothes so you aren't scrambling when the baby comes. Whatever floats your boat. We enjoyed the suspense and people guessing based on their experiences. Everybody and they're dog thought our first was going to be a boy. Well I showed them!!! You read all the old wives tales about which gender coincides with a certain symptom or lack of symptom. But the only thing that rang true for me was the heartburn. Oh lord the heartburn. If you've read my first blog, you know I was basically walking around like Taca from Moana for 10 months. Then Zoe popped out with hair like Fabio, just blowing in the wind. Well not really cause she was covered in gunk but, it was long and there was a lot! I was carrying Zoe all in the front, so from the back you couldn't tell I was pregnant, aside from the waddle I got the farther along I was, like most women. All these women would say, "oh you're carrying all the front, must be a boy." "When I was pregnant with my boy, it looked like I had a basketball under my shirt, you look like that, so it must be a boy." "You look so good, girls steal your beauty, so you must be having a boy." Doctors even jumped in on the guessing game. Zoe's heart rate was below 135 at each appointment, and boys have slower heart rates than girls. But, as you can see, she was a girl the whole time!
As much fun as it was trying to guess what our little bundle of joy was going to be. With all the heartburn came serious nausea. Like I said before, it wasn't fun. It wasn't necessarily any aversions to anything. I didn't see or smell something and go punish the porcelain with my insides. Just nothing really appealed to me. My appetite took a serious hit with both pregnancies, I lost 10 lbs easy, not from throwing up, just from only being able to eat so much before feeling full and disgusting. Didn't take a lot of food to achieve this feeling either. Doctor's would tell me I could gain more weight, well that's a nice thought but also a fucking pipe dream, but thanks anyway. Zoe apparently was NOT and funnily enough still isn't a fan of chicken fajitas. That was the one thing that she would routinely throw up. I wouldn't even be able to get through one fajita before having to sprint to the bathroom. Yet she loved spaghetti. I mean LOVED spaghetti. And a nice large chocolate milkshake with fries! Omfg I could have eaten those every damn day! A coworker offered to take me out to dinner once my appetite kicked in. It never did. I ate to survive and to feed my unborn child, but aside from my aforementioned faves of spaghetti and fries, food was never an enjoyable part of my pregnancy. That being said, it was one of the best diets I was ever on. I looked fantastic if I do say so myself for a pregnant lady *reminder from my first blog, I felt like Jabba the Hutt, may not have looked like him always, but I'm sure that blob of crap felt like one too.* I know there are some poor women who gain like 40 lbs and then have a hard time losing after birth. I had the opposite issue. I would lose weight pregnant, then look good for like two weeks after birth then nursing hunger would kick in and I would just eat, eat and eat. Fatty mcfat fat. Seemed like I had some unusual pregnancy traits.
I didn't have the usual quirk of having to pee every ten minutes. At least during the day. Quite the opposite actually, I rarely peed all day. A handful of times. Not sure where the bladder ended up with the organ move to make room for growing baby. People would comment at work that I never went to the bathroom. Sorry to disappoint everybody. Now as nice as it was to not have to try and make it to the bathroom all day long, my lack of bathroom usage came with its own set of problems. This probably happens to pregnant ladies who use the bathroom frequently as well, but every time I sneezed, I peed. A lot. If I didn't cross my legs like I was wringing out a wet towel, out she came! But also, with lack of peeing came frequent kidney stones. Again, if you've read my first blog, you know I had an incredible amount of kidney stones. Twice they were so painful I had to go to the ER. Funny thing about kidney stones is, if you're stupid like myself, you think you just have to take a huge poop. Then you put all your effort into letting loose that you give yourself some hemorrhoids....AMAZING! Let's add some insult to serious injury. I would basically live in warm baths to relieve the tension in my back and help my poor bum. Every day I had a long hot bath. By long, I mean, I let out the water and filled her back up a few times. And by hot, I mean good and hot that it was just shy of a hot tub temp. *I know you're not suppose to go in a hot tub while pregnant. I am over exaggerating the temperature only because I do not know how else to describe the temp. It was hot tub like temp without being dangerous.* Baths were basically how I survived the last months of my pregnancy with Zoe.
Now my second pregnancy. Ah my sweet Everett. I basically started feeling like walking garbage from conception. We did not get as lucky getting pregnant as quickly as we did with Zoe. I would feel sick and early pregnancy like symptoms and think we got it this time, but then I would get the worst periods I have ever had. Perhaps my sick feeling was coming off the birth control. My symptoms mimicked early pregnancy symptoms for months! But it was about 4 months I had been off birth control before we got pregnant with Everett. I had the 1st trimester nausea as usual, and expected. But again, no actual vomiting. I thought, since it was a different pregnancy, that perhaps this time I would get that 2nd trimester glow. Wrong again. This time was only different in the sense I didn't vomit every day which I suppose was good. Would have been nice to feel good too but whatever.
Heartburn with Everett was practically instantaneous as well. Like I was carrying teen wolf around in my uterus. Even typing this I can feel the slow burn happening in my gut. Creeping up my esophagus. I could have breathed fire if I had focused on it I'm sure! Everything about Everett's pregnancy was magnified compared to Zoe's. I naively thought my second pregnancy would be easier than my first. My body knew what was going on, it had done it before so why wouldn't it naturally just flow through it like a champion. The heartburn was as if I had just eaten a bucket of ghost peppers. And it never wavered. I got a 34 week ultrasound, to check for size, like I said before, this little nugget was measuring farther along than they estimated my due date *to touch more on that. I don't think the due date the doctors gave me was right. Like I said, I could give you the date we conceived Zoe, I can't do that for Everett, only because the due date they gave us does not coincide with any date we bumped uglies. But whatever, I suppose it was immaculate conception.* Back to my original train of thought. At my #34we
eks ultrasound, the tech showed me the little tuff of hair on the babies head. Holy shit, buddy had so much hair you could see it on the scan!!! But I didn't need a stinking scan to tell me this kid had a full head of luscious locks! Just like his sister.
With it being my second, I expected most things to happen the same as Zoe's but assumed an easier ride. Right off the bat, this pregnancy was different. I spotted early on, which scared me. As it would any and every woman. But I felt like I could feel the cute little early butterflies you read about quite early. I didn't get that sensation with Zoe. Zoe I did not feel until well after the #20weeks mark. Everett, after the little flutters you can't quite tell if it is baby or just your imagination, at #18weeks the little dude was doing a gymnastics routine! I remember thinking, " wow this seems so soon. They have to have my due date wrong." It was frustrating that everything pointed to an earlier due date than what they had given me. People would ask when I was due, and I would just say "end of August, beginning of September. I don't fucking know." I got so many ultrasound pictures of this kid, I didn't know what to do with them all. I stopped displaying them, but then I felt bad for not displaying them. Everything about my second pregnancy was so extra.
I had to get like 7 blood tests done with this kid, unlike the what usual 4 or something. It was ridiculous! Then had 2 extra ultrasounds. This kid was so extra, on top of having to chase Zoe around, I was a mess very early on. I was not a cute pregnant mom with my cute 2 year old! I had the worst sciatic pain that would drop me like a stone in the ocean. It freaked many people out on many occasions. I would just drop as if I had forgotten how to walk, or my legs just gave way under my enormous ass. Granted, yet again, I had no appetite, lost weight in the beginning, but doctors weren't bothered this time because I was good and chubbo before I got pregnant. I had some sciatic pain with Zoe but this was a whole new level.
This pregnancy was no stranger to the infamous kidney stones as well. Now because of my history of them I had to pee in a cup EVERY. SINGLE. prenatal appointment I had. Which worked out I suppose because they did happen to catch a UTI I didn't even know I had. But the call came in after that appointment they swab your booty hole for that strep B crap. But I missed the call, on a Friday, so I was freaked all weekend. Mostly because I was uneducated about strep B, and googling it only shows you the horror stories of your query. But turned out to just be a good ole UTI. I had like 4 UTI's my whole pregnancy, each needed a round of antibiotics. Plus a totally unrelated infection on one finger that required different antibiotics. The pharmacist, every time would ask if I required a probiotic. No dear, I basically am antibiotics so let's just move this along.
Now when I was pregnant with Zoe, the moment my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world. I snored so bad, and apparently couldn't be roused to stop. When I found out I was pregnant again, the first thing I thought of was the amazing sleeps I was going to get! My first mistake. I totally jinxed it. I slept terrible from that moment on. This little munchkin made some serious waves in my belly once you could see it moving! All day and all night, just doing somersaults and playing soccer with my internal organs. Had this been my first, I might have been able to live a little better quality of life, but chasing a toddler around on barely any sleep was just cruel and unusual punishment. Zoe gave up having naps pretty quickly after her second birthday which was bullshit no matter what state I was in. And after all that, I thought my labour would be quick and manageable, it being the second time, and anything other the first is suppose to be easier....not bloody likely. But my labour stories are to come soon enough.
Comments