So now that the whole gestation is all over and done with, and before I
go into the birth story, I thought I'd take some time to spread some
slight wisdom.
Ever since I started blogging about pregnancy I've been getting the
occasional hit from people googling (which, I hear, is officially a verb
now) obscure questions about being pregnant. I know I had a bunch of
questions and problems that there weren't any real answers to.
So here we go, in no particular order. Maybe someone googling will get
some helpful info.
1. Morning sickness does not happen just in the morning. It may not go
away in the second trimester. Eating crackers does not help. And most
irritatingly, you can be struck with crippling nausea where you can't
peel yourself off the couch without projectile vomiting, but then the
next day be perfectly fine. This will do little to convince either your
doctor or your employer (or even your husband) that there is anything
wrong with you.
This is all apparently normal, and goes away almost immediately after
giving birth. I remember scarfing down the hospital food and commenting
to my husband how weird that was, since it was truly disgusting. He
looked at me askance and said, "Well your nausea's probably gone, huh."
And astonishingly it had, less than an hour after Abbie was born.
2. You may not gain any weight if you are already overweight. I was
totally freaked at each weigh-in before the doctor's appointments showed
that I wasn't gaining anything. All the pregnancy books say, even if
you are already overweight (which I certainly was), you're supposed to
gain some.
But my weight stayed absolutely even until the last 30 days, when I
gained a whole seven pounds (and Abbie at birth weighed seven pounds
eleven ounces. I haven't weighed myself post-partum yet so I don't know
if I'm back to usual yet.) None of this phased my doctor at all. I
don't know how much of it had to do with problem number one, but
everything was fine in the end so I gues it's apparently normal for this
to happen, too.
3. Pregnancy gives you super-smell. It gets so intense it's like a
mutant super power. And, at least for me, it happens the moment you're
pregnant. Seriously, if you ever find yourself sniffing the air
quizzically saying, "What the hell is that foul odor?" while your
significant other looks at you like you're crazy, buy a home pregnancy
test. You may have a problem.
Unfortunately for poor Brian, the super smell coincided with his trying
to quit smoking. There was many a time when I walked into a room he
hadn'tbeen in for hours and screamed, "Dammit Brian don't smoke in the
house!" He has quit, though, and the super smell faded at about the
same time the nausea did.
4. Your giant belly makes your ass look smaller. Okay, so that's a
joke one, mostly. But it kinda does.
5. Your hips and pelvis may stop actually bearing your weight. Blame
the cheesily named hormone relaxin, which all the pregnancy books say
'might cause your joints to feel loose.' What they mean by this is that
the front of your pelvis (betcha didn't even know there was a joint
there,) will start to unlace, and your hips will literally start to
rotate out of their sockets when you try to walk.
This is excrucuating, or at least it was for me. I couldn't walk
around, sit in a chair, stand, lie down, turn over in bed, or do
anything but sit in a specific position in the recliner. I started
using a cane to hobble about the house. And it wasn't a dull ache or
anything, but a sharp, gasp-for-air, make-your-eyes-water type of pain. Once, after a shower, I actually fell over and couldn't get up, and had to scream for my husband to help me. A true, 'I've fallen and I can't get up,' moment is kind of humiliating, even if it is just your understanding husband (well, he did giggle a little...) coming to help you out.
But apparently this is also normal. It took longer than the nausea and
the super smell to go away, but at three weeks out I can now bound up
and down the stairs with impunity.
So there it is, just a little bit of info that I wish someone had told
me. There's some more, probably, if I could think of it. (Such as, why
didn't they tell me the first post-delivery pee would hurt so much? I
started crying right there on the toilet.) But the baby is sleeping and
I'm starved, so I'm making a snack.
No comments:
Post a Comment