Tales of Pregnancy: Most and Least Favorite

Five months pregnant! You know what they say, time flies when you’re having nausea and back aches! Wait…

I can’t believe it’s been five months, and at the same time it feels like a lifetime already. So much has changed in our lives since finding out Baby Spice was on the way, and I think all those changes have both helped the time pass quicker and simultaneously made it feel like a lifetime has passed.

It’s all new to me, all an adventure. Here are my most and least favorite things about pregnancy, so far.

Most Favorite:

• Friendships get deeper. During pregnancy you start to realize which of your friends have genuine interest in being a part of your life while and after it changes so much. I’m not saying this is a negative in any way—meaning, I think it’s totally natural and ok to drift from people during big changes in life. I don’t know if anyone else experienced it this way, but I have felt that some people unexpectedly made big efforts to find time to get together, when I wasn’t feeling good or going out much. Some made big efforts to stay in touch, and just see how things were going.
• No hangovers! Need I say more?
• No cake guilt. Maybe this isn’t supposed to be this way, I’m not sure, but I’m not going back on it. I make cake once a week now, which is up from like…3 times a year before. As long as I’m only having one slice a day (ok, two on the really emotionally draining days, like when you’re in the show hole or something), zero guilt here.
• Redecorating a bedroom! I’ve had so much fun picking out the crib, rocking chair, curtains, etc, and refinishing the dresser and hutch. Tons of work and not something I would do “just for fun,” so it was a reason to go big. And I love reasons to go big.
• When the little thing starts moving around so you know there’s life in there. This is probably a no-brainer, but seriously, it’s pretty reassuring after 3-4 months of getting sick, fat and tired with not much proof anything monumental is, in fact, happening.
• The mystery! You just don’t know what life is going to be like after this new human shows up, but you know for sure it’s all changed forever. It’s incredibly exciting waiting to find out if it will be a girl or boy, and what he/she will be like. An athlete? A pianist? A smarty pants, loud mouth teenager who sneaks out of the house? Wait, hopefully that was just me…
• Seeing my amazing husband get excited to be a dad. This is probably the coolest part.

Least Favorite:

• Pretty much the whole first trimester…
• That "camera" they do your first ultrasound with.
• Did I mention the sickness? Ok, I didn’t know I was pregnant for quite some time, but here’s what I DID think might be going on, in no particular order: flu, gluten allergy, too much protein intake, flu, stress, lack of restful sleep, death. Seriously, no particular order. I never experienced nausea in the textbook sense, like, run to the bathroom cause I drank a too much whiskey last night nausea. It was more like my body just hated all (and I mean any and all) the food I ate…and then it was worse if I didn’t eat. And as the days went on it started as soon as I woke up in the morning, and didn’t go away until I went to bed…three months later.
• Your body goes bizzzzzerk! My type A personality is all about controlling how I’m going to feel. Been a little tired? I’ll go to bed early tonight. Been a little lethargic? I’ll go for a run. Super rundown from a cold? I’ll rest this weekend. You get the idea. So when your body is like, “hey, I’m going to be sick for a few months and I’m going to be able to be awake until but no later than 2pm, and it doesn’t matter what you do about it,” my type A rages! And then when it further says, “hey, ya, that pukey part is gone, so let’s talk about some headaches and backaches, umkay,” you’re like, well shit body, seriously?! You going to make me bleed out the eyes and raise my mortgage, too?
• Fragility! Oh my gosh, this one is really tough for me! And here’s the kicker: you don’t HAVE to slow down, take it easier or be cautious of how you move if you don’t want to, but it’s not your life you’re messing with, it's someone else’s. Someone that weighs less than your lunch. So it would be pretty uncool not to do all you could to protect it. Also, you might fall down a ton cause you get lightheaded and see stars literally every time you stand up quickly for about three months or more.
  Recently I had an incident with EXTREME (like, gunna barf and then maybe faint) pain. The first time it went away on its own so I just called the doctor to be safe. BUTTT, it came back! Those of you that know me well know that if I’m visiting a hospital it’s to see someone else that’s a patient, and I don’t even have a family physician in Boise because I haven’t gone to one in like six years. But now there is this little tiny life that I’m the incubator for. What to do? I can tough out the pain, but is it affecting Sputnik? So, I went to the hospital. They diagnosed exactly nothing, and I still don’t know where the pain came from, but I did find out that his/her heartrate was normal and healthy. Apparently you got to go to the hospital sometimes when you’re pregnant, and I don’t like that.
• Waiting! Ummmmkay, I’ve been patient for five months now, which is like four months and 29 days longer than I ever have been before. I have to wait four more months?!?! #PatienceSucks