TOP ELEVEN SURPRISING THINGS ABOUT BEING PREGNANT (SO FAR…)

1. Although I’d read books and felt somewhat aware of some of the issues I’d be experiencing while pregnant, NOTHING prepared me for what ‘nausea during pregnancy’ was really about. I’m not normally a puker. Prior to getting pregnant, the last two times I remember throwing up I had mild food poisoning. I’ve got to be pretty darn sick to throw up. Even now, in week 23, I could go at any time. It’s amazing. I’m going about my business, doing fine, when all of a sudden I’m urging like a cat with a hairball. At least that’s what DH likens the sounds I make to. Apparently, I’m a little loud. Oh yeah, and apparently we need thicker doors on the bathrooms or DH is going to turn into a ‘sympathy puker’ any day now.
2. How sensitive my nose is. Smells such as fast food grease smells, any restaurant cooking smells, DH’s new deodorant smells, a change in dishwasher detergent for heaven’s sake (!) etc would send me running to the toilet.
3. My nose is so sensitive that I cannot currently knit with real wool. Honest to goodness. A smell I usually love almost completely turned me off knitting for nine months! Thus, I’ve developed a renewed interest in other fibres such as cotton and acrylic for knitting. Note: even though this issue deals with the same problem as Issue #2, I felt it deserved it’s own paragraph as this is a knitting blog and, in knitting terms, this side effect is terrifying!
4. How hard my belly is. Perhaps because my only experience with a large belly (my own!) prior to pregnancy was that large belly’s are ‘squoogy’ (that’s a new Patty-word for you). Not so my pregnant belly. Neither I nor DH can get over how taut my little belly is!
5. What feeling hungry really means. This coming from someone who, prior to getting pregnant, had to have a snack every two hours or so just to keep going. I’m a ‘grazer’ so I figured I would be prepared for pregnancy hunger. Although I score very high in ensuring that I always have snack food with me because that aspect I’m used to, I was not prepared for how ravenous I feel all of a sudden. Give me food, NOW!!! Unfortunately, if I don’t get food now, issue #1 rears its ugly head.
6. How absolutely tired I’ve been. It wasn’t so much that I fell asleep tying up my shoes. It was more that I couldn’t come up with the energy to find my shoes, let alone put them on. Or how I can only schedule one or two ‘activities’ into a day without having to go to bed for two hours. For example, dust the main floor (note: this is one floor of my house. I have three floors, including the basement, to dust/clean so this means that, just the dusting for housework, takes me three days. No wonder it feels like all I do around here is clean), go to bed for two hours. Vacuum any floor (one floor, no stairs involved), go to bed for the rest of the day. Not surprisingly, DH has almost completely taken over the vacuuming in this house. It’s only over the past week that I haven’t had to take a nap every day. Mind you, I did have a three hour nap the day before yesterday and still had a great night's sleep.
7. How my lack of energy has affected my fitness level. I ran a half marathon in May of 2005. I’m an avid runner and, when I was in school and despite the stress there, managed to get to the gym a couple a times a week. Now? Walking the dog has become my only form of exercise (besides the laundry. Hey! I have to climb stairs for that and that’s exercise with the weight I’m carrying around!) and that’s only on my good days. I finally walked Para her full regular DH walk today and I’ll probably be feeling it the rest of the week. I was up to at least an 8 km run three days a week in the fall before I got pregnant. Sigh.
8. How really and truly LARGE my butt has gotten. Enough said.
9. And, what a rip off, how small my bust has remained! I mean, all those pregnancy books about your boobs gaining POUNDS when you’re pregnant, kind of had my hopes up. I’ve never had cleavage. I figured, even with a gi-normous (another Patty word) belly, that this was my chance. Nope, nada. I’ve gone from a –A cup to a –B cup - a change so minuscule that the only reason I went out and bought new bras was because my rib cage is no longer 36" around. Pathetic really.
10. And how bloody hard it is becoming to get in and out of our little Mazda Protegé. Somewhere along the way, a woman was involved with car design. What else is that handle on the roof above the door for if not for heaving pregnant bodies out of the passenger side of the car? The steering wheel works nicely when I’m driving…
11. How truly amazing it was to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time and to experience the baby kicking and moving around in there. Truly, truly too amazing to describe. And, note, yesterday (March 1, 2007) was the first time I not only felt my belly moving from the baby kicking, but SAW my belly moving too!
12. To be continued…