Before I dive into the actual pregnancy, I wanted to say I actually had a feeling I was pregnant. A day that my colleagues and I had gone for Sushi was the day I was talking to my coworker and saying I had a feeling something was off about my body, like something was just different and I didn’t know what or why. She however told me not to worry, and its probably nothing, I even mentioned that I think it could be pregnancy, and she just kept saying I wouldn’t worry about it. Well.. that was the last day I had all-you-can-eat sushi.

My hunch was because I was off of Birth Control pills (I decided to go off of them because there were too many side effects that were happening, and I was scared of blood clots… even more that some COVID vaccines plus COVID itself can cause blood clots.. why take BC pills that are known for blood clots too…) I had a bit of a period, but not a full blown period.. it was less than what I had while on the pill, but I shrugged it off because maybe its the pill that needs to clear out of my system. During my “next” cycle.. it seemed a little off too and didn’t seem right in the slightest.. so one of these two periods must have been the “implantation”. Because my periods seemed off, I asked for second advice from a friend of mine.. at this point I spent close to $30 on pregnancy tests but didn’t want to use them till I was sure what was going on. My friend told me to wait a few more weeks and if I miss a period or my period isn’t normal to test myself. Well.. my body had other plans and gave me the most wicked heart burn ever days after the conversation happened (mind you.. I never had heart burn before.. so I had to google it).

I looked at the heart burn as a sign that I have to test ASAP. And as I was thinking.. I ended up being right..

Took a second test to be sure and it was positive again, but this time because it was the digital one it said…

When I told my Fiance, we were both nervous, but also excited.

My pregnancy was fairly interesting, I did not get the morning sickness or the crazy cravings that most Women got during their pregnancies.

At the very beginning my pregnancy was pretty minimal with the symptoms (honestly never know what to call them), I would only ever feel super nauseous when it came to me not eating enough, and only once during the pregnancy did I come close to vomiting, and that was due to being so nauseous from not eating for a long period of time, that if I did not get food inside me that second, I would puke. I am actually pretty grateful for not getting the morning sickness, as I had not puked since I was only a little girl.

I was turned off from the smell of garlic and onions cooking, I was able to smell things from far distances and the smell of smoke/weed bothered me more than it normally did. We were ordering Hello Fresh for a while, and I was not even able to eat that anymore because the smell of the seasonings cooking made me feel disgusted and nauseous, and just forget about the taste. Lettuce tasted like grass and I completely lost interest in eating salads. Tomato made my stomach feel bloated.

The only craving I could recall having in the earlier stages was fries and hot sauce. I needed to have hot sauce in everything. And fries just smelled and tasted way better than usual. Pasta also tasted better than usual as well. The craving did not last long, but, because a lot of seasoning seemed like a turn off for me, I did stick with having hot sauce during the whole pregnancy, as that was my safe option. There was some things I just really wanted at specific times, like one day it was a burger and then another day I needed to have Greek food, but to me I don’t really call those cravings because they are one offs.

Eventually anytime I ate fast food or anything overly greasy, I felt a tightness in my chest and stomach.

Since the pregnancy “symptoms” were so mild, I barely even felt pregnant, till my stomach started growing and clothes stopped fitting me, I was unable to make certain movements or I would be completely out of breath just going up a flight of staires (mind you.. I was never fit to begin with), would be twice as hard days I had to go to the office lugging my stuff up the steps while wearing a face mask.

The heart burn and acid reflux got worse closer to the end of the pregnancy, maybe the last couple of months, and when the heart burn did come, it came really hard and usually always at night prior to bed time. Closer to the end of the pregnancy I also ended up having to deal with swelling feet and ankles, however, they did not get as bad as a lot of other people have claimed them to be, it probably helps that most of my pregnancy was during the Fall/Winter, so I did not have to worry about the heat aggravating it.

I must say it was pretty cool being pregnant at the same time as a few of my close friends and one of my cousins. I was able to keep in touch with them and we exchanged stories about our own pregnancies and helped each other out. Plus its easier to talk to someone that is dealing with the same thing as you, verses someone that isn’t. Also having people close to me that were also pregnant the same time as me, made me realize how different every pregnancy is.

A few annoying symptoms I did get was the one time I had a bloody nose.. literally I sneezed once, and that’s all it took for a Niagara Falls of blood leaking out of my nose, the horror on my Fiancé’s face when this was happening was priceless. It was such a weird feeling too, because I never seen so much blood during a bloody nose, nor have I ever seen blood pour out so quickly from a nose bleed. Luckily the nose bleed was just a one off. The other annoying symptoms were the sensitive gums, which caused my gums to bleed almost every time I brushed my teeth. AND MY SINUSES, my sinuses were going nuts during the entire pregnancy, most likely from a post nasal drip. So I did end up buying a humidifier and it was my best friend during the pregnancy.

I had a few ultrasounds done in the beginning, one ultrasound was done too early, and I had to go back two weeks later to make sure the pregnancy was progressing. And then I had one done for the anatomy scan, which I had to re-do because the baby was facing the wrong way. The tech did not want to tell me the gender of the baby, and my OB ended up writing on a piece of paper to say it was a girl, but, she told me that it does happen where the gender is sometimes wrong, and she did not recommend me telling too many people. So when I went for the repeat anatomy scan, I did ask the tech if it was still a girl, and she confirmed for me it was a girl (this was a surprise to my family, because I have three nephews, so woohoo for a girl). Unfortunately due to what my OB told me about not telling too many people, we decided not to waste money on a gender reveal. However the theme of my Baby Shower was girl… I’ll post about this later.

My favourite parts of the pregnancy was going to my OB appointments and hearing the babies heart beat, on top of that I loved feeling the babies kicks and to be quite honest, I do sort of miss feeling those kicks. Unfortunately due to COVID and the precautions the OBs office was taking, my Fiancé was unable to experience any of the baby appointments. I am hoping by time we decide to have a second baby, that it will be a little more normal and that he wont be able to miss future appointments.

Shopping for Maternity clothes was RIDICULOUS! Went to a few stores and a mall or two.. and tell me how finding a Maternity clothing store is nearly non-existent anymore and I pretty much just had to purchase larger sizes that ended up being too large for me to wear anyway. I did get lucky that one of my friends gave me her Winter jacket from when she was pregnant, because I was literally not having any luck at all…

The hormones and crying for the tiniest things ever was bad. But not nearly as bad as I was during my period as a teenager.

I am so very grateful that my pregnancy turned out to be an easy one, and that the hardest part was probably getting to point B from point A due to the waddling at the end. Or when the baby was still riding high, it was hard to move when I was in bed because of all the extra weight in my stomach.

~*ATBW*~