Baby Womack: The Road to 30 Weeks

This is such an odd post for me to write, even now, as I sit in my favorite coffee shop in the whole wide world at 30 weeks pregnant, drinking my one allotment of coffee for the day with my knees spread wide and my belly bulging in front of me.

Thirty weeks pregnant. Despite the fact that I've spent literally the entire year of 2018 in this reality, it's still such a strange idea for me to grasp.

I've avoided writing publicly about my pregnancy with this wee babe for plenty of reasons, but I never wanted to not write about it at all; thus, with 10 weeks remaining until my official due date, I write.

I'll be completely honest. I do not love being pregnant. Actually, if it's complete honesty we're talking about, I think those women who do actually love being pregnant are either insanely blessed or totally nuts, or maybe both. That isn't to say that I'm not ridiculously grateful for this blessing of becoming a mother, but I wouldn't actually look forward to the experience of being pregnant again. The end result will totally be worth it; however, I'm really wishing that the stork-bringing-a-baby thing was real. What a dream that would be!

Pregnancy has not been particularly easy for me (and I still doubt whether it's truly "easy" for anyone). There have been maybe a total of about six weeks when I wasn't miserable. Maybe. Six weeks out of thirty weeks isn't a whole lot, really.

As expected per family history, I've been anemic since the very beginning of this pregnancy. I'm not sure of my exact levels because I didn't ask, but my doctor told me that my hemoglobin was extremely low and I needed to get on iron supplements right away. The lab results took a while to receive, and I don't think the technicians called me right away, so I didn't actually know that my levels were low until after I had spent many, many, many days utterly exhausted. I practically lived on the couch for weeks. I swear to you, I didn't wash dishes or do laundry or make a meal for nigh on two months.

I found out that I was pregnant on the 7th of January, but I had my suspicions almost right away. First of all, I couldn't get enough olives and pickles into my system. They had to be from Whole Foods, and I was literally eating them by the can and jar. There was a quick trip to visit my family in Arizona that following weekend, and of course I didn't let on about anything being out of the ordinary, but I was already experiencing some symptoms then, mostly having to do with insanely dry nasal passages and general discomfort. 

By the end of the third week in January, though, I was starting to become extremely tired. Typical pregnancy fatigue, I figured. I was back in the swing of teaching, after all... but it just kept getting worse. I would wake up at 5:30am like normal, teach through the day, leave the school as soon as possible (this has always been a problem for me, but I had already decided that this semester would be better before getting pregnant), go home, and literally lay on the couch for hours. HOURS. I was so exhausted that I sometimes couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom, which is a big deal for a pregnant lady! I was often short of breath and extremely weak. I would sleep most of the afternoon and evening away, wake up when Patrick would force me to eat dinner, and go right back to bed. This happened almost every day for what seemed like ages, but was actually probably only a month and a half until I got some major iron into my system. 

After about the 6 or 7 week mark, when the fatigue began, I also started to have some serious food aversions. Aside from the pickles and olives for that short time, I haven't had any true, consistent cravings, but boy, did I have food aversions. I didn't want to eat a darn thing for weeks on end. The only thing that sounded remotely edible was cheese - both plain ol' cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches, hopefully on sourdough bread. Thankfully, I could tolerate eating the sandwich with tomato soup. Poor Patrick. He got really tired of eating grilled cheese sandwiches, and I can't even begin to tell you how many he had to make for me. I literally wouldn't eat hardly anything else for weeks. I struggled to eat my beloved eggs for breakfast, and lunches/snacks to eat throughout the day were really rough. Processed carbs in all their bready forms were just about the only thing I could stomach for ages.

There was a lot of nausea accompanying the food aversions and fatigue (which didn't help the whole not wanting to eat thing), but the nausea didn't actually make me sick during the dreaded first trimester. Oh, no - that waited for the second trimester. Around 15 weeks, throwing up in the morning became my new norm. Some mornings, I could only eat a solitary bite of my breakfast before running to the bathroom and emptying my insides. I was instructed to take my iron pill with orange juice (vitamin C helps with absorbency), and it was better to take with food rather than on an empty stomach. Let's just say that I've had orange juice coming up through my nose far too many times, and I'm still struggling to get back on the OJ train - and I freaking love orange juice. Once the iron hits my system after about 30 minutes, it makes me feel extremely gross for about an hour to an hour and a half. Super fun times. Every. Single. Morning. Thankfully, I had first hour plan period, so I'd basically spend the entire time trying to breathe and maybe clear out my email without turning to my trash can.

In an attempt to not throw up before leaving for work every morning, I started taking my iron supplement with dinner, despite the fact that I wasn't nearly as consistent with the time or content of that meal. This resulted in me becoming violently ill when I would take my other supplements (another subject altogether) at bedtime. Around 22 or 23 weeks, I literally projectile-vomited water and soggy pills on the wall next to my side of the bed one night before making a bucket of water out of what was once my trash can. That was the last straw. I stopped taking all of my pills for two or three weeks and slowly reintroduced my body to them once school was out and I was able to get some real rest.

The more tired I am, the more sick I feel. This didn't help in my efforts to take any/all of my supplements. For the record, I've *never* had issues taking vitamins or medicine, and I've been on some of these supplements for years just because I knew my body needed them - but pregnancy definitely threw this curve ball at me. Before even getting pregnant, I was already taking a B-complex, magnesium/potassium, and fish oil. As soon as I got a positive test and told Patrick the news, I started taking typical prenatal pills. Then I had to add the iron supplement. However, as I became more sick, I couldn't even smell the prenatal pills without gagging; thus, I switched to Flinstones chewable vitamins to get that basic folic acid requirement. They were tolerable for a few weeks, but I didn't even make it through an entire bottle before throwing up while trying to take them, so I switched to the Flinestones gummies like a freaking child. Those have been a much better option for me, but I still have to break them up between morning and evening in order to stomach them completely. Somewhere around the halfway point, my doctor informed me that I was low on vitamin D, so I had to add that to the regimen. I know that's nothing compared to the things that some women have to take during pregnancy, but I never imagined that I would have so much trouble keeping down vitamins. Like I said, I stopped taking all of my supplements - and I mean all of them - for the last couple of weeks of school. I just couldn't stand being so sick when I had so much to do.

Life has been so much more pleasant for me since school released for summer. Around week 25 (the end of May), I was able to sleep in most mornings, and that has made the biggest difference for me. Mornings still aren't my best time as I still feel gross and a little bit "gaggy" after breakfast and vitamins, but I'll take that over vomiting up eggs and orange juice any day. As I started reintroducing my supplements into my daily routine again, I had more energy and was no longer sick every day. 

Hitting the third trimester mark, I began feeling the fatigue making its return. As I've crept closer to 30 weeks, the typical woes of the third trimester have definitely begun to strike. I've experienced Braxton Hicks contractions off and on since a fairly early point, but they've definitely become more noticeable since the 26 week mark. During the past week, they've become rather frequent during the night as I sleep. They don't hurt, of course, but they wake me up because it puts more pressure on my bladder.

I would be doing my documentation of this pregnancy a huge disservice if I neglected to state the fact that I'm spending my entire third trimester accompanied by the dead of summer. I'm technically due in the middle of September, and it started to truly get toasty here around the middle of May - that's the last four months of pregnancy spent sweating while also being a human incubator. I've never wanted to be without clothes so much and so often in my life. Summer is my least favorite season in Oklahoma anyway, and it doesn't come without me whining about being hot and uncomfortable even without being pregnant. I cannot describe how much I am looking forward to having this baby out of my body and embracing the cooler temperatures and wardrobe that autumn will bring. It's likely to be my favorite fall season yet for so many reasons.

There is so much to write about when it comes to pregnancy, especially experiencing it past the first trimester for the first time. I could talk for days about what this sweet babe is like as it squirms away in my belly, scrunching my innards and kicking me in the ribs. I could talk about what it was like to find out that I was pregnant after experiencing two losses and convincing myself that I didn't want kids. I could talk about hearing the heartbeat for the first time, hearing any heartbeat for the first time. I could talk about the fear and anxiety, the depression and the joys, the struggles and the milestones. I could talk about the overwhelming experience of going to our first anatomy scan and about how much I just stare at the perfect profile picture of our baby. I could talk about how amazing my sweet husband has been throughout this entire year, how I am so looking forward to seeing him become an amazing father and growing in the incredible man that he already is. I could talk about how I'm ready to not be pregnant anymore, but I'm a bit uneasy about what bringing home baby is going to look like and how much crying there will be - from both myself and the little one.

And I will talk about those things. I need to talk about them all, not only for documenting this unique and incredible time in my life, but also for my overall wellbeing. I don't want to forget any of it - the good, the bad, and the incredible.