This time everything is different.
People told me so many things about carrying a second baby. Some of their stories were good and some were awful. I was optimistic that my next go round would liken itself to my first pregnancy, which was pretty good. I have not had a terrible pregnancy, I know people who have it had it so much worse, but a few things have happened to me this time that were unpleasant, new, and even scary because I was not informed about the possibility that these things could happen.
1. Morning sickness. It is only ever talked about as the nausea that steamrolls you in the morning and often leads to vomiting. Through my own experience I can tell you that that is not always true. Sometimes that wave of nausea causes you to empty the contents of your core in a different, more gross way. And that can happen every day. For a month. Oh, and sometimes the nausea can be significantly worse in the evening than the morning.
2. Instant Monster. As a generally calm person, the desire to bite off heads was new to me. There were times that I was feeling sick and moody, where in my first pregnancy, I might have laid down in bed or taken up residence on the couch. When those waves of inner and outer sourness hit me during this pregnancy, I would again try retiring to my bed or the couch, but there were always the knees and elbows of a toddler jamming into me, whilst being used as jungle gym. In those moments, I felt like I would explode. My skin hurt. My senses were immediately overwhelmed. And I was instantly a monster. I would pick up my kid, give him some fruit snacks and sit down on the closed toilet seat to try to get my hackels down.
3. Small belly. EVERYONE told me variations of "You will get huge fast!", "You will pop by like 10 weeks!", "Fat you gonna be." So I got a little excited to have some outward evidence of my little bean. I feel like I have begun to stretch out, but I look rather unnpregnant to the people not living inside my body. I have heard some of the craziest things from women when I told them I am pregnant. "For real? You can't even tell!" Well, you know what all this did for me? It gave me a complex that there is something wrong with this kid or with me because I don't look as expected. Seriously, I had to talk to my therapist about it. It was a constant thought. Yet, as I always knew in the back of my mind, that this baby and I are fine, I was reassured when I heard his/her heartbeat yesterday.
4. Fainting/dizziness/lossofmusclecontrol. This one scared me the most. I was in the kitchen and suddenly I could not feel my legs. It was like they turned to hot metal- warming up, going soft, and giving in. I fell onto my butt, shattered the glass in my hand, and terrified my husband and son all at once. I shook for most of the day, waves of dizziness swept over me, strange sensations in my body kept me constantly on edge. Turns out, fainting (what happened to me qualifies as fainting), is not that uncommon during pregnancy. It can be brought on by about a million factors, blood sugar falls, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, lack of iron in the blood, etc.
5. Nose bleeds with added bonuses. I knew that nosebleeds were common and I had had a few the first time I was pregnant. While my body decided to add to that unique experience by passing large and gross blood clots from my nose. This one was a true surprise and had both my husband and myself appalled. (It is not good when no one is able to keep a level head in a new situation)
The point of exposing myself as a gross, shaky, neutrotic person, whose nose has betrayed her, is to let you know that these things can happen, and if they happen to you-you are not alone!
