I was more interested in adoption due to my mental illnesses, I was afraid a child I would have would possibly have schizophrenia and the thought of that was very hard on me. I have been talking to my psychologist and psychiatrist and they assure me, I will be able to help my child with any mental problems. They told me I will know what signs to look for, and I will be more sensitive to their needs. Obviously this is still a worry for me, and I question the fairness of bringing a child into that life. But this was not a planned pregnancy and I could never give him up. I am going to talk about my symptoms here in case someone is having these symptoms as well and need to know its normal and ok. Obviously most of you may not be interested in this, so just stop reading here.
I pretty much had symptoms of one sort or another pretty much from conception. At first, the first 2 weeks or so, I had weird squirming feelings in my stomach. I almost immediately became EXTREMELY tired. I have been out of shape tired, depression tired, illness tired or some combination of all of these before. This tiredness I felt was beyond anything I have felt before. It was like having narcolepsy. I had a sneaking suspicion I might be pregnant. I chose to ignore these feelings, but I immediately stopped taking Lithium. I DO NOT recommend stopping medication suddenly and without help from your doctors. I was on a lower dose of lithium and I was lucky and had no symptoms or problems quitting suddenly. I also lowered my caffeine consumption and started eating even healthier than I normally do. I took a pregnancy test a few days before my period was due. (I always had irregular periods and actually lost my period from time to time, the longest period of time it disappeared recently was 2017 I had no periods. When my period came back in mid 2018 it was reasonably normal. I started using flow and my bullet journal to track it, and I am thankful I did this because it helped me find out I was pregnant earlier) So I took the test at that time, I had told my husband a few days before that what I thought might be happening. I was actually nervous to tell him it was possible...but I have no idea why lol? He had a vacation and was playing the 20 year anniversary of Everquest and I was supposed to play with him, but I was too tired. I didn't want to "ruin" his fun week. But he is great and wasn't mad at all and was so supportive. So anyways I took the test a few days before my period and it quickly showed a negative. I also started having cramps and other PMS symptoms. I then started to think I was just being paranoid, especially after the negative test. (i got the expensive digital early detection test so it was ok to test at this time.) So a few days passed and I thought I was going to get my period, everything normal.
On my dad's birthday (he is deceased and I miss him so much) I decided to take the test again, I still felt so tired and just kind of "weird" also I had heartburn and terrible headaches around this time. I was pretty convinced it was going to be negative. But a teeny tiny part of me was like, "still possible". I took the test, it took a long time but it came back "YES+"! I was in total shock and I just walked over to Dan and said, "OMG!" and showed him. He hugged me and it was just such a surreal moment.
I told my family and Dans brother David and his wife Megan (who I adore) They are expecting a daughter this July so I was excited to let them know that their child would have a cousin! It still seemed like such an abstract thing around that time. I noticed that I began to have little emotional spells that did not make sense. Dan and I nicknamed these attacks as "cryspells" Weirdly I noticed i was having no issues with the more severe mental health symptoms that come up for me sometimes. It has been like that thankfully all the way through this pregnancy so far! I called all of my doctors the nest day and set up appointments throughout the next week.
First I went to my family doctor. I already had to have a lot of blood tests that I spoke about in my last post. They also gave me a pregnancy blood test, the next day it came back positive. I had a pretty high concentration of the pregnancy hormone, even though I was just barely pregnant. They also began a referral for a OBGYN/Pregnancy doctor for me. I told my closest friends that day. I knew I had to tell them because I had been unable to see the much recently because I was so exhausted. I also knew I might get sick and they would wonder what was wrong with me. My friends do not like children, pregnancy or pregnant women lol, but they were so kind and supportive and continue to be. My sisters and mother were so excited and they have helped me so much through this time, I ask them questions all the time because they have all had children before. My youngest sister has a 3 year old son who was born in December, and has been such a good source of information for me. (My son is also due in December.) Also Megan (my sister in law) and I speak all the time, and she is a godsend I swear. She has been so kind and patient to me and I cannot even tell you how much I love her and feel thankful I have her. It's nice to have another pregnant person to talk to, also my psychologist is pregnant too due in September.
The day after my family doctor appointment I went to my psychiatrist, I was really nervous about this one. I was afraid he would think I was too mentally ill, or he would not want me to continue the pregnancy. He was great, very supportive and positive. He said he thought I was doing well enough to do this. We lowered some of my medications, and discontinued some of them. I see him every 4 weeks now. So it went waaay better than I thought it would. I told my psychologist the next day and she screamed with joy! She was so sweet and excited for me. Two years ago she basically told me I was too sick for children (This was completely true) but I have been doing so much better she wasn't worried at all. The only real thing that I have had symptom-wise is that my religious delusions creep in. I find myself constantly praying and feeling afraid god was judging me and could make me miscarry. But I try my hardest to fight these delusions.
At this point EVERY food was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I was hungry about every two hours and if I did not get food I would freak out! My stomach would feel like it was tearing itself apart. I have had eating disorders most of my life, which included binge eating at times. I used to want food all the time, but it was NOTHING compared to the hunger I felt in the early weeks of pregnancy. I hate Italian food, but suddenly I was ordering pasta dishes and demolishing them! I also began to break my vegan diet (I know I hate it! And after my last post where I talked about how i wanted to be vegan forever!) I started wanting eggs and cheese. I am still a vegetarian and I plan on being strictly vegan again after I give birth. The weird thing about this is I was lactose intolerant and couldn't eat animal products without getting sick...but now my body handles them just fine? I still don't drink milk, but I want cheese ALL THE TIME. My doctors wanted me to just vegetarian, but I wish I could handle these cravings and still be vegan. I feel guilty all the time, and I wish it was not like this. So yeah, everything was great tasting and I packed on 10 pounds very, very quickly. I had no nausea until week 9, and not many food aversions either until that tricky week 9. It was so intense, the hunger... that twice I almost ran red lights because I needed to get home and eat and my stomach felt like it was absorbing itself. So that has been weird. The only food that I really haven't been able to eat is Pizza...I have no idea why. I was eating so much and had such high pregnancy hormone, I was a little worried that there wee multiple babies in me! (Before I had my first ultrasound.)
In week five, I was waiting for my first ultrasound at week 6. That entire week I was convince I had had a missed miscarriage. I started to read about pregnancy and forums, the bump ect. I also was looking at discussions on my Flo app. If you are newly pregnant I highly recommend you DO NOT do this. The forums are full of women talking about miscarriages. And the miscarriage rate is VERY high. Much higher than I ever knew! Of course these women need a safe and supportive place to discuss the sad event of a pregnancy loss. the problem is pregnancy is different for everyone. You start to see all these things, and you begin to worry, obsess. Welcome to motherhood, I know. But I started to get really afraid. I was not having EVERY symptom so I thought I had miscarried. I was also having cramps all the time. I know it sounds ridiculous to assume the worst like that, but people who had missed miscarriages, miscarriages and etopic pregnancy were EVERYWHERE. The talk of miscarriages even got into threads and boards that had nothing to do with pregnancy loss. I would be reading a thread about what to eat and someone would just randomly ask in a panicked state about a weird symptom and without fail people would bring up miscarriage. I am not shaming these people, I am just suggesting not to look at these places too much. The main symptoms you need to worry about are a fever that lasts over a day, heavy bleeding (light bleeding can be bad too, but its also a normal pregnancy symptom and can be implantation bleeding) Severe cramps. As always if you don't know I would recommend calling your doctor and not looking on the internet. I was so nervous, I thought I was loosing symptoms of pregnancy even though looking back, I wasn't. My breasts did not grow or hurt all all, I wasn't sick to my stomach, the only symptoms I had were exhaustion, hunger and cramps. My breasts did not get tender until last week, which was week 12 for me. Everyone talked about breast pain, all the lists of symptoms said breast pain was the first thing most pregnancy experienced. So for a week I was worried an later convinced that I was carrying a baby that had died. Everyone told me the baby was fine in real life, but the internet made me very frightened.
On the Monday of my 6th week I went to the OBGYN to look at the baby and get blood tests ect.. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I saw the baby and saw it's little heart beating! The babys heartbeat was strong at 157 and everything seemed perfect. Seeing the baby for the first time I feel like I had an out of body experience! I was so convinced it was dead or something was wrong...and there it was alive and well. Tears came to my eyes. I met my obgyn who will be delivering my baby and talked to her, had a exam and pap smear. She was very professional but incredibly kind. I bring this up because another mistake I made was i looked at the google reviews and Yelp reviews of the women's health center I went to. For the most part the reviews were terrible!! I was so worried and upset. My doctor only had one bad review, and it wasn't terrible...it just said she was too cold and clinical. Do not let others opinions on doctors or hospitals sway you. Meet the doctors, visit the facilities and make your own opinions. I mean obviously if the reviews are very bad and you fear for the safety of you or your baby...by all means don't go somewhere that makes you uncomfortable or scared. All the reviews were just so..untrue? A lot of them talked about the building being bad or the help staff being terrible. When I got there not only was the building clean, bright and amazingly nice... but the help staff and office staff and nurses were all beyond nice! Everyone really went above and beyond to make my appointment excellent. They were all involved but not too involved, especially the nurse who I ended up chatting with for 20 minutes she was just so pleasant and nice. The thing is unhappy people are more likely to write reviews than happy ones. This is such a sensitive area of the medical profession and maybe I'm wrong but I think emotions are on high and maybe this leads to incorrect impressions sometimes. Don't go to a doctor you don't trust or like, find someone you are comfortable with. People may need different things than others in a doctor. i like people who are polite but professional, I don't need people who are overly touchy or personal with me. but you may need that. I guess, just make your own choices with your doctor team.
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| 6 week Ultrasound |
Around week 7-8 I started having worse cravings and these are still going on now, but it's been less intense after week 12. I started eating so much junk food. I also had very extreme thirst but couldn't drink my seltzer anymore. I couldn't drink anything except water, water with lemon juice and Baja Blast from Taco Bell. Dan had to take over all the housework almost from the moment I found out I was pregnant. I was just too tired. He had some stressful moments, but overall he's been doing amazing! We started ordering out a lot, doordash became our best friend. This was not a good thing, but it is what it is. Dan also had to start cleaning the cat boxes, which I had always done before. We have five cats so this is no small task. Also two of our cats became sick and were in and out of the vet the past few months. This is never something you want, but it was at a especially bad time then. We were spending over 1,500$ on cat bills, ordering out food a lot, accumulating doctors bills..it has really drained our savings. My one cat had oral surgery (my favorite and oldest cat Ivan who i have had for 14 years and we are incredibly bonded.) This was very stressful and i was really worried about him being put under! So the pregnancy cryspells got a little worse at this time. He did just fine though and is doing better than he has in a while. He is in great shape except his teeth, and now that that is taken care of, not only has his quality of life improved,I think I gave him more time.Dick Sargent the second oldest cat has had a myriad of problems and was back at the vet over and over sometimes for emergencies. He is doing better now, but he was just back at the vet again last week. Dan had to work so even though I was miserable I had to take the cats to most of the appointments. I also started to get really hot around this time. It was not too hot outside, but i was always sweating like a pig at these appointments and it was super embarrassing. i mostly had cramps and was still very tired and hungry all the time for crappy foods.
Week 9 things really picked up, i started feeling very sick to my stomach all the time, but thankfully i only threw up once. I could not eat anything except Taco Bell and water and Baja Blast. Baja Blast was like a magic elixir that made me feel like a human being again. Some days nothing was good, not even Taco Bell! I also started getting terrible headaches. I felt miserable and I basically didn't leave my house for a few weeks, weeks 9-11 I was a total shut in. I watched Jenny Nicholson and MST3K over and over again. I would usually just pass out so i didn't try to watch anything I had not seen before. I think Dan thought I was just eating Taco Bell because its my favorite...but I sincerely could not stomach anything else. Most of the time I just lusted after Baja Blast (I am careful to stay within recommended caffeine consumption) I was pretty annoyed and bored, I missed my friends and being able to cook, clean and so on. The bed rest was no longer ok...it was just depressing. I knew I should have been eating healthier and exercising, but it was impossible for me. My cramps continued until week ten, and my back started killing me. I was never comfortable and I had pains often. I couldn't sleep well because I was so uncomfortable. Another thing that made this time terrible was my pharmacy fucked me over and I was out of my anti-psychotics for five or six days. I will go into what happened maybe in my next post. I started to get more and more messed up. I was miserable and I was hearing and seeing things. I almost ended up in the psych ward again it was so bad. It took several days after getting my medication back to go back to normal, so that was a scary time. I'm fine again and doing well now, but I am still incredibly angry about what happened. It's not only my safety, but also my unborn childs! I also started to have trouble with my sciatic nerve around this time.I still don't think I had it as bad as most women do during this time, but it wasn't fun.
Week 11 I was still feeling nasty, but at 11 weeks 4 days I went to the hospital to see a genetic counselor and to get another ultrasound to check for early signs of down syndrome and other things they could see, checking fluid on the babies spine and other stuff. I was excited to see the baby again. Again I made the mistake of looking up reviews of the Hospital's Women's Care center. They were pretty bad, many people said that the genetic counselors and doctors tried to force them to get tests and were very pushy. I had to go to this place because of my advanced maternal age and to see people who were specialists in high risk pregnancies. So I was afraid of what would happen. But once again I had a great experience and couldn't understand what these reviewers were talking about? The genetic counselor was not pushy at all and explained everything really well and was honest about the risks of some of the tests. I decided to have the extended NIPT test. I just knew that I wanted to know anything I could before continuing the pregnancy. I had my ultrasound after that. The baby was not cooperating! It kept covering his face, turning his back to us and disappearing completely. They kept hitting my stomach, making me cough and shaking me, turning me in different positions. They were able to see what they needed to, but it was not super clear to me. I did see his arms and legs and even the briefest views of his profile and body. I laughed a lot and said, "yep..that is me and my husbands child!" They did get two decent photos of him.They said he looked perfect and were able to verify my expected due date, which is December 5th.
I had my tests and all that jazz on Thursday and they told me it would probably take a week to get the results. So then I had to wait. Oh my it was hard. I just kept thinking about the baby, hoping it would be ok and have nothing serious wrong with it. But I think I actually did really well. Having extreme anxiety I really thought I would be panic attacks the whole time until I got the results...but I did so much better than I thought I could. But I will not lie, its a tough thing to wait for. I was shocked when I got a phone call on Monday. I didn't answer it because I didn't know who was calling. But somehow I knew this was "the" call. I got a voicemail and they told me everything looked great and that the baby was low risk for everything. They then told me they were going to tell me the sex (i specified when taking the test that it was ok for them to tell me.) My heart stopped, they paused to give me time to hang up in case I had changed my mind about knowing the gender. Then they said "Boy". I'm going to be honest...my heart sank.
The entire time I have been pregnant I told myself I had no preference of gender, I didn't care as long as the baby was healthy. I told everyone who asked the same thing. I really believed it. But I had dreams where it was a girl, and I felt like it was a girl. Everyone except my youngest sister thought it was going to be a girl. I don't know why, but maybe I just accepted that it was a girl as the truth. I felt upset when I heard "boy". I listened to that message three or four times. I looked at the text transcript. My child was a boy. I still felt a little excited even though I felt disappointed. I ran upstairs and woke Dan up and told him he was having a son. He said "oh wow!" I talked to people about how I felt. I am going to be clear I loved my son no less than I would a girl. But I was a little sad, also I was raised in a family of three girls and I know nothing about raising boys. My husband was raised in a family of three boys so I think this makes him more comfortable. I lamented over all the cute dresses and hair bows and girly stuff I would miss out on. I really didn't know or realize I wanted a little girl so much.
I spoke with many people with sons and my psychologist. They all assured me it was ok I initially felt this way. But over the past week I am happy to have a son and excited. I think I've realized that if I had been given a girl...I probably would have felt disappointed that I wasn't having a boy. He is mine and I love him already. Knowing the sex has made everything more real for us. I feel more connected to the fetus as well. It's easier to imagine what a child might be like after you know the gender. I'm obsessed with him, I stare at the newest ultrasound all the time. I announced my pregnancy when I hit 13 weeks. I couldn't keep it quiet anymore. I got so many great messages and love from people. I feel so happy and lucky. Not only do I have Dan and the cats, but now I have "my boy" (I call him my boy lol) but I have so many people who are happy for me and in my corner. We have a name most likely. I will keep the first name a secret, but his middle name is Steven after my father who died in 2016 and I was so close to and miss everyday.
The other thing that happened is I finally started to get my energy back at 12 1/2 weeks. I am over 13 weeks today and in the past few days I have been able to eat normally again. I felt well enough I went to a baseball game and my dear mother in laws farm this weekend. I was able to see my friends Monday and Tuesday. I even cooked tonight and was able to make this gigantic blog. Monday we had tornado's and actually my Dad's side of the family had flooded houses and lost their power. The town they live in was so heavily damaged that it was on international news. I got stuck at a friends house but it wasn't too bad where I live. Everyone=I have talked to said you will feel much better 2nd trimester and so far that is what I have experienced.
Currently I am working on weaning myself off Baja Blast. I'm doing ok, but I'm so obsessed with it..it's the first thing I think of in the morning...I know i'm ridiculous. I am having a lot of round ligament pains and random aches and pains. I got a pregnancy pillow yesterday and i highly recommend it, not just for those who are pregnant either! I slept so much better last night and I woke up for the first time in a long time without pain. I didn't really have bladder problems until the last two weeks, so I wake up a lot to use the restroom. Also my breasts have really hurt in the last two weeks. I also started to show around week 10 and I have gained more weight. This week I have been eating well and I'm starting to walk and light exercise hopefully tomorrow. I guess that is everything?
Sorry this post was a novel.I had a lot of things to catch up on. I hope that maybe this will help you a little if you are pregnant and wanted to know my experiences. I will probably not write something this long again but from time to time i'll update my experiences with pregnancy but I don't think this will be a blog all about that. I hope you are all well and have a great week.
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