Pregnancy and I had a Love/Hate Relationship

Okay, so we found out we were pregnant (this was October 2009) and we were really happy.  We called Mr. Right's sister and my sister right away (they were really the only people who knew we were even trying).  Then we had to figure out when and how to tell the rest of our family.

I scheduled my prenatal orientation (basically I met with a nurse who told me to take prenatal vitamins, what I shouldn't eat, don't lift heavy things, etc) and also scheduled my first ultrasound.  My father-in-law's birthday is at the end of September, but we didn't have a party for him until mid October.  PERFECT!  So, we bought him a card that said "Grandpa" on the front (that didn't give it away because they already had 3 grandchildren with another that was due to arrive in about a month) and when he opened up the card it read "Love, Mr. Right, Donna and Baby!"  He looked at us, then looked back at the card and then asked us if we were for real and Mr. Right said, yes, read it out loud.  There was a ton of excitement and hugging and jumping up and down.  And that was just my mother-in-law!  So, we had told Mr. Right's family, but we still had to tell mine.

My sister already knew and it was driving her crazy that she couldn't tell my parents!  She kept asking me when we were going to tell them.  How we were going to tell them.  Well, we were hoping to plan a surprise visit at the end of October (which I didn't want to tell my sister, because the visit was also going to be a surprise for her birthday).  I should probably mention that my family lives like 450 miles away from where Mr. Right and I live.  Mr. Right's family lives in the same area in which we live. We weren't exactly sure how we were going to tell them, but we knew we were going to do it in person.  Then this little thing that you may have heard of entered my life - morning sickness.

I find that "morning sickness" is not an accurate description - at all.  It was more like 24 hour a day/ 7 days a week sickness.  I spent almost a week in bed before I came to the conclusion that this was not normal and I should call my OB and see if there is anything to do to help it.  I mean, it took a lot of mental preparation to get out of bed just to use the bathroom.  It was bad.  And there was NO WAY that I was going to be able to handle a 7 our car trip to my parents' house.  No matter how bad I wanted to make it work.

Plan B - buy a web cam.  My sister (who was a freshman in college) already had one so she could keep up with some of her friends who were at different schools.  She went home for the weekend and took her web cam with her and we got one and set it up and had a nice little video chat with my parents and told them that we wanted to get a web cam so that we could talk with them over the computer.  It would be especially nice because then they would be able to see their grandchild more often.  Yes, they heard us correctly. We were having a baby!  This would be the first grandchild for my parents.  They were so excited and my sister was so relieved to finally be able to tell them that she had known for a couple weeks.

November 3, 2009 - I had my first ultrasound.  The pregnancy was confirmed, there was only one baby and I was about 7 1/2 weeks along.  The best part was seeing that beautiful little flutter of my baby's heart.  After the U/S I met with on of the Nurse Practitioners (that would be the last time I didn't actually meet with my OB).  The NP was kinda gruff and told me I should be eating more protein.  I told her that I was doing my best, but that The more I ate protein the more I threw up.  Also, I was having trouble with my prenatal for similar reasons.  She told me to try to eat more cheese and to try taking 2 children's chewable vitamins a day (that would give a similar amount of stuff that was in my prenatal, but I could take them at two different times, which seemed to help my tummy a little).  But she was really pushing the protein.  I left there feeling like I was failing my baby.

When I went back for my 12 wk appointment I met with my actual OB and she told me not to worry about it.  The baby wasn't very big yet, and there was no point to forcing my self to eat protein that I was just turning around and throwing right back up.  I wasn't getting any nutrients from it at that point anyway.

Throughout my whole pregnancy everything with the baby went well.  I was healthy, just really sick almost the whole time.  Finally around 20ish weeks I was able to get away with only taking 2 zofran (anti-nausea meds - yeah...I was that sick!) a day and I was starting to feel a little better.  That is also around the time that we found out that we were having a BOY!  We decided that we wanted to know the sex of our baby because it was important to us to be able to call our baby by his or her name.  I think that it helped both of us feel even more connected to our child before he arrived.


By the time I was about 30 weeks along I was able to take only 1 zofran a day (which I would do for the remainder of my pregnancy) and I was able to eat like a normal person again!  Except for the fact that my poor organs were running out of room because my giant baby was taking over my entire abdomen (and then some!).

Early on in the pregnancy we had decided that we wanted to have a natural childbirth.  I still wanted to be in the hospital, but I wanted to take all measures to ensure that the environment was conducive to a natural, drug-free birth.  I will write a separate post on how/why we chose this path.

Around 30ish weeks is when we started our birthing class (which was AWESOME) and decided to hire a doula (who was amazing and I wouldn't have been able to accomplish all that I did without her help and support - both for me and Mr. Right).  The class was wonderful and we learned a ton.  Mostly I learned to trust in my body and to embrace that God created my body to do this and that I was fully capable of doing this.

I was sore and tired and ready to meet my little man.  I was thankful that he decided to make his appearance a little early because at 39 weeks I wasn't looking forward to the possibility of 3 more weeks of pregnancy - especially because it was June, and this is Virginia and the weather was making more and more uncomfortable.

Later I'll post about our decision to have a natural birth as well as the story of my Budduh Boo's birth.