Well nobody mentioned THAT!! Things I never thought about pregnancy until I actually got pregnant

[heylottie]

I consider myself fairly well read on all things fertility and baby, having been ttc for some time. But now I am pregnant there are things that I am still surprised about.

1. Drool - I am sure I never used to wake up in The Pool of Drool that now greets me every morning
2. Baby gender - was always adament that I would never want to find out the sex, but MY GOD the temptation to ask at the 20 week scan was nearly overwhelming! I didn't but golly...
3. That I would need panty liners some days (TMI? yes but still)
4. That listening to Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs on the radio had me wailing (I don't expect this one to be universal)
5. The amount of people who, when you tell them of back ache, gripes and pain, say 'well it will only get worse' triumphantly.
6. That when the baby kicks my first response is still (sometimes) 'Oh I need to fart.'

Any more???

Ignore all tales of horrific births - your birth will be different as it'll be your birth and you will cope.

Also ignore jealous parents who tell you to sleep now, as it'll all change soon (in a patronising voice). This is because:

1. sleeping from now until birth still won't make sleepless nights easier, so just sleep when you can/need to
2. You will cope with it all, even lack of sleep. And not all babies are poor sleepers, some are, some aren't but you'll be fine.

Just enjoy your pregnancy and revel in it. It tok us 12 m to conceive, DD is now 9m and it still blows me away that I grew a human being!!!! I still feel very honoured. The slushyness never leaves you.

That a pregnancy actually lasts eight months and three years

The thing that surprised me was the number of people who would tell me their horror stories of childbirth / pregnancy. I have vowed never to do the same thing. Luckily I had a lovely pregnancy. Childbirth different matter but I have vowed not to tell you about that so I won't. The important thing is that I got the result I wanted - a lovely little boy

And yes Imoscarsmum, completely agree with you everytime I look at him I feel like I love him a bit more everytime.

That even though I had gone off sex, I would have orgasms in my sleep

The MiL treating you like you're her surrogate.

I honestly didn't know that you bleed during labour while dilating.

So I properly panicked when gore started oozing out with contractions while still only a few cms dilated.

Oh God, the crying was so embarrassing.

DH came home from work one day and found me wailing in front of Home & Away. I doubt I'll ever live it down.

And the dribbling. Though apparently it doesn't happen to everyone. My boss asked me how pregnancy was going and I said Jesus Christ, I need a spittoon by the bed and she (mother of two children) looked at me blankly. A tumbleweed or two might have drifted through the office.

Dreams both before and after birth

itchy twitchy legs - maddening!

loopiness that sense that there is a veil between you and the world that you can't and don't want to penetrate

waddling that you cannot get your legs together to walk....

Spending more than half of it in hospital

Stomach muscles that feel like I spent yesterday afternoon doing hundreds of sit-ups, though the last sit-up I ever did was a looooong time ago.

That you can't take hayfever medication when pregnant.

That it might be twins even if they don't run in your family!

that my body which only does long long long labours thinks it's funny to give me complete(not my usual drifting off for an hour or two stuff) insomnia for the two nights before i go into labour. then with laoburing through one night,the first night of staring into lo's eyes,then the infamous first night at home, i'm counting FIVE whole nights without sleep!!!!!!!

That I would sometimes pee myself as I was puking because of sheer force.

That I would bleed during labour - that freaked the hell out of me.

That the pain caused by a "long" baby of around 7-8 months gestation kicking up into my ribs was really quite eye watering.

The night sweats afterwards.

not sure if i should admit this, but ds would get hiccups, at first it was cute. but after two months of really long periods of hiccups at least 3 times a day i got really fed up and irritated by it.
it was like a twich like tapping on the side of my bump.

funny though, he barely ever hiccups post birth!

Also

how powerful my sense of smell would become in the 1st trimester. the scent of a banana from 10 meters away sent me to the bathroom retching!

completely exhaustion for the first three months, i slept for at least 16 hours on quite a few occaisions.

insominia, later on.

two weeks of being an emotional wreck and crying buckets at everything from the bad news stories, to dropping a pen lid.
even funny things start with a giggle, ended up blubbing.

oh and not fogetting SCIATICA! argh!

You see, all of these horrors and bizarreness is totally worth it for that wonderful, liberating, holy grail feeling of...

being able to walk down the road breathing out. Aaaaahhhh, the joy of not having to suck your stomach in all the time. They were the happiest moments of my life

oh wasabipeanut i'd forgotten about the lack of bladder control while throwing up.

sicking up , weeing myself, and then crying about it.
oh and sick coming out of my nose too!

basically you leak from everywhere!

Oh nomorecake the nose thing is grim. I think that happenned to me once or twice as well.

I forgot the hairy tummy as well. I got a very downy covering of blonde hair on my belly. Seriously freaky.

Unreliability:

Feeling tired and not being able to sleep.
Feeling full of beans, then falling asleep while you sit down to put your shoes on.
Waddling urgently to the toilet to find that nothing comes out.
Making yourself macaroni cheese from scratch after dreaming about it all day, then sitting down to it and thinking "Blerg."
Gagging to get your DP on their own because your libido has gone bonkers, then finding yourself wondering if Big Brother's on the second you get your knickers off.

the way you suddenly like pink for a nursery, even though you always swore you'd never be that conventional .

Morning sickness lasts all day.
It is worse if you just are nauseaus (sp?) as you get no relief and have to eat ginger biscuits (yuk)
Cramp in the middle of the night is worse then contractions
If you can't eat the food you are craving then woe betide anyone who gets in your way
You forget whay you are doing and why and have to ask 12 year old dd why you are going to the shops 20 times on the way and again when you get there.
Your bladder is an excellent trampoline
Your ribs are just plain in the way and baby will do anything to move them
You look like you ate all the pies but in reality after half an apple you are so full you want to burst

As soon as baby is born you will forget all the discomfort and plan for the next one

wasabi - your lucky that you're blonde!

just remembered, i also had bleeding gums and weird mettalic taste in my mouth.

and when i tried to brush my back teeth, it would trigger my (now) very sensitive gag reflex and help along the 'morning' sickness.

metallic

That my bits would move: things that had once been tidily out of the way underneath would suddenly and inexplicably be at the front and doing a passable imitation of a baboon on heat.

That my boobs would suddenly start to hurt so much, months and months before they were needed.

The nausea...the unforgettable, relentless misery of it, all day every day for months.

The leg cramps in the middle of the night (although they did serve a purpose because they were more painful than my contractions, so I had something to use for comparison during labour)

The outpouring of unsolicited advice from every other female I encountered. The words 'Have you tried ginger biscuits' now send me into an instant homicidal rage.

The sheer number of times that it is possible to need the loo in one night.

'The words 'Have you tried ginger biscuits' now send me into an instant homicidal rage.'

You need to join my 'Anti-Ginger Avengers' gang. If anyone mentions ginger to a pregnant woman (particularly one with hyperemesis), we swoop down out of the sky and slap the offending commenter. Some of us also offer a vomit-on-her-shoes service.

Yankn - that sounds like a seagull attack - if they are threatened they fly over and vomit on the offender until they go away. Hang on, I think I've just the job I might be ideally suited to...

Horrid taste in my mouth for so long that I didn't realise it was there
Restless legs
How much I would miss lying on my back
I did know hyperemesis could last all day every day for 9 months I just hoped it wouldn't. It did.
That after labour every single muscle in my body would ache (d'uh).
That I would recognise my babies heel when she was born because I spent months tucking it back in when she kicked it out.

That I would feel absoultly amazing after birth, because I wasn't pregant any more and all my symptoms went away, and food tasted nice for the first time in 9 months (even hospital food) and I had a gorgeous baby and best of all I WASN'T PREGNANT
DD is 20 months and I still get a feeling of relief whenever I see a pg woman.

Just to add ... not having ANY idea that a C section is really a very big deal to recover from when you weren't expecting to have one. And the baby's head pinging off your pelvic floor making you immobile from time to time when walking otherwise normally. And that bus journeys are not a good idea when in late pregnancy for the same head-pinging reason ...