My Pregnancy...A Quick Reflection

Being pregnant is the longest and shortest 9 months of your life.

I never quite understood the whole 9 month concept, because a full term pregnancy is 40 weeks. There are 4 weeks in a month, so doesn't that make it 10 months? Regardless, the journey is fun, exciting, scary, frustrating, tiring, has a beginning and has an end.

The Beginning

I remember going to work the next day and purchasing another pregnancy test "just to be sure". Then, I took a blood test to confirm it. At this point, all I felt was tired. That's all I felt for weeks. I had heard that having no nausea wasn't a promising sign, and I was freaking out. Why wasn't I throwing up? Why wasn't the porcelain god my best friend? I was panicked. I came down with a cold and bad cough and needed to know what cough suppressant was safe for a pregnant woman, and decided to ask the pharmacist if it was "normal" that I had not experienced morning sickness.

"Normal? There is no normal," she said. "Be glad honey! You don't want to experience that if you don't have to."

Still. I was worried. But then I hit the 8 week mark, and morning sickness came on with a vengeance. "Morning sickness", what an odd word to describe nausea and vomiting that lasts all damn day! I couldn't hide it from my work any longer, I kept going to the bathroom to throw up and became pretty incapacitated with the vomiting and the feeling of vomiting overtaking every minute of every hour of my day.

I called Shane the first day I started getting sick and told him I needed him to come pick me up. He said to me, "You have a long way to go until May 26, you're going to have to suck it up." Suck it up, I wish someone or something had sucked him up at that moment. When he picked me up that day after work, he took one look at me and said, "Oh, I didn't know you looked THAT bad. I'm sorry." Yah, thanks.

My obgyn put me on Diclectin, and instead of vomiting profusely 8-10 times a day, I petered out to about 4-6 times a day until my 8th month. Wonderful. I honestly thought that I would never ever know what it was like to be nausea free. I assumed that it was something I was going to have to get used to living with for the rest of my life, despite reassurances from my sister that it would go away.

My fondest memory was traveling with my co-worker for a store visit out of town and throwing up all along the highway as 18-wheelers and cars whizzed by. Good times.

Other than the horrible "morning" sickness, I had a fantastic complication free pregnancy. When I was about 18 weeks, we had what I thought was going to be the gender ultrasound. I am not into surprises, I like to be prepared. Apparently, this was only and anatomy scan and I had to pull out every persuasive technique I'd ever been taught in my retail career to get her to at least SHOW us the gender. I did a good job. She called my husband and mother-in-law into the room and pointed the little wand towards my baby's nether regions. No mistake, that kid was a boy. Bum in the air and legs spread, not a shy guy.

Nearing the End

The days and months passed quickly now that I look back, but there were days and weeks that seemed to drag on forever. I made the decision to go on maternity leave early as I am a retail manager and 8 hours on my feet in a high volume store was getting impossible. I was huge and couldn't breathe or stand any longer than 5 minutes at a time. I'm sure my girls were sick of my coming to work and not being able to work on the floor for very long without needing to sit down. As I see tons of people all day long, I was also sick of answering the same questions over and over again:

You must be ready to pop any day now! Nope, still two months to go!

When are you due? May 26.

Do you know what you are having? Yes, a boy

Is this your first pregnancy? Yes.

Are you excited? Yes. (Seriously, what kind of question is that?)

I am so glad to live in Canada where we get a year of paid and job protected maternity leave. It was nice to have the option to leave early, and I'm glad I did. I needed the rest and time to myself before my whole world turned upside down.