Look, I'll be honest with you.
I don't really want to share these things with you. They're embarrassing, and gross, and did I mention embarrassing? But I feel like you deserve the truth, ya know? When I first told everyone I was pregnant, people told me all of the normal stuff...
pregnancy glow
morning sickness
swollen feet
weird cravings
I mean, what is pregnancy glow? I actually think the term "pregnancy glow" came about because you sweat bullets all day long but people are so scared of your raging hormones to tell you that you look like your drowning in odorous body fluids so they put a positive spin on it.
That glow? Yeah. It's actually sweat. Go shower.
Anyways, people told me all of these things. But it was the deep, dark, pregnancy secrets that nobody told me about. The stuff I would've liked to be prepared for! I get it. Nobody wants to share this shame publicly but it would've helped.
So I'm here for you guys. I'll take the bullet and expose my most embarrassing moments so that, hopefully, you can avoid some of yours.
Let's talk urination
One of the most common things that you hear about pregnancy is that you'll pee 1000x a day. Well, I already peed 1000x a day so I wasn't too worried about that. What they didn't tell me was that I might need to pee but wouldn't be able to. Well, easily anyways.
Going to the bathroom when I was pregnant was nothing short of a circus act. I had to sit down, lean to the left, pull up on my belly, and then lift my right foot.
No joke.
I guess Cali was sitting on my bladder and compressing it? Whatever it was, it was a relief after birth to just sit and pee. No contortionist acts needed.
My husband called me a beached whale
In his defense, he didn't really. He just told me not to get beached.
Is that the same thing?
Either way, he was kinda right. When I hit a certain point in my pregnancy and was laying on my side (particularly in bed) it was really hard to roll back over to the other side. Think cockroach on his back kicking it's legs. That was (almost) me. If you're going to lay down, make sure you have a hand rail close so that you can pull yourself up and/or over.
My abs ripped
Not as in bodybuilding type "shredded", but literally ripped apart. Did you know that could happen?
Around week 14 I started having some really bad abdominal pains. I (obviously) Googled it and freaked out about everything that could possibly be going wrong. After having a mental breakdown to T, he calmed me down and spoke some rationale to me. After calling every doctor I knew, I was satisfied that it was just round ligament pains.
You see, to make room for the uterus, your ab muscles have to stretch and sometimes pull apart which is called diastasis recti. It hurts sometimes and is not fun at all.
Ummm... the wind.
Let's just get to the point here and move on as quickly as possible and then pretend like this never happened.
Before pregnancy, gas was a topic that T and I avoided like the plague. That is, until I couldn't anymore. I couldn't control when I did or didn't... toot. They would just come out - and sometimes loud - whenever and wherever they wanted to. T thought this was hilarious. Mainly because I got so freaking embarrassed by it. For a girl that likes to pretend I don't do that at all, not having any control over it is mortifying.
Just a tip: No matter what I did I still passed gas but I did find that if I avoided fatty foods (avocados, nuts, etc) it seemed to help a little.
Now that we've gotten that over with, let's move on.
Linea Nigra and hairy bellies
Yes. This really happens. Not only is your stomach not completely round like you see in pictures (the baby can be on one side more than the other and make you look lopsided) but you can also develop this very unattractive brown line that runs from your pubic (can I say that on the internet?) bone to your upper stomach.
And if that isn't enough? My stomach grew extra hair.
Gross.
The good thing is the hair went away after birth. The line? Well... it's slowly making it's disappearing act.
Sweating it out
Let's go back to that pregnancy "glow". I can't give you the exact science behind it but I sweat like crazy all day, every day. When T Googled it, it apparently comes from an increase of blood flow to the surface... whatever that means. But the point is, I was always sweaty. I'm usually always cold so this was a definite change for me. I didn't even really have to do anything but for some reason, I was always hot.
I really had to watch what shirts I wore because by the end of the day, I would look like I just ran a few miles. We were even living in Boston during the winter and I still managed to get hot.
Go figure.
Lopsided belly
Let's go back to this...
You know those maternity pictures you see with the skinny girls and the perfectly round stomachs? Well mine didn't look anything like that. Cali was laying transverse with her head on my left side and feet on my right. So when you looked at my stomach, I was extra wide with the left side of my belly a lot bigger than my right.
Also? It moved. I know that sounds like an obvious statement but when you think of feeling your baby move, most people envision sitting on the couch/bed/privacy of your own home with your significant other and you're all like "Oh honey! Feel the baby kick!" and you both smile at each other while you're touching your stomach. Well I never really thought about that I could be pushing the shopping cart around or babysitting an 8 year old and all of a sudden Cali would start kicking and flipping and my stomach was visibly moving. Like I had an alien in there. Craziness.
Let's talk urination
One of the most common things that you hear about pregnancy is that you'll pee 1000x a day. Well, I already peed 1000x a day so I wasn't too worried about that. What they didn't tell me was that I might need to pee but wouldn't be able to. Well, easily anyways.
Going to the bathroom when I was pregnant was nothing short of a circus act. I had to sit down, lean to the left, pull up on my belly, and then lift my right foot.
No joke.
I guess Cali was sitting on my bladder and compressing it? Whatever it was, it was a relief after birth to just sit and pee. No contortionist acts needed.
My husband called me a beached whale
In his defense, he didn't really. He just told me not to get beached.
Is that the same thing?
Either way, he was kinda right. When I hit a certain point in my pregnancy and was laying on my side (particularly in bed) it was really hard to roll back over to the other side. Think cockroach on his back kicking it's legs. That was (almost) me. If you're going to lay down, make sure you have a hand rail close so that you can pull yourself up and/or over.
My abs ripped
Not as in bodybuilding type "shredded", but literally ripped apart. Did you know that could happen?
Around week 14 I started having some really bad abdominal pains. I (obviously) Googled it and freaked out about everything that could possibly be going wrong. After having a mental breakdown to T, he calmed me down and spoke some rationale to me. After calling every doctor I knew, I was satisfied that it was just round ligament pains.
You see, to make room for the uterus, your ab muscles have to stretch and sometimes pull apart which is called diastasis recti. It hurts sometimes and is not fun at all.
Ummm... the wind.
Let's just get to the point here and move on as quickly as possible and then pretend like this never happened.
Before pregnancy, gas was a topic that T and I avoided like the plague. That is, until I couldn't anymore. I couldn't control when I did or didn't... toot. They would just come out - and sometimes loud - whenever and wherever they wanted to. T thought this was hilarious. Mainly because I got so freaking embarrassed by it. For a girl that likes to pretend I don't do that at all, not having any control over it is mortifying.
Just a tip: No matter what I did I still passed gas but I did find that if I avoided fatty foods (avocados, nuts, etc) it seemed to help a little.
Now that we've gotten that over with, let's move on.
Linea Nigra and hairy bellies
Yes. This really happens. Not only is your stomach not completely round like you see in pictures (the baby can be on one side more than the other and make you look lopsided) but you can also develop this very unattractive brown line that runs from your pubic (can I say that on the internet?) bone to your upper stomach.
And if that isn't enough? My stomach grew extra hair.
Gross.
The good thing is the hair went away after birth. The line? Well... it's slowly making it's disappearing act.
Sweating it out
Let's go back to that pregnancy "glow". I can't give you the exact science behind it but I sweat like crazy all day, every day. When T Googled it, it apparently comes from an increase of blood flow to the surface... whatever that means. But the point is, I was always sweaty. I'm usually always cold so this was a definite change for me. I didn't even really have to do anything but for some reason, I was always hot.
I really had to watch what shirts I wore because by the end of the day, I would look like I just ran a few miles. We were even living in Boston during the winter and I still managed to get hot.
Go figure.
Lopsided belly
Let's go back to this...
You know those maternity pictures you see with the skinny girls and the perfectly round stomachs? Well mine didn't look anything like that. Cali was laying transverse with her head on my left side and feet on my right. So when you looked at my stomach, I was extra wide with the left side of my belly a lot bigger than my right.
Also? It moved. I know that sounds like an obvious statement but when you think of feeling your baby move, most people envision sitting on the couch/bed/privacy of your own home with your significant other and you're all like "Oh honey! Feel the baby kick!" and you both smile at each other while you're touching your stomach. Well I never really thought about that I could be pushing the shopping cart around or babysitting an 8 year old and all of a sudden Cali would start kicking and flipping and my stomach was visibly moving. Like I had an alien in there. Craziness.
So those are some of the things - embarrassing and strange but true - that I found out while pregnant. The good news is that at the end of it all, I got a really cute baby, so I'm OK with it. And luckily
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