Doctors Appointments
There’s nothing that can really prepare you for your first pregnancy visit at your doctors office. On the one hand they tell you wonderful things “You are pregnant,” and let you listen to your child’s heartbeat and even show you your baby on screen, and point at its little beating heart, but on the other hand they take a lot of blood.
I’ve never had a huge issue with blood tests, my husband is fully capable of passing out at the sight of blood, but I’ve handled it fairly well. I’m anemic, so I’ve never given blood, but I’ve had a vial or two taken for my yearly physical before… yeah, this is more than a vial.
Try twelve various sized vials of blood. My veins suck by the way, so after a vial or two, I’d get poked in a new spot. They finally found a great vein to take blood from, on my hand!
After that visits are fairly uneventful. You go in, they weigh you, take your blood pressure, and temperature, and come in to discuss random bits of information every visit and ask if you have any questions. They’ll do one round of blood tests to see if the baby has any genetic abnormalities, and then you get to the fun visit, the twenty week ultrasound.
I love my insurance company/doctors office, but if they could just do ultrasounds at every visit, I would look forward to my appointments so much more. I love seeing my baby. The baby looks human at this ultrasound; unfortunately, my baby is human with a very specific set of likes and dislikes that it has learned to express towards kicking. Ultrasounds are not on my baby’s fun activity lists. My baby likes ultrasounds as much as it likes loud movies, barking dogs, my mattress, and fireworks, not at all.
We were able to see that the baby’s a girl (yay!) because all she was willing to do was flash and kick the camera. She very deliberately buried her head in my spine the entire procedure. We have some great shots of her little feet pummeling my stomach in an attempt to kick out the invading ultrasound camera thingie, but that’s about it for pictures, we have her but, and her feet.
So I had to walk around, move around, shift, and contort myself in fun ways to trick the baby into moving for just a second so the doctor could check on those pesky things like organ development. She’s completely perfect, and weighed/measured exactly what she should have at her twenty week mark.
One thing that shocked me was that babies are fast in the womb. She was darting around like a fish! I have no idea how they got pictures that didn’t just look like blurs, but it was amazing. My husband and I left the doctors office and went out to dinner to celebrate how perfect our little girl was, how active, and how amazing she was. It was unbelievable.
The ultrasound also helped us make a very important decision. Should we invest in getting one of those 4D ultrasounds, and having a little DVD, and lot’s of pictures to share, or would that just be wasting money? In our case, we opted not to get it. She made her preference clear, and we knew there was no way she would stay still for that adorable baby sucking on thumb picture that I wanted.
The next visit wasn’t as much fun. I was tested for gestational diabetes. To perform this test you drink something that tastes like the syrup used to make orange soda. Not orange soda, that’s less sweet, no, this is just the concentrated syrup. Then they take more blood, and then you find out if your diet has to change any more than it already has. Thankfully I tested negative.
When pregnant you call or go to the doctor for everything, just in case. I broke out in a really weird rash and visited, and had to be put on steroids to clear it up. I also was not allowed to use any scented products for the rest of the pregnancy. I stocked up on Aveeno soaps and shampoos, and my husband and I switched to Dreft detergent. So far, no more small red bumps, but man did they suck when I had them.
They started on my wrists. Little tiny red bumps that looked like heat rash, then they spread to my thighs, arms, and legs. They itched so bad that I scratched myself bloody. Nothing helped; I tried every remedy known to man, vinegar, oatmeal bath, and lotions, nothing worked. The only thing that gave me a modicum of relief was baby oil put on right after a bath. I would feel perfectly normal for an hour, and then the itching came back. Thank goodness for steroids.
One thing about steroids, if your doctor gives them to you prepare for super baby kicking. I swear she never slept for that five days, just kicked non-stop. Fun times
Pregnancy Symptoms
Kicking
My husband felt the baby move before I did. How many people get to say that? I was lying down, reading the latest Kelley Armstrong book out loud (my husband doesn’t care for reading, but he likes the stories) and my husband was lying next to me, hand on my tummy when he felt her kick. I felt her the next time she did it, and it was amazing.
It’s impossible to describe that feeling. It feels like those little things that hang onto glass windows with suction cups look when they’re being pulled off. Only it’s inside of you, and you’re the window.
My baby is so active, she moves around constantly, particularly at night. She typically does her aerobics routine between 1:00 and 3:00 am, I don’t mind though, it’s such a cool feeling, and if I ever don’t feel her kicking I get all freaked out and paranoid anyway, so really I’d much rather lay there and feel her all the time.
Weight
I didn’t gain any weight my second trimester. I was rather heavy set to begin with, and I lost weight my first trimester. The doctor was not concerned though; the baby grew at a great rate and was weighing in just fine. I think eating healthy and having time to eat healthy most likely meant my body was losing weight while gaining weight. Very strange, but nice, I didn’t have to buy maternity clothes my entire second trimester though. What sort of sucked was that no one could tell I was pregnant, but after hearing so many horror stories of strangers touching pregnant tummy’s maybe I should be grateful.
Complete lack of symptoms
The second trimester is kind of awesome. You find out the baby’s gender, you feel the baby move, and you still get fun cravings, but you don’t have aversions, morning sickness, headaches, or sleepiness to contend with. With the exception of the weird pregnancy rash, my second semester was completely uneventful negative symptom wise. If it wasn’t for the baby kicking, I wouldn’t have known I was pregnant.
My husband kept talking so much about how well I was handling pregnancy during the third trimester. Partially because I’m one of those people who read about feeling sick, and then feel sick, we were both very concerned about me being pregnant, because I’m a baby. So I think a lot of his bragging on me is just gratitude, but I’m careful to draw the line when he compares me to other pregnant women.
“Honey, to hear other people talk about being pregnant, it’s like it’s this horrible event, you’re handling it great. I think those other women are just drama queens.”
I point out that unlike most other women, I’m not working. The few weeks that I was working during my pregnancy were really rough. I think a huge part of the pregnancy symptoms (for me anyway) go away if you can just get enough rest. Also, lots of those other women have kids already. I’m younger, and I’m not them. Every pregnancy is different. I’ve lucked out so far, but tomorrow could change everything. Also, the second trimester is supposed to be the easiest. That kind of sucks actually, because no one takes women seriously during their first trimester because they’re “barely” pregnant. Well that’s when your body is adjusting the most. My first trimester, while still not terrible, was fifty times worse than my second. The second trimester was nothing. If any guys are reading this out there, listen during the first trimester, don’t brush off complaints. A woman’s body is going nuts that first few weeks, the second trimester its kind of gotten used to being pregnant, the third trimester is… special, but I’ll get to that later.
There’s nothing that can really prepare you for your first pregnancy visit at your doctors office. On the one hand they tell you wonderful things “You are pregnant,” and let you listen to your child’s heartbeat and even show you your baby on screen, and point at its little beating heart, but on the other hand they take a lot of blood.
I’ve never had a huge issue with blood tests, my husband is fully capable of passing out at the sight of blood, but I’ve handled it fairly well. I’m anemic, so I’ve never given blood, but I’ve had a vial or two taken for my yearly physical before… yeah, this is more than a vial.
Try twelve various sized vials of blood. My veins suck by the way, so after a vial or two, I’d get poked in a new spot. They finally found a great vein to take blood from, on my hand!
After that visits are fairly uneventful. You go in, they weigh you, take your blood pressure, and temperature, and come in to discuss random bits of information every visit and ask if you have any questions. They’ll do one round of blood tests to see if the baby has any genetic abnormalities, and then you get to the fun visit, the twenty week ultrasound.
I love my insurance company/doctors office, but if they could just do ultrasounds at every visit, I would look forward to my appointments so much more. I love seeing my baby. The baby looks human at this ultrasound; unfortunately, my baby is human with a very specific set of likes and dislikes that it has learned to express towards kicking. Ultrasounds are not on my baby’s fun activity lists. My baby likes ultrasounds as much as it likes loud movies, barking dogs, my mattress, and fireworks, not at all.
We were able to see that the baby’s a girl (yay!) because all she was willing to do was flash and kick the camera. She very deliberately buried her head in my spine the entire procedure. We have some great shots of her little feet pummeling my stomach in an attempt to kick out the invading ultrasound camera thingie, but that’s about it for pictures, we have her but, and her feet.
So I had to walk around, move around, shift, and contort myself in fun ways to trick the baby into moving for just a second so the doctor could check on those pesky things like organ development. She’s completely perfect, and weighed/measured exactly what she should have at her twenty week mark.
One thing that shocked me was that babies are fast in the womb. She was darting around like a fish! I have no idea how they got pictures that didn’t just look like blurs, but it was amazing. My husband and I left the doctors office and went out to dinner to celebrate how perfect our little girl was, how active, and how amazing she was. It was unbelievable.
The ultrasound also helped us make a very important decision. Should we invest in getting one of those 4D ultrasounds, and having a little DVD, and lot’s of pictures to share, or would that just be wasting money? In our case, we opted not to get it. She made her preference clear, and we knew there was no way she would stay still for that adorable baby sucking on thumb picture that I wanted.
The next visit wasn’t as much fun. I was tested for gestational diabetes. To perform this test you drink something that tastes like the syrup used to make orange soda. Not orange soda, that’s less sweet, no, this is just the concentrated syrup. Then they take more blood, and then you find out if your diet has to change any more than it already has. Thankfully I tested negative.
When pregnant you call or go to the doctor for everything, just in case. I broke out in a really weird rash and visited, and had to be put on steroids to clear it up. I also was not allowed to use any scented products for the rest of the pregnancy. I stocked up on Aveeno soaps and shampoos, and my husband and I switched to Dreft detergent. So far, no more small red bumps, but man did they suck when I had them.
They started on my wrists. Little tiny red bumps that looked like heat rash, then they spread to my thighs, arms, and legs. They itched so bad that I scratched myself bloody. Nothing helped; I tried every remedy known to man, vinegar, oatmeal bath, and lotions, nothing worked. The only thing that gave me a modicum of relief was baby oil put on right after a bath. I would feel perfectly normal for an hour, and then the itching came back. Thank goodness for steroids.
One thing about steroids, if your doctor gives them to you prepare for super baby kicking. I swear she never slept for that five days, just kicked non-stop. Fun times
Pregnancy Symptoms
Kicking
My husband felt the baby move before I did. How many people get to say that? I was lying down, reading the latest Kelley Armstrong book out loud (my husband doesn’t care for reading, but he likes the stories) and my husband was lying next to me, hand on my tummy when he felt her kick. I felt her the next time she did it, and it was amazing.
It’s impossible to describe that feeling. It feels like those little things that hang onto glass windows with suction cups look when they’re being pulled off. Only it’s inside of you, and you’re the window.
My baby is so active, she moves around constantly, particularly at night. She typically does her aerobics routine between 1:00 and 3:00 am, I don’t mind though, it’s such a cool feeling, and if I ever don’t feel her kicking I get all freaked out and paranoid anyway, so really I’d much rather lay there and feel her all the time.
Weight
I didn’t gain any weight my second trimester. I was rather heavy set to begin with, and I lost weight my first trimester. The doctor was not concerned though; the baby grew at a great rate and was weighing in just fine. I think eating healthy and having time to eat healthy most likely meant my body was losing weight while gaining weight. Very strange, but nice, I didn’t have to buy maternity clothes my entire second trimester though. What sort of sucked was that no one could tell I was pregnant, but after hearing so many horror stories of strangers touching pregnant tummy’s maybe I should be grateful.
Complete lack of symptoms
The second trimester is kind of awesome. You find out the baby’s gender, you feel the baby move, and you still get fun cravings, but you don’t have aversions, morning sickness, headaches, or sleepiness to contend with. With the exception of the weird pregnancy rash, my second semester was completely uneventful negative symptom wise. If it wasn’t for the baby kicking, I wouldn’t have known I was pregnant.
My husband kept talking so much about how well I was handling pregnancy during the third trimester. Partially because I’m one of those people who read about feeling sick, and then feel sick, we were both very concerned about me being pregnant, because I’m a baby. So I think a lot of his bragging on me is just gratitude, but I’m careful to draw the line when he compares me to other pregnant women.
“Honey, to hear other people talk about being pregnant, it’s like it’s this horrible event, you’re handling it great. I think those other women are just drama queens.”
I point out that unlike most other women, I’m not working. The few weeks that I was working during my pregnancy were really rough. I think a huge part of the pregnancy symptoms (for me anyway) go away if you can just get enough rest. Also, lots of those other women have kids already. I’m younger, and I’m not them. Every pregnancy is different. I’ve lucked out so far, but tomorrow could change everything. Also, the second trimester is supposed to be the easiest. That kind of sucks actually, because no one takes women seriously during their first trimester because they’re “barely” pregnant. Well that’s when your body is adjusting the most. My first trimester, while still not terrible, was fifty times worse than my second. The second trimester was nothing. If any guys are reading this out there, listen during the first trimester, don’t brush off complaints. A woman’s body is going nuts that first few weeks, the second trimester its kind of gotten used to being pregnant, the third trimester is… special, but I’ll get to that later.
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