Pregnancy and the accompanying​ anecdotes.

I’m pregnant.  After 2 years and 11 months of trying, my husband and I finally got a positive pregnancy test.  We spent a lot of money on sticks that I had to pee on, went to doctors, had fertility tests (all came back fine), and even tried in vitro.  All with no luck.  But, as of 2 days ago, we are 17 weeks pregnant.

We found out the morning of October 11th.  The day we left for our trip to Macedonia.  I was about 5 days late at that point.  I’m a superstitious person and after not just months, but literally years of getting excited every 28 days, and taking a test early only to be disappointed, I resolved to wait.  Wait until I was really late, like reeeaallly late.  I didn’t want to jinx it.  My husband Kruno was getting more and more excited as those late days passed by.  When I did take the test, I didn’t tell him what I was doing.  It came back positive almost immediately.  I called for him to come to the bathroom.  Drudgingly, he came. He thought I needed him in to kill a bug.  I showed him the test and excitement ensued.

The last 17 weeks have been enlightening.  I learn something new every day.  About my body, my abilities or lack thereof, and places I can, all of sudden, no longer comfortably reach because of my growing size.

And with every minute of research I’ve done since that positive test, I’ve become more and more aware that I know nothing about pregnancy, labor, and perhaps even babies.  And I’d like to share with you all some of the more interesting revelations I’ve had.

WHATS HAPPENING TO ME???

This question came early and often.  Google became my most used app.  How could I have been so clueless?  In movies and TV, pregnant women are portrayed in a certain way.   Emotional. Vomiting, Bitchy.  I thought I was mentally prepared for all of it, but the other symptoms and the pure intensity hit me like a wrecking ball

I get so emotional, baby…

The first to rear its ugly head was the elevated hormones.  I’m an emotional person to begin with.  But I naively thought “How much worse could this get?”  Well… Let me tell ya.

Every emotion I feel, I feel it times a hundred, maybe even a thousand.  If I’m sad, it borders on devastation.  If I’m angry, watch out. But the most notable change is that I am loving harder.  I love people HARD.  Wicked hard. Over this past holiday, I looked at my young nephews, I just wanted to grab them and not let go.  I wanted to look them square in the eyes and say sternly ” I love you, dammit!”  (Picture Rhett Butler saying that to Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone with the wind”. But, I thought better of it.  The boys are young and I didn’t want to scare the shit out of them.)  And when I left my grandmothers house to come back home, I cried for a long time.  She lives just a few hours away. I can go see her any weekend.  And as I’m typing this, thinking about how much I love these people and how much I miss them, I’m crying.  I’m a mess.

And my crying has changed. The act of it itself.  These crying spells last forever.  My tears have even gotten bigger.   The amount of fluid that is falling from my eyeballs is astounding.  My tears are the size of nickles, I kid you not.  Isn’t that weird?  Has anyone else experienced that while pregnant?  And because of all these things.  The dehydration from the size and quantity of tears, and the ease at which I cry, I have had to completely change how and when I view things.  For example, I’m spending far less time on Facebook these days.  I used to love watching the heart-warming videos. that would populate my newsfeed.  But no more. I can’t risk it. I also haven’t been able to watch several episodes of “This is us”.  I watched a few at the beginning of the season, but when I saw the previews of the one where Kate has a miscarriage, all bets were off.  Now the second part of the season is supposed to start and I’m in a pickle.  Do I devote an entire day to catching up on the season?  Let’s do that math:  4 episodes I missed = 4 hours of viewing. + 2 hours of crying time (conservatively) + 1 hour of recuperation to let the puffiness in my face dissipate.  That’s a big commitment.

My body is a wonderland

No, no it isn’t.  While it is mystifying me these days, I don’t think that’s what John Mayer meant.  You can read Pinterest posts, join the community group chats in your pregnancy apps and read “What to expect when you’re expecting” all you want, but I guarantee you, something is going to happen that will throw you for a loop.  From my albeit brief experience, I’ve come to realize that it’s important to use the mentioned resources as merely a guideline.  Most of my symptoms have occurred earlier than normal.

Don’t you, forget about me

“Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most”.  Mark Twain must have stolen this from his wife when she was pregnant.  People talk about pregnancy brain often.  But nothing prepares you for it.  I am not just forgetting things, but I’m thinking I do things or say things that I don’t.  “Didn’t I tell you that?” has become my most used sentence recently.  A few weeks ago I had mentioned to my boss that I had forgotten to text some family members back recently.  She was understandably concerned whereas my job is mostly following up with clients and remembering things.  I assured her that I only let it affect my home life.  And that is the truth. I noticed that this was starting to happen, so the moment I leave work, I totally shut off my brain.  So far, it seems to be working. While this doesn’t thrill my husband, it’s a sacrifice we’ll have to make until I figure something else out. I haven’t written a post in a really long time.  Not because I didn’t have anything to write, or I was too busy. I have been conserving all of my brain cells for work.  This post, in fact, has taken an exceptionally long time.  I’ve been storing up for weeks to finish it.  Now, I’m no neurologist but I think there might be some logic to it.

The end

While this is only a short list of the symptoms I’ve experienced, these are what has struck me as funny.  I think it’s important to keep levity at the forefront.  Because what awaits us at the end is going to be the most momentous experience of our lives. We are so excited to be parents and I am excited to share our little stories throughout the process. S