This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

I really do believe that they should teach teenagers just how much of a strain pregnancy puts on you and how painful it can be, and teen pregnancy rates would probably drop; at least by a little.

It has been a long, LONG 40 weeks, but the little one’s and my journey are soon going to separate. At least a little. Our due date is coming up in 2 days (October 21st) and we’ve had many signs of impending labor since week 36. In fact, I’m amazed he’s stuck it out with me as long as he has!

To elaborate, a few days into week 36, I had two nights that kept me awake with contractions. “Real”, painful ones, but they didn’t dilate my cervix and just robbed me of a combined 10 hours of sleep. Since then, not a day has gone by without some form of contractions, Braxton-Hicks, back aches, cervix pains and hit nerves. Still, we’ve stuck it out and at my last checkup I was 2 cm dilated, 80% effaced and his little head was sitting at -1 station.

As he’s getting ready to make his grand entrance, we’re working on getting all the last details sorted out before his arrival! My mother is flying in from Germany on the 21st and it’s looking like she might even get to attend his birth. While I would’ve appreciated an early birth, there’s definitely an upside to having my mom around for mental support during labor… and she’ll appreciate watching him be born and being a part of his first day in life.

While I’ve been in much pain and discomfort these past few weeks, I’m in a very serene mood with a big touch of excitement, just waiting for the little one to decide when it’s go-time.

21 weeks, 3 days

I have an almost insatiable hankering for cherries every summer as it is – delicious, ever so expensive morsels! This is multiplied by about… ten since I’ve been pregnant, and FINALLY cherry season has rolled around. I’ve been eating pounds and pounds of lovely red crunchy fruit and don’t plan on stopping until it becomes unaffordable again. $7/lb, really?! $3-4 is already a luxury, albeit one that I’ll gladly splurge on while I still can.

There are so many delicious cherry recipes out there, but my favorite is to just devour them fresh out of the bag. Rinsed, of course. They share the same fate as many other fruits this summer; I seem to not be able to get enough of sweet, juicy fruit. Blueberries, bananas, melon, pineapple, apples, nectarines – and, of course, the lovely cherries. I see this as a step up from the chocolate cravings that I’m usually plagued with.

It seems all I want these days is fruit, potatoes, whole wheat pumpkin spice bread from Great Harvest, protein pancakes, eggs, fish and poultry. This is such a HUGE turn-around from the first trimester, where fast food and simple carbs were my constant companions.

I feel that I’m doing a lot better on weight management this month (although I refuse to weigh myself between doctor appointments), to the point where I eat plenty of nourishing foods for my baby, exercise and still enjoy my body – more or less.

On the downside, our only car – a Ford Focus 2003 – has recently started its well-known ignition problem, where we’re unable to turn the key without manhandling it with a hammer. Since at any point it could refuse to turn on entirely, we’ve decided not to make trips that require us to get out of the car unless we’re at home. So instead of frequent gym trips, we’re now limited to “food hauls”. Tomorrow we’ll call up a locksmith and hopefully he can fix the issue.

Baby boy has been incredibly active! A few days ago my husband felt him move for the first time, and it was a darn big kick that he gave his daddy! Such a precious moment. I’m glad that he finally gets to experience what I’ve been telling him about for a month. Fetal movement is amazing; it’s making the pregnancy seem all the more real. No matter how many aches my body will go through in the next 19 weeks, baby boy makes it all worth it.

20 weeks, 7 days

For many expectant moms, weight gain is one of the things souring the experience of creating new life. I am one of them. To give a little backstory, I was always overweight as a child and teenager. My parents didn’t have a good grip on handling rewards without giving me treats, and I was home alone for upwards of 6 hours every day after I turned 10 years old. Loneliness as well as accessibility to junk food did their thing and I piled on an excess of about 50 pounds.

Around 20 years of age, I had had enough of being teased and ridiculed about my weight, and made the decision to drop the weight once and for all – with great success. I hit my target weight and ended my weight loss at around a BMI of 19-20. That is my happy weight. 115-120lbs is where I feel my most attractive and energetic and it’s easy to maintain with regular exercise and healthy eating. I had changed my lifestyle for the better and felt good about myself for the first time in my life, and I kept it up for 5 years now.

However, when I fell pregnant, my plans got boycotted. In my first trimester, I more or less lived on simple carbs – bread, potatoes, pasta, pastries and fruit were more or less all that did not make me nauseous and my routine of veggies, whole grains and lean protein got greatly interrupted. I didn’t lose my appetite – in fact; I was hungry a LOT of the time – but the things I was hungry for were things that frustrated me.

Of course, I wasn’t about to let my baby or myself go unnourished, so I ate fruit whenever I could, took my prenatals and made to as best as I could with whatever else I could keep down… but the weight went up. After the first 12 weeks, I had packed on about 5 pounds. After another month, I had packed on another ten. Yes, I somehow managed to gain about 10 pounds in a month! And this was past the first trimester, where I had actually started eating a lot better.

My midwife wasn’t happy with me, and I myself was rather devastated. I knew it wasn’t -quite- as much as 10lbs since I got weighed with boots, before a bowel movement and after drinking a liter of water, but it was still terrifying to see the number.

Thankfully, at the weigh-in a month afterwards, I had only gained 3 pounds (strangely enough, since I went on a 2-week vacation that month and wasn’t watching what I ate at all) and am now hoping to keep up a steady weight gain. I’ve shed most of my bad eating habits and have converted back to whole grains, vegetables, fruit and lean protein – just quite a bit more of it than I was previously eating. I also still visit the gym every second day.

I obviously know that pregnancy is about my baby and giving him the best start to life he can possibly have, so I put my own childish issues aside as best as I can. Regardless, weight gain is hard. This new body of mine scares me when I look in the mirror, and I yearn for my previously slim, non-swollen figure, with which it was so easy to do every day things like running, going up the stairs, cleaning the house, or even just turning around at night.

I aim to revert to my old exercise regime as soon as my doctor ok’s it post-partum. Hopefully I won’t have any issues breastfeeding my bundle of joy, so he gets the best nutrients for his growing body and I get to have a headstart at reverting to my old happy weight (the knockers can stay, though).

20 weeks, 5 days

I used to be a gymrat – my husband and I used to hit the gym at least 5 times a week. We did keep this up throughout the first trimester as best as we could, despite some days being more tedious than others. My first trimester had surprisingly mild morning sickness for me in store, although it came with many food aversions and light, permanent nausea. Since 12 weeks onward however, I’ve felt much much better, and food aversions have disappeared one by one, so the gym was very enjoyable once more from about week 12-16.

At week 16, we went out of country to visit my parents for two weeks, and while we got some decent exercise in form of hikes and various visits, we didn’t really get the same intensity that we’re used to from the gym. Even worse; we fell ill with the flu while we were there, so for about a week we didn’t feel up to much at all. I count my blessings though, I know that flus during pregnancy have the potential to turn into full-blown pneumonia and thankfully I evaded that.

Since our return at week 18, we’ve been carefully making a return to the gym. However, I find that my growing belly – and the ever-growing water bubble within it – make cardio a lot harder than it used to be. I’m a fan of the elliptical, but even though I turned down the elevation to avoid most of the “bouncing”, it still feels like I’m jumping rope with a big water balloon tied to my midsection. It’s uncomfortable! Add to this the fact that everything is starting to take a lot more effort to get done – bending down, going upstairs, sleeping as a few examples – and exercise is no exception. Not only am I lugging a good extra 15 pounds around with me, my blood volume shot up by about 40%, so my heart has to pump extra hard to get its job done and is not a big fan of me putting extra strain on it.

I’m thinking about switching over to the treadmill, although I’m past the stage where running is comfortable, so it’d have to be fast walking… perhaps up an incline to make up for the loss in speed.

Baby seems to be doing fine and goes through various grades of activity. Today he’s been rather quiet; yesterday he’s had a very active day, packing many kicks and rolls and little punches. I do hope he’s growing just fine, since my last appointment had me slightly worried about that. Our next appointment is on June 28th, at which point I’ll be 23 weeks gone. Perhaps they’ll schedule another ultrasound as well! It’d be nice to get another look at the little man and make sure he’s caught up in growth.

In the meantime, I made use of amazon and ordered the following books:
That’s my Son, by Rick Johnson

It’s a Boy!: Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18, by Michael Thompson

As mentioned, I have very little knowledge of how to raise a boy and I aim to at least educate myself by the time he gets here! We can learn the rest together, I’m sure.

20 weeks, 3 days

As mentioned, my little man is tiny compared to other boys his age range (20 weeks in-utero) and weighs in at a mere 10 ounces, thus putting him in the 5th percentile. The doctors didn’t seem too concerned considering my size (5’3″ and skinny, at least pre-pregnancy), but they did advise me to eat more protein and mentioned the possibility of another ultrasound checkup in about 6 weeks. Since then, we’ve acquired a high-end blender and multiple sacks of protein powder, as well as turkey sausages and many gallons of milk.

I’m a carbohydrate kinda girl and while I’m not a vegetarian, I rarely feel like eating meat. There are just so many other delicious things to eat out there! While I thought I was doing decently in the protein department, it certainly can’t hurt to ramp up my intake until my boy has caught up in growth – or perhaps even until his birth. This isn’t the time to care about my own personal food preferences; this is the time to ensure that a new person gets the best possible start to life that he can.

So now, I have a protein shake for breakfast, yogurt for lunch, and some kind of meat, beans or eggs for dinner followed by another protein shake. My snacks are made up almost entirely of fruit. Little one has been extremely active over the past few days, so I’m crossing my fingers that it’s working, or that he’s at least having a growth spurt. Hopefully we can get him up to a more average weight by birth (though I most certainly would be terrified of giving birth to a 95th percentile chunker baby! I don’t even think that would realistically fit…)

As I’ve found out, my high-protein diet greatly reduces the fiber I’ve been putting into my body, so I’m going to have to improvise on that one, perhaps with more vegetables or even a fiber supplement. High-protein diets make for very uncomfortable poops, I’ll tell you that much. Makes one wonder how the athletes do it.

This is my beautiful baby boy, at the time of this snapshot a mere 20 weeks in-utero and compared to other boys his age, tiny. Proportionate, beautiful, amazing, strong and active – and a boy.

I’ve spent the past 20 weeks envisioning a fair little baby girl swimming around and growing in my stomach, one that I’d dress in soft pinks and purples and whose smile would light up my life. A decade or two down the road we’d be the best of friends, and I would have a connection with my daughter bar none; like my own mother and I did. I went so far as to having my whole baby registry set up in beautiful matching shades of pink butterflies and purple flowers. Every time I felt this little being move, I referred to it as a “she” in my mind.

Imagine my surprise when it took the ultrasound technician less than a minute to cheerily proclaim “It’s a boy!”

I did not cry, make a snarky comment or even stop smiling for a second like you hear from a lot of women with gender disappointment. My baby was beautiful and I was fascinated by each of his little movements – he was perfect. I could not believe that my husband and I created this new budding life, and even though for a while I had trouble letting go of all my fantasies of pinks and girl time, I already love this little bundle of new life that has no idea of how crazy a world is getting ready to welcome him very soon.

But – the bigger question is – what do I do with this? I had everything mapped out for the little girl whose time hasn’t come yet. I’d teach her to read and write, I’d cuddle her at night, I’d change her diapers without safeguard, I’d get her interested in cooking and healthy food, I’d encourage her every step towards becoming a woman with that special bond only mothers and daughters share.

What if I can’t connect over anything with my precious little boy? While geeky, I’m still very much a girly girl and never had much to do with boys while growing up. I had no siblings and very few male friends as young child and I am admittedly a little terrified of what exactly awaits me. However, the more time passes since that 20-week ultrasound, the more comfortable I become with the idea of raising a son. I aim to be educated by the time my little bundle gets here, and I’m sure the little one and I can learn the rest together. After all, he has a whole new world to discover and I’ll do my best to guide him along the way, blue clothes and all.

Thank you, little one, for choosing me as your mother. I couldn’t be more blessed — but I would appreciate if you could choose a location other than my bladder as a bouncyhouse.