Today I am exactly 30 weeks pregnant. This is my first pregnancy, and it has been both an amazing and interesting experience. There is something about pregnancy that I noticed brings out a type of longing in other women, specifically mothers, not just to touch your belly, but to share stories and bits of advice from their own experiences. I have heard from so many women how they “loved being pregnant.” I’ve been told the many difficult stories people have experienced during their pregnancies, birth and after. Frequently I hear when I say I am looking forward to actually having my child “just wait” or “enjoy it while you can.”
Well, I don’t love being pregnant. For me, it is a means to a beautiful ending. I genuinely enjoy feeling my baby move (I opted to keep the sex a surprise) and find it very reassuring. I do not enjoy the hip pain and leg cramps I experience at night that wake me or feeling stretched and uncomfortable. Yet that really has been the worst of it. The initial fatigue I experienced that I just couldn’t even begin to explain subsided after a few weeks. I wasn’t overly sick in the beginning although brushing my teeth for some reason induced an unpleasant gag reflux. My health is good, my fibroids in sufficient check, and I passed the 3 hour gestational diabetes test after an initial high score. Despite the fair-weather experience, I am really just looking forward to meeting my newborn infant and motherhood as a whole. I know it will be difficult, I know I am going to be exhausted; I’m okay with that. At least I will be waking up to care for my baby versus because my hips ache.
So today I am reaching out to ask for some positive and practical advice from all the moms out there. Tell me about your joys in the first weeks and months of having your first born. Share your challenges and how you overcame them. Help me to embrace my soon to be future with your experiences and words of wisdom, while I wait for my soon-to-be bundle of JOY. After all, there is a reason we call babies just that!
