Things no one tells you

As you know, I'm a reformed babyhater. So I never was particularly interested in pregnancy until recently - after all, for all I knew, it might never happen for me - and I was also stunned to discover that I'm pregnant so soon after going off birth control. While I'd read up on fertility and conception, I hadn't so much as touched a book about actually being pregnant. I've recently ordered some (can't go into a bookstore to buy them since no one knows about Baby Bibliosaur yet, and I live in a small and gossipy town), but at the moment I'm still flying blind unless I have something specific that I want to google.

Because of this, I will openly admit the shameful fact that the vast majority of my knowledge about pregnancy comes from films and TV, which means that the last week has been a massive learning curve for me. After all, what do movies tell you about the first trimester? There are a lot of jokes about morning sickness and weird food cravings, maybe a mention of sore boobs. That's about it. But there are so many things that no one tells you, that are never mentioned and are (at least for me), totally unexpected.

So imagine my shock when a whole host of painful symptoms set in - starting with cramps.

Holy mother of Maude, cramps. Some are light, some are deep, but there are a hell of a lot of them. Naturally, my first reaction was to panic, then google it to see if I was miscarrying. Turns out that cramps in the first trimester are perfectly normal! They're caused by your uterus and stomach muscles expanding and stretching to make room for the baby.

Then there were the sharp, stabby pains in my right side.

See the straight rounded tubey thing stretching downward? That's a round ligament. [source]

WTF are those? Yet again, panic. And yet again, it turns out they're normal. It's called round ligament pain and is also caused by the uterus growing - the ligaments stretch like rubber bands, which doesn't sound too bad but hurts like a mofo. Also nothing to worry about unless they won't go away or you start spotting or bleeding.

I've mentioned fatigue and frequent urination in my previous post, but they're worthwhile repeating, just because they took me by surprise (I am fully aware how ignorant I must sound right now, but I'm being honest).

The fatigue is constant. I could sleep all day and still feel rundown. It's a bitch. The frequent trips to the bathroom are yet another symptom caused by a growing uterus, which presses on your bladder - the reason this very logical symptom took me by surprise is because I thought this only happened in the third trimester when you have a heavy baby tapdancing around in there. It's embarrassing, but I didn't realize how much your uterus shifts during pregnancy.

And backache.

"Really?" I thought to myself, "Backache? I thought that was only a third trimester thing." Turns out it's not.

And then, a sudden lack of all of the above. I thought I'd panicked about the cramps and round ligament pain, but this was where I really lost it. I'd had more or less 24/7 cramps since DPO4, mostly very light, but always present. Yesterday it stopped for three hours. You'd think this would be a pleasant relief, but instead it freaked me out - I was convinced that the sudden ceasefire meant something was wrong and kept going to the bathroom every 15 minutes to check for spotting. I nearly cried with relief when the pain started up again - I never thought I'd be happy to feel cramping. But, as google informed me, symptoms often go on and off, and unless I start bleeding, it's probably fine.

Now here's the tricky part: you might have all of these. Or you might have none of them. The only dependable fact about pregnancy symptoms is that no two women are alike - in fact, no two pregnancies are alike, even for the same woman. But just in case you do, don't panic. It's all normal, even if they don't mention any of it in the movies.