Early Pregnancy

I've been a really bad Pregosaur. I don't know why, but I keep saying that I'm going to come home from work and blog, but then somehow I always end up putting it off until "tomorrow." Then before I know it, weeks have passed and I still haven't blogged about anything. I promise to be a better Pregosaur from here on out...

It actually wasn't too long after I started blogging on Pregosaur that we found out that I was pregnant. In fact, it was just a few days after I published my first post on this blog that we confirmed it. You might be wondering why I didn't just come out and announce it immediately. I wanted to shout it from the roof tops, I really did. I chose not to, however, for two reasons.

The first reason was because things are so uncertain in the beginning. So many things can go wrong and the miscarriage rate, I was surprised to find out, is about 20-25% in young, healthy women. I wanted to make sure that everything was okay with the baby first before making the announcement. That said, if something had happened, I think I would have blogged about it as an outlet for my emotions. Thankfully, everything has been progressing really well so far.

The main reason I wanted to wait before announcing my pregnancy was because I wanted the opportunity to blog about my IF journey. No matter how long or short, it's not an easy path to take, and I wanted to share my experiences with others to help those who have found themselves on that path, and for those that are not - to help raise awareness about IF.

I was really surprised how quickly the pregnancy symptoms came upon me after I got my BFP. I was immediately making trips to the bathroom at night to pee, something I had never done before. I always thought that the increased urination doesn't occur until the end of pregnancy, when the baby is pushing on your bladder. Turns out that your increased blood volume, in addition to the increased blood flow to the uterus will cause increased urination early on in pregnancy as well.

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The fatigue was also overwhelming. I'm usually a night owl, staying up until midnight or 1am every night, but as soon as I was pregnant I found that I was ready to go to bed between 8-9pm!!! This wasn't something that was intermittent, either. I was consistently feeling fatigued every night after I got home from work, regardless of what my work day had been like. I was really surprised that a little being consisting of just a few small cells could be taking such a toll on me!

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My breasts also started to become tender almost immediately, and I could already tell that they were growing. I always thought that the majority of mammary development occurred in the third trimester, but apparently for many women, it starts early on.

Those were my main pregnancy symptoms early on. Luckily, I did not have any morning sickness during the first few weeks. I was thankful for this, but at times it was hard for me to really feel pregnant. I know that every pregnancy is different... some women never get morning sickness and some get morning sickness with one pregnancy but not the other. Some have mild nausea, and then others are vomiting multiple times a day, requiring medications.

Regardless of which symptoms I had or did not have, I was thrilled to finally be pregnant. This joy was slightly hampered by the ongoing worry that something would happen to my baby and I would have a miscarriage. I had no reason to believe that things were going awry - I had not had any spotting or cramping - just mild twinges as my uterus was growing. Yet it was still so hard to keep the worry from the forefront of my mind. The five week wait for my 9 week ultrasound was even harder than any other 2 week wait I had previously endured. I just had to constantly remind myself that we had waited so long to finally be here that I was going to do my best to enjoy this pregnancy...