Category: Things They Don’t Tell You About Pregnancy

Ok, this one is about something that can be both a very sensitive subject and very frightening, but I’m just gonna put it out there – not all bleeding during pregnancy is a bad omen.

Now I am definitely not implying that you should ignore it if you start bleeding at any time throughout your pregnancy, but just know that it doesn’t always signal the worst. Certainly call your doctor if you see anything more than some light spotting (or even if you do see spotting and it makes you nervous, for that matter) just so they are aware and can direct you if anything needs to be done. Let me give you my little example…

When I was about 4 months along, I woke up one Sunday morning to some nasty bleeding. I thought oh my god! What is that?? What’s happening? What’s going wrong? For I had zero pain or discomfort whatsoever and had done nothing strenuous at all in the days prior. It was just all of a sudden there when I first went to the bathroom that morning. So I went into a mild freak out and called my doctor’s after hours line, it being 7:30am on a Sunday and all. The on-call doctor with whom I spoke didn’t seem concerned since there was no pain associated with it, there appeared to be no lumps in it, and it was more of a dark red than a bright red. He told me to just lay low and relax that day, and try not to do too much physical activity. Ok, done. I sat in bed all day watching tv. This was actually what I would have done most of that day anyway, since R and I had gotten in a huge fight the night before when I picked him up from an all-day bar crawl, he slept on the couch that night, and I was going to generally try to avoid him all day Sunday even without these new doctor’s orders.

And things seemed to be clearing up just fine. There was no more bleeding that morning and into the afternoon. About 3pm, however, it was back. Shit! I called the doctor again, and this time he wanted me to go into labor and delivery at the hospital just so they could check me out and do a little investigative work. Double shit. I almost had a panic attack. I was so scared. If something happened to the baby I didn’t know how I was going to be able to handle it. Everything had gone so wonderfully in my pregnancy up until that point I hadn’t even thought that losing the baby was still a concern for me. But what else could all this blood mean? Plus I hadn’t said 1 word to R that whole day and now I have to tell him that I’m going to the hospital because I’m bleeding and I don’t know if there’s something wrong with our baby? Oh god, I can’t do it. So I went out in the living room, sat down on the futon to put on my shoes, and he looked over at me to see what I was doing. I told him I had to go to the hospital and instantly broke down in tears. It was the scariest day of my pregnancy, my husband and I were mad at each other, and I thought I was going to have to hear the news every pregnant woman fears most all alone. I broke. R immediately flew off the couch and into action to get ready and take me. I told him he didn’t have to come and he told me not to be ridiculous. I was so relieved. I thought he was just going to be more mad for some reason, hence me not even wanting to tell him where I was going. I honestly thought I was just going to walk out the door without saying anything to him. How awful would that have been?

On the way to the hospital I did one of those sniffle-sobs where you’re really just breathing in, but since you’ve been crying it gets all jumbled up and noisy. You know what I’m talking about? When R heard this he grabbed my hand and held it the rest of the way. I felt so much better. Still scared shitless about what was going on inside me, but at least our fight from the night before was instantly a distant memory. When we arrived at the hospital they showed us up to l&d, and I explained to the nurse at the window that I was the one with the unexplained bleeding about whom the doctor had called in to them. They showed us to a room where I waited to be examined. The nurse had me change into a gown and asked me to describe what had been going on and if there was any pain, blah, blah, she hooked up an ultrasound machine and placed it on my belly, and right away we saw the baby in there, swimming away totally a-ok. Oh thank god and all things holy! You have no idea how relieved we were. Awesome, fantastic, whew! But where was the blood coming from? They weren’t sure. The nurse did an internal exam and said it was old blood, so it could really have been caused by anything – maybe I strained too hard in a movement and it escaped, or it may just have been hiding out in my va-j that whole time and got jostled out somehow, she really wasn’t sure. All right, fine. As long as the baby is ok I really don’t care. I had another ultrasound scheduled with the perinatologist for a different reason a few days from then anyway, so they told me to just take it easy until then and he would be able to get a much clearer picture of what was going on in there. My god was that ride home a bazillion times better than the one on the way to the hospital.

At my next ultrasound, the doctor found the cause of my bleeding – a low-lying placenta, otherwise known as placenta previa. This is a condition where the placenta does not grow up and into the uterus as the baby grows, but rather stays down near the cervix, either partially or completely covering it. If it stays down there until it’s time to deliver, it almost always results in a c-section, since a vaginal delivery would be much too dangerous for both mom and baby and would entail a ridiculous amount of bleeding and tearing. Yee-ouch and yikes! Fortunately mine was about the least severe classification possible – my placenta was just barely touching the cervix, not covering it, but it was still close enough to cause that blood to come out. So I was placed on a 6 week no sex, no heavy physical exertion restriction, in the hopes that the placenta would just naturally correct itself and move up. And fortunately it did. At my ultrasound 6 weeks later everything looked great, I got the all-clear, and I didn’t have to see the perinatologist again during my pregnancy. He’s a nice guy and all, but I’d rather know everything is healthy in there than continue to have to see him.

So you see, as scary as it is when it happens, bleeding doesn’t necessarily mean everything’s going wrong. Like I said, absolutely call your doctor if you do start bleeding, but please try not to assume the worst. I know I’m a bad example since I obviously failed at that, but after going through my little experience I now know that there are so many other causes, and hopefully if it happens again during any future pregnancies I might be able to stay a little more calm until we figure out what’s really going on in there.

 

Holy cow, double digits! I think I’m running out of topics here…

But have no fear, I do have one for this week. I had often heard that heartburn was a symptom of pregnancy, but having never experienced it before, I had no idea what it felt like. Everyone always warned oh it’s nasty, it’s this burning up and down your chest that feels like fire. Oh awesome, that sounds like tons of fun.

So when mine struck, I didn’t even think it was heartburn (kinda like i didn’t even think my contractions were contractions, but cramps. hmm, maybe i should have been paying better attention that whole time). The burning sensation I felt was always in my throat, never in my chest. It was kind of a nagging discomfort that seemed to make my mouth water a lot more than usual. As such, I kept thinking man, this sore throat sucks. Why will it not go away?

Yet again, duh, SM. Maybe it was the pregnancy brain, maybe it was just my own typical aloofness, but when I finally considered that maybe heartburn could be felt there, too, I tried some Tums. Ahhhh! (picture that being sung by a small chorus of angels, and that is what it felt like) My fiery, tingling, painful throat was finally feeling some relief. It’s amazing what magic those mushy, chalky little tablets possess. I didn’t even attempt to try the regular flavor ones, though, I went straight for the fruit flavors. Have you ever chewed on chalk? I haven’t, but can’t imagine it’s too pleasant, so didn’t really want to give it a shot. Especially when my body was already doing such weird things from growing a miniature human inside of it.

Dudes, those fruity little circles became my new best friends. But they have calcium too, they can’t be bad! Right? Who knows. I’m sure if you eat 400 a day it’s probably not the best idea, but I stuck to the 2-3 recommended as necessary. And man oh man, did I love those things. They became my pregnancy candy, and we all know how big my sweet tooth is. Think wooly mammoth tusk-sized.

Now I can’t remember exactly when in my pregnancy my heartburn began, unfortunately. But it was a fairly constant companion once it appeared. It didn’t seem to be triggered by certain foods more than others, either, it just seemed to be there at some point during pretty much every day. Fortunately I never had it bad enough to wake me up at night or cause trouble falling asleep, and I never needed anything prescription-strength to calm it. That family-sized little jar of Tums served me just fine. And then once D was born, it just up and disappeared.

How about you mamas out there? Are your hearts burning yet?

 

All of you who are now or have ever been pregnant are already well aware of the myriad aches and pains that come with the territory of a fairly rapidly expanding body. So this one will come as no surprise – things hurt. And sometimes things that you didn’t even know could hurt (or even know you had!) hurt.

One of the pains that I remember most distinctly was sacroiliac pain. What the what? Yes, sacroiliac pain. Mine manifested itself as a lot of lower back/butt/hips area pain. Not always a sharp, shooting pain like with a pinched nerve (sometimes i did feel that kind of pain but not as a rule), but an overall uncomfortable soreness in that general area. Being the self-diagnosing wonder that I am, I ruled out sciatica, which can also become an ailment during the latter months of pregnancy. For I didn’t have that tell-tale pain and/or numbness radiating down the backs of my legs that is associated with the sciatic nerve being pinched.

My pain was much more a feeling of man, something is out of whack back there, not ow, my leg hurts. So after some tooling around on the interwebz I figured it was sacroiliac pain. You have 2 sacroiliac joints – 1 on either side of your spine where it joins your pelvis in your lower back. As your pregnancy progresses and your body gets ready for delivery (read – wider and wider!), your pelvic ligaments begin to loosen as well in anticipation of the widening of the birth canal for baby to escape. This loosening of the ligaments in turn causes a concurrent “loosening” of your joints, if you will. So specifically with the sacroiliac joints, as they move out of their regular position, you may very well feel this pain. Delicious, isn’t it?

I think my pain became really noticeable toward the end of the second trimester, when my belly started pulling its weight, literally. It was weird too, because up until that point I honestly hadn’t had too much discomfort. But I started noticing more pain in my butt and hips during weight-bearing activities like standing and walking, obviously, but also during ones you never give much thought to until you’re the size of a small VW, like rolling over in bed. Getting out of bed became painful for that area too. I did ask my doctor about it during one of my visits and she agreed that I was very likely experiencing sacroiliac pain, and not sciatica. For in actuality, true sciatica is fairly rare for women who are otherwise having a generally healthy, problem-free pregnancy.

So if your burgeoning babe is becoming a pain in your pregnant butt in the most literal sense of the phrase, check it out or ask your doc. There’s a very good chance that you, too, may be enjoying some delightful misalignment of your sacroiliac joints. It gets more fun by the day, doesn’t it?

 

** Side note – it’s not only your pelvic ligaments and joints that loosen during pregnancy, they all do. So be careful! If you find yourself twisting your ankles or tripping more often than usual, you’re not just getting super clumsy. You’re getting ready to have a baby!

 

This next one I had completely forgotten about until the other day. Why I suddenly remembered it, I have no idea, but it’s a good one.

So by the end of the second trimester I had finally begun showing. I know, I know – what, SM? Shut your mouth, that’s hardly fair. But it’s true.

I remember a day at work when I was almost 6 months pregnant, and whoever I was talking to had no idea that I was even expecting. Hey, I’m tall – almost 6′ – there’s plenty of room for things to spread out before popping horizontally. Like to my ass.

But anyway. Around that time my stomach started to itch like crazy. And I mean iiiitch. It was like I constantly had itching powder in my shirts, and it was annoying as hell.

At a Memorial Day party last year I asked one of my friends who had a baby exactly 1 year before I had D if that was normal and she was like oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about that. It’s totally normal. All right, it may be uncomfortable and a little embarrassing walking around scratching my belly all the time like it’s my beer gut and I’m just wasting time til the next possum hunt with Jethro, but at least it’s not just me.

And when you think about it, it makes total sense. Your skin is being stretched further and further past normal to contain the growing babe, so that’s bound to be somewhat irritating. Yet this was another one of those simple and most logical of facts that totally escaped me until it actually happened.

I would look at my stomach sometimes after a particularly itchy session and could see the reddish/purple streaks where I had been clawing myself. I always put lotion on my stomach after my showers while I was pregnant, which did temporarily help soothe the itching, but in order for it to have masked it completely I think I would have had to bathe in the stuff twice daily. Sorry, didn’t have time for that. And have you ever tried to get lotion out of your hair? Gross.

So there you have it. Those of you in the later stages of pregnancy are probably reading this right now nodding and scratching without even knowing it. Those of you still in the beginning, just wait. You’ll soon resemble a cat at a scratching post. Except you’re both the cat and the post. Fun, fun!

 

p.s. one of our friends had her baby boy this past saturday! congratulations, K with baby O!!

 

So did anyone else’s skin decide to go back through puberty once you became pregnant, or was that just a cruel joke nature decided to play on me? And not really on my face so much, but I was blessed with the red-headed stepchild of skin problems – backne. Yep, that’s right. Zits on my shoulders and upper back. Gross!

Fortunately backne has never really been an issue I’ve had to deal with, aside from the occasional random blemish here or there. But once I became pregnant? Holy shit. It was like the skin of every pubescent teenager decided to take up residence on my upper back. It was so nasty. I was like what the hell is this? Where are all these pimples coming from? It was disgusting. I started using those Noxema cleansing pads to try and combat it. You know, those round ones that come pre-soaked in their own zit-zapping juice? The ones that reek and sting if you swipe them over broken skin? Yeah, those. Those that you probably haven’t even given a thought to since you were about 15. At least I hadn’t, anyway.

This lovely phenomenon lasted for pretty much the entire first trimester. I can’t remember exactly when it began, but I think it was fairly close to being from the get-go. And I know it lasted until at least March, so that would be a little ways into the second trimester as well. We went to St. Thomas for a vacation that month, and the backne was still plaguing me. I think it was beginning to finally go away at that point, but there were still some remnants. My mom even noticed my shoulders and asked me if it had started when I got pregnant, because she experienced the same thing. Some of the bumps were just awful, too. Like big and painful. Sorry, truth hurts sometimes. And so did those horrible zits. Fortunately the tan I got down there helped mask them, instead of continuing to appear as giant volcanoes on my pasty white Wisconsin winter skin.

It was so odd, too, how it was gone by the time my pregnancy was over. Thank god. Hormones, gotta love ’em.

 

I took the train to Chicago yesterday afternoon for a class and parked at the Amtrak station in downtown Milwaukee, and it never fails – the car is always covered in huge blasts of bird shit when I return. Then this morning I stuck my hand in a big smear of it when I closed the car door. Awesome. I really hope it’s not a sign of things to come for today.

But anyway… I bet all you moms-to-be have heard how terribly important the birthing classes and birth plan are. I’m going to let you in on a little secret, though – they’re not. Gasp! I know I just turned your pregnancy world upside down with that revelation, so I’ll let you right yourselves before we continue…

See here’s the thing – labor and delivery is SO unpredictable (i guess unless you have a planned induction or c-section) that even if you have the way you want yours to go nailed down to a T with each minute planned out and choreographed to the perfect playlist, chances are that baby will flip you the bird and toss all your well-laid plans right out the window. He’ll be like birth plan? You expected me to follow a birth plan? Hahaha, suckers! Ready or not (no, we’re not!), here I come!!

Like I’ve said before, the actual labor and delivery process was what scared me the most when I was pregnant – what does it feel like, how much will it hurt, how long will it take, will I survive? (my answers: a lot of poop, a lot, 20 minutes, yes) So I did look into birthing classes. I mean after all, these people have gone through this numerous times so they should be able to give me some sort of hints about everything, right?

Well have you checked out those class schedules lately? At my hospital, at least, you had to go 2 hours a week for 6 weeks or 3 hours on a Friday night plus all day Saturday. Yeah right. Have you checked out our household schedule lately? We didn’t have time for that. Plus, getting R to attend a childbirth class? Hahahaha. Yeah, I might as well have tried to get him to take ballet lessons with me. Not a chance.

Now I still wanted to learn at least a little something about this process that was going to put the contents of my insides on the outside, and my hospital did offer online childbirth classes, so I signed up for that instead. Too bad it cost the same amount as the in-person classes and basically told me the same things I had already read in my books and online. So I’m going to do you a favor and just tell you what you’d pay to learn in those classes. Well, at least my version of it anyway, lucky you!

• 10cm – that’s the magic number. Your cervix has to open that far, then the baby can come out. Here’s a totally harmless geometric representation of the expansion from 1-10cm to give you an idea of how big that is (no really, it’s just circles, not vaginas).
• There are 3 stages of labor – early (latent) labor (0-3cm. not really painful at all, can even unknowingly start weeks out from delivery whenever your cervix begins to dilate), active labor (3-7cm, usually lasts a couple hours. ok, it’s probably really starting to hurt. if you’re having an epidural you need to get it now, before you reach about 7cm), and transitional labor (7-10cm, generally the shortest phase. holy shit this is killing me! get this baby out!! fortunately now is when you do, and then it’s all over. drinks for everyone!)
• Breathing really does help during the painful contractions. During our whole ride to the hospital (when I was really already in transitional labor and didn’t even know it. um, duh) I kept trying to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth when I felt the pain, and continued doing so until delivery, and it honestly did help. My head never once exploded. I didn’t even need a class to tell me that! When you start pushing they will give you instructions on how to breathe too, so if you’re unmedicated at that point and in so much pain you can’t even speak your name (see my delivery story), you don’t have to worry about how many numbers you have to count to or how many times. They’ll count, you just breathe in, out, then push. Just don’t hold your breath until they tell you to. It’s really hard to deliver a baby when you’re passed out.

Now who needs a class just to learn that? See, told you.

And I know that list only has 3 things on it and that can’t possibly be all you need to know when you’re going to have a baby, but in all honesty, that is the crux behind childbirth classes. Just for liability’s sake, however, so no one goes into labor and says, “but SM said I didn’t need to do that!”, I do suggest doing a bit of research on your own about the whole process. I certainly didn’t want to go in blind, and I don’t recommend you do either.

I just don’t think you really need to take a class when there are so many free (and much faster) resources out there. This site alone does a great job of breaking out and explaining the various stages leading up to childbirth, some techniques you can use to manage pain, different childbirth options, etc. It’s from the same people as the “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” book, which I’m sure many of you have, so the information on that site will probably be very familiar to you.

And I do realize many people want a much more hands-on experience in preparation for childbirth and love the classes. I get that, I really do. It just wasn’t for me.

And a birth plan? Nope, don’t need that either.

Practically everything I read while I was pregnant said make a birth plan, a birth plan is so important, you can’t have a baby without a birth plan, don’t you know?!?! What the? Why do I have to have a birth plan? Labor was such an unknown for me, I thought how could I possibly even begin to try to plan it out when I didn’t have the slightest clue what was going to happen? Even the doctor who is now D’s pediatrician thought it was a ridiculous notion when I was talking to her for the first time last summer, before D was born.

So for me, the only thing I knew was that I wanted to try to go as long as I could without pain medicine, but if it got too unbearable I definitely wasn’t averse to asking for an epidural. Ha! Little did I know I wasn’t even going to get the opportunity to ask anyway.

I do recommend having at least a little idea of how you’d like to deliver in a perfect world (meds, no meds, water birth, birthing ball, music, who’s in the delivery room, what you want them to do or not do for you, etc.), but don’t get too attached to that plan. And if things don’t end up going according to your agenda, try not to let that ruin your birthing experience. Just go with the flow and remember that the most important thing is that your baby gets out here safe and sound and you live to tell the tale. If you didn’t get a chance to have your calming Enya playing in the background and the candles lit when all that happened, too bad. It doesn’t matter.

Maybe I should start my own childbirth class. It’d go something like this – do this, don’t do that, now have a baby. Ready? 1, 2, 3, GO!