Ten things that have surprised me about pregnancy (#5-10)

by Lisa

Here is the second installment of the post I started yesterday – things that have surprised me about pregnancy. After I started writing these posts on Sunday, Mike and I talked about this topic over dinner. We agreed that, overall, I’d had a pretty good second trimester and been lucky enough to stay fairly healthy.

“Huh,” I said, looking at the food on my plate as we were saying this, “I don’t feel so good all of a sudden. I don’t think I can eat that.”

To cut a long and yucky story short, that was the start of a night when I broke my own personal record for the number of times I can throw up in twelve hours. I dropped five pounds overnight and yesterday I couldn’t make it out of bed until 5pm. We suspect food poisoning – though we have no idea what could have caused it – and today I’m feeling much better. I am at least showered, sitting up, drinking water, and eating toast.

Ah, surprises. Some of them are great. Some, not so much.

So here are six more things that have so far surprised me about pregnancy.

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5. I expected that morning sickness would strike immediately if it were going to strike at all.

It took me quite some time to really grasp the fact that I was indeed pregnant, and it seems that my body is not the quickest off the mark, either. If I were going to suffer from it, I thought morning sickness would hit me much earlier than eight weeks and I thought it would go away earlier than eighteen weeks. Alas, wrong on both counts.

6. I expected that I’d continue to enjoy a cup of coffee a day all through pregnancy.

I know traditional wisdom is that you should avoid all caffeine when pregnant, but most doctors and research now suggests that you can safely ingest the caffeine equivalent of one or two cups of coffee a day all during pregnancy. I love coffee and had already decided that I wasn’t giving up my morning cup… except that my body had other ideas. The day I got morning sick, right on week eight, I went off it overnight. All of a sudden it tasted revolting. It still doesn’t taste the way it used to.

7. I expected that I’d be hungry all of my 2nd trimester.

Food was such a weird experience for most of the first trimester as I veered between the two extremes of not being at all hungry and being completely ravenous (often within the span of five minutes), that I expected I’d be a lot hungrier than normal in my second trimester. I haven’t been. Sometimes I even forget to eat a small snack mid-morning or mid-afternoon. This is not to say, however, that I did not disgrace myself when I was consistently put in front of all you can eat buffets in Bangkok last week. On more than one occasion the only thing that stopped me from returning to the buffet for three more scoops of ice cream after I’d polished off my first dessert sundae at lunch was shame. Who says that peer pressure can’t be good for you?

8. I expected that disrupted sleep was something that would begin only after the baby was born.

I expected that the whole waking up numerous times a night to pee would start in approximately month seven of pregnancy instead of week seven. I still have problems understanding how a baby the size of a lima bean can really put that much pressure on a bladder. I mean, come on! I have now been waking up between three and six times a night now practically since I found out I was pregnant. Not cool. Not cool at all.

9. I expected that my sex drive would surge in the second trimester.

Most of the books I’ve read paint a picture of the first and third trimesters of pregnancy as virtual sexual wastelands but hold out this oasis-like vision of the second trimester as a time of unparalleled sexual desire and enjoyment. I don’t know how many accounts I’ve read of women’s transformations into total sex kittens the minute they hit week thirteen of pregnancy, so perhaps it’s understandable that I feel particularly ripped off to have so far had this expectation disappointed. For not only did my sex drive vanish so completely the minute I got pregnant that it became difficult to remember I ever had one, it hasn’t really returned to pre-pregnancy levels yet much less been catapulted into “sex kitten” territory. I will be especially peeved if this, like morning sickness, is merely my biology lagging behind the curve and sex-kitten-energy kicks in four weeks from now, right when I head to Australia and Mike and I say goodbye for three months.

10. I expected that the quickening would be unmistakable.

The quickening, for those of you who haven’t read 5000 pregnancy books, is the name given to the first time you feel your baby move inside you. The books do warn that it can be hard to tell whether those early flutters are the baby or something else, so I don’t know why I expected to feel the baby move in one, singular, weirdandwonderful moment. Maybe because “the quickening” sounds like such a singular “moment”ous event. Nope. I spent about a week trying to decide whether it was the baby I was feeling or gas. Now the baby moves all the time – particularly at 10pm when I’m trying to go to sleep and at 6a.m. when I’m trying to stay asleep.

I’ve tried to explain to Mike what it feels like. I’ve described it before as feeling like a sackful of eels squirming around in there, but as I’ve never actually had a sackful of eels tucked in my belly I can’t really vouch for the accuracy of that description. The most accurate physical description I can come up with is the completely unromantic, “it feels like giant bubbles of gas slithering around intestinal corners, but without any gas pain.”

The most accurate psychological description I can come up with, for me, is that it feels like fishing. As a kid I used to love going over to the river across from my grandparents house, baiting a hook, and fishing off the wharf. I would wait patiently for ages for that first tug on the line – that sudden, promising, tightening of the nylon under my index finger signaling that something alive was definitely out there underneath all that water. When the baby taps me from the inside I get that same feeling. Of course, given what ended up happening to the fish I caught, that metaphor has its limits, so we’ll stop right there.

OK, that’s it for this edition of “expectations that have been turned on their head by pregnancy.” Catch you later this week, perhaps from the road as Mike and I are leaving on Thursday night for a road trip down south, and do chime in below and let me know what’s surprised you about pregnancy or parenting. I love learning from others’ stories. 

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17 comments

Ten things that have surprised me about pregnancy (#1-4) | Wandering. Wondering. Writing. April 19, 2011 - 9:05 am

[…] Wandering. Wondering. Writing. Lisa in Laos Skip to content HomeAboutHumanitarian work + psychology ← Happy New Year from Laos Ten things that have surprised me about pregnancy (#5-10) → […]

Jennifer Nishizaki April 19, 2011 - 9:07 am

Yup, the peeing thing is always grand. In early pregnancy I’m pretty sure it actually happens a lot because of the excess of hcg, the thing that pregnancy tests look for. It’s totally hormonal and totally a pain. 🙂

Lisa McKay April 19, 2011 - 2:24 pm

Yes! Totally a pain!

Robbie April 19, 2011 - 12:40 pm

I have the coffee aversion too! Must be a family failing.

A.L.S. April 19, 2011 - 7:11 pm

I’m a coffee lover too and I also totally went off it during pregnancy. Didn’t even like the smell!

Lisa McKay April 20, 2011 - 7:47 am

It’s so weird how that happens. I’m looking forward to liking it again!

Margie April 19, 2011 - 8:07 pm

I fought to have my one cup of coffee a day…and won. But have never really liked soda of any sort since then. The smell of chicken cooking was enough to turn my already sensitive stomach against itself, causing nausea to the max!

Lisa McKay April 20, 2011 - 7:48 am

I guess there are worse things to go off altogether than soda, but so odd isn’t it?? Hope you’re well.

Jane Tingay April 20, 2011 - 1:25 pm

The thing that makes me laugh is I have possibly had the opposite experience to atleast eight of your points ….. Goes to show every pregnancy is different….

Lisa McKay April 20, 2011 - 1:40 pm

You going to share which ones?? (If I could figure out the emoticon for “wicked grin” I’d put that in here, but I can’t, so I’ll stick with plain old :)). Yeah, so they say about every pregnancy being different, which is why I think there’s power in hearing other people’s stories rather than just reading research stats based on aggregates of experience. I hope you’re going well as you enter the home stretch with your own pregnancy!

Danielle April 21, 2011 - 9:42 am

Even funnier is that all these things could be 100% different with the next baby/pregnancy! I had it so easy the first time I thought the second would be even easier as you know what to expect…..boy did I turn into the ass found in the word assumption. On a bright note, the nightly peeing does usually take a weird break somewhere at the end, and of course stops the minute of labor. Now being able to hold it again….well that’s tmi….

Lisa McKay April 23, 2011 - 5:36 pm

No no, never TMI (though my Nanna would disagree with me on that and so would my beloved mother). I can’t believe Thomas is four and I can remember when you announced you were pregnant for the first time. Wacky!

Margie April 23, 2011 - 11:46 pm

Don’t know if your doc (or his nurse) has talked to you about the ability to “hold it all in” for an extended period of time once the baby has been delivered – but they should. It simply comes down to using an exercise called the Kegel exercise. It works!

Lisa McKay April 24, 2011 - 9:07 am

Since I’ve seen the doctor once since I got pregnant (at seven weeks, no less) no doctor has yet mentioned this. But plenty of loving friends and cousins have… so I’m well prepped to be practicing kegels. Thanks!

The Empress of Lao Libraries | Wandering. Wondering. Writing. April 30, 2011 - 11:16 am

[…] and partly to having just eaten a large plate of spaghetti at noon. I would like to retract my recent statement about not being hungrier than normal – this week I am perpetually ravenous and I think the baby has doubled in size in the last two […]

The Empress of Lao Libraries | LisaMcKayWriting May 11, 2012 - 12:30 am

[…] and partly to having just eaten a large plate of spaghetti at noon. I would like to retract my recent statement about not being hungrier than normal – this week I am perpetually ravenous and I think the baby has doubled in size in the last two […]

Ten things that have surprised me about pregnancy (#1-4) | LisaMcKayWriting May 11, 2012 - 12:34 am

[…] it for today. Come back tomorrow for surprises 5-10, including my thoughts on that fabled surge of sexual energy in the 2nd trimester… And for those […]

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