Bumps on the road
As I wrote in my blog about being pregnant, there were a few bumps on the road and yes, I admit that I even doubted if my body wasn't telling me that I could not make it through the end of this pregnancy when the blood pressure and epigastric hernia issues caused me a lot of trouble. These days that I dealt with that I truly felt that this was never going to work out and that it would probably end up in another miscarriage or emergency where I'd lose the baby.
These incidents were really heavy and hard to deal with, but reflecting back on these moments on better days, I can clearly see that these were all very easy to explain incidents that either could have been avoided with some extra care and attention by either me or the doctors OR that were unlucky symptoms from the change of medication that you can not always predict in advance.
I've learned to be on top of eating enough fiber, drinking enough water (always do this though) plus adding certain foods and tea to the mix every few days so that the epigastric hernia doesn't cause me extreme pain anymore. Even while the baby is growing very well and taking in more space every week.
Doing my own research
At first, when finding out I was pregnant, I didn't do research about which medication I should ask for but just went to the doctor and told her I was pregnant and that both my blood pressure medication stated that they weren't safe to take while pregnant. I trusted her judgement to give me a good alternative. While she knew about the epigastric hernia and troubles coming from it from time to time, she prescribed me a medication that causes constipation. Although you can never be sure that this happens to you, as usually there's a huge list of complications or side effects, I slowly noticed that the issue got worse even while I was on top of taking care of myself. My gut feeling told me I should talk to my gyneacologist about this.
I was bold and asked him if it would be smarter to change medication because at that time there was no growing belly yet so I fully expected this problem to become HUGE once the belly would grow. He agreed and changed my meds but sadly he prescribed a double dose of what my body needed. Causing another ER incident, oh well. I don't blame him, all worked out well and I'm happy that I trusted my gut feeling and did my own research because it turns out I was right.
Constantly checking my blood pressure
I check my blood pressure three times a day, why? Because I learn from it. Often I have headaches that I can't explain, but now I know that my boyfriend experiences them at the same time, and it's not caused by blood pressure values but air pressure changes, often before or during extreme windy days. Before I was on top of these measurements, I always blamed my blood pressure. I'm happy to learn to know my body better so this helps.
It also helps in case an emegency appears and a doctor thinks A while you know for sure it can't be that and they should explore B or C as a cause for some incident. It's already proven to be the case twice for me going to the ER.
I can now finally enjoy things a bit
The first 20 weeks were scary, not only because of the incidents that happened, but also waiting for a genetics test result as well as the 20 weeks ultrasound all contributed to me not fully enjoying the pregnancy and allowing myself to be happy or even buy baby stuff. I didn't trust my body to be capable of carrying a child anymore after 3 miscarriages in a row. The age surely doesn't help either, I thought it wasn't in the cards for us anymore.
Now that my own gyneacologist also confirmed by reading the test results that everything is REALLY going well and that I'm doing really well too considering I just gained 1 kg while the baby weighs more than half of that already, I feel more relaxed and certain that this little boy will make it. And with the current number of weeks that I'm pregnant now I also know that even if something were to happen in the next weeks, the baby still has a chance. Which is making me feel more at ease.
Buying baby stuff
There's still plenty to buy because where I'd normally have everything set by now or not long after this period, the only things we bought (last week lol) are the stroller (and it's beautiful, I love it) and a baby bed that can be turned into a chair to eat or just relax. We made one heck of a deal on them, as I found them second hand in amazing condition, which is rare so it seems.
I only have 1 cute baby outfit and still have to buy all the bed linnen, bathing stuff as well as more cloths. The thing is that being born in summer, this baby will probably mostly be wearing these onesies over real clothes because it will be hot the first months of his life. I don't want to overbuy clothes but rather buy a bit more once it turns out needed.
The most expensive thing we bought is a car seat, having a small car, I had one wish and that was that this time I need an Isofix system car seat and I can only hope that when it arrives it looks as good as advertised because I ordered it online. If not, we still have time to return it and buy another but mostly for my back's safety, I need to have a seat that can be turned to the side and therefore this one item was a bit more expensive than the rest.
Room changes
As the baby stuff is now stuffed inside the big bedroom, simply becasue my office is in the future baby room, we soon have to make the change to switch rooms because I can't stand tripping over stuff anymore. I don't mind the baby room not being ready yet but I would love for all the baby stuff that can't be placed inside wardrobes (read: bed and stroller) to be in one room so that we won't trip over that stuff anymore.
Today I'm not ready for that task yet as I still have more to declutter first. But I start to feel a bit of pressure now that I know the heat is knocking around the corner and rather have it done before it arrives..
For now, I try to enjoy the pregnancy very conciously every day and focus on the good. Fun fact is that someone I met last year on a network event, turns out to be pregnant just one day shorter than me, we will soon meet up for some mommy talk, which I really look forward to. What are the odds, right?
The header image is created with Canva Pro with my own picture included.