OMG, kill me now.
Some women sail through their pregnancies with that lovely "preggie glow" that you hear about in movies and magazines, while the rest of us spend the first trimester with our head in the toilet looking like something out of Night of the Living Dead.
I was lucky enough (sarcasm) to have all day, morning-noon-and-night sickness. It's important at this point to note that there's only around three kinds of medicines on the market that you can take for the nausea and vomiting, one of which was discontinued, so that leaves us with two. Two completely useless remedies for what feels like death on a plate.
I started eating bags of pretzels because they were the only thing I could stomach and drinking ginger tea. I'd walk into my office looking like a zombie and pray that I wouldn't vomit over myself or my co-workers. Driving any real distance was a problem because you were never sure when your stomach decided to rid itself of its contents. Driving, in my case, was a very real problem because it's 50 kilometres between my home and my office... one way.
I realised, right upfront, that I hate being pregnant. Queue the universal GASP as women all around the world are mortified that someone said that out loud. Here, let me say it again. I hate being pregnant.
At 12 weeks I made the decision that if the nausea and vomiting didn't stop that I was going to throw myself out a window somewhere. Look, I wasn't thinking straight, but I wouldn't really, I just felt like I could. Thankfully at around 14 weeks the majority of the nausea started to subside.
Looking back, the nausea was the least of my problems...
Friday, January 23, 2015
Picking up...
... from where I left off.
Like I said, we didn't know how much of a journey those 10 months were going to be.
You do all kinds of strange things when you're trying to fall pregnant, from following your monthly cycles on an online app to trying out new and interesting positions in bed. You start referring to your husband as DH because this is the abbreviation for "Dear Husband" online and sex as "BD" which is "Baby Dance". You buy boxes and boxes of Ovulation Predictor Kits and even invest in "the one sperm friendly lubricant on the market", which costs an absolute fortune, but in your head it's all worth it because you know there's absolutely nothing wrong with you and your husband and you know that it's only a matter a time and all about timing...
And then doubt creeps in.
So the next step is a visit to the gynae (this is your third visit - first one was to get checked out just to make sure you're healthy, second one was because you just wanted to make sure that you've got your timing right and now... you're back). This time, however, you're in tears because that little "positive sign" on the stick that you're peeing on month-after-month just isn't showing itself and your husband is starting to stress, and the whole thing is starting to put major strain on your relationship.
She tells you, try again for three months, which you do, to no avail. Back in her office she hands you a test sheet for the Ampath lab and says "your hubby needs to go for a sperm count test". I'm not sure about your hubby, but my hubby was not happy at all about this idea and queue more tears, insecurity, and an all-round miserable time. So you give up on the sex because really, you're just over it and it's not fun anymore. Hubby stresses even more and four months later decides to get the test done. Yes, four months. Turns out, his swimmers are of Olympic quality and he's not the problem! Relief washes over you like a tidal wave because you can fix your problems, but you can't fix his without a wide variety of dramatic interludes so off you go, back to the gynae. Did I mention that it's R800 a pop?
Surgery. You have to have surgery to check if your fallopian tubes are functioning properly, which of course they're not but they do get fixed there and then, thank goodness. All of the stress for 10 solid months was because of two stupid little pipes in your body that decided to flatten themselves out and basically turn themselves into a built-in contraceptive.
After the surgery to open my fallopian tubes I had to wait two weeks for my next cycle to kick in and another two weeks for my OPK to hit positive, but I literally fell pregnant on the first try... Thank God.
Like I said, we didn't know how much of a journey those 10 months were going to be.
You do all kinds of strange things when you're trying to fall pregnant, from following your monthly cycles on an online app to trying out new and interesting positions in bed. You start referring to your husband as DH because this is the abbreviation for "Dear Husband" online and sex as "BD" which is "Baby Dance". You buy boxes and boxes of Ovulation Predictor Kits and even invest in "the one sperm friendly lubricant on the market", which costs an absolute fortune, but in your head it's all worth it because you know there's absolutely nothing wrong with you and your husband and you know that it's only a matter a time and all about timing...
And then doubt creeps in.
So the next step is a visit to the gynae (this is your third visit - first one was to get checked out just to make sure you're healthy, second one was because you just wanted to make sure that you've got your timing right and now... you're back). This time, however, you're in tears because that little "positive sign" on the stick that you're peeing on month-after-month just isn't showing itself and your husband is starting to stress, and the whole thing is starting to put major strain on your relationship.
She tells you, try again for three months, which you do, to no avail. Back in her office she hands you a test sheet for the Ampath lab and says "your hubby needs to go for a sperm count test". I'm not sure about your hubby, but my hubby was not happy at all about this idea and queue more tears, insecurity, and an all-round miserable time. So you give up on the sex because really, you're just over it and it's not fun anymore. Hubby stresses even more and four months later decides to get the test done. Yes, four months. Turns out, his swimmers are of Olympic quality and he's not the problem! Relief washes over you like a tidal wave because you can fix your problems, but you can't fix his without a wide variety of dramatic interludes so off you go, back to the gynae. Did I mention that it's R800 a pop?
Surgery. You have to have surgery to check if your fallopian tubes are functioning properly, which of course they're not but they do get fixed there and then, thank goodness. All of the stress for 10 solid months was because of two stupid little pipes in your body that decided to flatten themselves out and basically turn themselves into a built-in contraceptive.
After the surgery to open my fallopian tubes I had to wait two weeks for my next cycle to kick in and another two weeks for my OPK to hit positive, but I literally fell pregnant on the first try... Thank God.
It starts with a test...
Well, it actually started about 10 months before the test. Wayne and I had decided that it was time to have a baby. We knew it was the one thing missing from our lives, what we didn't know was how much of a journey those ten months would be.
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