From “Nausea, Nausea, Nausea” to “Why yes, I am wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday” – A Journey Through Pregnancy
Welcome to my photo journey through pregnancy…I hope you enjoy!
January 28
Just barely pregnant here, but I don’t know it yet. I went off my birth control in mid-December so it wasn’t on my radar that I might be pregnant already. Mostly I just think that I keep getting food poisoning or eating bad food. Once, during this time, I ate Taco Bell and felt sick. Nathan blamed the Taco Bell for it…weeks later when we found out I was pregnant I made him take it back LOL #tacobellisgood
February 15
Still don’t know I am pregnant. We went to a marriage conference and I was wondering all night why I felt a little light headed and why my pants felt tighter than normal.
February 25 (Week 5)
We found out I am pregnant! We didn’t take a picture on Wednesday, February 20 when I took the test. This, however, is a lovely picture from the doctor’s office when they confirmed that I was indeed pregnant…doesn’t Nathan look excited? LOL I didn’t tell him I was taking this :)
Even though we were trying to get pregnant, we were still shocked and a little scared when we found out we were pregnant. We were blessed that it didn’t take long at all to get pregnant, BUT at the same time we thought we had more time to get used to the idea of becoming parents.
February 25 - March 18 (Weeks 5-8)
I began to order a litany of items from Amazon to attempt to ease the terrible nausea that kicked in almost immediately. As you will see throughout this post, Amazon should have sponsored my pregnancy because I got just about everything from them….
Items:
Queen Rose Pregnancy Pillow: This pillow became the bane of Nathan’s existence, but it SAVED me. In the early stages of pregnancy it kept me at a good angle when I felt super nauseous and at the end of pregnancy it saved me from having to use 10,000 pillows just to get comfortable. Nathan hated it because it took up approximately 80% of the bed, so poor guy had no space. The only thing I didn’t care for was that I got a velour pillow cover which was so hot at night. Next time, I will be using a cotton pillow cover…sorry Nathan, if we have another baby it is coming back!
Sea-Band Mama Wristbands for Morning Sickness: USELESS! I was so hopeful that these would do something for this desperate momma and they did nothing.
Preggie Pop Drops Plus: These are candy lozenges that are supposed to be a natural way to ease morning sickness. Sadly, these actually made me more nauseous!
Ginger Chews: These worked, but only eased the nausea while I was chewing them…once they were gone the nausea came back.
Vitamin B6 melts and unisom: This didn’t do much but the doctor said it should help with the nausea, especially at night.
Sadly nothing seemed to really take the nausea away. I was losing weight and I had quite a few calls to Nathan from work crying saying that I can’t live like this (before you judge how dramatic I was being, remember the hormones LOL). In the end my doctor prescribed me some medication to help with the nausea. The medicine made the nausea manageable, didn’t take it away totally, but it also made me pretty tired. I also diffused peppermint and that seemed to help take the edge off of the nausea as well.
March 18 (Week 8)
Around this time I figured maybe I should document what I look like before I get too huge. Already my clothes are starting to feel tight. Not in a cute “aw she is growing a baby” kind of way…no it was more “hmm Allie has gained some weight” kind of look. LOL
We had not told a lot of people yet, so I had been trying to hide my horrible nausea (which if you know me, you know that I am the worst at hiding how I am feeling). I am also horrible at keeping secrets when they are this big. I just wanted to tell the world! The only people we were telling were family and close friends.
Not telling people was a decision we made together, but looking back I think it was heavily influenced by people telling us we needed to wait until 12 weeks just in-case we had a miscarriage. Next pregnancy I think we will tell people whenever we are ready, even if it is before 12 weeks.
April 18 (Week 12)
We officially announced it on social media! Yes, we were “those people” and used a letter board. #noshame
During the ultrasound, Pax was kicking off one side of my uterus and bouncing around like a pinball inside me. That was the strangest thing because I couldn’t feel anything but here he was, bouncing around in my belly.
April 23 (Week 13)
We found out that we were having a boy! Gender reveal parties have become a big thing nowadays, but we didn’t really want to have a party. We did however, want to find out in a fun way what gender baby we were having. So our wonderful friends BJ and Lindsay got donuts and filled them with blue icing so that we could bite into them and find out if we were having a boy or girl. For those of you that know me know that I LOVE donuts, so this was such a fun way that they surprised us with!
April 27 (Week 13)
I know, another letter board. Nausea still ruled my world at this point. Everyone talks about the “glow” and I wasn’t feeling it. I felt like Pheobe from Friends. When she was pregnant. Joey said “Hey, but at least you get that cool, pregnant lady glow.” and her response was “That’s sweat. You throw up all morning, you’ll have that glow too.”
At this point in my pregnancy, we had re-watched almost all of Friends because I felt too sick to go anywhere or do anything.
May 17 (Week 16)
We went on vacation! We went on our annual trip to Florida with my family. It was nice to be on vacation and away from work for a little while but vacation looked very different this time.
What I normally do on our vacations: eat, sunbathe all day, eat, shop, eat, and go for walks on the beach.
What I did this time: sat in the sun for 20 min before overheating and going back inside, ate only certain foods that made me not nauseous, shopped for 30 min before getting super nauseous because I didn’t eat enough, bought maternity clothes, and took this cute picture.
Also, people saw this picture and thought we were naming our child Jordan LOL
(Mom and Dad hats were purchased on Amazon)
June 2 (19 weeks)
Finally starting to feel better! Praise the Lord! This was taken after I had eaten a bunch of delicious pizza. Was it the pizza or the baby that was giving me this bump? We’ll never know…
June 16 (21 weeks)
My belly was growing and growing. I definitely only fit into the maternity pants we bought on vacation and these comfy maternity leggings I bought on Amazon (pictured)! At our ultrasound around this time, they told us Pax weighed 1lb already and that felt huge. I could start to feel flutters at this stage, but at the beginning I wasn’t sure if they were Pax or gas bubbles. Also at this stage, when I sneezed really hard I would pee a little…pregnancy is definitely glamorous.
June 29 (23 weeks)
Indiana Baby Shower! I flew up to Indiana for a baby shower with all my family and friends. It was so awesome to get to spend time with them and celebrate.
I had to buy and wear compression socks for the flight and the long drive home. I thought these would be annoying, but they actually felt awesome! I love compression socks now.
The drive home to Atlanta was LONG. My mom and aunt drove back with me to help with all the stuff I got and to help set up the nursery. Due to the baby in my belly, we had to stop every 2 hours so I could pee and eat. I wore my compression socks and stretched at every break and I was still sore by the time we got to my house. I am really glad I chose to do this early on in the pregnancy instead of waiting until later. I can’t imagine what that drive would have been like much later than 23 weeks!
(I spent like $60 on these balloons because I thought they would be cute to take pictures in front of, but they were too big for the space LOL so I had to get at least one picture with them! Turned out cute I think. #worthit)
Indiana Baby Shower🖤
July 27 (27 weeks)
More than halfway there! At this point in time, the tips I was giving people about how to hang out with me were the following:
Always tell me where the closest bathroom is, if I don’t need it right then, I will in like 5 minutes
If you see me about to get up from a comfy couch or chair, give me a boost. Getting up is difficult LOL
Always offer me food, 99% of the time I am hungry and would love to eat whatever it is you are offering
August 3 (Week 28)
I have definitely given up on wearing anything other than leggings. I went to Old Navy and purchased 3 of these big, flowy tank tops to pair with my Amazon leggings. This is me trying to look cute for church.
August 17 (30 weeks)
On day 5,890 of pregnancy at this point. It’s HOT HOT HOT in Atlanta. I made a mental note to myself that if we have another kid I do NOT want to be this pregnant in the middle of the summer in Atlanta.
Pax is super active by now and loves to cuddle up under the right side of my rib cage. His feet just stay there and kick. He also does what feels like full body rolls. When that happens, I picture him doing a crocodile death roll where they just keep rolling, except he’s doing it under my rib cage. Google “crocodile death roll” if you don’t know what it is… it’s crazy.
I also start to crave shaved ice because of how hot I am at all times. We went to a super tasty shaved ice place downtown Atlanta because of this. At work, our AC was not able to keep up with the heat, so I spent many breaks in my car blasting the AC to cool back down. The struggle was real.
August 31 (Week 32)
Atlanta baby shower! Some of my wonderful friends in Atlanta threw me a baby shower. We were so blessed to have such great friends. We got everything that we needed and more to get ready for baby Pax.
Guess where I got my dress and my lace cardigan? If you guessed Amazon, you would be correct!
My belly started to feel like it was going to fall off at this point. Notice how my hands are under my belly? It’s not because I thought it would look cute, it was because when I held it up a little bit I felt better LOL I ordered a belly belt at this point (from Amazon) and it helped a lot!
ATL Baby Shower 🖤
September 22 (35 weeks)
Feeling like a whale…it is hard to get comfortable, toss and turn at night, and I’m not getting much sleep. We had almost finished Pax’s nursery and it was feeling more and more real.
I was so big that I was rotating between the same 4 outfits, which was interesting when I worked 5 days a week. My sass level was going through the roof…sorry Nathan LOL
My wonderful work family threw my a baby shower around this time too. My pregnancy brain was in full force and I forgot to take pictures, but Pax was seriously loved on by so many people before he was even born. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, we were blessed with community.
We also had our hospital bags packed and ready this week, which was a good thing because Pax came not too long afterward! I ordered some stuff for after the birth from Amazon that turned out to be super helpful. Some Helpful things I ordered were:
Stretchy button up night gown: I wore this in the hospital and many nights after he was born. It was comfy and easy to breastfeed/pump in.
Slippers: wonderful to wear while at the hospital so I didn’t have to walk on the gross ground. I didn’t wear them after we left the hospital but they were worth it for sure.
Dermoplast Pain & Itch Spray: a life saver for after I came home from the hospital for the weeks of healing from my stitches.
October 5 (Week 37)
I just couldn’t believe how big my belly was getting. Looking at it now, it doesn’t look overly massive, but at the time I remember saying to Nathan “can you believe how huge I am?!”.
I was ready, and honestly had been ready for a while, for Pax to get here. My whole pregnancy I felt like Pax was going to come early. Little did I know that just one week later, I would be having Pax.
October 12 (Week 37 and 6 days)
Pax came into the world 15 days early!
(See my previous blog post for the birth story)
October 5 vs October 19
Just a little one week before birth vs one week after birth picture to end my photo journey through pregnancy.