Weight and Health During First Pregnancy

It has been a long time since I blogged about my health and wellness, and oh what a journey it has been these last nine years. My last blog post was a story from 2014, and in 2015 I became pregnant for the first time. 

Pregnancy is much the same, but also different for every woman. Some of you may have heard of unicorn women who absolutely love being pregnant, have almost no side effects, and enjoy every blissful minute of it. I am not one of those women. Don't get me wrong, I loved becoming pregnant and we were ecstatic to have our own bundle of joy on the way, but the reality of the day to day was not cupcakes and rainbows for us. 

As I wrote in a previous post, I have PCOS, so becoming pregnant, especially the first time, was no walk in the park for us. The half marathon as mentioned in the last post was one way to help me get in better shape to help with my fertility. We tried on our own for half a year before I consulted with a physician, who then recommended trying for another year before taking any external help or medication.  So, we continued to try for another twelve months with constant late periods getting our hopes up (thanks PCOS). False pregnancy test after false pregnancy test later, finally, in the twelfth hour (month), we got our first positive. 

We were over the moon excited to be welcoming our first baby. I had the apps, the books, the pamphlets, all the information I needed to help eat right and do the right things to help this baby thrive and grow. What I was not mentally or physically prepared for, was the physical and mental toll that was about to happen to my body. I felt I handled pregnancy pretty well until one day I woke up feeling hungry but nauseated at the same time. I would scan the contents of the fridge hoping for something to seem edible. I started trying anything that could help ease my stomach: crackers, ginger ale, Preggie Pops, sea bands, you name it. Eventually my doctor would prescribe an anti-nausea medication. These things would help to a small extent, but this was not just simple morning sickness, this was all day sickness. By the evening when I would get home from work I had no energy to do anything else. Some days I would cry because I wanted to eat something so badly but knew that I could not keep down or enjoy anything.

The result of this all day sickness was that during the course of my first trimester and into my second, I ended up losing the 20 pounds I had been struggling to lose before pregnancy. 

Even though the constant nausea and hormones was a physical and mental drain on my body, I was happy that my baby was doing well, and the doctor never felt it necessary to put me on IV fluids because I figured out how to keep the food down, even if it was by eating very little amounts. Thankfully, the day did finally come where I was able to not only eat my food but actually enjoy it! My husband will still remind me on occasion the time I suggested we stop at a Carl's Jr for dinner because it actually sounded good to me, and I cried tears of joy in the restaurant while enjoying my burger. 

I never wanted to take for granted being able to sit down and enjoy a good meal or a favorite snack. Unfortunately, this meant I stopped regulating what I was eating because the cravings hit as well. As my belly grew, so did my hips expand, and I began to have back and hip pain. It was excruciating just trying to get in and out of the car some days. I made an appointment with my doctor, who ended up sending me to another office that day because they were out of town. 

Part of the joy of being pregnant is when you have health concerns and issues, almost everything that would typically be prescribed for treatment is now a danger to you and the baby. As I spoke to this new doctor about my terrible hip and low back pain, all he seemed able to say was "Well, this is normal." And when I asked about my concern about it getting worse and what labor will feel like and if the baby was going to break me, all he could say to ease me nerves was "Maybe." I remember just being dumbfounded at his flippant attitude, and annoyed that he treated my concerns as if they were dismissible.

I left the doctor's office with my discharge notes, and while I was reviewing the diagnosis page, I spotted the words "generalized anxiety disorder" listed at the top. Not that I disagreed with the assessment, but I was alarmed that this never came up during the actual appointment but was just listed in the notes like an afterthought. I felt embarrassed, angry, scared and rather anxious all at once. Was I really going crazy? Perhaps they were right, and all of this was normal, and I was just being one of the weak ones complaining about every little ache and pain. I had no frame of reference because this was my first pregnancy after all. 

During the course of the pregnancy, we ended up moving across the country. With the added support of my parents nearby, I realize now how much this helped my anxiety about the pregnancy. Things were still rough physically, but I was able to get by and ask my Mom lots of questions on the spot whenever I would have a concern. It was during the middle of my second trimester that I had the first early signs of Braxton Hicks contractions, so that was fun. The back and hip pain continued, and so came the swelling, the Charlie horses in the middle of the night, the heart burn and acid reflux and all of the other joys that come with pregnancy. All of these things cut down my mobility quite a bit and not only did I gain back the 20 pounds, but 30 more on top of that just before the end.

The story of my delivery is best told on its own, but needless to say, the weight gain was all worth it in the end because I delivered a healthy 9 pound, 22 inches long baby girl whom we named Rose. Between the 9-pound baby, the giant placenta, and all the water weight that was lost in the following days post-partum, I was about 20 pounds lighter a few days post-partum. That left me with a net gain of 10 pounds heavier than before my pregnancy began. 

As I said at the beginning of this post, pregnancies can be different. My story is my own and is not the same story for everyone, but I believe it could be used as a good frame of reference for what one could potentially expect. 

I have more to share in regard to what my life was like post-partum and with my two subsequent pregnancies after that, but I will save that for the next blog post.