Pregnancy Hot Topic: What do you wish you had known

[Maribeth]

What you wish you would've known about pregnancy before you conceived? (not labor, delivery or postpartum but pregnancy itself)

Share your thoughts with us and we'll archive them for the Pregnancy Channel!

Thanks wise women!
Mari

I had severe cramps, I kept waiting for my period to show up. Finally went to Doc about the pain, found out I was pregnant. This was a good thing, we were trying but thought it would take longer due to getting off BC. A week later I still feel have cramps. The OB doc conducted an ultrasound to confirm that it was not ectopic. Then the doc just said it was my ligaments stretching and implantation pain (where the egg is burrowing into the uterus). I had never heard of this or read about it in pregnancy books, but I did "google" it and got many sites about the topic.

I always thought pregnant women who gained too much weight were just using pregnancy as an excuse to overeat whatever junk they would normally want to eat. I think this is a pretty common attitude, even amoungst some women who have been pregnant but not gained too much weight. I found out that food really does become much more tasty and you really are more hungry pregnant, so it is much harder to control youself than it normally would be, and for many ladies, it ain't easy normally! I'm a more humble person now.

I agree!!!!! I am only 6 and a half weeks pregnant so there are probably tons of things I am going to "discover" but the cramps I have had since my 3rd week were not something I had heard about before. I have had an ultrasound and everything is as it should be but ths stretching and cramping, (like before my period but way stronger,) is not so fun.
Don't get me wrong I am very happy to be pregnant but between the nausea and cramping I don't think these weeks are the most beautiful part of pregnancy

I guess I didn't realize the severity of morning sickness. I am 7 1/2 weeks pregnant, and I'm on day 4 of morning sickness (or should I say all day sickness). I never thought I would get tired of eating all the time, but I'm there. I'm trying water, hard candy, bland foods, etc., but nothing seems to take the edge off long enough for me to relax throughout my day. Really starting to take a toll on my work, and the way it sounds, I have over 4 more weeks of this. I have my first doctor's appointment next week, so hopefully he can help me. Any suggestions from anyone out there would be greatly appreciated.

[JackieB23]

I wish I'd known how it would change how others see you:

"Wow, you're HUGE!!" (nobody over the age of 7 ever says that to a non-pregnant person!)

People asking you about choices you'll need to make - work/stay at home, breast/bottle feed, cloth/disposable diapers, natural childbirth/medicated childbirth, scheduled c-section/VBAC (to name a few) and then criticize you for whatever you decide.

Strangers actually TOUCHING your belly.

You get mad/sad/irritated and they attribute it to your pregnancy. Others say that it can't be justified and you're just irrational because you're pregnant.

People can't resist telling you pregnancy/birth horror stories - thanks, but I DIDN'T NEED TO KNOW THAT.

I do love the fact that my husband and I created a miracle.....

However I so wish I knew that when you become pregnant everyone who has been pregnant in the past suddenly feels entitled to give you their opinion, good or bad, and because it happened to them its going to happen to you.

No matter how you put it, at the end ( Im 5 days till my due date ) you feel HUGE and there's not a thing you can do about it.

Sometimes you can be really mean to people you love due to the crazy hormones your feeling all at once.

Sometimes if you are the only one in your circle of friends that are pregnant all the relationships change....

HEARTBURN really sucks!!!

However I can't wait to hold this little angel

I also got cramping the week I was expecting my period, and even took some pamprin before going to work. No one ever said you would feel like you were getting your period- which it continued to feel like for several weeks.

Morning sickness was all day and night to the point of insanity. I went to the ER to get IV fluids and prescription Zofran, just so I could at least keep down some gatorade. I could also smell EVERYTHING and it all smelled BAD.... from the cucumber scented bath soap to the dog who was not allowed in the room anymore!

Also someone said you are pregnant for 10 months not 9, to which I thought they were a moron. But full term is at least 40 weeks...10 months long.

Heartburn, leg swelling, side-sleeping, baby kicking, mood-swinging good times are to be had for all!

The physical changes of being pregnant were all that i had expected...even a litter easier than i expected (people keep on telling me that im lucky) however my 'surprises' came in a different way...

Since my pregnancy wasn't planned (and out of all my friends, I'm the first one to have a child), I had to deal with a lot of 'inappropriate' comments - however I'm sure (/hope) that the majority of people who said things didn't realize exactly how it was coming across. For the most part, I'm the type of person who would just brush these things off and not get worked up about it...but after hearing the same questions/remarks over and over again just gets to you. And you'd think that if you were going to hear any inappropriate comments that they'd come from your parents....silly me thinking that!

I got a lot of these:
"so was it an accident?" - I really didn't mind the "so, was this planned?" type questions, but using 'accident' just really got to me...especially after hearing it several times.....from some of my closest friends who knew that my partner and I weren't planning. I've almost come close to asking them if they were accidents.

"so are you getting married now? / are your parents pressuring you to get married?" - my (pretty much) husband and I were planning on getting married this past April, but due to a lot of different things going on in our life (new house, personal issues, etc) we decided to put off getting married (I found out that I was pregnant a week before our former wedding date too). I actually had one friend ask me the above-mentioned questions one right after the other. (No we're not getting married right now because we don't want to base our marriage solely on the birth of our child, we want to do it when we're ready....no, we're not feeling any pressure from our parents because theyre not d-bags like you...lol)

For the most part i think it had to do a lot with the maturity level of my friends. It's not as if I'm a teenager who got knocked up from a one-night stand...I'm 26, with a house, with a 'husband' and we both have great careers...however i think some people still saw me as a kid whos not ready for this (...it probably doesnt help that about half of my friends just finished school within the past year and still live at home whereas i have been moved-out and working at my career for the past 4.5 years).

The first person who I told and the peson who had the worst reaction was surprisingly my sister. We were going to Vegas for a trip and i had found out the week before we went that i was pregnant.....i had to tell her because she would know something was up if i was passing up cheap drinks all week. I expected her reaction to be more on the surprised side than anything, but she acted like she was my mother and that my 'husband' and i were 14 year old kids coming to her with our 'problem'. She was utterly retarded! (and it probably doesnt help that shes a bit of a drama queen) She had to stop what she was doing and take a shot of alcohol because 'it was too much information for her to handle' and then she lectured us on if we thought we were ready for this and so on and then joked about getting me a coathanger (SOOOOO inappropriate). It was horrible and really set the tone/my attitude for when i was telling the rest of my family/friends.

After my sister's reaction (to which a couple of weeks later she told me that 'she was now ready to be an aunt') i was scared to tell my mom. But it was good! You'd think, if anything, that your parents would be the ones to say the inappropriate comments, but really they are your greatest supporters! (I had also told my mom my about my sister's reaction and she couldnt believe how rude she was). My mom has always told my sister and I that we don't have to make her a grandma (as she knows some parents put some pressure on their children for that cause), but when I told her, she was really cute. I think out of everyone, she had the best reaction. She told me that about 3 months prior she had thought to herself that she was ready to be a grandma, etc. She also mentioned that she had started a list of unique names she like/had read in books (she does a lot of reading) and went and got me the list. It was cute/funny/a little nutters that she had started this list, but what made my day was that at the top of the list she had written "2-syllable names sound better with Clarke" (which is my 'husbands' last name).

So really, I guess what I learned from my experience is that not everyone is going to have the best reaction no matter what your situation is. Be prepared for those inappropriate comments!

In reply to a couple of other posters regarding our 9 months of gestation, it is kind of true that we are actually pregnant around 10 months, but that is only because months are not exactly 4 weeks long, they are usually about 4 weeks plus 2-3 days. When you add those extra days up (plus the 2 weeks of your cycle, which the doctors include in your pregnancy, but where you weren't actually/probably pregnant yet), it's adds that extra month of pregnancy (sort of). In reality, pregnancy is about 9 REAL months, meaning 9 months that include 4 weeks plus 2-3 extra days equalling around 40-42 weeks total, so 9 months later or so, baby will pop out.

I figured this out after many friends told me about this "10" month gestation period their doctors had told them about, leaving them with lots of confusion. I, myself, am currently trying to get pregnant and found out lots of confusing stuff of everything to do with pregnancy and trying to conceive. So far, I ovulated about 4 days ago, had intercourse everyday during that time, and now I'm having very increasingly sore breasts. Not sure if I'm pregnant yet, but keeping my fingers crossed. Just found out here on this website, contrary to much info I read, that sore breasts and other symptoms can start this early on. Crazy!