22 Weeks

Lets talk symptoms…

A few of the symptoms I have felt are;

-       Tiredness

-       Extreme Emotion

-       Lack of appetite

-       Gagging

-       Nausea

-       Generally feeling low and deflated

-       Full Bladder!

The first thing I want to make apparent is that I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was 12 weeks. This meant that I was trying to find reasons for my symptoms which obviously looking back now was all because I was pregnant and some of the excuses may of contributed but were not the only reason.

Lets start with tiredness; March to June is the busiest months at my work and probably the worst months to fall pregnant. We were very busy and I was working a lot of overtime, which I thought explained the tiredness. I was knackered, one weekend I was only awake for about 8 hours over the 48-hour period and that was only because Baby Daddy woke me up to eat. I didn’t start to feel tired until Easter time, which meant I would have been 4-6 weeks, don’t worry though the tiredness stopped at about 18 weeks. Baby Daddy and I noticed a sudden difference in my fatigue and since then I have had a lot more energy to get up and do things. I have struggled to keep my eyes open some days, I do not know what it is going to be like once Baby H gets here, they do say its your body going into training.

I have never cried so much in my life than I have done in the past 22 weeks. I have cried at adverts and sometimes I don’t even know why I was crying. Again we put this down to being stressed and unhappy at work it seemed to be the best excuse for most of the symptoms I was having.

I will talk about gagging, nausea and lack of appetite in one paragraph as I do feel they all go hand-in-hand. About 3 weeks before I found out I was pregnant a nasty bug was going around the office and of course I caught it. For a week I was bed ridden; I couldn’t eat, I had swollen tonsils, diarrhea, vomiting, think about anything you could have, and I had it. Even though this only lasted a week I thought that my pregnancy symptoms, which obviously continued after the bug, was my body still just getting over the sickness. I have a very good gag reflex normally, not many things could make me wretch, my sister on the other hand only has to smell something bad and will gag for 5 minutes. A good friend at work who also had the horror bug was saying that she was still gagging even though we were both better, to me this made sense to why I was gagging. I can officially say that gagging is horrific! If you are someone who suffers from a short gag reflex I feel your pain and do not know how you live your life as everything was making me gag. When I say everything I mean I was gagging at everything! A few of the most memorable and weird things were; walking into a warm room, walking through a swarm of midges and people talking about number 2’s. Due to all the gagging this is what made me be sick the handful of times that I did, it was only when I couldn’t breath through it, or control it that I threw up, thankfully.

**Side note ‘Morning Sickness’ is bull it should be called ‘All Day Sickness’ it does not just happen in the morning do not be fooled!**

Along side the gagging I continuously felt nauseas, for a good 6 weeks. To help this I ate the most; plain, boring, tasteless food you could think of. I had rice and corn cakes coming out of my ears, none of the fancy flavours literally plain maybe lightly salted. I ate these for breakfast and lunch for 6 weeks, this is what seemed to settle my stomach and help the sick feeling. Another food that I felt helped was mints, I would suck on them through-out the day to keep my stomach occupied and from building up the acid which was causing the nausea. Due to the nauseas feeling I completely lost my appetite and within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy I lost quite a bit of weight obviously I didn’t know I was pregnant so was not looking out for myself in the way the books say you should. Thankfully at about 19 weeks I found my appetite; which I am very happy about, the one downfall is I cannot eat as much as I used to. I can now only eat half a pizza!

Before finding out I was pregnant I was feeling very low. I couldn’t 100% explain everything I was feeling and I was getting upset and frustrated. The day I had my doctors appointment I was expecting to be written off work and given anti-depressants that is how low I felt. I am not embarrassed about how low and depressed I felt at the beginning as my body was changing and preparing in ways that I can never understand or explain. Maybe if I had found out earlier I would of understood why I was feeling the way I was and could of helped myself through it better, instead I didn’t want to get out of bed, do the things I enjoy doing or some days even talk to people. The moment I did find out I was pregnant the doctor made sense of all the symptoms and I did instantly feel better as I had answers to why I felt terrible.

The last symptom I am going to talk about is one that I think will last until this little rascal is in the world and that is my bladder! I can honestly say I think I have gone to toilet more in the past 22 weeks than I have in a year. When I am awake I wee 3 times an hour, honestly. I am one of those people who can sleep through a thunderstorm but since being pregnant I wake up at least 3 times a night to wee, which can be very frustrating. One positive I can walk from our bedroom to the toilet in the pitch black.

I hope that hearing about my symptoms will help you feel less strange as I would of felt a lot better to know that I wasn’t the only one who could fill a pool with urine within a day. I would love to hear about the symptoms you guys had/have as I do feel everyone is different and we should all help each other through this confusing time in our bodies lives.   

Baby Mumma xx