What took me by surprise.

I cannot believe it has been already over six months since I gave birth to our beautiful son Johaan. Time flies and I am slowly starting to forget all hardships of my pregnancy, remembering only the amazing moments. Initially I was planning to write about my whole birthing experience but then I decided to mention only few things that took me by surprise. After all, every woman experiences giving birth in her own special way and so it might not make sense to hear about mine.

Here are few things that happened towards the end of my pregnancy:

In the third trimester I started to feel like I was going to faint.

I walked to work during my whole pregnancy (approx.15-20 mins) which didn't bother me at all. In the last three months few minutes after I arrived to work (sometimes already in the elevator) I felt like I was going to faint. At the beginning I would only need few sips of Coca-Cola which was always ready on my desk (not that I was excited about it), but later even Coke stopped working. My doctor suggested to eat breakfast with some protein in it, eggs or maybe a hand full of almonds. Since I am not a big fan of eggs for breakfast I was munching on bag of almonds on my way to work, fortunately it worked.

Next thing that started in the third trimester was so called "disease of restless legs".

It is hard to describe that feeling but the name actually suggests a lot. Your legs are pretty much restless, every few seconds you have to move them. Sometimes it took hours before I could fall asleep. I remember it used to happen to me while waiting long hours at the airport,  but never at home in bed. After few weeks I finally read on it and found out that it is a common disease that also affects pregnant women but goes away after giving birth (which was my case). Advice that I found and that worked for me was not to lay in bed too long before going to sleep, that means not to read books in bed or have a light on, simply go to bed and try to fall asleep right away.

"Blister" on my tongue.

Few weeks before my due date a small blister appeared in the middle of my tongue. First I thought it was a reaction on something I ate.  But the blister was getting bigger and at one point I had troubles eating. My OB-GYN wasn't sure what it was but suggested to wait until after I give birth. And so the blister was getting bigger (it was not too big, but I could feel it is increasing). Few days before my due date I was enjoying a piece of chocolate and accidently caught on the blister that started bleeding like crazy. Maybe you will laugh at me but I panicked (pregnant, alone at home, I really thought I am gonna bleed out) and called 911 (what didn't occur to me at that time was just to put pressure on it and it stopped bleeding). After this incident I went to my primary care doctor who also wasn't sure what it could be but gave me a contact for a surgeon by whom I made an appointment.

Two weeks after giving birth I went to the surgeon office who right after looking at the blister

 stated that it is a "pregnancy tumor". It is caused by hormonal changes during pregnancy a most of the times appears in the mouth, on the gums or the tongue. Surgery lasted few minutes and my tongue healed in few days. The surgeon warned me that the same thing might happen in my next pregnancy and that I should not, under any circumstances, wait this long with the removal since it can grow bigger.

This was probably the most uncomfortable thing during my pregnancy mostly because I had no idea what it was and the doctors I initially saw didn't know either.

 

Strange feelings/situations while birthing:

After my water broke.

I am not sure if I just didn't pay attention at the classes we took with my husband but I was caught by surprise that after my water broke, the water just kept coming.

Feeling nausea.

This took me by surprise the most because no one ever mentioned it to me. During pushing stage I was getting sick with every push. It was exhausting, because almost every second push had to be interrupted.

High fever.

In the last stage I got high fever so they had to be giving me antibiotics for few days after I gave birth to our son.

The epidural didn't work at first.

The epidural didn't work in one spot which might happen sometimes and so I didn't have cramps all over my belly but concentrated in one spot. They had to increase the dosage several times which finally worked.

So this should be everything that took me by surprise during my pregnancy and birthing. My intention was not to scare future moms but to share information with them that wasn't available to me at the time but which would save me lots of nerves.
Despite everything I fully enjoyed my pregnancy.