Mommy Nuggets

The last couple weeks of my pregnancy I was in and out of my OBGYN's office. I wasn't sleeping and high blood pressure started becoming an issue. I was at work one day and started feeling like I was going to die. The nurses at my office checked my blood pressure and it was high enough for my doctor to want to see me. I went alone and scared. I knew what I was feeling wasn't normal. My doctor did a sonogram to check on the baby, prescribed high blood pressure medicine and sent me home on a couple days bed rest... with a bright orange bucket in tow. I had to start collecting urine in it the next morning and continue for 24 hours. Fun fact: you have to keep it cold. My refrigerator was violated as well as my dignity. Returning it, I had to carry it from the parking lot all the way to the 4th floor. Of course people knew what I was holding! Nod and smile, that's all I could do. Turning it in was uncomfortable too...  Hi, I'm  checking in and I have this jug of bodily ...

Some women love being pregnant. I did not. I loved the fact that I was pregnant but I did not love the symptoms. I had guilt throughout my pregnancy for not loving every minute of it. After all, there are women who would give anything to be in my shoes. I was one of them in what seems like a lifetime ago. I was on fertility drugs for over a year during my first marriage. That one year of not being able to get pregnant and not knowing if I would ever have a baby on my own was desperately painful.  So, 3 months into my brand new marriage, my soul mate and I decided to "see what happens". I was prepared for a long battle considering my past. We decided if we weren't pregnant in a year that we would go to the doctor about fertility. Low and behold, God blessed us on our first time of "seeing what would happen". I was floored! My journey began.  I was only a couple days "late" if shark week was on schedule, but it varied by a couple da...

The main advice I received during my pregnancy was,  "You'll never sleep again!" "Get sleep while you can!" "Sleep when the baby sleeps!" I hated every time I heard that because I had insomnia my entire pregnancy. I would always reply with "Well, at least I won't have this immense pain on top of it". I suffered from "down there" pains very bad. Each side I laid on would go numb after 20 minutes and every time I turned over in bed my hips would pop sending shooting pains through my "not so special place".  So, I was prepared for the no sleep, I hadn't slept for more than a couple hours at a time since my first trimester. Next, please. Here are a few not so obvious things I wished I had known to prepare for. How much my arms, hands and shoulders would ache due to the hours on end of holding and patting... and more patting ... and just a little more patting. I should have put more time in on the arm machine at the gym...