This Is the Pregnancy Commiseration and Support Thread

Oh the retching. I always feel like a cat trying to hork up a hairball when that happens. Everybody I know who had bad nausea turned a corner between 12-16 weeks, so I am optimistic for you! I am just one of the lucky ones who get prolonged nausea, I guess.

Knackeredness is no joke. That's great you have a quiet room at work. We have a room for breastpumpers but it requires requesting a key and some other stuff, so I just worked from home a lot and took 30 minute naps whenever I got the chance. I've definitely gotten some stamina back, but if left to my own devices, I can sleep for 10-12 hours without even trying. I don't know if that ever changes.

A friend of mine said that in her third trimester towards the end of her pregnancy, she would fall asleep sitting up typing at her desk, and only realize it when her snoring woke her up! So we have that to look forward to.

I had a brief stint as a hotel night auditor at a hotel, and was trained by a woman in the last couple of weeks of her pregnancy. She kept falling asleep in the middle of a sentence...it didn't help that this was the overnight shift.

the other day on the train there was a very nauseous pregnant woman with her husband. the husband kept trying to do things to make her feel better, which was cute but also cringey. he kept asking her which foods he could make her, which was a bad move. then he rubbed her stomach and was joke-talking to the baby like "you little monster, why are you making mommy feel sick?"

I would have barfed all over him.

Probably the most helpful thing Jeff has done to help me cope with the exXxtreme nausea, aside from truly wonderful practical things like cooking AND doing the dishes and going to the store alone so I don't have to be around food and bringing me ice water on demand, is just be understanding. Like, not care if he cooks and I eat two bites of food and spend the rest of the evening lying down with my eyes closed, or not tease when I cry because I feel so bad, or not care if we had plans for dinner and I got really hungry at 4:30 and ate a bag of yogurt covered pretzels and then felt like hell for the rest of the night and couldn't eat anything else. Just kind of being chill and available and not taking anything personally.

Or like the time we were meeting friends out for a fancy dinner and Jeff was totally nonjudgmental when I had to stop for a hot dog from 7-11 because I suddenly got so hungry I thought I was going to pass out before we even got to the train station.

Anyway. Jeff: he's a pretty good guy and he never rubs my stomach and baby talks our fetus or talks to me about food when I feel like I want to puke.

I'd puke on me if I did that.

why does the puking happen? obvs there's a lot of wacky hormonal stuff going on, but rejecting nutrients doesn't seem evolutionarily beneficial?

i have experienced feeling extra protective of pregnant friends, which is kind of strange! a friend whose wife was pregnant at the time went a step further and began to seethe whenever he encountered someone he felt was capable of being mean to his wife

Nobody knows for sure, but most sources lay the blame primarily on hormones. I'm pretty skeptical of evolutionary theories because they are kind of the "everything happens for a reason" approach to pregnancy.

My doc told me that at least in the early part of the pregnancy, the fetus's nutritional needs are such that it can get everything it needs by sucking it out of my body so not to worry about food aversions/weight loss too much. But I was also starting with a nice surplus, so there was less to worry about. If I had already been underweight, it probably would have been different.

yeah my friend went through some pretty hardcore anemia at first bcz babby was sucking her dry (she was also pretty slight so the weightloss was like whoa)...she ended up on iron tablets and the whole deal (constipation hooray)

The best advice I got re. nausea was from a friend who is 8 months ahead of me. She said whenever I felt ill to just force down some carbs - completely counter-intuitive, but within seconds I feel better. I've been carving through loaves of bread and even though the need for an hourly slice of toast has subsided I still can't manage without my 10am sandwich at my desk.

(I've gone off chocolate and anything but the plainest food, so the carbo-loading hasn't affected my weight.)

http://www.endoftheworldasyouknowit.com/images/smilies/Drudge_Siren_Small.gif ANOTHER RANT ABOUT CLOTHING AVAILABILITY!!! http://www.endoftheworldasyouknowit.com/images/smilies/Drudge_Siren_Small.gif

My underpants are too small now and "plus size maternity underwear" is the most depressing google search ever. There are two choices - Motherhood/Destination Maternity (different retailers, same products) which get terrible reviews, or the $23/pair support drawers from Belevation. I have maternity bike shorts from Belevation that are AMAZING and I love them for wearing under skirts/dresses but spending over $100 on underpants that I'll wear for a few months? Naw man. Also they are not cotton, which is the recommendation for all sorts of fun and gross reasons.

Sigh. SIGH.

A HUNDRED DOLLARS? Oy. Do you NEED pregnancy underwear? Can you just wear maternity tights/leggings under dresses?

Well, $23 each so you figure minimum four pairs of underpants, and that's doing laundry 2x as often as I do now.

Well, I need underwear. Avert thine eyes, those who are squeamish about the grosser aspects of pregnancy - this is a thing that happens. So even if I were prone to underpantslessness under normal circumstances, it's not very comfortable now. I guess I am going to try buying giant brief-style underpants a couple sizes up? That should work for a month or so, at least, and giant brief-style underpants are pretty cheap so.

In other omg seriously? news - http://www.target.com/p/miss-oops-women-s-popper-stoppers-nude/-/A-14337153#prodSlot=large_1_15

They are like bandaids to cover your poking out belly button to make your stomach look smooth under clothes, because women's bodies are defective and ugly no matter what.

But they gave it such a clever name.

Oh $23 each, that seems sensible, I didn't read that carefully enough.

I may buy a pair later for their support properties.

Now see if you had 10 children, you could amortize the cost of all this shit and it would be like $5 per baby. This is clearly the way to make pregnancy more cost-effective.

We just registered for four classes - childbirth class, hospital maternity tour, breastfeeding, and "Babies 101" (LOL which end is up???). Shit is getting real...

we had like five sessions on childbirth and one on baby care. I always thought that was kind of ass backwards.

Babies 101!! Try not to drop the baby, that kind of thing.

also, until they invent a doll that can kick you and pee/poop on you, diaper practice is of limited value

we took a long natural birthing class that was really good and as a bonus connected us to other new parents at a time when we didn't know a lot of people with kids. i also took a short "babies for dads" class at be by baby that was SO DUMB and condescending, like the assumption was that you were a total moron and hadn't done any research on what babies are like.

lol @ babies 101 tbh though if I ever have kids that's a class I'd need because while I love older babies and children I've held an actual newborn exactly once and it was so little I was totally freaked out.

We are doing the one day 9-5 childbirth class so that should be exhausting.

The last time I had a baby in my care, you were still supposed to put them to sleep on their stomachs and I don't think Jeff has ever cared for a baby so we can use all the help we can get. I was watching You Tube videos about how to bathe a newborn. I like that at first you just sort of wipe them off.

lol that's kind of awesome. Eh, just give it a wipe.

Yeah, I guess until the cord falls off you aren't supposed to put them in water?

Yeah, I guess not submerging them until then makes sense since it's supposed to dry up and fall off.

Man, they're like Gremlins - don't get them wet etc. Pretty sure they like to eat after midnight though.

like the assumption was that you were a total moron

There's so much of this, the maternity ward advice seemed based entirely on you being a lazy idiot. The advice on feeding was change nappy, then feed baby - so we were changing out of clean nappy, feeding whereupon he'd dirty it, and having to change again. When we queried why you had to do it before, it turned out it was because they assumed if they said 'after' you wouldn't bother at all.

My dads' class was actually pretty good, but tbh you exceed everything you could possibly learn at it within about 5 minutes' caring for an actual baby. Stuff like this is great for giving you the confidence to deal with those 5 minutes (and preceding months) though.

i was terrified about being a parent tbh, like you get to the hospital and it's all real all of a sudden, and then a couple of days later they just sort of gently escort you out and you have a baby and no clue what to do next (or so it feels.) the best advice i can give is that the first couple of weeks are probably the worst and it continues to get easier. also the first few poops are nightmarish, it's like trying to clean exxon valdez oil off a baby walrus.

lol

(xp to self) Or the one that actually really angered us - if you're breastfeeding, the baby can't have formula milk. But it takes a day or two for the actual milk to come through, so on his first night at home the poor soul screamed until 6am and lost a lot of weight.

The reason of course was them assuming that if you tried formula milk once, you'd just give up breastfeeding. There's no medical basis for it at all. So angry because that little top-up would've saved a two-day-old a whole night of misery.

that is fuckjng stupid

there is so much hysteria and stress around breast-feeding that you don't find out about until you have a baby

Yeah, the amount of crazy talk (on all sides) around breastfeeding is overwhelming. I'd like to breastfeed and I will do my best to make it happen but if it doesn't work or only works partially, I'm going to be okay with that, too.

xp!!!!!!!!!!!

there are so many people who are extremely hardcore about their breastfeeding philosophies (whether to do it at all, how long, how often, where, etc.)

i would say it can be hard at first (as it was for us) but if you want to do it, don't give up.

(somewhat unrelated I was just reading an employment law decision out of Texas district court in which a judge held that it was okay to fire a woman for taking time to pump because breastfeeding was not related to pregnancy (pregnancy is over!) and firing "someone" (he doesn't say a woman, of course) for pumping breast milk is not sex discrimination. Now that's something to get pissed off about, IMO.)

ugh

at my wife's work they have a breastpumping room!

one at a time, not like a hair salon or w/e

i would say it can be hard at first (as it was for us) but if you want to do it, don't give up.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, August 27, 2013 2:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with this but would add, if you do give up, don't feel shitty about it

we had lots of problems too and ended up supplementing with formula the whole time evie was breastfeeding and felt vaguely guilty about it at first but now i'm just like why were we so worried about it?

We have a pumping room, too. At the state, they actually would tell women to use the accessible stall in the bathroom, which is arguably against IL law (an employer needs to "make reasonable efforts" to provide a location other than a toilet stall).

I hear you about not giving up, and I want to breastfeed but if it comes to a point where I think it would be healthier to let it go, I'm going to do that. Like if I've got stigmata of the nipples and start resenting our baby as a dreadful monster and thinking about putting it up for adoption, I will probably move on to formula. That is okay, you know? I trust myself to make a good decision there.

xp n/a and I apparently sharing a brain today.

xp to self) Or the one that actually really angered us - if you're breastfeeding, the baby can't have formula milk. But it takes a day or two for the actual milk to come through, so on his first night at home the poor soul screamed until 6am and lost a lot of weight.

The reason of course was them assuming that if you tried formula milk once, you'd just give up breastfeeding. There's no medical basis for it at all. So angry because that little top-up would've saved a two-day-old a whole night of misery.

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, August 27, 2013 3:37 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Argh, I remember this. The way we heard it was that if the baby tried the bottle it would be "easy" and then it would get too "lazy" to breastfeed. Of course the exact same thing happened to us, and I can still sharply remember that hysterical 3am moment of H and I going back and forth virtually in tears before finally just saying "Ok fuck it, K won't stop crying and she is really really hungry" and giving her a little formula. This was a good decision.

(somewhat unrelated I was just reading an employment law decision out of Texas district court in which a judge held that it was okay to fire a woman for taking time to pump because breastfeeding was not related to pregnancy (pregnancy is over!) and firing "someone" (he doesn't say a woman, of course) for pumping breast milk is not sex discrimination. Now that's something to get pissed off about, IMO.)

― Lawyer... SUAVE... (carl agatha), Tuesday, August 27, 2013 3:56 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The law, in its magestic equality, forbids men and women alike from breastpumping at work

stigmata of the nipples lol omg

Nothing drives home the overwhelming maleness of the federal judiciary like a Title VII sex discrimination decision. xp

Can she be fired for leaking milk all through her top at work? (Fuck that guy with a rusty pitchfork, imho, or better yet go back in time and prevent him from ever suckling at his mother's breast. Wait a sec. Maybe that's EXACTLY what happened.)

Oh god yes that too. I was basically always sopping wet with milk and sweat. Sexy.

He's so cute!!!
I finished work last week. I was going to work until 38 weeks but got freaked out by everyone (2 people) telling me they stopped at 37 then the baby came the next day or the day after.
I'm OK except my legs hurt if I lie down for too long. Also can't have the house to myself/a bathroom yet as building work still goes on. But can't really complain. Not really ready for the baby to come yet...

I figure if you're able to stop work a few weeks before due date, do it! I know I wanted to have zero responsibilities come 36 weeks but hey, life.) But I also know people who happily worked right up to due date like la dee da. Keep stretching those legs and taking Epsom salts baths. I'm not a bath taker but because I had such hip pain I took many in 3rd trimester and half-resented it - now I'm like oooh long baths what a nice concept... Even if I did get to take one I'd worry about falling asleep in it, ha.

Maybe your baby will wait for the home reno stuff to be done before deciding it's time to be born ;)

I've been dreaming of having a bath for months - it was the first thing to be taken out and will be the last thing to be put in :( Have grabbed one at a hotel when I was staying over for a wedding and one at my parents' the other week.
Baby is super wriggly at the moment!

Ivy's first scheduled delivery date was today, so this time last year I was in the hospital convincing them to wait. Remembering all of this is giving me a lot of feelings!

11/12/13 would have been so easy to remember.

She would have been less than four pounds if she was born today! I think we can remember 11/18 pretty easily.

That would have been a cool birthday, though. I think some of the nurses were a little disappointed I didn't go for it.

Yeah, they were nuts. 11/18 ended up being great!

aw ivy, what a lil trouper. how much courage you all had to rustle up. and now look at her, the darling.

best wishes, kinder, i hope everything goes really well for you.

and best wishes to robyn and your darling babby also.

allow me to introduce y'all to my excellent new granddaughter Isolde

http://i1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah265/DJsleeve/IMG_0957_zps7b652034.jpg?t=1415827907

oops wrong thread kinda

Post her pic in all the threads imo.

Because look at that face.

it is the all knowing buddha baby smile

Somewhere between "jolly farmer" and "mad dictator"!

Awesome babby!

sleeve! she has the best name & the best face

best name and best face yes, but c'mon y'all got to give it up for the hair

(congrats sleeve!)

thanks y'all.

tbh I did not expect this level of emotional involvement with somebody that I share no genetic material with (she is technically my step-granddaughter, my wife is the one who is especially delirious with happiness as a first time grandma). but yeah the hair, the face, the eyes... it just slays me. I can see my wife's son in her face.

rrrobyn, Isolde's parents watched"Happiest Baby On The Block" as well! I now know the five "S" things.

The family lives around 5-6 hours away, so it's not too bad for visits, but we only get to see them every month or so.

cutiepies >>>> sharing genetic material

sleeve, my stepdad is Ivy's grandfather (or as we like to call him Pop Pop) and it is a wonderful magical love to behold. My stepdad and I are never going to see eye to eye on a lot of things but I love him dearly and am so happy he's a part of Ivy's life.

So I guess just big ups to stepdad grandpas and I'm so happy for you and Isolde.

Awww, my dad is a stepdad grandpa to his partner's daughter's twins, and he's in deep. He just built them an insanely complicated and inappropriately delicate train set <3

My wife's parents are divorced and both are remarried, so my impending kid will have six total grandparents which is kind of awesome as I only ever knew three of mine, two of whom have been gone since 1989.

It's an open adoption also so who knows how many more "grandparents" might be involved on some level.

Yeah cosign to everything said above.

Also there was a point this year where I half-seriously considered getting a "5 S's" tattoo

Nora was born 15 days ago today. Thought I ought to check in.

How's it going?

Pretty well so far. She only woke once last night for a feed, she's putting in weight well, and she's a pretty content little baby all told. Feeling very lucky.

Congratulations :)

Realised I missed a golden opportunity for 'bahn in mi oven' display name :(

:(

lol :)
it's good you're leaving that dn here though for the next victim i mean happy pregnant person

I pass it on to my first-bahn son

A+ :)

I'm here again. Quite precariously since I haven't cleared the appropriate amount of weeks to be safe. But I've been so ill. Terrible morning sickness, not at all the bliss of the first pregnancy. Trying the new morning sickness drug but it's not making me drowsy anymore. Keeps me up. So here I am after a very long absence due to no longer owning a laptop. And decided on this board since I'm wide awake and feeling like shit.

<3 *tera
Hope it passes soon. I felt sick with mine but not enough to actually throw up - and that was bad enough, although manageable. So hard to get through the day.

PS Congratulations!

Thank you! It was an awful night but the meds kicked in and I'm coasting on them this morning.

Congrats, Tera! I bet August is so excited!!

congrats tera! sry about the illness stuff though, that's rough :/

Thank you!!! She was but it's now abstract. Now she mostly reassures me that she is still a baby who needs me.

I was able to control terrible morning sickness with deep breathing. That felt good. Today though, went out and about so I took the medication and after the best pizza of my life, was overwhelmed with drowsiness so I crashed for several hours. Ugh. My first pregnancy was not so incapacitating this early on. Maybe I need to scroll up and check that.

Come Monday I'm a single parent again, all week, so I need to get it together. Although, having my husband around during this rain break...binge watching Girls... Has really been like a real Spring Break. My Monday will be like any Monday after a long break.

I'm so happy for you, tera! Except the morning sickness part, I hope that passes quickly!

Sadly, the pregnancy ended a month after I posted this. It was a moment of overconfidence I was ultimately glad I had.

Oh *tera, I'm so sorry.

Hugs and love to you

hugs & condolences tera, i'm so sorry <3