1.19.17
“It’s weird, finding out you’re pregnant, yet life remaining relatively normal.”
Three days after finding out we were pregnant, we finally started trying to take action on those “first step” pieces of the journey.
1 – Picking an OB/GYN – This is something I regretted not having done research on, prior to starting a family. I lost my chance to ask, guilt-free, if any family members or friends had suggestions for which OB/GYN to see. Instead, I picked based on my very well thought out, extensive list of two criteria. I wanted a woman, and I wanted somebody close to home. Having found one who met my highest of standards, I scheduled my two first appointments with the doctor I thought would one day deliver our baby. People say you’re supposed to have this great relationship with your OB/GYN, that you’re supposed to have a strong connection and bond over the course of your pregnancy and their delivering of your baby. I felt so much pressure to like my doctor as a person, that I never took into account what would happen if our pregnancy turned sour and our needs were out of her realm of assistance. Never again will I choose a doctor based on how well she likes my jokes.
2 – Planning out vacation days – Kevin and I examined our remaining vacation days for the year and imagined how we might ration those as best as possible to have more time at home when our baby arrived and yet still enjoy one last, nice vacation as just the two of us.
3 – Dreaming up the nursery – In the midst of a kitchen re-model, we knew our next big project would be the nursery. Not yet knowing the gender, there was little we could do aside from setting a chunk of time aside in the future to paint, decorate, craft and put furniture together. I imagined we would tackle this as soon as we finished the kitchen, and then put our other house projects on hold until the baby arrived and we got settled in.
I took my dog for a long walk on this day, listened to a few episodes of a pregnancy podcast because I realized how little I knew about pregnancy and drifted off to sleep at the early bed time of 9:00 pm, which would soon get earlier as I got deeper into my first trimester.
My symptoms were fatigue and tender, um… breasts… and they felt difficult because they were different. It is a hard stage, having symptoms of being pregnant, but not being allowed to let on about what you’re experiencing. I just had no idea how much harder this pregnancy was going to get.
In the stats:
Gestational Age: 4 weeks, 5 days
You were blissfully naive! I would have loved to talk through this time, but you probably wouldn’t have listened. You thought you had a pretty good handle on things. I was that way too.
Not that you would have been equipped to prepare us for what was to come. 😉
No, but I may have been some help in choosing a doctor and we could have compared notes on those first months
But we didn’t tell people for the first 12 weeks.