Symptoms

I already talked about the fatigue in my previous post: 34 weeks… wow.

So yeah, I’m moving even slower now when walking.  Though I don’t waddle much, I mean it happens but not often like a lot of pregnant women do.  I’ve noticed the more I walk the less I waddle while walking.  And my only form of exercise these days pretty much is walking.  Still, I simply can’t keep up with normal people walking, and I used to be able to do better than average ’cause of my long legs!  I don’t force it, go at whatever pace feels right for that particular walk.  But when I’m walking with others I find I have to remind myself to slow down before I get to the point where my body forces me to!  Just a normal tendency to keep pace with others.

The baby is doing well.  Yay!  I had myself a little worry last Thursday (the 15th).  The baby is usually active 4 times day, but that day there was only 1/2 hour in the late am and then again about an hour in the early evening that that baby WASN’T active.  The hyper activity made me slightly concerned, but it was when I realized I was having pain that felt exactly like my menstrual cramps that I felt I should call the doctor.  Of course the office had closed1.2 hour before!  I called the after-hours line to talk to that doctor, and the woman who called me back said to go put my feet up, drink more water, rest and see if things got better.  Long story short, after a couple hours even though I was averaging only one cramp an hour and things might have been heading in the right direction I finally broke myself out of my internal debate and went to the hospital to get the baby monitored.  I should have been thinking from the beginning: When in doubt get checked.  This is the baby’s well-being we’re talking about!  So stupid, I should have gone an hour or so earlier than I did.  But the baby’s just fine, so it wasn’t that stupid I guess, except for the extra time I lost from sleep, as I had to be at work super early the next morning.

Anyway.  Overall pregnancy symptoms I’ve been having?

Well I totally have the droppsies.  For the first 4 months or so, when I got clumsy it was a sign I was getting too tired.  But the last few months, nope.  It just happens.  Randomly and indiscriminately.   And as bad as my memory was before pregnancy, I have the addition of pregnancy brain.  Which oddly enough has helped with some of my normal memory issues, but most frequently causes words to just fall out of my head, inlcuding names of people I’ve known for years and/or interact with frequently.

However the mild leg cramps I was getting in the middle of night or first thing waking up in the mornings during the 5th (6th?) month have gone away!  It turned out those were a symptom of dehydration.  I was really good about drinking water the first 4 months, into the 5th.  Then I slacked off for a while, weeks.  I didn’t go back to barely drinking anything, but I was only doing about half than I had been the previous months.  Going to the bathroom so much as just so annoying.  But those were the same weeks the leg cramps came.  I upped my liquid intake a little, and away they went!

THANKFULLY I decided to make a better effort at drinking more water the week before the horrible heat wave hit here, and before I went Up North for the 4th of July.  I don’t know how bad it would have been if I hadn’t started working back into consciously drinking water and trying to be aware of if I needed more.  I probably would have done better Up North if I had have had more time at that before hand so I wouldn’t have rationed my water as much the first day and notice that day instead of the second how much more water still I needed ’cause of the heat.  Things are definitely better overall when I’m hydrated, even if it does mean more middle of the night waking for peeing.  I think remembering to drink form the bottle next to my bed first thing when I wake up has helped too, sometimes I’ll even do so in the middle of the night if I wake up with a dry mouth.

I have gotten to the ring doesn’t fit on my finger anymore stage, that started at the beginning of this month.  I wear it on my fourth finger now, instead of my middle.  And I realized last night that my socks are probably too tight, as it’s the second time in the last few days I’ve noticed they’re actually leaving indentation marks all the way around my legs.  I mean that usually happens, with a thing ring, but just moving the sock up or down once during the day stops it.  Now it’s indentations like two inches high all the way around each leg, and I feel the sock pulling away when I take it off.  Yeah… I’ve widened all over, my whole body.  So proportionally I still look fine, and I’m sure a fair amount of people haven’t notice.  Heck I didn’t even notice for a while when I looked in the mirror, except I had signs like the watch getting tight, and then the ring, and now my socks.  But you can see in pictures how much bigger I am around, even in my face and arms, than I was pre-pregnancy.

But I think the symptom I dislike the most is the overheating and sweating.  OYE, suck.  It usually happened about an hour or so before I go to sleep, or it wakes me in the middle of the night.  So I set the thermostat to actually get cooler over night that during the evening, and that helped some.  I hate sweating.  And usually I don’t sweat much at all, even when hot.  I haven’t been overheating near as much this last week or two though.  Yay!

So there are lists, posts, warnings, whatnot out there about “the things no one tells you about pregnancy”.  I’ve read at least three different sources, and there are some interesting things in there.  But there’s still one symptom I’ve had that no one has mentioned, even with all this gathered knowledge on the secretive side of pregnancy: how fragile my skin has become!  Every minor little thing ends up being a scrape, and except for once yesterday, any even mild collision I have causes bleeding.  I’ve had more scabs in the last few months than I get in one year!  Yesterday was the first time I actually got a bruise instead, it wasn’t a happy one though, but at least it’s not painful today.

People have observed that I seem to be a happy mom-to-be, a happy/good pregnancy.  And I am!  Well, once I got through the loss of twin B.  I realized quite a while ago that I seem to be having a much better than average pregnancy.  Which is wonderful!  As wonderful as I’ve found being pregnant is!  But I am having symptoms.  Perhaps it’s my attitude about them.  Or that they didn’t last as long for me as others?

I’ve had one total break down.  I’ve had the hormone intensified emotions, though it seems only those who know me very well have been able to tell the difference (I guess I really don’t display my emotions as much as I think I do), and a couple everything-pisses-me-off stages.  I’m sure the heavy stress from work for those couple weeks didn’t help anything.  I even had numb fingers on my right hand every morning for a couple weeks in the first trimester, and loss of feeling in my whole right hand twice at night a couple weeks ago.  But very thankfully my evening-sickness was not anywhere near as bad as you hear about.  I just wish people would stop asking about that.  It was way back in the 2nd-4th months, with some creep into the 5th and a bit longer, about once a week, which always coincided with a day someone asked me about having morning sickness.  Jerks!  Putting it back in my head.  And, of course, I’ve had the constant hunger.  Thankfully that period is over too.  It was horribly annoying!

Many of my symptoms don’t happen in public or very noticeable ways either, though the newest of which is a bit worrisome for me.  The baby is stronger, which is good, but now its movements – pushing the most common, but still the occasional “kick”, and of course actual moving around – are causing me discomfort more often than not, and even real pain every once in a while.  The baby’s only going to get stronger still, and larger, which means less room and more uncomfortable and even painful movements.  :p

Still, overall, things are good!