Risky Business Part II

I was ready to get pregnant, but I was anxious about it.  My mother had always had extremely easy pregnancies, but I wasn’t going to count on the old wives’ tale of being like your mother; other family members had pregnancies full of complications.  I'd watched enough friends battle fertility issues to know that even getting pregnant wasn’t a given, either.  Starting this journey slightly later in life - and taking classes in college about the biology of reproduction - meant I was uncomfortably aware of everything that could go wrong.  

But actually, everything went smoothly for quite some time.  After a few months I was pregnant.  I tested so early that there was no big ‘reveal’ moment; instead it was a, “I think this may be a line, so we’ll just test tomorrow and see if it’s darker.”  Then it was, "I think that's darker; does that look darker to you?"  For the curious, the pink First Response tests were much more clear, but the little Wondfo strips were cheaper and satisfied my compulsion to test.    

The first trimester passed in a blur of nausea and hunger.  I had morning sickness that just wouldn’t quit, but I was ravenously hungry at the same time, which meant I was eating whatever I could keep down.  I’d read that some people actually lose weight in the first trimester; not me.  I’d also heard that the morning sickness starts to fade after the end of the first trimester; also not me.  I was beginning to worry that I’d be as big as a (vomiting) house by the end of the pregnancy, but the good news was the fetus was progressing on schedule.  It went from being the size of a seed to the size of an olive.  I had an ultrasound for the 11-week NT scan, and the baby did barrel rolls and waved its little hand at me.  

Not everything was textbook, though.  Your blood pressure is supposed to drop in the second trimester.  Mine didn’t.  By week 16 I was officially a high-risk pregnancy.