How Pregnancy Has Taken Over My Body

I’m not one of those people who think of my baby as a parasite or an alien invading my body, though I get the sentiment. Pregnancy is a weird experience. One in which I haven’t felt like myself for about eight months. 

I’m currently 35 weeks along, quickly approaching the finish-line (holy crap…), and just about every month (sometimes every week) new changes pop up. Some have stuck around, some have left (thank the Lord!), and I’m certain the next 5 weeks will have some additional symptoms. In fact, just this week, I have begun struggling to sleep through the night in comfort (Baby… get out of my ribs! Find space elsewhere!).

For your enjoyment, and for need to cope through writing, here is a list of some of the ways my body has ceased behaving like it used to. 

***Beware: I pull no punches, and pregnancy may be all-woman, but there is no part of it that is lady-like!***

1 - Food Aversions/Heightened Smell: 

I’d heard of this being a symptom of pregnancy, but I had always heard of tuna or pickles or other strong smells that people were bothered by. Here I was able to STRONGLY smell the sugar in someone’s coffee creamer, which didn’t bother me, but then not even be able to look at a diced avocado without gagging. 

I love avocados.

Ever since I was little, I have loved vegetables (except for peas… get those demon, green-globules to the abyss where they belong!), but now that I’m pregnant, there are very few vegetables, and only in certain forms (usually cooked), that I can stand eating. Or even looking at. Or thinking about… *gag*

2 - Cravings:

I haven’t had many cravings, but the ones that I have had, shoot… I severely underestimated their power in my pre-pregnancy life. 

The first craving I had was around nine weeks. I was sitting at my desk at work, data-entrying along when it hit… and all I could think about was a 7-layer burrito from Taco Bell. 

People, I hadn’t eaten Taco Bell in three years at that point. Taco Bell has never been my friend, and a 7-layer burrito certainly isn’t paleo… 

But all I could think about, while actively trying to re-focus on work, was feeling my teeth bite through the tortilla, tasting the sour cream and nacho cheese, savoring the addition of the meat and the rice and the tomatoes and lettuce… I spent twenty minutes staring at my computer screen thinking about that burrito.

That evening, I got a 7-layer burrito. And I’m telling you, fulfilling a pregnancy-craving is on par with orgasms and sleeping in on vacation at a resort in the tropics. 

Pure magic.

3 - There is no more room in my stomach. 

And I mean my actual stomach organ. It has been so crushed and mutilated that now, in my third trimester, I can usually only eat about a third of what I used to eat at any given meal. There is physically no room for more.

 And I am sad. I love food. 

I was always a voracious eater, but if I eat too much now, it’s not like it used to be where you get that awful stomach ache where it feels like your stomach lining is stretching and it’s uncomfortable and awful. 

No, I get “backwash.” It’s the only word I can think to describe it. 

Because of our weakened sphincters (more to come on that! Isn’t pregnancy fun?), some pregnant women get heartburn after they eat, but not me. I get partially digested food floating up through my esophagus politely reminding me that my child is residing in the place that this food would have occupied but now cannot. 

It’s not vomit. I don’t throw it up. It just rises up a little bit, and then I swallow it down. 

It’s like if you squeeze the bottom of a milkshake and watch the contents glide up the straw. 

Like that.

4 - Heartburn:

Okay, so I said I don’t get heartburn after meals, but that does NOT mean I don’t get it. And because I never used to get it, heartburn became a shocking and unpleasant addition to my life. Thankfully I’ve got some prescriptions that are helping me with it now. Every natural method I tried was doing me no good, so I finally decided that sometimes there’s just nothing for it, and you have to take drugs. 

I didn’t have any heartburn until late in my second trimester and it’s bizarre. It’ll sprout out of nowhere. I will have been eating no food or drink, but it will rear its ugly head and I’ll be spewing dragon breath until I can locate my tums.

It’s worse at bedtime when all I want to do is lay flat, but the second I do, that poor, sweet, weak stomach-sphincter leaks all the stored acid all up into my sad, un-protected esophagus. And it’s like fiery death.

So, now I have a prescription to counter-act the stomach acid, which is awesome! But, as with many medications, there are downsides… less stomach acid means food takes longer to digest… making it harder to eat more food… 

At least I don’t feel hungry! And as sad as it is to have to put 2/3 of my burger in a to-go box, I am grateful not to have heartburn.

5 - Constant Burping:

This is likely related to the full stomach and weak sphincter. I burp… so much. 

I feel awful for my co-workers and Brock. It’s not like I have large, resonant belches, but they certainly aren’t silent, and they really are constant. I imagine it’s like trying to sleep next to a partner who snores intermittently. It’s just constant enough you can’t go back to sleep after an episode, but not so constant that you can tune it out.

Usually it doesn’t hurt (unless it’s accompanied by heartburn, then it really is like dragon fire), but is just so obnoxious…

6 - Moving. At all:

These days, just moving my body is tough. But honestly, it started early for me. I think part of this was that I was struggling with hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme pregnancy nausea), so I was very cautious about bending my abdomen fearing that any pressure on my stomach would cause waves of nausea or even vomiting. This made getting off the couch and sometimes in and out of bed complicated.

Now, it’s just plain difficult to get off the couch because I have a watermelon in the spot where I would normally bend. This does, indeed, restrict movement, if you can believe it.

Oh! And picking things up off the ground… it’s hard, man. Around 25 weeks I gave up trying too hard and began asking for help, which is an important skill to develop before and during pregnancy. HOWEVER!!! Around 30 weeks, I realized if I just split my knees apart when I squatted, I could reach the ground much more easily! I look like a spider when I squat, legs splayed and giant abdomen heaving, but I can pick things up by myself, guys! 

And like I said, pregnancy is not lady-like.

But it isn’t just that I’m having issues with heaving myself off of the couch or bending to pick things up. I waddle. And I’ve been waddling. For a while. 

I think I started waddling around week eight, and it was mostly unnecessary, but also completely subconscious. Part of it may have been psychosomatic, meaning my brain made me do it because it thought I needed to even though I really didn’t (I’m pregnant, right? Pregnant women waddle. So, waddle!). But the other part of it was that things just felt weird in the pelvic region. 

When you get pregnant, your body surges with the hormone progesterone, which has many functions during pregnancy, but one of the things it does is loosen everything up (ligaments, muscles, sphincters… it’s a doozy… But, it’ll actually be great for labor and I’m grateful for you, Progesterone, I’m scared to shove this baby out of my vagina and I need your help, please don’t leave me,). 

But with everything loose, my hips worked differently. Things felt like they needed to settle into place when I changed positions from lying down to sitting to standing. And sometimes it could hurt. So, there were moments that my waddling was necessary, but not as often as my waddling would suggest. When I would catch myself in the act, I would check in with whether I actually needed to, and usually I was able to walk normally. 

But I was dang cute! 

Still am…

So, this is just a smattering of the weird changes I’ve experienced during pregnancy. Stay tuned for a post on pregnancy symptoms I never expected or had even heard of before.