If you read my announcement recently, you’ll know I’m currently 12 weeks pregnant – eek! I was keeping track of notes and changes I was going through throughout the first couple of months though and am posting these now. Read my full pregnancy diary here.
This week was very very surreal, knowing that there was a teeny tiny baby (already more than a cluster of cells!) inside me but I was still going about things as normal with only Ben knowing. I sat in meetings at work thinking “I’m pregnant but no one knows!”, wondering if they could tell, and waiting for a wave of nausea to hit me so I would have to run out the room. Fortunately this didn’t happen (and is one of my biggest fears in the world – more on my emetophobia and pregnancy soon), but it still felt really strange.
We found out at 4 weeks 5/6 days – I’ve been given three different due dates now – 1 from the doctor, 1 from the midwife, then 1 from the scan. I didn’t realise before getting pregnant that the first 2 weeks you’re not technically pregnant, as the weeks count from the beginning of your last cycle. Weird, right?!
I’d been absolutely convinced for the past 3 or 4 days that I was pregnant and had had a few suspicions leading up to this thanks to a few random pains in my side and lower abdomen as well as sore breasts. The biggest signs were the massive crying fits I had on two occasions that weren’t totally out of character for me but were definitely entirely unexpected and left me wondering what I was making such a fuss about. Then when I was 4 days late, we decided it most likely wasn’t due to post-wedding stress and I should probably do a test.
Secret time: I actually stopped taking my pill that I’d been on since I was 17 almost 3 years ago! I’d been getting a little concerned about what they could be doing to my body for a while and wanted to give my body a rest. After a little while, we did the “not trying, not preventing” thing but we were more careful in the months leading up to going to Florida last year and the wedding – didn’t want to cancel any big events! I’d started to get a little worried as that was a fairly long time to go not using anything but not getting pregnant, but I didn’t want to get too worried until we properly started trying. Basically during this time, everything was so regular that I’ve literally only done a pregnancy test once before and that was around 38 days after coming off the pill when my first cycle went crazy long! They calmed down after that and settled into a very very regular rhythm which I was really pleased about as it meant at least something was going right in my body!
Anyway, this time I used a Clearblue blue dye test which shows a cross when it’s positive. Because I read a lot of mummy blogs for work (I’m literally currently working with pregnant mums and mums of newborns!), I’ve read a lot of posts about pregnancy tests and seen the very very faint lines that still signify a positive result, so I was fully expecting to have to squint at the test and go back and forth with Ben over “it is positive, isn’t it?!”. But (TMI perhaps?!) literally as soon as the wee hit the stick, the line appeared! I quickly put the cap back on and laid it down upside down (because I didn’t want to get any hopes up just for it to disappear in front of my eyes!) to wait the 2 minutes while Ben continued cleaning my sewing room. I was kind of mumbling out loud about how I’d seen a line but it probably just always appeared like that and you can’t tell until after the 2 minutes are up and blah blah blah.
And 2 minutes came. I took a deep breath and turned it over. I’d never seen such a strong line before! I think because these tests can be done even before a missed period, they’re pretty sensitive – and I was 5 days later than that now! Some people see results on these tests up to 2 weeks earlier than I had done the test, so I guess that explains why it was so bold!
My reaction was as you might imagine – I was crying and shaking and excited and happy and confused! Ben’s reaction was even better: “Well done”, he said in the middle of cleaning my sewing room, then picked up something else to clean underneath it! Never one for dramatics!!
See more of my pregnancy diary posts here or check out the whole thing:
The first thing I did was to order ginger biscuits, peppermint tea and crackers on Morrisons. I was (and still am!) terrified of the dreaded morning sickness so I wanted to get hold of everything to counter it as soon as possible. Ben also grabbed me some pregnancy vitamins first thing the next morning and I rang my doctor to arrange an appointment. This was a frustrating one as the first appointment they had was a fortnight away so I had to agree to that one, but it felt like an age as I knew they wouldn’t even confirm the pregnancy there – they would just get me into the system.
For the next week, I was mostly just feeling quite tired and very very hungry. I noticed a big increase in my appetite but also took advantage of this in case it would be replaced by nausea at any time – I wanted to get my nutrients and food in while I could! (And I’m glad I did!)
Wednesday was a difficult day as it was Brownies and we went to the park to play parachute games. I know that it’s safe to exercise while pregnant, even recommended to do so, but I was still wary of running around with a group of rowdy girls in the park in case something happened. And my fears were partly confirmed when, yep, I fell in a hole and twisted my ankle. It went with a lovely crunch and pop then a shooting pain up my leg followed by two days off work with ice and lots of rest. Luckily it wasn’t a spectacular fall so I wasn’t too worried about tiny baby inside me, but I did quickly learn that it’s recommended to limit your use of painkillers during pregnancy (and certain ones aren’t recommended, so check with your doctor!) so I had to persevere through the pain. Even now (at 12 weeks), I’ve still got pain in that ankle and have also learned that your ligaments are more “stretchy” and likely to shift around during pregnancy (in preparation for all that bump stretching and giving birth), so I think that had I fallen a few weeks earlier, it may not have resulted in a sprained ankle, but there you go.
So because my family were away on holiday – their plane had literally just taken off as I was doing the test! – we wanted to wait until they got home before telling them. I didn’t want to tell them over Skype and I also didn’t want them to worry about anything while they were on holiday. We went back and forth over waiting to tell anyone until they were home, but 3 weeks is a really long time and I wanted someone close to me to know as a “just in case” – I needed someone (apart from Ben) to call or message if I was feeling scared or worried or if something went wrong. So the decision was made: we would tell Charley and Frankie. It also made sense because Charley also needed to know for BCLC purposes – I feel like I was already up a cup size by this time and was thinking about how much longer it would be before she noticed – she sees me in my underwear a lot!!
We were seeing them that week, so it was excellent timing. I could hardly have kept it a secret anyway when we saw them! They came over for a barbecue and Ben devised a plan: he would buy all sorts of baby vegetables (and pick some from our garden!) and offer these to them one after another.
The plan was all set, and Ben presented them with a dish of baby cucumbers, baby pickles, baby olives (yeh, not so sure on that one either…) and baby peas. If they didn’t get it, I was hoping he would move onto saying: “Hey, did you know that this pea is how big a baby would be at 6 weeks pregnant?” (I couldn’t say it, I could barely keep a straight face!) but Frankie realised he’d forgotten something in the car and went back half way through Ben’s baby vegetable offering, so our plan had to move onto stage 2:
We gave them a tour of the house. Yes, they’ve been to our house many many times before, but we’d got our new bedroom furniture and done a major overhaul of the spare room, my sewing room and cleared out Ben’s office/the nursery-to-be. In fact, that’s what we were doing while I did the pregnancy test! So Ben proceeded to introduce our new bed as “not a baby bed” and certainly big enough for plenty of “baby cats”. Still, no ball!!
And finally, stage 3 of the plan needed to be brought into action – not a stage we’d planned! I hoped Ben would catch on as we headed back down to the nursery-to-be, and luckily he did! We went into the room and he said: “And here’s the office, or as some might call it, the nursery.” To which Charley responded: “Yep, cool, we know this is the office/nursery.” Then caught sight of our expressions…and screamed! We finally confirmed that YES, it’s true!! And moved on to the next part of the evening, which involved prosecco for everyone else and none for me!
So that was the first week of pregnancy for me – I was mostly starving and totally distracted the whole time. I also kept trying to convince myself I had a bump already, but that totally wasn’t happening! Stay tuned for my 6 week update soon.
Gosh, it sounds so similar to when I was pregnant. I was an emotional wreck for the first 8 weeks! I knew because I was so weepy, moody, etc. that something was up. I’m so so excited for you. There is nothing more fun than telling people! Reading this is making me want a second baby really badly!
Congratulations!! Wonderful news and a very special time for you all!!