Things I learned the hard way about being pregnant. In no real order except the order in which I am thinking about them.
10. When you get pregnant, your body makes 25-40% more blood. What this means: your heart rate goes up and each pump of your heart moves more blood than it does when you're not pregnant.
9. All that extra heart pumping is kind of uncomfortable. I don't usually notice it except when I'm trying to relax--for example, while I'm trying to fall asleep. That's when I most notice that my heart is racing and I have to extra focus on my yogic breaths.
8. At the end of the first trimester, your body goes crazy with this hormone called Relaxin. Apparently it sticks around until delivery (at which point, HOPEFULLY it goes away and everything goes back to normal). Basically it relaxes all your... joints? tendons? something? so that eventually your pelvis can stretch out enough to let the baby out. Which is cool. But in the meantime, what is not cool is that everything else in your body becomes super stretchy. All my joints feel loose now, and in a not-good way. It's not really bad or anything, but like the blood thing, it makes sleeping kind of hard. My hips and my knees and my ankles have all come undone, which makes sleeping on my side really strange. It's hard to explain.
7. Pregnancy really does make your hair grow freakishly fast. And your nails. My hair has probably grown 5 inches since December. For comparison, normal hair growth happens at a rate of 1/2 inch per month. Also I have to trim my nails at least once a week if I want to be able to play the piano--which, I do! That's about twice as often as usual, or possibly more (I can barely remember what normal is, but I know it's not every 6 days).
6. Oh yeah, that whole extra blood thing means extra blushing! In normal life I almost never blush, but now I feel like I spend half my life blushing. So ridiculous.
5. They actually weren't kidding about foot cramps. I thought I'd dodged the bullet because I didn't start getting them until last week, but no. They are crazy painful.
4. In addition to foot cramps, the extra weight you have on the front of you apparently makes your arches flatten out and your ankles pronate. Sad day for me, I was already flatfooted and dealing with severe ankle pronation. So if you see me wearing flip-flops, berate me soundly and make me go put on responsible shoes so I can walk the next day, please.
3. Back cramps. My weird back keeps cramping. I'm guessing it's a result of the relaxin, the extra foot issues, and then all the extra weight in the front. I notice that they get a little bit better when I sit differently.
2. You can totally see babies move around FROM THE OUTSIDE once they get big enough. Totally never knew that, until the other day when Baby D was all like "kick" and it poked out of my guts. Wow. It's kind of awesome. If you find me just staring ponderously at my own stomach, it's because I'm hoping to watch him do something crazy.
1. Hmm. Nine's all I can think of. Oh well.
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