Y’all. I am almost 37 weeks and I can HARDLY believe it! So so close to meeting our baby girl! As I near the end of my pregnancy, I thought it would be fun to do a little mini-series about the realities of pregnancy. What you see in the movies and maybe even what you have heard from friends and family is just often times not the reality. And now that I’ve been through it, I would love to share a little BTS of what it’s really like to be pregnant! From my perspective anyway! I am known for not really having much of a filter, so if you don’t like TMI then you might not want to read this series. And men! If you want a small glimpse into what a woman goes through being pregnant so you can love & serve her to your best ability– read on! I have to give a shout out to my dear friend, Sarah, who is a mother/baby nurse and has been THE most valuable resource for me as I’ve gone through pregnancy. I strongly recommend finding someone you know and trust that can give you sound information and advice! We are going to start way back at the beginning with just figuring out if you are pregnant or not (you may chuckle, but as a first time mom it actually can be a bit ambiguous!) and a little tip about pregnancy tests. Then we will move into pregnancy itself in some future posts. So here we go! Enjoy! 🙂
First of all I just want to say, I have loved pregnancy! I felt like my whole pregnancy I kept waiting for something awful to come up that I would be tortured to live through.. and it never happened! Here I am with just about 3 weeks left and I still really don’t have many complaints. Some aches and pains here and there and some discomfort? Yes, sure.. but pregnancy is a beautiful opportunity to create another life and I would do it 10,000 times if I felt that’s what the Lord wanted for me and my family. Just wanted to get that out there.
I’m going to start way back at the beginning.. the day I found out I was pregnant. This is pretty funny. Cam and I went off birth control at the end of November and were therefore having unprotected sex starting in December. Well sure enough at the end of December (Christmas Eve) I woke up feeling a little funny and decided to take a test. This is what it looked like…
I don’t know about you, but that ain’t no glaring sign that says “I am pregnant!” As I had seen and heard before, I expected it to be very clear that I was pregnant… as in two BOLD lines showing me, yes, you are indeed pregnant. The box even shows what it should look like!
So naturally I sent a picture text to my two best friends and said, I quote, “What am I half pregnant?!” In which they sent me text messages back, freaking out telling me, “NO you dummy! You are pregnant!” And that’s how I found out. So my first little tid bit is simply this…
ANY sort of second line probably means you are pregnant!
Since I was so early at that point (not even 4 weeks) my hormones were still super low and that’s all the test could pick up. Just a couple days later, I was getting tests that I had envisioned in my head, that would be very clear that I was pregnant! Like so…
Now that I could not misread! 😉
One other little side note about pregnancy tests.. BUY THE DOLLAR STORE TESTS! All the other popular brands like First Response are easily $8 a piece, and the Dollar Store tests are.. well.. a dollar. And they work great! That test pictured above is from the dollar store and I used it a day after the first test (which was First Response) and it gave me the same (if not better) reading. You will save a whole lot of money by buying them from the Dollar Store! Trust me.. between doctor visits and baby expenses.. every penny counts!
I hope you at least were humored by my first tip and stay tuned for more truths & tips about my experience with pregnancy, as I hope to do around 3 or so more blog posts on this topic before the babe comes!
Happy Tuesday!
<3 Kira Nicole
