Little moments of note

These were small notes I made as I emerged from that awful first trimester!

Flashback to The First Trimester...

I wrote this post when I was in the thick of the first trimester and was never sure when to share it so I guess now is as gooder time as any... I think..? I'm still new to blogging! Here is my rant. there's a picture though so that's a bit exciting.

How many weeks?

Before being pregnant the word trimester meant very little to me. When you’re pregnant everything is first trimester this, second trimester that. It’s all quite interesting because working in education I see it as pregnancy is split into three terms, like an academic year. (Academic years have Autumn Term, Spring Term and Summer Term)

Another thing that happens when you’re pregnant is everything becomes weeks not months. You are 6 weeks p regnant, 8 weeks pregnant, 12 weeks pregnant etc etc. I think that the reason why this is is because so many things change week by week. That and if you complied the list into months e.g. in month one you will experience abcdefghijkl, no one would want to be pregnant, it would be too daunting and then the population would die out. At least that’s my theory.

When I discovered I was pregnant I was 5 weeks pregnant (this was after a GP confirmation that yes, this is real) Now, in my brain I was frantically counting back 5 weeks thinking, wait a minute, I wasn’t doing any sex that day!? But actually, that isn’t how it works.

I don’t know how women are expected to know this, but how many weeks pregnant aren’t actually counted from conception. It is counted from the date of your last period. So technically, youre counted as ‘being pregnant’ before you’ve even had sex and conceived a baby. Bizarre isn’t it.

After the doctor used this spinny round puzzle like card to work out my dates, I went home and googled a way to confirm this for myself, just to check, because I’m a control freak like that. This the website confirmed what a healthcare professional with years of training had already told me. (Why I couldn’t just accept his words, I don’t know) If you're pregnant and confused by your healthcare professional the website I used can be found here. 

Please note how pregnancy is called a ‘condition’ by this website…

Getting Knocked Up

Written January 2016:

The main reason behind setting up this blog is last month, in December 2015, I found out I was pregnant.

Now I will stop here and let you know that I will be brutally honest all the time on this blog so if you’re sensitive I would just stop reading now. Thank you for your time. If you’re ready, then I will continue.

So, I found out I was pregnant.

After having a bit of a heavy Christmas pouring Hendricks and Lemonade, Dark and Stormy cocktails and Prosecco down my throat I was feeling quite delicate and thought nothing much of it. Self-inflicted, it was what a probably deserved. However, the festive hangover seemed to last for days and days and by the 29^th of December I thought I obviously had alcohol poisoning and was dying. I could not stop being sick and standing upright was just not happening. By this point I was also due a visit from Mother Nature so I thought all of these things were bundling together to punish me for having too much festive cheer.

Only, Mother Nature never really came. I mean, she came, but it was feeble and half arsed and not at all what I was used to. So after another drink fuelled evening with my gal pals the idea was planted in my head that maybe this wasn’t just a hangover.

The next day I ventured off into town to find a pregnancy test. Now I don’t know how many of you have ever had to do that but isn’t it just the worst?! For a start there are about a hundred options and the whole time you’re stood there you just feel that you may as well have a big flashing sign over your head that says “YUP- I DID IT!”

After making my selection; Superdrug’s own brand, just the one test, I was convinced it would be negative, I made my way to the till. The trauma continued, a greasy teenage boy raises his eyebrows at me. Could this ordeal be anymore chick lit cliché?! Just let me buy my pregnancy test and leave!

Said teenage boy scans through the test, purchase is made and I run out the shop and vomit on the pavement. Brilliant.

A bit red faced but feeling defiant and actually quite annoyed with the middle class women tutting at me as they walk past I made my way home.

The moment of truth-

I pissed on a stick and there it was. Two little pink lines.

I was not having any of it. Time for a FaceTime call to my mother.

“MUM WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THIS PICTURE!?”

I won’t transcribe our whole conversation but I’m sure you can imagine how it went. To summarise; she was elated and I was in denial.

“Are you sure though mum, I think it’s not, I think this is broken”

And there you have it. The story of discovering you’re knocked up when you never even really wanted children.

As a twenty something married woman with a good career and a peaceful home life, getting pregnant is not really socially unexpected. But to me, it was the hardest thing to get my head around. Telling my husband later that day was the best part of this traumatic day. He was so joyful as he has always wanted children and for a little while his excitement was contagious. However a further pregnancy test in the Asda toilets confirmed what I already knew, this was real, it was happening to me, and I was just gonna have to get on with it. 

Welcome

So, I have never ever had a blog before, I have never even thought about having a blog before, but, I have some things to share and have been told this is a great platform to do so, so here I go!

Firstly I will introduce myself, I'm Emma and I am a twenty something lecturer at a Special Needs College (this will be relevant in future blog posts!) and I live with my husband and his parents and three ridiculous dogs. It hasn't always been like this and I have some blog posts to upload that I wrote a while ago (before I understood the internet) when I was living in my lovely little house with a dog, a cat and a husband and life was very very different! (more about that to come...)

My blog will mainly be about the here and now of what is happening in my life. Feelings I'm feeling, thoughts I am thinking, products I am using and rages I am raging. 

Get ready, this could be shambles...