Eddie's Birth Story- My Pregnancy

My pregnancy, at the beginning anyway, was horrendous.

First there was the constant nausea. I never once threw up, I just always felt like I was going to. I kept food on my night stand and just did the best I could. I couldn’t stand to drink or smell coffee which was a feeling so foreign that I can’t even describe it.

After the nausea came the bleeding. Incessant bleeding. Nothing was ever wrong, it just turned out that I had “a very vascular cervix” but to be safe, relations were suspended by my doctor until after the 1st trimester.

And after those two things came the worry; the ever-present worry. I had read so much about things going wrong for someone with my particular thyroid condition. I was so nervous about losing the baby, so nervous that it would be gone forever, I just counted the days until my 1st trimester was over.

The most defining moment in my pregnancy was having a cautious ultra-sound when I was 7 weeks along, during the bleeding. There was the baby, a teeny tiny bean in there with a heartbeat. A HEARTBEAT!! When I was 7 weeks…which is really only 3 weeks after my missed period-I was in complete wonder at the evidence of life in me so early on. 7 weeks.

When the 2nd trimester began, so did the cravings. I did not crave a single thing that was good for me. I was on a Twinkie binge for nearly a month (to the point where my boss was smuggling in Twinkies to work because Ed forbade me to eat them), and with the exception of having to have orange juice with my breakfast, I drank root beer, Mug Root Beer to be exact, morning, noon and night. I could not eat tomatoes in any form and thinking about baked macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs on it made me sick. I craved favorite foods from my childhood: creamed cucumbers, peanut butter cookies, and my aunt’s deviled potato salad. Later on, it was breaded pork chops. We ate them for a week straight before Ed said anything.

I was huge and in full maternity clothes by the time I was 4 months pregnant.

At my 20 week appointment I was ecstatic to find out that we were having a boy. I sobbed in the ultrasound room and Ed was sure it was because I wanted to have a girl, but really, it just made it so much more real. A boy, and he would be Edmund Mason Jr.

Of course, we registered immediately and my mother and aunt began planning my baby shower. I had never been so excited in my life. All the clothes and toys and blankets. Who knew that there was even so much out there for babies? I felt like an idiot, let me tell you.

Here is me at 7 months:





And here is me at my baby shower, with my mother.





I had planned on working right up until my due date because I had just been promoted, but just before Thanksgiving I started having contractions. Ed and I went to the hospital, and I was in labor, 6 weeks early. I was re-hydrated and given something to stop the contractions and sent home. I worked for just about another week before I was pulled indefinitely. This was actually pretty cool because I got Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years off. I felt fine, other than the heartburn that had me sleeping upright in our recliner, and we took the time to put things together and set up Eddie’s room.

Christmas came and everyone marveled at my huge belly and we all laughed at how I balanced my dinner plate and pop can on it for the duration of our meal.

It was perfectly relaxing, and a wonderful experience to have no obligations, and just be able to enjoy the last weeks of my pregnancy at home, just getting ready for this life changing event.