You could always take a type from Thelma “Mama’s Family” Harper
Funny, a friend of mine and I were just comparing notes recently, and discovered we both craved mayonnaise when we were pregnant. Maybe it’s because eggs have such an unholy combination of fat and protein?
Yes, but how is babby formed?
I don’t like needles. It took *lots *of them to get me pregnant (all of which I had to stick in myself, thank you very much husband). By the time it got to the birth, they’d taken god knows how much blood out of me. By that time, it really wasn’t a big deal. And then labour started. I really wanted an epidural. I didn’t even notice them doing it. It was so…insignificant…in the grand scheme of things, I can’t remember it. I do remember the relief, though, from the back labour.
Seriously, you will be okay. As others have said, it’s just one day out of your life. Then it’s over, and you will have something much more wonderful to focus your attention on.
Oh, yeah, and I planned and tried for years to get pregnant. Didn’t stop me feeling like it was a big giant mistake for a long time. The first few months of their life are rough for a lot of people. It was for me too. A year into it, it’s a totally different ball game, and he’s such a wonderful wee boy. He runs around, tells me where my nose is (in case I have forgotton), and holds on to me when he’s scared.
Worth every goddamn needle 
It was kind of funny. At the doctor’s office the nurse did the pregnancy test and confirmed I was all kinds of knocked up and then moved us to the room with the sonogram equipment. When the doctor came in she had a funny little smile on her face and said, “What did you do?” (probably remembering when I yelled at my husband that he had to get a vasectomy when he was holding my hand during my colposcopy because that was bad enough I was never going to be able to give birth) and my response was, “When a man and a woman love each other very much…” She laughed.
Congrats!
As a man I can’t tell you what labor and delivery was like. But I can tell you this bit of wisdom that my mom passed on prior to Lady Chance and I having two girls:
(I paraphrase)
“Children are annoying. They make noise and distract you. They scream and cause chaos wherever they are. You likely don’t like them. But when you have one it’s the most fascinating thing there has ever been and you can’t help but be enchanted by it.”
Certainly true for me.
And, just for chuckles: An XKCD on the subject, sort of
pbbth- congratulations.
My pregnancy was wanted, planned- all of that, and still, for the first few weeks when I was vomiting 3 times a day and constantly nauseated, I really, really wasn’t down with the whole deal of being pregnant. Especially when I ended up in hospital on a drip.
Things changed when the nausea lifted and I started feeling the kicks.
I had an elective c-section with a spinal- so I wasn’t in labour and I was awake but numb and paralysed from the waist down.
You get a cannula in the hand, and a needle in the back, but it doesn’t stay in.
Your back is numbed, and I didn’t feel anything worse than a slight stinging and the sensation of someone pressing on my back. The worse part (and they tell you it is the worst part) is actually the cold antiseptic liquid being put on your back- horrible but not painful.
Whatever way your baby arrives in the world- you’ll get through it.
It will be worth it- and I say this as someone who had to clean up her toddler’s diarrhoea and vomit today.
Heh. Are we secretly the same person? Because (except for having a daughter) I had exactly this experience. I’ve always wanted to have two kids – I was asking the doctor about having a second one as he was stitching me up. And then, a couple of weeks later, I told my husband, “I don’t know if I can do this again. I really thought I wanted a second kid, but I can’t do this.” (I’ve since changed my mind, though I’m not ready yet.)
The best thing someone told me at 4 weeks was, “Yeah, at that point I didn’t want to keep my son either.” A lot of people do bond with their kids immediately, and I apparently know a bunch of these people, so everyone had reassured me that it would all be worth it when I saw my baby. And it was so not. I was not prepared to feel the crushing sense of responsibility without actually feeling like I loved this little lump of poop and spitup. (Now, obviously, she is The Most Awesome Sweet Lovable Kid in the World.)
That sounds very similar to the first trimester I had. I was the only one who saw motherhood as a responsibilty instead of a blessing.
I didn’t feel excited until about 14 -16 weeks, when I started getting a tickling sensation from the depths. That’s when it started to be real instead of just weird food preferences and mood swings.
Within a few weeks (18? 20?) there were deifinite movements and I realised that her schedule had nothing to do with mine (she was doing gymnastics while I was trying to sleep) and I knew she was not just a thing, but a person separate from me.
The last half seemed like games - the day she spent on the left so I was walking on an angle. They way she’d try to kick the mug off my stomach if the coffee was too hot. I got a sonogram picture of her at about 25 weeks and she’s ‘waving at the camera’.
Some people at work wanted to feel her kicking, she performed brilliantly for one, then ‘hid in a corner’ every time the other put a hand near my tummy. We tried over several days and she did it every time.
There’s a natural thing that kicks in about 38 weeks for most women where they just want the baby out regardless of what needles, drugs or interventions it will take, which is aparently nature’s way of preparing us for childbirth.
YMMV of course.
Just wait, by the time your due date arrives you’ll be so uncomfortable you will be willing to go through absolutely anything to have the baby. You’ll be begging for 100 needles to prick you while you watch just to have the baby leave your body.
This is amazing. I totally understand your terror of childbirth and yet am insanely jealous at the same time. All I can say is the scariest things usually point to what we care about the most. I believe you can do this. I am so proud of you already!
I’m so sorry - well, here’s hoping you can make the best of it.
I missed this the first time! Although the Little One was very much planned and wanted, we didn’t feel so excited as we did responsible. And nauseous, in my case. Second trimester it started to get mildly exciting, as that’s when we got the neat ultrasound pics, we found out it was a girl, I could finally tell everyone (I didn’t want to tell anyone until we knew the fetus was healthy), I started feeling kicks, and I had a baby shower.
But I don’t think I ever got nearly as excited as, say, my sister-in-law. I never wanted to know the fetus was a big as a canteloupe or whatever (whereas when she was pregnant we got the fruit updates on a regular basis). I didn’t get excited until… about three months after the birth, when she started really responding to us and my heart started its current state of melting into little puddles of goo on a regular basis.
I just wanted to say two things:
First, I am SO glad there is someone else out there who isn’t at all excited by the whole pregnancy thing. Makes me feel a lot less weird.
Secondly, don’t get your hopes up til you check it out, but apparently some major teaching hospitals are starting to use laughing gas again, and from the studies I’ve seen (Laughing gas returning as option for laboring moms is an article about) it looks like it might be returning as an option in more places soonish.
Something you can always ask around about - if you really don’t like the idea of needles or you feel like you’d rather not be totally numbed up it could maybe be an option for you.
Congrats, and I hope it goes well and that you get less freaked as time goes on!
Hours of horrid pain? :rolleyes: Your pregnancy must have been awful.
Not usually, or always. It can happen, sure. Some people, you have a few hours of really bad period type cramping, followed by about 10 minutes of Real True Pain, then…babby is here! 
You never know which one you’ll be, but it’s childbirth, not a sentence to torture. If you decide to get an epidural, I do agree that it is something you probably won’t feel much of, and what you do feel won’t be like any jab with a needle you’ve had before. I had a bit of needle phobia myself, like, I had to be reasoned with if shots were required, and sometimes chased around tables, but the epidural wasn’t like that, for all the reasons mentioned here. But realise, too, you just might be one of those women who sail right through without needing pain relief. I’ve known several.
Don’t worry if you’re not into the pregnancy thing, og knows I surely was not. Don’t even worry if you don’t do the instantly in love with the baby the minute you feel it move, cause I did not either. It’s even cool if it takes you a bit to bond after you have the baby. It did me.
It might not for you, we’re all different. Whatever you feel, whatever you think, that’s normal. It’s normal for you. (Within certain parameters, of course - like, if you feel all axe-murdery or something, seek help, or if you have a pre or postnatal depression thing going on, seek help for that, too.)
It’s all up to you. You’ll get more free advice, much of it bad, than you know what to do with - including this post. What I didn’t know then that I wish I knew was that it was ok and not weird or abnormal for me to be feeling what I was feeling right then. Your hormones are on overdrive, and your brain in marinating in them, so who knows what it will throw at you. But it’s ok. You’re going to be ok, whatever you decide.
Mine’s 15 now, plays rugby and is taller than me, despite all the trauma that I had going on.
Congratulations, Mom. 
Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths…
I’m glad your MIL was able to help you look at the possibilities calmly, rather than jump up and down, pumping her fist in the air, “YES! I’m going to be a grandma! Finally! YESSSSSSSS!”
Middlebro has always wanted to be a father, SiL-the-GP used to not want a child at all due to fear of having them born with a genetic disease a distant relative of hers has; eventually, she was able to get tested for that disease’s known markers, the test was “all clear” and she decided that ok, they could have a kid. Both Kidlets were the result of planned, wanted pregnancies, but Middlebro was a puddle of goo from the moment he got the news both times; the first time she spent the whole freaking pregnancy going over lists of Everything That Can Go Wrong, to the point where I was feeling sorely tempted to hit her with her ObGyn book (hardcover, about 4" thick) and Middlebro’s mantra became “honey, what’s the chance of that?” “about 1 in every 4,000,000!” “OK, love, that means 3,999,999 kids out of every 4M will not have it, the probabilities are in our favor.” By the time she got pregnant with The Kidlette, motherhood had forced SiL to learn to relax, I didn’t feel tempted to grab the ObGyn book even once.
I haven’t given birth myself; in my case, it’s the “raising a kid” part that’s terrifying, though, not the medical bits. But the women I know who got epis don’t even bother to mention them when they talk about birth pains, and the women I know who got cesareans report long recovery times and in some cases consequences which never go away (cosmetic mostly, but after all, in a cesarean your belly’s muscles are being cut through). If it hurt that bad, you bet they would mention it!
Hi, Gleena, my name is Nava and my childbirth was 24h long from “broken water” to “it’s a girl!” Hopefully pbbth will be like the mother of my friend Hope, who went to visit her sister and newborn nephew, then she went “oh!”, the sister rang for the nurse, and by the time the nurse arrived the boy’s mother was holding a squirming little girl and saying “what do I DO?!”
Yeah, totally, that’s my point. My son was a lot of labor (greater than one day) and some other nasty complications, but there’s no point in telling that story when I have a friend who’s son was born two weeks earlier after four hours of labor. And by labor I mean “oh, ouch, that’s a bit uncomfy.”
Scaring anybody with my ZOMG LABOR! story is kinda mean. My labor (and presumably MamaNava’s) isn’t really the norm, it’s the exception.
Dude. Not cool.
The OP has fears and uncertainties, as most people do when they’re expecting their first baby, especially unexpectedly. But she very clearly says at the end of her post that she’s looking forward to the baby, so “I’m sorrys” are a bit inappropriate, don’t you think?
Mrs Magill has had three c-sections, and you could say she’s a little needle phobic. Honestly, she and I had other things on our minds than needles at the time.
No matter what happens, as long as you have a good, competent OB and a loving, supportive husband/partner, you will do fine.
Get ready for the ride of your life.