I forgot to add, no stretch marks and I retained half of the boob increase (which, in retrospect, I wish I didn’t). I looked pretty much the same afterward. Except for the bodacious ta-ta’s.
I retained my new shoe size…which is 1 size bigger than they used to be. Now THAT sucked. By the time the kid was born, I had one pair of shoes that fit me, and the vast majority of the other ones I had never fit me again.
I didn’t have any nausea with either of my pregnancies, but especially with my second, I had just horrible swelling. I’d have to come home from work and elevate my feet a foot above my head for an hour just to get them back to something resembling a normal size. And the way I was carrying my son, I looked like I had a 40-lb watermelon attached to my stomach, sticking straight out lengthwise. Even the loosest maternity clothes hung out at an angle. It was humiliating!
I’m one of those people who didn’t really like being pregnant. But it was certainly worth it! Kids are just amazing, and life is a never-ending adventure.
Oh, and if I have one wish for you, it’s short labors. Both of mine were under 4 hours – I was dilated 8 cm before feeling one contraction with my daughter, and 6 cm with my son – and it was wonderful to just get it over and done with!
Oh my gosh, I hope I don’t get the swelling WORSE this time. It was hot during my last month, and I was torn between hiding my gigantic ankles with long pants, and wearing capris so I could bear the heat. It was awful!!! At least this time, it will be March, so it won’t be hot yet. Yikes!
I wasn’t a good pregnant lady either. I have friends who glowed in pregnancy - who would have six kids if they could afford car insurance for them all as teenagers because pregnancy was such a joy.
I didn’t glow - I oozed.
Mouse - may you reach your second trimester and glow.
Thank you.
Right now I’m trying to reach 5pm Friday without a murder wrap. My emotions are out of control.
{{{{{Mouse_Maven}}}}}
I can’t advise you on pregnancy, but that I know about.
My only advice, though, is to find a nice violent video game to play…
Mouse, try any game from the Baldur’s Gate series. After a few hours you should be able to go back to the “low level areas” and just smash your way through the critters. Or an Undead Warlock in WoW… them’s the WoW definition of Nasty Buggers.
That can be fun, but usually I prefer something like Europa Universalis or one of the Civilization games, where you can potentially kill anywhere from thousands to billions of people because you’re not happy. Mwahahahahahahaha!
If you need something really violent, here you can send a rogue star through the solar system or crash an asteroid or comet into the Earth (or any other planet). We think that the K-T extinction event killed off 99% of all living creatures on the Earth at the time… can’t get too much more violent than that… And sending a rogue star through the solar system can be strangely comforting when you’re having a bad day.
Gosh, Anne, that there’s a little boy’s wet dream… “my daddy will beat your daddy!” “my daddy will throw an A-bomb of your daddy!” “my daddy will blow up the solar system! With your daddy inside!”
Yes, mostly true, I just felt so bad for Mouse_Maven!
I didn’t so much have morning sickness as all-the-live-long-day sickness. A permanent feeling of being travel sick from the moment I woke 'til the moment I slept. Couldn’t eat, lost 6 kilos in those 3 months. Then it went away HURRAH! Then there was the blocked ears and runny nose, the nights of tossing and turning because you can’t sleep in your favourite position any longer, the hay fever season endured without anti-histamine, the UTIs 
, the blood tests, the monitoring trips to the hospital…
See I’d forgotten a lot of that, my SO hasn’t bless him, but now I have Butterbaby and it was worth it.
Hang on in there Mouse_Maven, it’s horrible now but it’s worth it in the end. 
What did you think made some of us want to be astronomers? 
Oh, Mouse, something I just remembered…
You know how there comes a point (about the 4th month) when babies start kicking? SiL complained that nobody had told her about elbows and headbutts.