I loved every minute of being pregnant. I’m 5’4", by the way, and had no morning sickness or heartburn. It didn’t slow me down; in fact, I competed in a horse show at seven months. My doctor loved me because I always bounced in with a smile and a cheerful attitude. The last three months I would push on my stomach at night to feel the baby respond with a kick or other movement. The whole pregnancy just seemed amazing to me.
My delivery was a concoction of “things that can go wrong”. There was an unusual number of pending births that day, so I was on a gurney in the hallway instead of in a room. I had to be induced, and they dripped the meds in too fast. I had a student nurse being instructed on how to determine the extent of dilation (ouch). The woman in the closest room was giving birth - naturally - to a 12 pound baby. Man, could she scream! My epidural was placed too high so I was numb from the breasts down for six hours. And they brought me the wrong baby on the first room visit. :eek:
No. I had hyperemesis gravidarum with my second which is basically morning sickness on steroids. I lost weight during my first two trimesters from throwing up so much. The meds I was finally put on stopped the throwing up but not the retching or nausea. It was horrible and I had it during the entire pregnancy.
My first pregnancy had (regular) morning sickness and just this mentally fuzzy feeling. I also ended up with a fluke high-risk pregnancy. It was cool to feel the baby move inside me but I wouldn’t want to repeat either experience. I have 2 healthy kids and I;m thrilled with the results but disliked the process.
Hated it. No particular symptomatic complaints to speak of, but felt trapped and miserable. Cried most days. I love having kids and would have been strongly tempted to have more than two if the process of making them wasn’t so awful.
Yuuuup. Everyone is so solicitous now, which is weird to me because I don’t need it (on the other hand, my sister did at this point in her pregnancy – she had a much harder one), whereas I remember the actual baby being quite a bit more hassle (and my physically feeling a lot more terrible). The other thing is that this is my second, and I’ve noticed that people are even less helpful with a second than with a first, I guess because one is supposed to have figured it all out by then, but it seems like one needs it more then! Oh well. I’m enjoying it now.
Second-hand, this is what I’ve heard. (In one case, not so much morning sickness as constant tiredness).
Plus in the second trimester, you can tell people and they can see it, so you get all the happy helpfulness but you’re not sick of people’s weird treatment of you yet.
Of course, pregnancy is supposed to be hideously uncomfortable at the very end. How else could you be motivated to go through labor? Nature, in her wisdom, has provided that motivation.
My wife (4’11" and small framed) is convinced it is frequently physically easier for taller women. She had so little room in her abdomen that our kids (both large at birth) essentially grew straight out. It killed her back, split her abdominal muscles pretty bad, and her stomach skin will never recover.
We saw a friend of ours (~5’ 8" or and larger framed) that is past due and you can tell it is much easier for her to move around. She was like my wife at 5 months.
I am in the group that found it easy and loved just about every minute, but alas, I am short (5’2"). I think it’s one of those things where it’s hard to predict how your individual body is going to be impacted.
I was very happy to BE pregnant – it took a while to get that way and needed some medical intervention with some drug or other to stimulate my ovaries. Pregnancy itself was not fun. I didn’t have nausea at all, but I had heartburn from the first month on no matter what I ate. Mylanta was a constant companion. And then came the backaches, starting in about the third month. Later on, both of the above were joined by having to pee approximately every half hour. I did not find getting kicked in the bladder to be much fun at all.
Labor and delivery were no problem at all. I took the full Lamaze course and the deliveries were hard work but relatively short and not especially painful.
Apparently I am an outlier among the women in my family. No one else has had the slightest problem becoming pregnant and most seem to be able to conceive at will. Almost all of them had difficult deliveries.
