Pregnancy Announcement & a Linkup

PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

Well, the day has finally come where it’s time for the pregnancy announcement!  As you can tell, I can’t really hide it anymore because I’ve officially popped.  The baby is perfect and healthy.  My brother and I have been calling it bebe instead of baby because of Moira from Schitt’s Creek haha.  Bebe is also incredibly active, and constantly moving around.  I’m currently at 22 weeks, and it’s been rough, however I do believe this explains why my blog and Youtube channel haven’t been as consistent as they used to be.  In this post I’m going to go over how I’ve been doing and future plans.  If you’d prefer to watch my Youtube video about this, that will be available for you at the end of this post.

Dress: Target // Earrings: Etsy // Sandals: Boohoo

THE FIRST TRIMESTER

Before we proceed, I’ll start off by saying, the due date is my husband’s birthday; October 24th.  I’m kind of excited to have a spooky October baby, not to mention my birthday is also in October along with our wedding anniversary, and of course Halloween.  Anyway, I found out I was pregnant the day after Valentine’s Day.  I had a weird feeling that something was off and I told my husband that I think we need to buy a pregnancy test.

My husband bought three.

Of course, all 3 came back positive.  Since I’m always honest here on my blog, our reaction wasn’t what most people would expect.  We didn’t jump with joy like some people, we were really fucking terrified.  This reaction is probably because we always said we never wanted children, but if it happens it happens.  Well, it happened.  Here in Florida, to get an appointment with an OBGYN we had to wait until the beginning of March to get an appointment.  Before I went to that appointment, I did end up in the ER.  I was really nervous that the pregnancy was ectopic, so my husband and I decided that I needed to go to the hospital in case it was, because it could be dangerous.

THE HOSPITAL VISIT

Turns out it was a pre existing condition.  I’ve suffered from ovarian cysts and ruptured ovarian cysts for as long as I can remember.  I ended up in the ER with a ruptured ovarian cyst when I was in college.  This time around, the ruptured cyst felt different, and I mean, that could very well be due to being pregnant.  In addition, I also had a UTI.  I have never had one before so I didn’t even know what those felt like, but I found out that those are common with pregnancy.

THEN I GOT INTO AN ACCIDENT

After that hospital visit, because my mother in law was in town, we went to go get lunch, because I just needed to relax and I was so hungry.  I got myself chicken nuggets and a strawberry milkshake.  I was going to save my milkshake for the drive home and as a way to relax in bed, knowing that it wasn’t an ectopic pregnancy, and that everything was fine.  That plan was changed after I had been rear ended on  my way home.  The baby was of course fine, and the police along with EMT’s made me feel horrible.  They made me feel like I was just being a neurotic woman, which I spoke about in this post.

Long story short, it took about 1-2 hours for the cops to show up to just write a report, no one cared that I was pregnant, and they kept trying to get me to not write a report because there was no damage.  Which is funny because last time I checked, EMT’s and Police Officers aren’t body shop techs.  Turns out, there was $1,200.45 worth of damage to my bumper.  I honestly didn’t care about my car at that point, I cared more about if something happened to the baby, someone was going to be held responsible.

GETTING A MOM CAR

Due to that accident, my husband and I had a discussion regarding getting a different car.  I had been in 3 accidents within the past decade and all were not my fault.  Each accident I was rear ended, and I’m still traumatized from the previous two because they were a lot worse.  As someone who has driven manual for almost two decades, and only having an automatic vehicle for two of those, it was very hard for me to part with my car.  I did get upset about it, and I know that sounds really dumb to most people, but when you’re a car person like myself, it hits differently.

In last week’s post, I did introduce my mom car which is a 2018 VW Tiguan SEL.  We’ve already started wrapping the chrome pieces on the car to make it more me.  I hate chrome unless it’s on classic cars, especially on a nice cherry red 50’s classic.  However, I hate it on modern cars.  I’ll show pictures of that once it’s all finished.  We’re also going to tint the windows, and paint the wheels black but that’s a future project.  Especially because we’re currently in the process of looking and saving for a house.  We already went through the preapproval process to see what we would even be approved for.

FIRST TRIMESTER CHANGES

One thing that I had to get used to was the nausea.  I only got sick a few times, and I’m so incredibly grateful that I didn’t end up in the hospital due to dehydration because I know women that happened to.  I was mostly nauseous, and I CANNOT eat or smell seafood.  I normally love seafood, but now, even in the second trimester, it makes me want to puke.  The number one complaint that I have though was the fatigue.  I’m still painfully tired.  It’s not as bad as the first trimester, but I get so tired so quickly.  After my accident, the fatigue got worse and I actually stopped driving after a certain time.  My husband became my chauffer haha.  There were a few times where I fell asleep at our business.  The guys even cracked a few jokes about it for a few weeks, but I haven’t fallen asleep at the desk since so that’s an accomplishment!

Another thing that I’ve been struggling with is the dreams and nightmares I’ve been having.  The nightmares have been bad, to the point where I’ve dreamt of the absolute worst happening to my baby.  It’s gotten to the point where I’ve woken up from a deep sleep thinking it actually happened and running to the bathroom.  The dreams on the other hand are just flat out strange.

BODY CHANGES

With pregnancy, obviously comes changes with your body.  This is something I truly feared.  It’s inevitable that it will happen.  I’ve always been very open on this blog with my past and how I’ve always struggled with my body.  This is no different, so of course I’m going to share my struggles with that openly.

CHANGING IN SIZE

I’ve already gained a lot of weight.  In the beginning of the pregnancy I didn’t mind it because I knew it would happen and I was in pretty good shape pre pregnancy.  Because we closed our CBD Store and I started working at our auto shop, I was incredibly active and still am.  However, because I popped out of nowhere (at least that’s what it feels like) all of the sudden my body has changed in size significantly.  As beautiful as growing life is, seeing what I look like in the mirror has been hard for me.

Due to my past with eating disorders and body dysmorphia it’s been much harder than I originally expected.  My husband has to keep reminding me that I’m pregnant and I have no control over my body changing in size right now.  Don’t get me wrong, I have indulged throughout the pregnancy, not every day, but it has happened, so that portion is something I can change.  However, the ever expanding bump is something I have absolutely no control over.

Surprisingly though, I don’t really have too much of an issue with the bump besides having to get new clothes.  I’m moreso upset about my arms, legs, and face.  I’ve already been planning out workouts for when the baby is here and I can work out heavy again.  Due to how hard it’s been for me in this aspect, I did go on a few shopping sprees to help me feel pretty again, and I will say it did help a little bit.  Being excited to receive new clothes and shoes is also a great feeling.

HAIR THINNING

As most of you know because of this post and this one, I did suffer from hair thinning.  This was due to the pregnancy.  My doctor said it’s not as common to happen during pregnancy, but rather postpartum.  However, she said it does happen and she’s seen it happen to women.  It was something that happened what feels like overnight.  It’s still thinning, but not as bad as in the beginning.  My theory is because of all of the hormonal changes, my body just went into overload, because one of the triggers for my seizures is hormonal changes.  Which brings me to talking about my epilepsy during pregnancy.

MY EPILEPSY

If you’re new here, hi I have epilepsy!  I was diagnosed in 2005, so it’s not something that I’ve had my entire life, it’s something that developed over time.  My neurologist has already seen me and will see me again next month, but we are monitoring my medication levels in my blood.  This is because when a woman gets pregnant, for whatever reason, the medication levels drop significantly because of the baby.  One thing I did ask him about is if I will pass my epilepsy down to the baby.  His response was that it’s a possibility because they say epilepsy is hereditary (even though I’m the first one in my family to be diagnosed).

I’ve been feeling so much better when it comes to the epilepsy during this pregnancy.  The neurologist told me this is actually pretty common.  He’s known many women who actually felt normal during pregnancy, and it has something to do with the hormonal changes.  They don’t know specifics behind it, but they know it has to do with that.

THE GIRLS

Of course, the girls, or my boobs, have grown quite a bit.  Prior to getting pregnant, I told my husband I wanted to get a boob job because they already started migrating south due to my age.  I knew they’d only migrate more and more, so my husband was all for it if it made me happy.  Obviously that has been put on hold, but of course, I’ve been told how much they’re going to change after breastfeeding.  Now, as much as I love the people who are telling me all of the bad things that will happen, it doesn’t help me mentally whatsoever.  I know this isn’t really important, but I guess I’m just venting that most people are telling me all of the bad and really none of the good.

GENDER REVEAL, PRIVACY, ETC.

My husband and I had a discussion about a few things going forward with this pregnancy.  First of all, we will not be doing a gender reveal.  It’s not really our thing, and we just don’t want to do it.  That isn’t to cast judgement on anyone who has done a gender reveal, because I do find some of them really clever.  Plus, it’s super exciting!  We did find out the gender at our anatomy scan, but we just aren’t going to do a gender reveal.  We also didn’t do the test in the beginning where they test for down syndrome and all of the other tests.  This is because of a couple of reasons.  The first being if I were to find out something was wrong with my baby, I’d blame myself and stress myself out even more which is never good.  Secondly, it’s because we will cross that bridge when we get there.  It’s not like it would have changed our minds on keeping the baby or not, so we decided that we didn’t want to know.

I’m not sure if it’s because of how much true crime content I have consumed and created on my channel, another thing that we decided to do is keep the baby private.  I will not be showing photos of the baby’s face.  Of course I’ll show the cute little toes here and there and if there is a picture of me with the baby, the face will be blurred.  After my husband and I talked about it, we just don’t want the baby’s face out there publicly.  There are way too many weirdos out there.  In the future I’ll probably show the child, but not for a while.  Again, this is not to cast judgement on anyone who has shown their baby, this is just what we are deciding to do.  I know I’ll probably want to show the baby because what mom isn’t proud to show the world her beautiful baby, but for now, I want to respect the baby’s privacy.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

The discussion of me working/not working of course came up.  I was never one to dream of being a stay at home mom.  That just wasn’t the life for me.  My attitude was always putting my career and work first because believe it or not, I love working.  I babysat for neighbors as soon as I was old enough, and then once I turned 15 (18 freaking years ago), I got my first job working at a grocery store.  It’s been 18 years of working as much as I could, so becoming a stay at home mom is not something I ever planned on being.  We did decide that I’m going to stay home with the baby and once baby is in school I’ll go back to physically being at our business, however in the mean time, I’ll be working from home.

We’re going to assign more responsibilities to me so that I can help out my husband and his brother and still work.  There are also a few freelance projects that I’ll be working on.  Not to mention I’ll have this blog and my Youtube channel.  Although, I don’t get paid from my blog anymore, I do get paid through Youtube.  The blog will be more for fun and a hobby again.  I think with it becoming a hobby again, it’ll be more fun for me to get behind the computer and type away.

NO MLMS, PLEASE.

I’m very well aware that being a stay at home mom and housewife is a job in and of itself.  There have been plenty of studies that showed with how much moms do in a day, the hours they work, what they do, they should be earning 6 figure salaries.  However, what I mean by working is having something outside of being a mom.  I think this is a reason why so many moms fall for MLM companies.  Sorry to bring this up during this post, but it is what I cover on my Youtube.  In my opinion, I do think because moms get so used to being a mom and having that be their identity, they yearn for something.  They want friends, they want to interact with other adults, and they want to do something to feel more like their old selves.  At least that’s my theory.

Dress: Target // Earrings: Etsy // Sandals: Boohoo

WHY I DIDN’T ANNOUNCE SOONER

I was really nervous to announce the pregnancy.  Some people asked me if it was because we never wanted kids and that’s why.  The answer is absolutely not.  I’m not ashamed of being pregnant, and that’s kind of what I feel like that question is alluding to.  To be completely open and honest, it’s because I was afraid of “jinxing it” and having a miscarriage.  Especially after having nightmares about it, and the accident, I was very scared.  If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have announced it for another few weeks, but the last two outfit photos were really pushing it.  Especially the picnic table dress (as my husband likes to call it).  Last week’s outfit, I really had to push my butt out when I was posing to hide the bump.  That’s why I decided it was time to announce it.  Plus, a lot of people in my private life, including my Patrons and Channel Members knew about this all the way back in the first trimester so it wasn’t fair to them to keep this secret for so long.  I felt a little more comfortable once I got past the halfway mark.

CONCLUSION

With all of that said (I know it’s a lot), I’m excited for bebe to get here.  Only 18 more weeks to go!  I’m not looking forward to carrying when I’m really big in the summer time because I work both outside and inside at the shop, but I am looking forward to wearing all of the cute dresses.  Now, let’s move on to the linkup.