My Pregnancy in a Nutshell
/As I always say, each person is very different. Therefore please keep in mind that the way I had gone through my pregnancy might be very different compared to other’s experiences.
I consider myself very lucky and blessed since I pretty much didn’t have any of the “common” symptoms/effects of the pregnancy – other than 40-week long PMS, which I am very thankful to my lovely husband for coping with it. From the first day we realized that I was pregnant to the last week, my baby boy made me forget many times that I was pregnant because he never prohibited me from living my life as usual. I didn’t have nausea. I didn’t have weird food cravings. I didn’t have swollen hands or feet. I didn’t stop any of my sports; mountain biking, windsurfing, teaching Boot Camp… I didn’t need any pregnancy clothes (more clothing to buy for my baby). On the other hand, I did notice some changes in my body, other than my growing baby. Out of all the moves I do at the gym – including all sorts of balance drills, the only one that was affected was the pull-up. For some reason – I don’t think that it was my extra weight – my arms started to bail on me after 3 counts when I was able to go up to 15 easily. Towards the end of the pregnancy, I also realized that my lungs needed more air in them whenever I was walking up the steep hills of San Francisco. I also did experience lack of energy during the first trimester in my own way – given that doing two of my sports for multiple hours in the same day has never been an issue, getting tired on those days was my way of not having enough energy. Out of all these changes, the most mysterious one for me was my nose – I had stuffy nose my entire pregnancy. I would love to understand the physical reasoning behind it as I am hoping that it will be back to normal once I deliver.
Through out the pregnancy, Derek and I opted out of reading anything related to pregnancy since we strongly believed that every case would be different. However, one thing that we didn’t watch out for was setting expectations based on a guess – we were told that our baby had a chance to be slightly early due to my mom’s deliveries with me and with my brother. Having that expectation definitely impacted the comfort of our last week. We set ourselves into the waiting mode much earlier than his actual due date of 1/20. Instead of continuing to enjoy his movements and calmness, we questioned his decision of not coming out, even though it was not time yet.
Basically, in this entire process, the one thing to keep in mind is to set NO EXPECTATIONS. Uncertainties dictate the process and that is the beauty of it. Every step of it is full of surprises. Therefore taking a step back and enjoying each surprise, as a new episode of an exciting show, is the best approach ever. At least, this is what I have learned…
And now we are proud parents of Kaya Roy Lueck, born on 1/24 at 10:16am... A wonderful new chapter of our life has begun and I am out of words to explain my excitement!
