I’m starting Flashback Fridays! They may not be every Friday, but it’s a chance for me to remember something, and maybe even dig out a photo or two. To give credit where it’s due, it was Chases’s idea. So here comes a little memory!
Many of you may remember when Chase and I announced our pregnancy in the fall of 2010. We were ecstatic. Our parents were ecstatic. Our friends were ecstatic. It was a wonderful pregnancy, but the biggest thing about it, was the belly (pun not intended, but hilarious)!
It takes 40 weeks, or about 10 months to cook up a baby. It’s a harrowing process for the mother’s body – a nurse I met once said it was absolutely traumatic for the body and it’s systems, as it encounters everything from hormone swings to physical pressures to the birth itself.
Hubs and I took one picture every week all the way through the pregnancy – it was our way of watching the changes, although some seemed more apparent than others. Here was a starting picture (good god, can I please get back to THAT?!)
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| 6 weeks |
What comes next, I like to call the beer gut. I’ve obviously gained a little weight, but now I look “akwardly fat” in my jeans instead of pregnant. I think this observation is feared most by women in early stages of pregnancy!
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| 15 weeks |
In about my 21st week, I popped out. This “popping” phenomenon is caused by the uterus breaking through the abdominal wall. The abs will separate as the uterus pushes them to the side and protrudes. You wake up one morning, and it’s different. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen to wake up and be completely different from when I went to sleep tried to sleep tossed and turned all night from pregnancy insomnia.
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| 20 weeks |
Hubs and I have not gotten around to making a montage of the entire slideshow – but I think it would be fun. Hear that, Hubs?? Hop to it!
Next up, I give you Valentine’s Day last year. I look so tired, and amazingly bigger! It was about this time that Mom visited and started to laugh at how round I had become. My Nana even called me tubby (which is funny now, but awful at the time! 😉)
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| 27 weeks |
It was about 22 weeks that my Braxton Hicks contractions started – mild false contractions that do little more than cause discomfort. The discomfort is directly proportional to your belly, in my opinion. The more belly there was, the more pain there was! It was also about the time that Red started to get so big he put a curve in my spine. The result was a Mama was only wanted to stand or lay down. Sitting with the weight of the belly pulling on my back muscles was near excruciating. Driving down the street to the grocery store was nearly all I could handle, much less sitting in a dark theatre to watch a movie. When Hubs and I DID watch a movie, I got to lay on the couch with a pillow for support! 🙂
In shameless vanity, I now share with you the 31 weeks photo, Because I think my hair looks good 🙂 And I’m smiling so my face doesn’t look like a Krispy Kreme Donut. Much bigger!
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| 31 weeks |
And two photos, taken by Tracy at Babycake Studios – so cool! These are my only professional maternity photos, because at the time, I couldn’t stand the thought of a belly session longer than 10 minutes. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose. Cupcakes by Miss Mamie’s Cupcakes and Such in Marietta, GA. (A place I LOVE).
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| 38 weeks |
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| The little cupcake has baby birdies on it! |
Lastly, here I am about to pop. Red was due on May 6th, 2011 and he came one day early. We’ll save the birth story for another flashback. Giant Mama! It’s a total trip to look back on the 40 weeks of pregnancy (as for the poundage -well, that’s a mystery). What a wonderful, exciting, painful, responsibility-driven trip that I’m not looking to make again any time soon.
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| 39 weeks |
Instead, I’ll go and enjoy my little monkey.
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