Pregnancy has this bad PR that I don't really understand - where does it come from and why does it exist? Pregnancy is a beautiful thing and this bad PR seems to exist to disprove that it is. Black Twitter, please don't misunderstand me. I am in no way intending to discredit any horrible pregnancy experiences some may have had, I just want to share my pregnancy so that women who are pregnant or looking to get pregnant hear both sides of the experience.
FIRST TRIMESTER
I was almost done with my first trimester when I found out I was "with child". I think I had about a month and a half left of it... something along those lines. My First trimester didn't bring me morning sickness (something I had imagined to be mandatory for every pregnancy.), instead, it brought me a really bad yeast infection, my very first one. I think, out of everything I experienced in my pregnancy, this has to be the worst. I was using an over-the-counter vaginal cream which only relieved my symptoms temporarily. What I really needed was a 200 and something rand prescribed pill that had to be inserted vaginally. To sum up my first trimester, It was itchy and came with a terrible odour that put me in some awkward and embarrassing situations but overall, it was smooth. I hiked Skelton George in my first trimester, I had some energy to spare and the notorious back problems hadn't caught me.
SECOND TRIMESTER
A bigger belly and a loss of appetite, that's what my second trimester came with. The loss of appetite was really only in the evenings. I would sometimes nibble what my partner had cooked/ordered for dinner and casually stare at what was left until he cleared my plate after finishing his own. The loss of appetite didn't last long. Midway through my second trimester, I gained it back. I forwent eating takeaways as it didn't taste as good as I'd remembered. Mc Donalds, Steers and wimpy burgers tasted like rubber and KFC streetwise 2 didn't bang as hard. I don't see this as a lowlight because really, it gave me a chance to focus on eating healthier for the baby. I did develop an insatiable addiction to Tjing Tjing Ramen - ordering it nearly every week. I would later outgrow the taste.
Napping was a constant - I loved it soo much. I would look forward to the weekends simply because it afforded me the opportunity to take as many naps as I had wanted. I was on content shoots in my second trimester, picking up boxes, styling shoes, coordinating models - a full-time job. I would huff and puff easier than anyone else on my team but I had the energy to get the work done. This time period is when I experienced a heightened glow, I looked SO GOOD. I did however end up getting patches of dark skin on my face, a darker neck and darker armpits.
THE FINAL STRETCH - THIRD TRIMESTER
I had no swollen feet, but my face was slightly swollen, it reached its peak of being swollen towards the end of my pregnancy - 40 weeks onwards. My feet grew silently (it wasn't visible at all but I felt it when I couldn't slide smoothly into my MRP Birkenstock look-alike sandals). My Face had black patches of skin on and off and I had a sudden burst of energy. It was weird really. At a time when I thought I would've been extremely tired and sluggish, I was full of energy, finalising content shoots for the year, walking around all over the city. At this point my tummy was so big, people kept asking me if I was carrying twins. I would get occasional onsets of a sore back but nothing debilitating or that a hot bubble bath couldn't fix.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my pregnancy. For me, nothing could've ever beat the feeling I had when I first felt baby Matheo kick, the constant kicks thereafter and the conversations his Dad and I would have with him in the evenings. Seeing him on the scans at the doctor's office, watching my tummy grow to accommodate him, it was so surreal. Every day I was in awe at this miracle happening right inside of me. My pregnancy was nothing like what other women told me it would be. It was better than what I expected it to be from the many stories I heard from moms. I began to realise that internalising other women's experiences of pregnancy almost didn't allow me to embrace my own.
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