The Counter Glow

  Hey and welcome to my site. I’m twenty-something and recently (well like...11 weeks ago) found out that I’m pregnant. Holy s****. Honestly, we knew that what we were doing was a bit risky but seriously, I still wouldn’t have thought it would happen that quickly. This actually sounds worse being typed out than it had in my mind. So maybe I should make a few things clear. I’m absolutely pro baby. I was before that stripe turned blue (or is it pink...seriously, that situation is more shocking than people tell you and I wouldn’t be able to save my life to tell you which color that stripe had. Just the fact that there WAS a stripe really stuck) and I still am. I just would have loved to get a more serious warning about this whole pregnancy thing beforehand. So, this take us back to my point of introduction here. If you’re looking for cute and fuzzy and glow-ish things, this is not the place. If you’re as scared and confused as I am and are saving your ass with taking everything with a bit (cross that, with a huge) grain of salt/sarcasm: This is your place. So, without further ado, welcome to this little space. Quick information to the name. I guess it IS quite obvious after all. Everyone is talking about the glow that seems to emanate off of every pregnant woman and, well honestly, so far there has not been any emanating off of me. So, I decided to create a space for the true and honest and unfiltered counter glow. Or maybe I just need to rant. You decide ;)   

[thecounterglow-blog]

General hiccups you should know you’re getting yourself into ;) (when getting pregnant)

Hey there! So admittedly the last two weeks have been kind of...good! I know, I can’t hardly believe it myself 😀 I didn’t do any sport (let’s not start to get delusional) but I rode my bike A LOT, even had the energy for a proper bike tour and met friends. Plus, we got a bit further with our apartment into which we just moved less than a month ago. And the monthly check up went well too. On that part, tiny bean is a trooper. I just always get the thumbs up and “everything is well”. Though bean doesn’t really fit the description any more. It’s more like a nice chocolate croissant by now (which I LOVE....if they’re done right).  

Today was a bit weird though. I’ve been TIRED as hell...which meant: I got up at eight, had breakfast and cleaned the place a bit and went back to bed for another FIVE hours of sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I’m tired again (haha not kidding here. I even treated myself to a rare caffeinated coffee! At like 7:30 pm). And I feel the little bean...pardon me, croissant, is crushing my stomach again. Or maybe it’s just having a growth spurt? At least that’s what my belly feels like. All stretched and sore.  

Btw, this is what happened so far:

That was when we nicknamed it tiny bean.

I have to admit, the gummy-bear-stage seemed the cutest. 

But seeing it move this week was crazy, it even waved and (we assume) picked its nose 😀

However, this post is also a summary I wish I had seen beforehand (though I’m doubting that I’d have taken it seriously enough anyway) but anyway, here you go: All the fun things that come along as well as soon as you get pregnant:

Let’s start with bloating, farting and peeing (I still can’t believe I’m typing this down). This however is a VERY present part of your pregnancy. The first two especially during the first three month (it will get you quite a couple of not so cute nicknames from your beloved other half) and the third evenly replaces the first two as soon as they get better. Especially for me as the little croissant seems to LOVE dancing on my bladder!

Sickness (not talking the all-day-and-night-sickness here but the not-knowing-what-you-want-to-eat-because-everything-will-make-you-sick-just-thinking-of-it kind of sickness which seems to come and go as it pleases...or as the little croissant switches between my bladder and my stomach)

Tiredness (You are tired A LOT. I used to be a super high energy person. Used to be).

Stiffness and with that: Headaches! (maybe that’s also the lack of sport for me? Who knows.)

Apparently, you are more prone to caries! (already had one dentist appointment and the second is scheduled).

Bladder infections (Yeeks). Side note here: I didn’t get a proper bladder infection (though I read that it’s apparently common) it just FELT like one. For two weeks.

Crying and mood swings. Like crazy.

Exhaustion (constant)

Preggo-brain. Seriously it’s a thing (or maybe I’m just becoming stupid. Who knows.) For me it’s mainly names and terms. It just suddenly happens that there’d be a blank space in my brain. Name of a person I’d known for month? Poof! Name of a certain kitchen tool? Poof! Really hard to explain when people don’t know yet that you are pregnant.

Out of breath-ness (always)

No coloring needs and wants (more information later on)

Taking ALL THE PILLS. This is what I’m currently taking:

(That’s (from left to right) vegan B12, Folat (which every pregnant woman should take), Biotin, Vitamin D, iron (please substitute this only after having talked to your doctor. My iron levels always were really good even though I mainly eat plant based but after 2 months of being pregnant my levels started to drop so I’ve been substituting ever since) and vegan Omega 3.

Super smell sensitive (but only for the bad ones)

Lost my love for music. Though I got super into audiobooks and podcasts (specially the three ??? Something German and awesome and normally for kids around like...10? Who cares!)

In short: Prepare to become more or less the opposite of what you used to be (if you were happy and sparkling)

I’ve also heard that other “hiccups” might include: scratchy skin, swollen ankles, water retention, constipation, greasy hair, pimples like a teenager...seriously the list goes on and on. If I forgot something, keep me posted!

This isn’t supposed to keep you off of getting pregnant in no way! Also, I hope I’m not coming of like a wimp. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for what was coming. So, you are now 😉 Fully!  

(Also, I needed to rant. So, there is that)

[thecounterglow-blog]

Nausea

To be honest, that one didn’t come with too many surprises. I mean, that’s something I had ALL heard about before. Come to think of it, I think that was one of the only things I had heard about pregnancy before actually becoming...well pregnant. It started slowly, tricking me into thinking I had all but skipped the nausea-train, honestly it was so slow I don’t even really remember the start. But it ended in:

I was sick if I ate 

I was sick if I didn’t eat 

I was sick when I thought about food 

I started avoiding most of the foods I had LOVED before 

But don’t let that fool you, mainly it was a “I can’t eat that but I have to eat this-and-that RIGHT now” and half an hour later it would all be reversed.  

Also, don’t let yourself be tricked by the term morning-sickness. As you might have read somewhere else by now if you’re pregnant like me, or of you haven’t because it skipped you or you’re just not pregnant, it’s an all-day-all-night-sickness! 

What stuck the most was the fact that I have loved, LOVED coffee and avocado before. Both I couldn’t even think of anymore. I also think that there was more to the whole food aversion thing but I have to grudgingly admit that pregnancy-brain also is something true, and mine just had deleted all the details. What I know is that I also, and still so far, don’t really have CRAVING per se. I just like some things more for a couple of weeks. It was apricots at first, cucumber (but the sweet and sour ones) second and right now it’s grapefruits (which I ADORE. Right now). Also, I am probably quite lucky because apart from a couple of days where I was totally into cake and ice cream, I have mainly been craving fruits and veggies. I know, hate me.  

The whole sickness thing seemed to last for forever but I think it calmed down in week 12(?). Man, I should have been writing this down. But you get the gist.  

Also, for anyone who’s suffering from it right now. I’ve heard it is different for everyone. Some don’t suffer from it at all (let’s hate them together...nicely), for some it lasts the whole pregnancy (my condolences here) but for most of the group it seems to end at about the end of the first trimester. So, 12 weeks are your friend!

...buuuuuuuuuut for some funny twist in the story, for me sickness just came back. Not as bad (luckily) but like this little reminder, if I don’t eat something fast enough in the morning, or if I’m trying to eat a bit more...it will still be there, yay! (NOT!) 😀  

[thecounterglow-blog]

The Beginning (so original, I know)

I am, well sadly right now this should say WAS, a really happy, bubbly, sporty, healthy person. In short, squeeze everything together about a glowing, kind and cute person (who you might secretly hate, but seriously, I am too nice to be hated) and you’ve got a good picture of myself. It’s not that I never experienced and hardship or pain or chaos...I just eventually decided that life is too precious too get caught up in the sh*** so instead, I tried to be happy. And the phrase, fake it till you make it, really does come true, trust me. But just so you hate me a little less, I know what the dark side of live looks like too.

I had met my boyfriend in November the previous year (we are talking like spring this year), so we hadn’t really been dating for that long, but for some reason, it felt right (jep, sounds wrong and fake and disney-ish, but that’s what we were at). And for some odd other reason, we stopped being as careful as you might want to be. Fast forward, 4 months (I think it really was just that, things tend to happen quite fast in my life, it’s always everything or nothing and nothing barely happens) I was in our bathroom (at that point I was still living in our flat share of five in which I had moved into the previous October) brushing my teeth while not looking at the stick I had just peed on. Btw, isn’t it weird how pregnancy suddenly makes it totally ok to talk about all kind of activities you’d have NEVER mentioned before? Or is that just me? Anyway. I had taken test before. Like, MANY. I was one of those girls who got so scared of our school lessons of turning pregnant (they made it sound like it could HAPPEN any moment) that even though I had religiously taken the pill for years, I had more than one fright where I had thought that, for some mysterious reason, I might have fallen pregnant. So, by the time I was peeing on that particular stick, I wasn’t really worried. Sure, it did feel a bit different this time. I somehow had that weird impression my boobs had GROWN like at least a cup (exaggerating here for good measure) and there were pretty tender...but common. I was a bit late with my period, yes. But I mean, this stuff happened! Right? So, I peed and brushed my teeth and did stuff to generally make those 3 minutes pass. And then I went over and looked at the stick. Ok, for a more dramatic pause here I might shouldn’t have started with the fact that I AM pregnant. Kind of spoils the ending, but so you might guess right here: There was a SECOND line. It was thin, yes. But it was there. And I think I went into shock. I had imagined myself endless times in exactly that situation but it always had turned out, my brain was just too scaredy-cat-ish so I somehow had started to believe that that’s what it would be like for forever. Turned out it wasn’t. I took a picture, threw the stick away, changed the garbage bin bag and went into the kitchen. And the first thing I did was burst into tears after one of my roommates looked expectantly at me (to verify, it was one of my female roommates and we had gotten quiiiiiiiiite close over the last month, so naturally we had talked about EVERYTHING).  

Those first few days were weird. Suddenly your holy life changes, but then again, not that much changes. I had TONS to do at work. I had friends I was meeting. I had my life. I think that, as I would call it now; happy in between (to stay on the honest side here, it wasn’t really that happy, lots of stuff was going on, but I wasn’t really bothered by the new fact of my pregnancy) lasted for like...2 weeks? And then it all started to go down the drain.

*Your baby is the sice of a bean...well at some point during those first weeks. That’s why we came up with the idea to call it bean. Aren’t we geniuses!?*