I know I said that I didn’t necessarily plan on talking so much about pregnancy, but I wanted to write something out so I’d always have it in my memory box on my blog. We definitely don’t have some crazy story, but we’ve always known that when the time came to start a family, we wanted it to happen during his shore duty. Shore duty, I’ve always referred to it as the downtime from going out to sea and having a more set work schedule, but that’s not really the case nowadays. We got extremely lucky with A‘s shore duty since we’re overseas for two years while he goes back to school.
Why’d you wait til shore duty?
With A being in the submarine force, his work schedule was unpredictable and he was out at sea a lot. Yep, deployments aren’t the only times when they’re out in big ole blue. For our first, we both knew that we wanted to ensure he could be there for the birth and have as much time with our little one as possible. With his school schedule, he has a bit more freedom. After we left Hawai’i, we moved to Virginia for about 9 months and during that time we considered trying, but we didn’t want to run into possibly being told to stay in the US for delivery. With being part of the Olmsted Foundation, we knew his orders were highly unlikely to change in this scenario, so we decided to wait until towards the end of our time in Virginia.
At this point, I’ve been off birth control for over a year, taking prenatal vitamins since October, and had my exams with my OB. As far as we knew, we were in the clear and deemed “healthy” to start trying. It took us 2 months of trying before we got pregnant and that surprised us because we didn’t think it would happen so quickly especially with the fact that we were indeed trying.
After I took a couple of tests, I remember telling A right away. No special way to tell him, I just flat out told him. We were very calm and collected once we learned the result and we stayed like that for all of the first trimester even after getting my blood test to confirm it. Actually, we’ve been calm/easy-going this entire pregnancy. Naturally, with the first trimester, we wanted to stay on the safe side of things and not get too excited because anything can happen.
Besides A, my mom was the first to know. I’m very close with my mom and I tell her just about everything. After my first prenatal appointment with the most amazing OB ever, I knew I wanted to wait until I flew home to visit my family before our big move to share the big news. My doctor made sure I had all the necessary lab work done before our overseas PCS, which was extremely comforting. We opted to find out the sex through blood tests and got the results a few days before we flew to Slovenia. It was crazy that we learned early on that we were expecting a little girl!
First trimester.
Like most, it was zero fun! I want to say I had it easier than most because of the fact that I didn’t throw up at all, I did feel miserable though until about 14 weeks. The smell of garlic was a huge no, laying down in bed was my all time favorite, and taking that football of a vitamin was quite the task. And don’t even get me started on all the peeing! A full night of sleep has pretty much been non-existent since the first trimester.
Second trimester.
Everyone was right, you really do get your energy back and you start to feel somewhat normal again. I knew once I started to get into the “normal-ness” stage, I wanted to be active. In Virginia, I was doing kickboxing for a while, as much as I would have loved to continue that, I felt absolutely horrible so I didn’t even bother going the remainder of my time there. I stuck with some jogging/running on the days I felt up for it or walked on the treadmill. Once we got to Slovenia, I tried running around the city with A, but it was a bit tough for me, so I just stuck with walking.
Ladies, walking is a completely effective way to stay active during your pregnancy! Click To Tweet
I had all these intentions so be this fit pregnant lady, but walking and hiking (nothing insane, listen to your body) worked perfectly fine for me. And it helps that we live in a walk-friendly city. We barely drive unless it’s for my doctor appointments or grocery shopping.
Third trimester.
As of about a week and a half ago, we’re officially in the trimester and it’s surreal. I can’t believe how quickly this pregnancy has gone and there’s still so much to be done. This week we’re heading to France to meet up with friends and it’ll probably be our last trip before baby arrives since A starts school in just a few weeks. Pretty much we’ll be using the remainder of our time getting the nursery ready, I’ve decided to tackle a couple of DIY projects, but we’ll see how that turns out. I’ll make sure to share the progress on my Instagram stories.
Well that’s all I got for our little pregnancy story, nothing too crazy.
Bump Progression
Taking pictures of my bump hasn’t really been my thing, as you can tell, I’ve been super inconsistent with it. To be honest, I’m not even entirely sure the weeks are correct except for the 28 weeks because I took that one last week!
I’d love to hear from you about your pregnancy experiences, I’m constantly benefitting from other moms and their wisdom 😉
Check out my pregnancy posts!
Thanks for sharing your story! Every pregancy is different as you know! I’m glad you’ve had it pretty easy cause some women are not so lucky! Look at The Duchess of Cambridge!
I’ve been pregnant twice. The first time around everything was smooth sailing. I didn’t have any indication that was pregnant besides a missed period. I remember buying the test after a PT session and racing home to take it. My husband and I were watching Jeopardy to get our minds off the test. I had only been off birth control for a month before the test showed positive. I had some implantation spotting that kind of made my midwife nurse but everything was fine. I didn’t have any symptoms at first. No morning sickness. No back aches. I never threw up. It was great, until around 20 weeks where sciatica reared it’s ugly head. I was still on AD so I managed to continue with PT. I was doing kickboxing, jogging, and yoga for a while, until 28 weeks when my body said it’s time to walk and just do yoga. Everything was wonderful until 28 weeks when I felt decreased fetal movement. I went in to get checked and the baby was fine. No symptoms at all. I might as well have been not pregnant with the way I was feeling. Things progressed normally until I went into labor at 33 weeks.
The second child was rough! We had been trying for a year and were not getting pregnant, turns out I had a big fibroid hindering my chances of getting pregnant so I got it removed and we waited. We came home from the Big Island and I felt awful! I was wondering if maybe the vog was getting to me. I was nauseous every single day. Everyday. After two full weeks of feeling like crap, on a whim I decided to call my doctor and take a pregnancy test, just in case. Test was positive and I changed my appointment. I was sick for the first 14 weeks or so. The morning sickness did not stop me from traveling to Turkey and Japan. I had some minor spotting again and things were normal until I got home from Japan. I threw up a few times because I developed smell aversions, to silly things like broccoli and cooked meat. I got sciatica again! It was painful for a while and then went away all on it’s own. I had to get shots of progesterone once a week starting at 16 weeks until 36 weeks. Besides the oh so annoyingly uncomfortable shots of progesterone everything was great until I got to 38 weeks and delivered this serious child into the world.
Thank you for sharing your stories with your little ones! I’m sooo curious to see when she’ll actually show, I’ve been hearing about a lot of early births lately. It’s like one big ole surprise of when it’ll be. Your kids are absolutely adorable, I love when you share pictures of the both of them!
Thank you Malia!!! <3
You have more pictures than me! I haven’t taken any “bump” photos except one at 14 weeks or so by request for my mom and sister. My husband really wants to take some maternity photos of me, so that will probably happen sometime in the next few weeks.
Luckily, I wasn’t sick during my first trimester but I was absolutely exhausted. It seems to have caught up with me now, though, because I have actually been nauseas for the last couple of weeks! Those are really the two main symptoms I’ve had, and it sounds like you’ve been doing pretty well, too. I’m convinced that staying active really helps! It’s awesome that you’re living somewhere so walking friendly – I miss all the walking and biking I was able to do in Charleston, SC.
Have fun in France and best of luck getting your projects finished!! We’re working on some baby projects today while my husband has Labor Day off. Our estimated due date is Halloween, but I’m trying to have everything ready by early October just in case – I was 3.5 weeks early and my parents weren’t ready yet!
Haha it’s funny cause I still don’t think I have that many. But when I do take em, I just share them with the fam and one of my good friends. I have friends visiting from Hawai’i a couple of weeks and she’ll be doing my maternity shoot. And I’m at a complete lost on how I want it … trying to be uncliche about it 😉
Oh man, your due date is coming up so fast! Can’t wait to hear all about it, hope your projects are going well. I have yet to start mine … maybe when I come back.
I love the walking tip, I swear, it’ll help make delivery so much easier!
That’s what I’ve been hearing, sooooo lets hope that’s the case!
It’s so hard to plan babies around the military, so it’s nice when you have that little break. I’m so excited for you and for your little one to be able to say she was born abroad!
I’m so happy to read that you’ve had a great pregnancy AND that he’s able to be there for your little family! When are you due? We gave up trying to plan around the Army and just went for it, thought we had some losses before finally conceiving. And oh my goodness you are so cute pregnant. I just look like a house. Ha! I’m looking forward to reading your future posts and seeing those adorable family and baby pictures!