First blog; first 17 weeks of pregnancy

I had always been pretty healthy. I am 5'3, fairly active, and almost always had weighed about 125. I was at my heaviest, 140, when I found out I was pregnant. Not sure if this is relevant, but I am now wondering if this played a part at all...
I was laid off from my job when I was six weeks along. I had only known I was pregnant for the two weeks prior to that!



Here I am at 14 weeks pregnant....

In retrospect, I have no idea how I would have handled my difficult pregnancy with that stressful job. Pretty much as soon as I found out I was pregnant, the morning sickness started. It was an overall nausea that is hard to even describe, but other pg women have been there. I was extremely sensitive to smells. Everything smelled like rotting garbage, including yummy food and perfume that I loved! (and I had worked at a perfume bottle manufacturer)
I had ordered the Gwen Stefani fragrance: "Harajuku Lovers Gwen" right before I was laid off. When it arrived in the mail, I was so excited, I put it on, but then had to run to the bathroom immediately to heave. By the way, if you've ever smelled it, you would know that that is not a typical reaction. It smells amazing, like coconuts and summertime :) After this, I couldn't wear perfume for the rest of my pregnancy.
I couldn't walk by the Abercrombie & Fitch store because of the smell of their men's fragrance. I couldn't walk BY my favorite store, Sephora. I hated the smell of coffee, and I was previously a caffeine addict.


So yeah, the nausea was no fun. At about 13 weeks, I pretty much stopped getting sick. There was a reprieve. Up through then, it was a pretty typical pregnancy.


Also at 13 weeks, I had a voluntary blood test at this point called a nuchal lucency test (sometimes called nuchal translucency or NST) It was a finger prick test. I also had an ultrasound then. They said everything came back fine, except I had one small issue. I was borderline the lowest amount for HCG, my level was a 1. To this day, I still don't really understand what that means. They said everything with the baby looked fine, but my uterus was giving this reading. It could lead to something called IUGR, which is when the baby stops growing in utero at a late point in the pregnancy. This totally scared me, but the doc assured me this was extremely unlikely and I would get extra ultrasounds just to make sure.


At about 17 weeks, I started getting something called RLP, round ligament pain. This is when your uterus is basically stretching and pulling the muscles in the abdomen. I went to the doctor twice with this pain, because I worried something was wrong. Turns out, this is pretty common. The RLP is not unusual, but once again, my pregnancy was very tough. For the most part though, pretty typical aches and pains that all moms-to-be go through, though....