April 26, 2021
Happy Name Day to me and my mom. In Sweden, each day of the year (or most of them) have one or two names in the calendar and we call it Name Day. On April 26 it’s Therése day which is a name that me, my mom, my grandmother and my great grandmother all carry. If “lilliput” is a girl she will carry this name as well of course:)
To something else…
24 weeks and 1 day
For the past few months, people I know and strangers have been asking me if I am nervous, anxious or even scared of giving birth. My answer is always “No, not even a little, it never crossed my mind”. And I really mean it.
Social media, articles, baby apps and you name it wants to highlight the real stories of birth and parenthood which I of course appreciate and support. We should not sugarcoat any of it. But in my opinion, the problem is that it is a bit over hyped these days which can cause fear rather than excitement. You read or hear everywhere how painful birth is and how tired you’ll be when the baby is born and how hard life is during pregnancy and postpartum. That might all be true (for some), but that’s very negative and no wonder people are scared and worried. I am not at all ignoring the facts, I don’t believe it will be a piece of fluffy cake, but I have always chosen to see it from a positive point of view.
If I walk around thinking of pain then I will be afraid of giving birth, most likely hyperventilate through it all and wont enjoy my experience. So when someone mentions words like nervous, anxious, scared, worried, pain, sleep deprived, breastfeeding is hard, postpartum depression etc etc, I hear what they are saying but I’m also not really listening, cause I don’t need that kind of negativity preparing myself for it all. Women were meant to do this. Not every woman can for many different reasons, I might not be able to have the birth I imagine either, but I am not going to focus on that. I am also going to be at an awesome hospital surrounded by awesome doctors and nurses so if something were to happen then I have a team around me that will do their best to help me and the baby. So to be honest, I feel calm, excited, confident and I absolutely trust that my body knows what to do. And we’ll see how it goes:)
24 weeks 3 days
Every week I open the baby apps and read articles about baby’s development, what size of fruit or toy the baby is and what can be expected in the pregnancy. Once again, it has all been quite negative week after week which I think is a problem and they should look into making some changes. The first sentence should not be negative, it should be uplifting and exciting. And it should not be written as what they talk about will definitely happen to you, cause I have had minimal symptoms of what they describe every week and don’t feel like I can relate at all. For example, somewhere between 50-80% of all women (depending on what studies you read) experience morning sickness in their first trimester. But there are women, like myself, who never have to deal with this, yet, every single week in both 1st and part of second trimester you read about how bad your morning sickness is and that you have to suffer just a little bit longer. And you also read every week that you might have a miscarriage, that’s not very exciting at all. In third trimester (and part of second) you keep reading about that you’ll definitely will have Braxton Hicks contractions, heartburn, stretchmarks and about how hard it is to sleep and so on. I have had none or minimal of those symptoms. No, I have not been symptom free, I too have things going on in my body, like I have this weird tightening in my throat at night sometimes that makes it more difficult to fall asleep and after the bump dropped in week 37 I got my first stretchmarks (all in the front around my belly button cause the baby seems to think that’s the way out). But I don’t need to read that first thing when I open an app to read of what can happen this specific week. I want to start with something positive like “congratulations, you made it to this week and we should celebrate whatever whatever..” and then read about the symptoms that can happen.
And now to something else again…
As I’m approaching due date, hubby and I will not respond to questions about if the baby is about to arrive, is here yet etc. If someone is messaging and we don’t answer the question, it does not mean that we are at the hospital, it simply means that we don’t want to answer:) We know that everyone are curious and excited for us, so are we, but we don’t need that kind of stress or pressure right now. The baby will arrive whenever she/he is ready and we will let everyone know then. Ok, bye:)