Pregnancy, take two

I’m currently about 27 weeks into my second pregnancy. It’s interesting how similar both my pregnancies have been so far. There hasn’t been a lot of difference between the two. Just a warning for the weak: this post talks about menstrual cycles and some of the joys of pregnancy that could gross you out. You know, if you’re male.

I had been taking birth control in pill form since 2001 because of irregular periods. They would be between 35 and 80 days long. It turns out putting you on birth control is the best modern medicine has figured out to regulate this. It does have the nice side effect of being able to have sex without worrying too much about getting pregnant. Because of the history of irregular periods I had thought it would be very difficult if not impossible to get pregnant. I had been let go from my job a few months before Sam and I got married, and therefore also lost my health insurance and, since I had Kaiser, also lost my doctor and pharmacy. We wanted to have kids so I figured I wouldn’t get pregnant in the few months before the wedding since it was going to be hard to get pregnant anyway, right? Wrong. Three months after taking the last birth control pill, less than a month before the wedding, and likely the first time we ever engaged in activity that could result in pregnancy without some kind of birth control, I got pregnant.

So most women have some kind of symptoms in the first month or so of pregnancy. I didn’t, other than the obvious one of not having a period. But that wasn’t unusual to me. After almost two months I decided to take a pregnancy test just in case. It was positive. Ever wondered why pregnancy tests come in packs of two? It’s because you often don’t believe the first one. Yep, the second one was also positive. I never did have any of the nausea type symptoms in the first trimester. Please don’t hate me, I had nothing to do with it. I only puked once the entire 9 months. In fact, the entire pregnancy was (for the most part) ridiculously easy. The only problem I really had was when the muscles in my abdomen called round muscles started stretching out at about 18 weeks. It felt like menstrual cramps but about five times worse. If you remember, I didn’t have health insurance. I ended up going to a county hospital emergency room because I was a bit worried. It was a touch embarrassing for the diagnosis to be: You’re pregnant, silly. However, something good did come out of it. I learned there is a low cost cash payment program for county residents. The prenatal care there turned out to be amazing, I’m currently going there for this pregnancy as well.

This pregnancy was pretty much the same story. We decided to start trying to have another kid and I stopped taking birth control. A few months later I was pregnant. So far, no puking. There have been differences, however. Last time all I wanted to eat was spicy food. I would chop up a whole serrano chile, seeds and all, into my morning eggs. For anyone unfamiliar, those are pretty spicy. My husband likes spicy food, usually more so than me, and there were a few times that I made things too spicy for him. This time, I really have no food cravings so far. This time I also don’t have the crippling fear that I won’t know what to do when the kid is born. I still wonder how I’m going to manage to take care of two at once. But the first pregnancy was easy and the kid is easy as well. This pregnancy so far as been pretty easy (more updates on that later) so I’m hoping that results in another easy baby.

But really, ten fingers and ten toes and all the other parts in the right place. That’s all I can really ask for. I’ll figure out the rest as I go along.