6 Things that surprised me about being pregnant

So it’s been 30 weeks, I thought I’d write a post about my pregnancy misconceptions. I’m a first time mum and my own mother isn’t around to tell me what to expect so it’s been an interesting experience to compare what my layperson expectations of pregnancy were to experiencing the real thing.

Banned Food & Drink list

Everyone knows you can’t drink alcohol or caffeine when you’re pregnant so that didn’t come as a great surprise. However, freshly squeezed juice that’s more than a couple of hours old? Large fishes? Soft cheeses? Beansprouts and other veg that have been stored in a plastic package where water may have condensed? These were all news to me. It didn’t cause too much bother to me though as I’m not a great cheese eater (thankfully mozzarella is ok which is pretty much the only cheese I like) and I don’t eat any of my friends from the sea. I’m just missing my daily cappuccino and the occasional mojito or glass of wine.

Aversions instead of cravings

Talking of food, I was expecting crazy cravings at 2am. Thankfully that didn’t happen. What I wasn’t expecting was for things I already loved to start making me feel ill and not want to eat them. Nutella and Coffee (decafe naturally), but why!? I had to shake up my whole breakfast routine.

16 Week scan results

Its common knowledge that you can have an Abortion up to 24 weeks (in the UK anyway). So I wasn’t expecting much ‘baby’ in the 16 week scan, actually a grey slush of a few blobby cells was what I was expecting. Amazing there she was, fully baby shaped, chilling with her little legs crossed and waving her arms about. Eek! It all became real in that moment. Actually, those scan photos (seemy previous post for the photo) were the best ones so far because since then she’s been in an uncooperative position for scan photos.

Anti-cat hormones

For the first month or so my little Leeloo would have nothing to do with me :( I’m pretty sure she still thinks I smell funny but she’s got used to it by now and lowers her standards enough to sit on me (when Daddy isn’t around of course).

Maternity trousers

I wasn’t a skinny girl before I got pregnant, not massively overweight either but large enough not to want to wear skinny jeans. My personal opinion on skinny jeans (and generally any trousers that taper thinly at the ankle) is that you end up looking like a large arse on a stick. Even a skinny pregnant girl is going to look like a python who ate too much at once. So why-o-why makers-of-maternity-clothes are skinny trousers all I can seem to find in the shops?? I'm in need to get some bigger clothes again and hope to have a more successful shopping trip this time (fingers crossed).

Morning Sickness

Well, where do I start with this one, this one topic was full of surprises.

• It's not just restricted to the morning! At first there was no actual sickness just horrendous nausea from about 3 in the afternoon onwards. I could hardly see straight and was terrified there would be a *keyboard incident* (but thankfully not).

• Brushing my teeth related. What the hey? When the sickness did finally kick in, it was in the mornings but only as a result of brushing my teeth. Very odd. I got myself a new electric toothbrush which helped a bit but not for long.

• A change in breakfast routine was required, I needed something in my stomach so I started having coco pops (something that might have made me ill at 6am previously anyway).

• Morning sickness gives you red freckles. I had to google this one! They go within a few days or so but it’s really strange. Something about the blood vessels in your face breaking – eewwww.

• It seems to go on forever, its supposed to stop around 14-16 weeks but mine went on for weeks after that. It was around week 23 or 24 that I worked out if I switched the coco pops to chocolate milk I’d be ok again. Phew! (and my blog site name was born).

So there you go, I'd be interested to hear what other mums-to-be found strange or unexpected so please comment below.