Oh pregnancy…it can be so exciting and traumatic at the same time. I was big on journaling throughout my whole childhood and into early adulthood but stopped right around the time I got married in 2016. I unfortunately have not gotten anything in writing in the past 8 years and I really wish I had done so throughout my pregnancies, miscarriages, and postpartum journeys.  That’s why I’ve decided to add various posts on A Hybrid Life to finally get these experiences written down!

As a side note, I was truly so clueless about the female reproductive system until my husband and I decided we were ready to conceive and how I wish I was taught at a much younger age. I missed out on such valuable information, information that is so critical for a woman to really understand herself. I’ve since become more intune with my body’s cycle and it is evident how my hormones affect my moods, my mental health, my energy, my appetite, my fertility, and almost every aspect of my life. I think all women and men should educate themselves on this topic so they can understand themselves and/or their partners at a much deeper level. It’s just mind boggling how little understanding there is of the female body but also I believe having this understanding can help us to be more compassionate with ourselves and the people around us. 

OK, back to the topic…here’s the timeline of my pregnancies:

1. First son was born July 2018
2. Second son was born August 2020
3. First pregnancy loss in the fall of 2021
4. Second pregnancy loss in the spring of 2022
5. Third son was born May 2023

Here I’ll talk about my first pregnancy and will write about my pregnancies that have gone to term in three separate posts. I’ve also finally written my experience with pregnancy loss so be sure to check it out in my post My Experience with Recurrent Pregnancy Loss.

My first pregnancy was uneventful for the most part. I had extreme nausea, vomiting, weakness and fatigue for the first 15 or so weeks but otherwise everything went smoothly. After the nausea abated, I was back to my super active self and started my daily prenatal yoga and exercises. I was in California at the time and was given Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL) 4 weeks before my due date and decided to spend most of that time in the swimming pool at a local gym. Lightning crotch and the constant urge to urinate made it difficult to walk more than a few steps and swimming was the only form of exercise I could tolerate toward the end of the pregnancy. It really felt so amazing to be in a pool! 

Two weeks into my leave, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, my water broke in the middle of my 70th lap in the pool and I could tell the warmth between my legs was not pool water (oops!!). Timing worked out perfectly as my husband had gone swimming with me. We went home to grab some stuff, went into the hospital, and 6 hours later my newborn son was thrown onto my chest (at least that’s what it felt like in the midst of all the craziness!). It was a quick labor and the pushing, which was the most exhausting, lasted about 2.5 hours. Thanks to a wonderful doula and my supportive husband – who also needed a lot of support from our doula – I managed to deliver our son without an epidural (though I did try the nitrous oxide and found it helpful only when I managed to use it correctly). For no reason other than wanting to feel the whole experience, I had decided I wanted to go as long as possible without needing any pain medication. I had challenged myself and got some satisfaction out of sticking with it and boy did I feel every bit of it!

Now I was done with the first two stages of labor (dilation then birth) but what I was really not prepared for was the third stage, the delivery of the placenta. The hard work was far from over and delivering the placenta, with my son in my arms, was not easy! I ended up having some difficulty delivering the placenta and had postpartum hemorrhaging as a result. I was given pitocin (a synthetic form of the hormone oxytocin) to manage the hemorrhage and the midwives and nurses pushed HARD on my stomach, over and over, to help move the placenta forward. It was overwhelmingly painful and I remember looking at my husband and saying “please please just make it stop” which fortunately it did when I finally managed to push out the placenta. We took one curious look at it and this overwhelming experience, like most things in life, became a thing of the past. 

It was a weird feeling to have my son in my arms. I was so detached from myself that I didn’t feel this immediate bond that I was told I would feel. Maybe it was the aftermath of the experience of labor and delivery. I mean, it’s such an intense experience and I almost became this other version of myself, a very raw version, that I had never known existed. I felt stunned and distracted and this feeling lasted the first few days or maybe weeks after delivery. I later understood that this bond is not immediate for all parents but in the moment I wondered if I was suffering from heartlessness! Thankfully I got to know my son (and myself) so much more over the first year and, for me, that connection grew deeper day by day. I didn’t develop this deep bond with my son on day one and, in retrospect, that was totally OK. 

Another thing I came to understand a few weeks after my son’s birth was that my relationship with my husband would never be the same. It took me some time to accept that this is also OK and that a lot of effort would need to be put in toward our relationship as we adjust to this massive change in our lives. I mean, relationships change over time regardless but the change was so drastic and sudden that I didn’t quite understand it at first. I was no longer just a wife to my husband but also a co-parent and we now shared an enormous responsibility. Of course it wouldn’t be easy! My husband and I have hit a lot of bumps since the start of our relationship but we’ve kept afloat thanks to our efforts to communicate, listen, compromise, and sympathize.