No Pain, No Gain

My sister first told me this when I was getting ready to go into high school I think. If I remember right, I was doing some "beauty" thing, popping a zit or plucking my eyebrows for the first time, or something else that hurt, and I wanted to give up and she looked at me and said "no pain, no gain my sister". How true her words were, and still are, to everything related in life. Pregnancy included.

The first trimester can be painful, especially if you are sick. You are tired, feel like you are going to throw up all the time, if you aren't already, and can have cramps on top of it all. Food tastes like crap, you are constipated, and that glow that you are supposed to have? Well, lets just say the only glow I had was a tint of green.

Everyone says the second trimester is so much better. Maybe it is because you normally don't feel so sick anymore, but it brings with it it's own pains. Round ligament pain ring a bell? Feeling like your ovaries are being ripped apart, along with your growing uterus? Pressure on your bladder, or stomach, or other organs? Being hungry, but not able to eat because you have no room, causing either hunger pains if you don't eat, or pains of being full because you did eat and there is no place for your food to go? Sound a little painful? There is also the pains you get in your lower back, the cramping that never seems to go away, the kicks and jabs in your ribs and crotch. All of these things are pretty painful if you ask me. You can also be lucky like me and your baby sits on your nerves and you limp around in horrible pain (thanks Pumpkin) for months, having to actually go to physical therapy in hope of relief... that you don't get. Or you can loose circulation and get to wear the ever so sexy compression socks to help regulate your blood like your grandmother does. But don't worry, its just the second trimester. Next, you get to enter the third trimester.

The funnest of them all because time drags painfully on as you await your little one. You also can't sleep without 50 pillows around you, under you, and in between your legs. Laying down hurts, so you try to walking around. No luck. Your lower back hurts so bad, you feel like its going to snap at any moment. As your bundle of joy moves into position, your crotch breaks into two. Not literally, but it really does feel like it. I remember "walking" through the store right before Pumpkin was born, and I thought I was going to faint from the pain. It scared me too. I called Dr K because I really thought my crotch bone was breaking. She informed me that this was normal, and its actually 2 bones held together by cartilage, and that feeling I was having was the cartilage separating to help open up the birth canal for the baby to be able to come out. Oh, ok, so much better. But still painful.

You will survive all 3 trimesters though, and then you get to give birth! The contractions rock your world. Think menstrual cramps x168165191163874931561. They get you from the front, and the back. And just when you think you are going to get a break from one, another starts. It sucks, I'm not going to lie. Everyone's labor is different, so I am just talking from my experience with Pumpkin. The contractions are followed by pushing. They say pushing a baby out is equivalent to a man trying to pee out an orange. No big deal right? Remind your SO of that when you are trying to give birth and they seem to think its no big deal. Then I got an episiotomy, and tore the rest of the way anyways. Pumpkin's shoulder caught my tailbone on his way out and cracked it. I think that was the worst part (after the rest I should say). I couldn't sit for weeks. And then there is breastfeeding.

I was under A LOT of stress after Pumpkin was born. I mentioned a little about it here. I think because of all this stress, I was never able to get a supply in. I tried to breastfeed though. My nipples cracked and bleed and they hurt constantly. Oh so, so painful. But with PPD, a really mean nurse telling me I was starving my baby but yet didn't help me at all, and the stress of everything else, I couldn't do it, and that was emotionally painful.

I am not trying to scare you, or discourage you, honestly! Obviously the pain is all worth it if I have tried so hard to put myself back into the same situation! And, despite all these "pains", you do get the greatest gain of all. Your baby. And there isn't a pain in the world that isn't worth holding your child for the first time or the love that you feel towards them.

Right after Pumpkin was born with my sister who told me those ever so true words

What pains are you scared most about? Or what pains do you think are the worst?