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The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy
by Vicki Iovine
Ratings:
288 pages5 hours
Summary
The practical, comforting, honest, and hilarious bestseller for moms-to-be, with more than one and a half million copies in print!
Your doctor gives you medical advice. Your mother buys you baby clothes. But who can give you the real skinny when you’re pregnant?
Your girlfriends, of course—at least, the ones who’ve been through the exhilaration and exhaustion, the agony and ecstasy of pregnancy. Four-time delivery room veteran Vicki Iovine talks to you the way only a best friend can—in the book that will go the whole nine months for every mother-to-be. In this revised and updated edition, get the lowdown on all those little things that are too strange or embarrassing to ask, practical tips, and hilarious takes on everything pregnant.
What really happens to your body—from morning sickness and gas to eating everything in sight—and what it’s like to go from being a babe to having one.
The Many Moods of Pregnancy—why you’re so irritable/distracted/tired/lightheaded (or at least more than usual).
Staying Stylish—You may be pregnant, but you can still be the fashionista you’ve always been (or at least you don’t have to look like a walking beachball)—wearing the hippest designers and proudly showing off your bump.
Pregnancy is Down To a Science—from in vitro fertilization to scheduled c-sections, there are so many options, alternatives, and scientific tests to take that being pregnant can be downright confusing!
And much more! For a reassuring voice or just a few good belly laughs, turn to this straight-talking guide on what to really expect when you’re expecting.
Publisher: Pocket BooksReleased: Jan 9, 2007ISBN: 9781416551874Format: book
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The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy - Vicki Iovine
1
So, What Makes You
Think You’re Pregnant?
QUITE OFTEN NATURE provides us with physical clues that might make us suspect we are pregnant, even before modern science confirms it. Usually when you find out that you are, indeed, pregnant, you say to yourself with a sudden awakening, "Oh, so that’s why my… (Fill in the symptom:
boobs hurt;
bladder fails;
partner drives me crazy.") Especially in retrospect, you will see that there are usually abundant physical changes to inform you in no uncertain terms that you are pregnant. That is why I am always cynical when I read those stories about unsuspecting women giving birth to babies in airplane bathrooms after nine months of not knowing they were pregnant. Come on now! Most eight-month-old fetuses kick and tumble so fiercely that you can watch your abdomen go from round to nearly square. And what about that inevitable weight gain? Who are these women trying to kid? Either they are trying for the Immaculate Conception excuse or they are just not really paying enough attention to themselves. There are plenty of other changes that, when put together, might lead you to suspect that you are pregnant long before you confirm it with a pregnancy test. What follows is a list of the common early-warning signs.
Breasts
One of the most common changes in the pregnant woman’s body is in her breasts. The newly pregnant woman often gets the same puffy breasts that she gets premenstrually, but the consensus among the Girlfriends is that these breasts are a lot more sensitive. In fact, taking a shower can be agonizing if you face the stream of water, sleeping on your stomach becomes unbearable, and if your partner should happen to touch your breasts, you will feel completely justified in hitting him with the bedside lamp. Not only are they sensitive and sore, but they are getting bigger and bigger every day. The good news, especially for those of us who have always secretly longed to be big, busty gals, is that they will continue to grow, and they will eventually stop hurting. In a month or so, you and your guy will have a nice new set of playthings.
Peeing
Another symptom that the Girlfriends found in early pregnancy was the need to urinate a lot. You may find yourself getting up two or three (or more) times a night to pee, when you used to sleep all night long without even hearing a peep from your bladder. Since fatigue is often another early sign of pregnancy, you will probably learn to loathe all of these interruptions of your precious slumber. Some old folk wisdom says that all this getting up and down all night to pee is nature’s way of preparing you for early motherhood, when the up-and-down drill is much the same. I happen to think that this folk wisdom is incorrect, because you will start being able to sleep again later in your pregnancy, and everyone knows a pregnant woman cannot be expected to remember something that she learned six months earlier. Heck, she probably can’t remember what happened yesterday.
All these nighttime trips can indeed be annoying, but it’s usually not as bad as it sounds because almost all of us Girlfriends discovered that we could get out of bed, walk to the bathroom, pee, wipe, walk back to bed, and crawl in, all without opening our eyes one single time. Some of us could even take a drink of water without looking. I, however, was almost always hungry at night, and I frequently ended up in the kitchen after one of my nocturnal pees. If the trip downstairs hadn’t awakened me, the refrigerator light was sure to.
Exhaustion
The tiredness of a newly pregnant woman is like a heaviness or being on nighttime cold medication permanently. My Girlfriend Becky, who sells real estate, was so tired that she fell asleep in the car every single time she went to houses of prospective clients. Fortunately for Becky, she had a partner who did most of the driving. The newly pregnant woman may find herself at work unable to think of anything but lying down. My Girlfriend Rosemary used to lock her office door and nap on her sofa for a few minutes every day. Those of us who are fortunate enough to actually take a nap, sleep like the dead, waking up with blanket creases on our faces, red cheeks, and bedhead hair—and usually little more refreshed than we were before. Forget about settling in for a cozy night of watching TiVo’d shows with your honey. You will be snoring before it’s time to fast-forward through a commercial. This fatigue can also lead to an inability to stay awake long enough to have sex. Please hand this book to your partner right now.
ATTENTION, PARTNERS OF NEWLY PREGNANT WOMEN:
DO NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY WHEN YOUR MOMMY-TO-BE WOULD RATHER SLEEP THAN SLEEP WITH YOU! SHE REALLY CANNOT HELP IT, AND IT IS ABSOLUTELY NO REFLECTION ON YOUR UNDENIABLE ATTRACTIVENESS OR HOW MUCH SHE LOVES YOU. TRY AGAIN TOMORROW MORNING AFTER SHE HAS HAD SOME REST. (UNLESS, OF COURSE, SHE HAS MORNING SICKNESS, TOO, IN WHICH CASE, TRY THE INTERNET—JUST KIDDING!)
Crampiness
Phantom menstrual cramps can be another sign of pregnancy. Many Girlfriends have never been more certain that their periods were going to start than when they were pregnant. Pregnancy and serious PMS (which is always serious) have several similarities, such as lower-back pressure and that slightly crampy feeling you get right before your period starts. Since I was always paralyzed with the fear that I might miscarry (which, by the way, I never did), I really hated the feeling that my period might start at any minute. I can’t count the number of times I felt a little trickle and dropped everything to fly to the bathroom to see if my period had begun. As you will soon learn, in pregnancy a lot of trickling is going on, as your body goes into overdrive in the vaginal-secretion department.
With all four of my children, I did experience some bleeding early in the pregnancies, and while this is not particularly common, it may happen to you. A general rule of thumb is that if the blood is brownish with no clots and doesn’t fill more than one or two sanitary pads, everything is probably all right. If the bleeding is bright red or has clots in it, call your doctor right away. And if there is cramping with the bleeding, call your doctor immediately and ask whether she wants to meet you at her office or the nearest hospital.
Believe me, I know how hysterical you can feel if you are pregnant and you find blood in your underwear, but if it makes you feel any better, all four times my bleeding was bright red (but without cramps), and my doctor just had me rest with my feet up for a couple of days until it went away. My pregnancies were just fine after that. It is perfectly natural to call your doctor for reassurance, but it’s not always a call for alarm.
Dizziness
Quite a few of my Girlfriends said that they were light-headed early in their pregnancies. Getting out of bed too quickly could give them tunnel vision and make them see stars. Bending over to tie their shoes could result in their having to lie on the floor until the blood returned to their head. A word of caution here: A significant number of women have gotten pregnant after too much to drink, and sometimes pregnancy and a hangover are hard to tell apart. The general rule should be that a hangover that lasts for more than a couple of days could be pregnancy, and it might be a good idea to give up the partying until you know for certain. Even if you aren’t pregnant, if you have hangovers that last more than a couple of days, it is probably a good idea for you to give up partying anyway. If you are light-headed, it is usually nothing to worry about, but you could pass out and bonk your head on something, so move slowly and let your blood pressure adjust at its new, slower pace.
Nausea
Nausea is the Waterloo for many newly pregnant women, and it can strike at any point in the pregnancy, usually at the two-month point. They either will find themselves eating everything in sight in a desperate attempt to make the queasiness go away, or they will gag at the mere thought of certain foods. You would think that a nauseous woman is a woman who cannot eat a crumb. Not true. Many of my pregnant Girlfriends experienced starving and vomiting almost simultaneously. Pregnancy can create a gnawing uneasiness in the tummy that is most easily compared to seasickness, and, as with seasickness, food is the only thing that can settle your stomach. The catch is that not all food is friendly food. The challenge is in finding just the right foods to soothe the nausea—because you will be amazed at how many of the old favorites, such as cheese, fish, broccoli, or chicken, now make your stomach lurch uncontrollably when you imagine eating them.
Some of my more unfortunate Girlfriends have had such extreme nausea that they would gag right in the middle of a sentence. My poor Girlfriend Maryann was so plagued by morning sickness that she would throw up spontaneously. There would be no warning signs, such as a wave of nausea or a watering of the mouth. One moment she would be chatting normally, and the next minute it was the pea-soup scene from The Exorcist. She just sat as quietly as possible with her mouth clenched tightly to try to keep the mess to a minimum. Occasionally, a pregnant woman suffers so much from vomiting, a condition called hyperemesis, that she is hospitalized to keep her hydrated and as comfortable as possible. This unfortunate pregnancy side effect
isn’t usually threatening to the baby, but it can send the mommy right around the bend. As the saying goes, This, too, shall pass.
Then again, many other Girlfriends have never experienced a gurgle of nausea. This diversity is just another example of how nature gets a kick out of keeping us guessing and never letting us completely relax.
There is really no rhyme or reason in this area of food preferences and sensitivities. You might be like my Girlfriend Sondra, who, when she was pregnant, craved anything spicy. She would start her days with Mexican food drowning in salsa. By lunchtime she was begging her friends to go to sushi bars with her so that she could nibble on the wasabi, even if she couldn’t eat the raw fish. (Little microbes might be transmitted from sushi into your intestines, Girlfriends, or your doctor may worry about too much mercury collecting in your body. Just ask your trusted professional for her appraisal of the risk.) Or you might be like my Girlfriend Shannon, who craved comfort
foods such as mashed potatoes, cereals, and white toast. My Girlfriend Corki got on a fruit kick and lived for strawberries and nectarines, with a little chocolate thrown in every now and then for variety.
Obviously, the goal is to eat some foods from the five major food groups, if not at every meal, then at least once a day. DO NOT PANIC, HOWEVER, IF YOU FAIL TO EAT TEXTBOOK BALANCED MEALS EVERY DAY DURING YOUR FIRST COUPLE OF MONTHS OF PREGNANCY. At least one recent study indicated that food aversions are actually nature’s way of protecting you from certain risky foods. So, if you would rather lick dirt than eat broccoli, maybe your body just isn’t ready to process that particularly aggressive food. No matter how vehement those other pregnancy books are about your needing eight ounces of protein, four glasses of milk, and a bushel of green, leafy vegetables every day, just do the best you can and KEEP TALKING TO YOUR DOCTOR. He or she may prescribe vitamin supplements to help carry you through the nauseous period and into the second trimester, when you will be thrilled to eat nearly anything that is placed before you. You may find that a calcium pill is as effective as the glass of milk that makes your eyes water and your throat close down. The bottom line this early in your suspected pregnancy is this: If you feel green
and you haven’t got a temperature, it’s time for a pregnancy test.
Note: If you crave nonfood items, such as the above-mentioned dirt or paint chips (and some pregnant women do), avoid the urge and call your doctor TODAY.
Sensitivity to Odors
For a lot of women, including myself, the first sign that they are pregnant is that the world begins to smell strange. Common aromas seem to get more powerful or cloying. My Girlfriend Mindy developed such an aversion to the smell of dairy products when she was pregnant that she couldn’t walk into a grocery store or a delicatessen for fear of smelling the cheese and throwing up in the aisle. One morning she saw me pouring cream into my coffee and started making noises like a cat trying to get up a hair ball. Continuing with this cat theme, my Girlfriend Lynn had to beg her husband to take over the feeding of their cat because the first whiff of the Seafood Surprise when the can was opened sent her streaking for the sink.
By the way, if you do have a cat, and you are indeed pregnant, it is time to give another member of the household the job of changing the cat litter. Ask your doctor for details, but cat poopoo can give some virus to pregnant women, so steer clear of it (as if I have to twist your arm, right?).
During my first pregnancy, I was so certain that my bed pillows and comforter were mildewed that I wrapped them in plastic garbage bags and disposed of them. I immediately (and irrationally, according to my husband) replaced the pillows and comforter with brand-new ones, only to discover when I crawled into bed that night that they smelled exactly the same!
Insanity
Another indication that you might be pregnant can be the feeling that you are losing your mind, or at least some vague control of your emotions. You may feel as though you have a monster case of PMS. This is not something I am proud to share with you, but as your Girlfriend, I will: Two different times, the first doctors to suggest to me that I might be pregnant were not gynecologists, but psychiatrists. One time, my husband calmly put me in the car and drove me to his therapist right after I tried to knock his head off by throwing a book across the room. (Believe me when I say this behavior was not only uncharacteristic of me, it was absolutely unacceptable to him.) Another time, after I tried to steer the car while my husband was driving (because he wasn’t taking the route I had so generously suggested), I ended up on a therapist’s couch sobbing that I feared I was going through early menopause because I just didn’t feel like myself and my periods had stopped. That menopause turned out to be my baby Jessica, a possibility that I had not even considered.
Even if you are not prone to violent outbursts, you may experience the hormonal irrationality of pregnancy in the form of weepiness or utter lack of humor. My Girlfriend Amy, who is normally the sweetest of Southern belles, was so cranky when she was pregnant that she actually became funny. The contrast between her usual tiny-blond demeanor and her general pissed-off state during pregnancy was so dramatic that it was comical, not unlike a toddler swearing.
One of the most important things to consider during this time of emotional whiplash (aside from putting off the cleaning of any handguns) is the probability that you will be completely unaware of your strange behavior. If your partner or friends dare to suggest to you that maybe you aren’t yourself these days, you will certainly feel attacked and unfairly judged (and you will begin formulating plans to have them poisoned). As convinced as you may be of your rationality and of everyone else’s irrationality, you really are not normal, and you should just accept it and allow for it. In other words, this is not the time to file for divorce, change your job, buy a house, or, most important, cut your hair.
No Period
You might think that not getting your period is a pretty reliable indication that a bun is in your oven, but that was never my first clue. Sure, millions of women have regular twenty-eight-day cycles and know exactly when to expect their period, right down to whether it will be before breakfast or after dinner. I, however, am all over the place. Not only am I irregular, I am usually too distracted by the business of living to have even a vague notion of when my friend
(don’t you just hate that term?) is coming. I have a hard enough time remembering to fill my car with gas, and it comes equipped with a gauge.
The fun part about this absentmindedness is that it can keep your life full of surprises; one day you wake up expecting the same old routine, and instead you discover you are going to have a baby! The troublesome part of this absentmindedness is that when you do confirm that you are pregnant, your doctor will invariably ask you for the date of your last period, and you will have to either lie (as I have always done) or give some lame answer like "It was the day after they announced the winner on American Idol."
My Girlfriend Mindy had missed two periods before she began to suspect that she might be pregnant. I think that she, like a lot of us, was not particularly upset about missing two weeks of tampons and cramps, so she accepted her lack of periods at face value: A gift from God. One thing, though, that I have learned from experience is that it is helpful to have a vague familiarity with your cycle, because the new home-pregnancy tests are so sensitive that you can often know if you are pregnant as early as nine or ten days after the deed. And since it only makes sense that you would want to protect your pregnancy from the earliest possible moment, a positive test result could inspire you to stop smoking or drinking or taking Prozac (with medical supervision, of course) immediately.
Intuition
We women are supposedly famous for it, and while it has never happened to me, I have a number of reliable Girlfriends who have never previously claimed to have supernatural powers but who swear they knew they were pregnant the instant it happened. They felt something come over them, like a shudder or an instant awareness that this particular roll in the hay wasn’t like all the rest; something momentous had occurred. Scientist (or cynic) that I am, I have asked these women if they have ever felt that mystical sensation and not been pregnant and just never mentioned it to anyone. Or if perhaps the event wasn’t heightened by their knowing that they were having sex on day fourteen of their twenty-eight-day cycle and they weren’t using birth control. (You don’t have to be a member of the Psychic Network to know that one out of the five times that you get a sperm to an egg, you make a baby.) But, no, these Girlfriends insist that they felt different physically and psychically from that climax onward. And you know what? I believe them, even if I don’t understand or relate to any of it.
If you are feeling any of these symptoms, alone or in groups, and if you don’t yet know for certain whether you are pregnant, then what in the world are you reading this book for? No, I’m just kidding. You must have a pretty good hunch that a baby is in your future, so you’d best get in touch with a good obstetrician and start taking special care of your baby and yourself right now.
2
Sharing the
Wonderful News
SINCE THE BEGINNING of time, any woman who has gotten pregnant by a man who has a job and is not married to someone else has been congratulated and showered with best wishes. (One would hope that she gets showered with more than just wishes, and I will address a good partner’s and a best friend’s responsibilities in this area later.) The news that you are pregnant is BIG, each and every time it happens. You know this already by the way you feel when your doctor, nurse practitioner, or any stranger in a white coat comes out of the little lab room with a big smile on his or her face.
The general rule is, if this is your first pregnancy, you will tell your baby daddy the glorious news before you tell anyone else (unless you live in Pine Valley and you are awaiting the DNA reports determining paternity). If this is your second or third baby, however, you will inform everyone on your email list by PDA and text-message the rest. And if this is your fourth or subsequent pregnancy, well, judging by my own experience, it doesn’t even pay to mention it until someone asks.
If women and men were really emotional equals, then all prospective fathers would be with the potential mothers, waiting anxiously in the doctor’s office for this momentous news. There they would sit with you, flipping through old copies of Fit Pregnancy or studying the manuals on the human papilloma virus. If this is your first pregnancy, there is a chance that your partner will indeed be there with you to see the nurse and her smile. But if he’s not, remember, perfectly good partners, including my own, are not always with their beloveds when they learn they are pregnant. They can still grow up to be wonderful and attentive fathers. Keep this bit of advice in mind: One good kind of daddy is a daddy with a job, and a daddy-to-be with a job might not be able to get away for an afternoon of sitting in the gynecologist’s office. Be pragmatic; a busy man does not automatically equal a bad father. Besides, three home pregnancy tests that came up undeniably positive may be as much excitement as he can take in a week.
Your Obstetrician
At the risk of repeating myself, let me assure you that home pregnancy tests—yes, the standard sticks you pee on and wait for a sign in the little window, or a colored tip to appear, or a stork to fly in your chimney—are virtually always correct if the result is positive. In spite of this, most first-timers do not consider themselves officially pregnant until their doctor tells them so. This is why we call to make an appointment for an office test ASAP! Even if you strongly suspect that you are indeed pregnant, the shock of hearing this news from a medical professional can be so stunning that even the most capable and stouthearted of us become weak and quite grateful that someone familiar with CPR is in the room with us.
Your first response will be the slightly inane question Are you SURE?
And without a doubt, your next question will be When is it due?
Few things are more exciting than watching your doctor or practitioner pull out one of those little cardboard wheels with the numbers to compute your baby’s expected arrival. No matter how often your Girlfriends advise you not to rely on it too much, you will embrace that date firmly and plan your entire life around it. And when that due date comes and goes with no baby in sight, as it frequently does with women expecting their first babies, you will become a directionless person without the slightest clue how to pass the time until you feel your first labor pain.
By the time I was pregnant with my third and fourth babies, I had boxes of those home pregnancy tests in my medicine cabinet. I routinely took them whenever I was overtired, bloated, burpy, or just bored. What the heck; I’d already spent the money, just in case, and they were a cinch to use as long as I was careful not to pee on my hand. When I finally got a positive result, I was repeatedly so stunned that I immediately reached for another kit to confirm. Here was one of the few times that a pregnant woman’s constant need to urinate came in handy. If the results were unanimous, I’d make a note to call my doctor to let him know that I was pregnant again and arrange to drop by for a visit in a week or two for some information, such as whether there was a heartbeat (they can often see a little flashing beat as early as six weeks with ultrasound) and whether it was time to start applying to preschools, again.
If your mate is in the doctor’s office with you when you are given the glorious news, the two of you can rejoice together and cry and bury your heads in each other’s shoulder, just as those couples do on the TV commercials for home pregnancy tests or fertility clinics. If your partner can’t be there with you, you can spend the next couple of minutes being patted and congratulated by the doctor’s staff and figuring out the best way to tell your guy that he is going to be a daddy.
Telling Daddy
Some of my Girlfriends are quite sentimental about how they share this delicious information. Candlelit meals with romantic music in the background are popular in my crowd, as are clever emails, teddy bears waiting at the front door, or going for a walk together as soon as you both get home. But if my husband were to come home to a setup like that, he would think I had joined a cult and given all our money to the swami. He would be so relieved to hear I was only having a baby that my announcement would be anticlimactic.
Having watched far more TV than was good for me, I always imagined telling my husband as we walked hand in hand along the beach at sunset. I would turn to him and he would embrace me and we would look out to sea as we dreamed of our child’s future. Perhaps he would even sing Soliloquy
from Carousel, I don’t know. Anyway, it never happened. What did happen was usually something like this: I would call him from the doctor’s office and hysterically scream at his assistant, What do you mean, can you take a message? You just tell him to get out of that damn meeting and talk to me right now, because I’m PREGNANT!
Progesterone and I don’t get along very well.
I did try the romantic-dinner approach when I learned I was pregnant for the fourth time in six years, and he’d never expressed a desire to have another child after our first was born, and I was desperate, and this is what I learned: When you are telling your partner that he is going to be a father and you are looking directly into his eyes, it is almost impossible not to start crying before you even get the first word out. No matter how many times it has happened to you or how comfortable you may be about your new condition, the first couple of times that you say the words I am going to have a baby,
you can hardly form the words because of how much your chin quivers. Maybe it was my terror that he’d pack up and leave me alone with three babies and another on the way, and two dogs and a pregnant feral cat hiding behind the water heater in the garage that viciously scratched any toddler or gardener or mommy who tried to pull her out. Or maybe it was my mushiness over all things having to do with romance and babies (it was years later that I learned those two things are mutually exclusive, at least for about five years, but I’m digressing here). But I nearly choked to death before I could get beyond Honey, guess what?
My poor husband imagined all sorts of disasters, such as the dog died or I lost his baseball jacket, before I finally spit out the words We’re gonna have another baby.
And when I finally did, his expression seemed to say, You’re not going to play the baby card again, are you?
As a matter of fact, this last time I distinctly remember him going on to say, How could you do this to me?
I mumbled something to the effect that my elementary understanding of biology indicated that this was something he had done to me, but this really wasn’t the time to quibble. In fact, now that I think about it, it might have been the time to take all the sharp flatware and heavy glasses off the table between us. Before I dissolved into a puddle of hurt feelings, I recalled that my Girlfriend Mindy’s husband had said something equally enthusiastic to her when she had gotten pregnant six years before. I believe his exact response was I’m sorry, but I’m just not ready.
As a matter of fact, he wasn’t certain if he was ready for most of her pregnancy and was reading old issues of Road & Track while she was in labor for forty hours. But the minute their baby girl took her first breath, he became her devoted slave. A father couldn’t love his baby more.
Keep daddies like these in mind, because they both started out slowly and then became candidates for Father of the Decade. It isn’t necessarily wise to take a mate’s first response much to heart. Sure, these days, guys are theoretically more evolved and more in touch with their nurturing side, but even the guys who claim to feel their biological clocks ticking louder than yours, or who mention in a moment of intimacy that they wish they could nurse a child, too, can turn into thick foreheads when told they have to parent something. In my case, when my loving husband seemed to want to backstroke his way out of daddyhood before it was too late, I chose to keep his lack of enthusiasm filed away for future infliction of guilt. For example, when our youngest baby does something that is so cute and loving that it brings tears to my husband’s eyes, I have been known to toss out, "And that is the child you didn’t want!" Then I run out of the room as fast as I can.
When either parent-to-be asks the Are you SURE?
question, what they are really saying is What happens if I change my mind?
Be honest—you must have asked the same thing of yourself at least once. If you didn’t, I assure you, you will, either when your head is in the toilet and you are dry-heaving, or nine (ten) months from now after hours of pushing. (A lot of parents of teenagers report asking themselves the same question fifteen years after delivery.) So give the guy
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