Can I ride a camel at 24 weeks?

Top 10 random and embarrassing Q&A about pregnancy

Dear friends and readers, before it directly affected me I never realised how little I knew about pregnancy, despite being a woman with a womb.

From the gestational age calculation to shared parental leave, from do’s and don’ts and old wives tales, I never knew there was a deep treasure chest somewhere buried under many years of patriarchy and man-body oriented health and medicine studies. This shouldn't be surprising. I've known for years that much of the knowledge in medicine is predominantly based on male studies. Read more about this here. Did you know, for example, that most heart attack symptoms are broadly based on what men experience, not what women generally do? Or that the reasoning why men were chosen for more health related studies over women, is that ‘females are a more “complicated” model organism than males’?

Either way, I guess with any other topic on this earth, the moment you realise it can affect you, you start to become intrigued. I became interested in understanding my body and the process that was about to take place inside me as best I could, while desperately trying to avoid generalised Google searches. Number 1 reason for this choice was to avoid getting stressed out or panicked about things I read online. Number 2 reason is because these days I trust the internet like I trust my Grandpas’s memory. Not very much.

So in the hope to make this useful and informative, I have decided to reveal my current top 10 Q&As about pregnancy. I must highlight I decided to do this against my better judgement, as some of them seem really silly questions now, but at the time I was truly clueless. I just hope you will find some of these useful or at the very least entertaining. Please spare any judgement, as I do enough of that by myself. No help needed there!

1 - Why is pregnancy 40 weeks long and not 36?

It is funny how we always hear 9 months as a pregnancy period. And really frigging confusing when you also hear that people have given birth at week 40. I know I’m not a genius in math, but even for me, the math wasn’t mathing. If most months are made up of 4 weeks, and I have been told that ‘to make a baby it takes 9 months in the belly’ that should be 36, but it is more often than not 40. What so these 9 months we always hear about, are actually 10? And why the hell would that be? I like 10, why didn't we just say 10 from the start? Or does that put some women off cause it sounds way longer than 9, a little bit similar to being put off by buying something for £10 but £9.99 is a bargain?

So here’s my simplified explanation of what I discovered. Your pregnancy length is calculated not based on your baby growing inside you, but based on your gestational age. Another way of putting this, it is based on how long your uterus hasn’t shed its lining (aka since your last period). So that means that week 1,2 and often 3 of pregnancy are actually baby free, or implantation weeks. Finally, I understood also why pregnant people don’t say I’m this many months pregnant, but often refer to it in weeks. I always just thought it was a bit of a pretentious way of saying it, but now I am fully guilty of it myself. Because you are ultimately having all of your midwife appointments and scans based off your gestational age, in WEEKS and not months. Month is too vague!

The other crazy thing I discovered is that it takes a while for the fertilised egg to implant into the uterus, it is not an immediate success! I always imagined this like a ‘POW’ moment where the sperm meets the egg and then they magically get stuck to the uterine wall, but no, it can take up to 12 days!! So for 12 days, I have imagined this as you have a floating conglomerate of 2 DNA inside of you, trekking down from your fallopian tubes, into the warmth and comfort of the uterus. Until then, your baby is not even an embryo, is just an infinitely tiny blob of matter. This process, sometimes, is also when some people experience ectopic pregnancies. Aka outside the uterus implantation. I have purposely decided to stay away from numbers and stats on this blog post as to prevent creating any further anxiety for people who are TTC (trying to conceive), but they do happen sometimes and it’s important to know, they are unfortunately dangerous and not viable pregnancies.

2 - Can my climbing falling impact the implantation process?

In my head, I was imagining the implantation process similar to handling a very fragile porcelain vase in a very busy shop. One little misstep, one inattentive stranger’s elbow push, and bam, everything shatters on the floor. In reality, the scale of the reproductive system vs the fertilised egg is way off what my imagination presented to me. The zygote (fancy name for fertilised egg) is roughly 0.2 mm or, for visual people, about a grain of sand, and it travels inside a space that is pretty big. The uterus itself is about the size of a fist before pregnancy, but also we need to remember that there are so many further layers of protection, like the fascia, muscles, fat and skin layers wrapping everything like bubble wrap. A little bum fall on the bouldering crash pad won’t do any harm at all, nether will jumping off from the top.

I was blessed with pure oblivion as I didn’t realise I was pregnant during implantation period and I took some pretty big falls whilst bouldering. From personal experience, I feel lucky to not have known. I think those first few weeks of pregnancy are still so random, I was glad I was able to have fun and enjoy myself without the added worry. The previous month, however, I thought I was pregnant and wondered about all of this, which is why I researched and asked my lovely climbing coach Jemma.

3 - How do I know if the pregnancy is viable?

Here’s the easiest answer and yet probably the hardest to hear. You don’t. Pregnancy test aside, which should be 99.9% accurate on positive tests, there is nothing else you can do but wait and start taking your supplements and vitamins. Unless you wanna pay loads for a private viability scan, you are sitting with yourself for 12 weeks, until your first public health funded scan. Sat wondering if you are going crazy or if you’re actually pregnant. For me in particular the doubts in my mind were high because I was absolutely fine. No morning sickness, very little nausea, just constantly fatigued. And I wasn’t really sure that was much different from when I feel exhausted from work or doing too much training. So the wait was weird… but it taught me to appreciate the process and relinquishing control over things I couldn’t do anything about.

4 - Will I have to be completely hairless down there for birth?

Okay yep, my silly brain was like, oh gosh, will my baby struggle to see the EXIT if I’m hairy? LoL LoL LoL I hope you are laughing as hard as I am now. I asked this to a dear friend in confidence but afterwards I felt so stupid I was thinking perhaps there are other silly people out there like me?

First off, baby doesn’t see a thing!! It’s not like they’re driving down a tunnel and all of sudden there are branches and leaves in the way and they have to sit there and report the roadblock to the council until it gets removed. Nope! They’re most likely going to have their eyes closed throughout their birthing experience, but also, the birthing canal will make a lot of space for them, enough to fit their tiny head and shoulders through (as well as the rest of the body).

5 - Can I ride a camel in my second trimester?

This will sound like a really silly one but actually it was founded on the basis that we were planning our final holiday as just the 2 of us, and considering Morocco, I really wanted to find out if I could go on those Camel days out in the desert. You know classic touristy shit I sometimes like to do! Well this is where I had the terrible idea of going on Reddit to check for previous posts and questions and the answers were savage! But to spare you from the drama, mainly it is not a great idea to ride animals that are at a height, as the fall risk is quite high up on the list of possible pregnancy complications. I settled for petting two young camels, aged 3 and 5. I also found out they live for about 20 years! So I guess not so young camels after all. They were surprisingly soft at the touch, and one of them has bright blue eyes, which I thought might be very inconvenient, considering they spend their day in the bright sun.

6 - Can I give water to my newborn baby?

No, No and No. Big time No. When babies are born their kidney function is still impaired. Water could dilute their blood too much and it would be bad news for the baby. It may also mean that they aren’t able to digest all of the nutrients from the milk, so even small amounts of water are a no. Despite it sounding super counterintuitive in my head, only milk will suffice for at least 6 months. That is alright, but I do fear for my poor boobs. They have been on vacation this whole time and soon they’re going to be squeezed and misused multiple times a day. We pray for the boobs. May you all pray for my boobs?

7 - Can I take my new born baby on a plane?

This may sound like an odd question, I definitely have higher priorities when it comes to going to places with my baby, however my whole family aside my brother still lives in Italy and so I am pretty sure we will be flying very soon with the baby. Some parents blogs like healthychildren.org say that it would be best to avoid flying until they are 2 to 3 months old. This, provided they are not born prematurely, which I am sure would change a lot of things you can and can’t do.

8 - What is a perineal massage?

When I first had my booking appointment with a midwife (unfortunately I have seen soo many midwives by now, I can’t remember anyone’s bloody name! ) I was silently handed a leaflet about perineal massage. I felt like I was handed a vital piece of information but secretively, like I wasn’t able to ask questions. A bit of an incognito spy message, if you will. So when I got home with my maternity pack and saw the leaflet I felt like I was in a DaVinci Code film, deciphering the details of the message, including self and assisted manoeuvres, as well as the exact location of the quest.

Again, it might just be me, but up until pregnancy, I didn't even know there was a bit of my body called perineum. I also thought for some dumb funded reason that only guys had a gooch so I was really surprised when I found out I had one too AAAND also that it can tear during child birth. OUCH! My poor, until-then-unknown perineum, was risking its life for the life of my baby.

A perineal massage is a manipulation of the lower end of your vulva, that should help make that area more receptive to stretching instead of tearing during a vaginal birth. Soz if you think this is too much info, but we really gotta check ourselves before we wreck ourselves (I am certain Ice Cube wasn’t talking about vaginal health when he wrote this song, but ya gal likes the memo). So you’re essentially inserting your thumbs in there and applying downwards and sideways pressure, preferably with an oil or lubricant of some kind (no spicy oils recommended!!!!)

I will spare you the details on how it feels, and instead, let you decide for yourself if you ever decide to do it!

9 - Why are my nipples so dark?

According to some popular belief, the darkening of the nipples are supposed to help your baby find the food source easily. Most likely though, it is just due to a change in your hormone levels, which also affect your melanin. The pigment in the skin that makes you go darker in the sun. This is also the reason why some mums get a very distinctive darker line on their belly, above the belly button, called linea nigra (black line in Latin).

10 - What do I do if I need a poop and I’m alone with my baby?

Well, I guess for this one, I will find out. But I am truly intrigued to see what sort of magical tricks or aces up my sleeve I will have after Leon goes back to work, in order to have a nice peaceful poop. Perhaps none, for at least 3 years. Perhaps I will manage to find a way. Judging by the number of mothers who are still alive and well, I think I have a pretty high percentage of survival, and certainly a high probability of finding ways to have uninterrupted regular bowel movements.

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Here we are, my friends and readers! Some random, embracing and silly questions have been answered for you. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you are thinking of offering unsolicited advice about how to become a good mum, please don’t. It is a journey I am excited to figure out by myself and with the help of my close friends and loved ones.

I should mention that many of the simpler, less embarrassing questions I've had throughout this pregnancy have been answered by my pregnancy app. I don’t look at it every day, I try not to be obsessive with it, but it has been a nice way to learn about my body changes and symptoms that otherwise I would have been left wondering with. I personally use Flo App. I have linked a Substack post about it just below so you can go and have a read! This is by no means a sponsored post, just a personal recommendation!

If you would like to support this Life with Fran Blog consider subscribing! At the cost of a coffee a month, you will give me the illusion I will be able, one day, to do this full time! And you will get the occasional private post. (Next one coming is about my long hate and love relationship with my body and how pregnancy is changing this).

Thanks for reading as always,

Fran