I just peed myself

and the many more weird and wonderful side effects of pregnancy

Dec 08, 2024

Dear friends and readers, (doesn’t this sound a bit like the opening of Lady Whistledown from Bridgeton?)

Let me start my acknowledging that I have been - so far - incredibly lucky with my pregnancy symptoms. I also want to reiterate the fact that this is a personal blog, and therefore contains stories based on personal experience, not on evidence or statics. What you may read in this Substack is intended to make you laugh, reflect and hopefully learn something, however it is probably only the very teeny tiny tip of the iceberg of what it is being pregnant, what symptoms and side effects you may experience etc.. This is to say: take my blog with a pinch of salt! No one person is going to have the same experience.

So here we go, my attempt at pregnancy storytelling follows:

I wake up in the morning (did your brain go ‘feeling like P-Diddy?) with the most ferocious anger I have ever had. I never liked breakfast before. It always seemed to me a slightly inconvenient time a day for people to put effort into what they were feeding themselves. The prospect of sleeping a little longer has always sounded much more appealing. Before this baby, I managed to mitigate the staying in bed for longer and the need to feed my brain and body for the day ahead with some overnight oats, but for some completely arbitrary reason, my body is having a full strike against peanut butter, oats, yogurt and the like. Not to mention how disgusted I have felt about eating eggs. I love eggs. They were my one and done breakfast for years. And the funniest of thing is that no rational thinking is involved at all. There is not a single percent of my brain that would think about it, for the last 3 months and a bit, it has always been dictated by my gut feeling. Just now, I am starting to think about eggs as the old timer friendly pal that I can perhaps consider having in my life again, but before this I would have probably gotten close to gagging away at anyone cooking or serving me eggs.

The well-known cravings everybody is interested about, haven’t been as evident for me, at least for now. The closest I got to a craving was experiencing the most random burst of joy thinking about Loaded Nachos. Oh yes, of course I have ordered them. But it hasn’t been a fixation, I just wanted them twice, ordered them once, asked Leon to make me some another time. It was incredibly delicious. Mamas and mamas to be out there, if your partner is a good cook, I personally think you are going to love this phase of the relationship. I see Leon not only as my partner now, but as a deity that can enhance my feel-good emotions through the medium of food. Everyday I await impatiently for his ‘what would you like for dinner’ question, like kids do with their advent calendar. That time of the day is the only time a day that matters. Alongside going to sleep. But we will get to that later.

Aside my obsession for awesomely cooked food, I’ve noticed this baby is turning me into somewhat of a gourmet critique. Whenever I used to cook for myself I never really learnt the art of putting details or different flavours on my plate. If I was hungry, I would just grab a piece of bread, slap a slice of cheddar in it and bite it away happily cause my basic hunger need was satisfied. Now, however, I find myself coming up with much more intricate or delicate recipes to make for us, like kimchee, pastrami and cheese bagel for breakfast (lol how bougie) or beef stock ramen soup with fresh basil and mushrooms for lunch. Where I used to boil some pasta, plop the pesto from the glass jar straight in and eat, I now make a little onion soffritto, add some tuna and cherry tomatoes, and then heat up the sauce before I let it simmer with the pasta. I love that for me. I always thought I will never appreciate fully the cooking aspect of eating and now I am starting to see how fulfilling it can be.

The rest of my life has stayed pretty much the same, doing the same stuff as before. Only now with the constant feeling of being on a boat, and with the conscious effort of not falling or letting things hit my precious life-growing belly. What do you mean being on a boat? Well, I mean the sort of internal feeling that your stomach is not quite having the time of its life, but often it is just a question of having to release some trapped air through burps or farts and then everything quiets down again. But multiply that by all of the hours that I am awake. Which is really confusing because it’s same feeling you get when you’re really hungry and you haven’t eaten anything and your stomach starts to churn and make loud noises. Sometimes you feel better by eating and sometimes you feel worse. I call it the Gastric Russian Roulette, you’ll never know what happens next, you just know you can’t escape it.

My energy levels have been impacted the most. As a former burnt out self-employed gal, I have known serious fatigue before. So it is not necessarily that I have never known how this would feel, but more so that I can’t do anything to help it. I accept that if my body says ‘you’re staying in bed today’, I stay in bed no questions asked. There is that sort of blind acceptance that I never had before, that my body is busy creating a whole new life inside me, and therefore it’s okay for me to work from bed. Kinda. It’s uncomfortable and not ideal, but it is what the body commands. And my mind, that usually guilt-trips me into thinking I am not enough or that something is wrong with me, is very complacent. No fuss or tantrum thrown, just a pure a simple acceptance that in this era, the name of the game is feeling good, and not doing more. Another reason and quirky fact you might like to hear, is that I have now way of telling when or if I will be exhausted in the evening until it happens. There is literally no pre warning sign (or maybe I haven't learnt them yet) that tells me, hey you know what, let’s skip this walk or let’s climb a little less. - Aha!!! I dropped another big bomb, I know, but we will cover climbing in the next bit- . So the other day I went from doing some squats in the gym and stretching and feeling chatty and fantastic, to having a full shut down moment. As we returned, I could barely get myself into the house, and once in, I had to lie in bed with a hot water bottle until I was able to to perform the final two, somewhat fundamental, acts of the day: eat and wash myself. How did I not see this coming? No idea. But I know it has happened a fair few times now, so I am just reducing massively the stints of efforts I make and trying to stay hydrated and well fed throughout.

And now, for the most discussed, heated, hated, loved topic: exercise in pregnancy. I honestly almost don’t want to start this conversation, and if I do, I am sure I will get some angry messages saying I am being irresponsible but here’s the truth. There is no one on this earth that knows your body better than you do. Movement makes me feel good. Climbing makes me feel good. Of course I don’t just climb the same way I have climbed before knowing I was pregnant, but I still do and I intend to do til the very end. I have also purchased a pregnancy harness, despite my obsession for bouldering, because I think it will be nice to have to worry less about falling further down the line. Learning how to move in this completely new and softer body of mine has been an absolute blast. I used to be known for being quite heavy handed and burly as a climber. My core tension would be non existent sometimes and I would just rely on my biceps and traps to make hard moves. I have never been an elegant climber to watch, and now I am starting to feel like this is the best opportunity I have to learn about this thing called technique. lol. I am being forced in a way to reinvent myself and I am here for it. I am not here for slabs though, because my boobs are very sore and have become very much in the way!!

Finally, the infamous bladder capacity reduction is a real thing, and for me, it was probably one of the earliest and annoying signs of pregnancy. I used to be so proud of how my pelvic floor muscle could handle a long night sleep without peeing in the night. That however, is a long gone dream now and it has been replaced by multiple get-ups in the night and having to hide in a bush to pee at a park, if I’m out for too long. Just the other day, I was walking with a friend in town and I had to sneeze. I thought nothing of it, until I realised my pelvic floor cannot handle walking, sneezing and keeping pee in all at once. I just stopped for a second, assessed the situation and said out loud ‘I just peed myself!’

Life with Fran

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