Baby Bump Debut (and Why It's Such a Relief)

11w,0d. I woke up yesterday morning with the remains of a sore throat (more on how much sickness during pregnancy sucks at a later date)... and a baby bump. Here’s why I’m delighted to actually look pregnant so early this time around…

I’m not going to lie—it feels like a bit of a relief to have some visual confirmation of this pregnancy. I continue to have all of the same symptoms I’ve been having: bigger boobs (requiring a shopping trip for new bras last week), mild but omnipresent morning sickness, and my husband’s favorite—hormone-induced mood swings (we’ve had lots of crying around here). But I still have yet to see my midwives (I’m with a homebirth practice which starts seeing patients at 12 weeks), and I had my one and only ultrasound just shy of 6 weeks (when we saw the heartbeat after a doctor manually tilted my uterus for a better angle)—which means that for a crazy lady like me, I’ve had ample time to worry about all kinds of things going wrong.

And while I feel so strongly about the importance of women talking honestly about miscarriage and baby loss, right now it’s kind of hard to hear others’ stories—but it seems like now is the time that everyone wants to tell me about their loss. For example, a recent acquaintance (one so new I don’t even know her last name) starting telling me about how much she enjoyed being pregnant—and then paused to reflect that part of her joy was likely because she’d miscarried a previous pregnancy at 3.5 months. Good friends (like the kind you’d think might call as they’re peeing on the stick) have waited to reveal pregnancy news until the start of the second trimester or even halfway through a pregnancy because friends of theirs have had stillbirths in the third trimester and they’re terrified of the same. And I still can’t forget about a friend of a friend who delivered her stillborn baby on the day that was supposed to be her baby shower, after a seemingly normal and healthy pregnancy. I don’t want anyone to keep quiet about their loss if they want to share, but I’m having a hard time separating their experiences from my own, especially since I too have miscarried, albeit quite early in a pregnancy.

All of which is to say that waking up yesterday morning to find that I actually look a little pregnant and not just bloated and puffy made me feel pretty good. I’m trying to tune out others’ tales of loss and try to relax and even enjoy this pregnancy—but it really is a struggle for me right now, especially hearing stories of loss well beyond the typical first trimester miscarriages.

Did you feel like you had to tune out tales of miscarriage while you were pregnant? Were you ever afraid of losing your pregnancy?