[...] I admit.  before I got pregnant, I had no idea what to expect.  I was seriously naive about pregnancy and how my body and emotions would change.  I don’t know what I expected, but I sure wasn’t prepared for my dresses becoming dangerously short and a snotty nose.  hop over to Babble to see 5 things I never knew before becoming pregnant. [...]

Well this list explains a lot of what I’ve been feeling lately. I’m only 14 weeks and my husband says since we first found out I’m pregnant I breath really hard and loud when I’m sleeping. Sometimes he gets up and sleeps in the guest room! That is the most unexpected thing so far.

I was so eager to get pregnant that I had been researching it and asking my friends about it for a long time before I finally hit the fertility jackpot. I felt pretty confident that I was prepared for whatever came my way, especially since my hubby’s best friend’s wife is about 5 weeks ahead of me and she shares all the juicy details of what to expect. I have had symptoms, though, that no one else I know has had and I was shocked when my midwife said they were perfectly normal. My two biggest surprises have been the bloody noses and the hip pain which I’ve had since the end of my first trimester (my friends didn’t have hip pain until much later).

My baby will be 7 months old on Friday, but one thing I remember very clearly about being pregnant was how quickly the body changes came on. I know this sounds dumb, but I must have thought that I would have just woken up one day and had a cute bump. I was not prepared for the “in between” stages where you just look and feel fat and your waistband is oh so tight. I also remember saying I was NOT going to ever buy those maternity pants. Imagine my surprise when I bought my first pair of them…and cursed myself for waiting so long!

Oh, my goodness, so many of your 5 were the same for me (except for the supplies one… I’d been around enough babies to know what I was in for in that regard!). But another big surprise for me was how people reacted to me. It felt like everyone was smiling, noticing, asking questions. That doesn’t stop once that baby arrives, of course… And even more surprising was how much I missed being pregnant after the baby was born. Of course I was elated to have my little one, but I was occasionally jealous of pregnant women I saw. If you had told me I’d feel that way when I was in my last few weeks I would never have believed it, though! And the surprises certainly keep coming…

When I was 24-weeks pregnant with my daughter, I went into labor for the first time. By 27 weeks, I was put on full bed rest. I felt like a prisoner in my own bed.
I never realized just how much I would sacrifice to keep her inside for as long as possible. The weeks dragged on, but she made it to one day before her due date.
That kind of love is just unimaginable before you become pregnant for the first time.

I felt all of the things you describe but one of the most pleasant things about pregnancy that I did not expect was how kind older men would be to me. They were always the first ones to hold a door for me and I would get big smiles and they would say “Oh my DIL is having our first grand baby” and just generally be so sweet. They weren’t likely to tell me horror stories like grandmas like to. They were just sweet. It was really one of the nicest things about being pregnant, getting to see this softer gentler side to the male species.

You think crying at a documentary is bad??? I’ve cried when my husband and I were out to the movies and the screen/preview changed from black to green…you want to talk emotional!!! HA! I didn’t realize I would start to produce milk so soon (21 weeks this time) or that between pregnancies I would never stop producing! I was also shocked after my first one was born how amazed I would be at the size of her and that you don’t have to get a pg tummy (I always get to the chubby stage and stop there…hoping this time will be different for once…3rd time’s the charm, right) to have a good sized baby! How much I would love feeling this life inside of me starting to move…how eager I would be to share every second with my older kids too…I just love the whole thing so much!