Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Everything Other Than Morning Sickness

What are the symptoms that come with pregnancy, besides the throwing up? (I probably could've just asked for info in the Morning Sickness thread, but I felt it'd be too impolite to hijak someone else's thread)

Also, I've heard that pregnant women have strange cravings. I asked my mother to elaborate on this for me, but she told me she'd be no help because she's always had strange taste in food to begin with. (hmm, I wonder if that's genetic?) So, could any of you nice, wonderful, and oh-so-smart folcs give me the details I need/crave? And what is the strangest example of cravings that you've ever either experienced or witnessed?

Besides feeling like Mrs. Pillsbury Doughboy, one does get food cravings, and I don't really know if there is any consistency to them. With my first, I craved spaghetti with tomato sauce. With my second , it was Oreos with milk and pepperoncini (not at the same time), and with my third, it was anything edible.

One of the best symptoms of pregnancy is those little flutterings that you feel in your stomach and the thrill of realizing that they are caused by the baby moving. And how exciting it is later when you watch your stomach and actually see him/her commit a technical foul by kicking or throwing an elbow.And I think a pretty common one is the burst of energy as you get close to the end of term. I know I was rushing around getting everything ready, clothes washed, diapers stacked etc... By the time my third came along (mine were an average of 21 months apart), it was routine, and the enrgy went into chasing the two already born. And the energy level just goes down from there. We were originally going to have four, but I called a halt after # three. I don't know how Erin does it.

Jude

Well, some of the highlights:
1st trimester- complete lack of energy.
Once the energy comes back, many women have a very active libido
Towards the end, Lots of heartburn, swollen feet(and legs and hands...)

As for the cravings: I do know that I had a chicken sandwich with mayo and pickles on wheat bread, and a salad with lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cheese and ranch dressing for lunch and dinner every single day for 5+ months with my second daughter. I ate two or three strawberry yogurts every day with #3 The thought of coffee or soda or the like made me nauseous with all of the pregnancies. Oh and nothing tomato based, either (and I am a big into italian most of the time.)

AMR

WATERMELON!!! My first one had me finishing up at least two large water melons a week for 3 months, and at really odd hours, I'd be sending my poor hubby to the 24hr grocery down the road at 2 AM to get more watermelon.

My second one had me on Milk and Ice, both these were a cover for the heartburn I had. I swore she pushed my stomach up to my esophagus, and used my bladder for a trampoline.

Speaking of Bladder!!! You have to use the potty every 20 minutes or so, but usually as soon as you sit, nothing happens cause the whole stomach thing will block the flow. Also eeeek! there is, dare I say,...major constipation...ooh boy I said it! All this is mostly toward the end and there is a lot of crying to go with it.

Now that whole libido thing worked during my first pregnancy but by the second time I was gun shy. Still there were the nights before both deliveries to look back on fondly. <BG>

Hope this info is helpful!

TEEEEEJ

No cravings that I can remember.
But definite heartburn, swollen legs, back ache, ciattica for number 3 which probably helped me decide that number 4 wasn't an option,, overactive libido (probably because I couldn't get pregnant), numerous trips to the toilet,

and to add a new one to the list: sore breasts (that was an indication that I was pregnant).

Oh the good old days....

gerry

Ditto on sciatica, especially with #3. Thank God for the chiropractor.

Cravings: milkshakes. Not ice cream, not milk with anything else, but milkshakes. And with numbers 2 and 3, salty things.

I usually don't eat a lot of salty stuff, and I don't add salt to things when I cook. But my blood pressure drops when I'm pregnant, and that seems to be what triggers MAJOR salt cravings. Pickles, pretzels, popcorn, potato chips -- I didn't care much, as long as it was salty.

In addition to what the others have mentioned, my emotions were on a rollercoaster. I'd be doing the dishes with tears dripping into the sink, and I hadn't been a big crier before. It was really bad during the first few months, but let up by the time I felt that first little ripple of movement.

I'll confess. I was a dedicated vegetarian for years when I got pregnant with my first. Ded-i-cat-ed. No eating poor little murdered animals, nope. Tofu. Veggie burgers. If I got crazy, maybe, mayyybbbee a shrimp or two. If they'd lived long lives, died in their sleep- those kinds of shrimp. Plentiful on the Gulf Coast.

Ok. So, I started to have hamburger dreams. Dreams drenched in animal fats and charbroiled smells. Big and juicy and sinful. Man. And my doctor said maybe it was my body's way of saying I needed the protein.

I asked her to clarify that. Was she ordering me to eat a hamburger? Did my unborn child's life depend on it? When she looked puzzled and said no, I asked a bit more insistently, and she got the hint. She wrote me a prescription. A cheeseburger a week.

I still remember that drive to the McDonalds...

I fell on that thing like a hungry wolf, and three kids and eight carnivorous years later, I haven't been able to go back.

But it's still wrong. I know that. I just give Greenpeace a little something more each year and pass the ketchup.

CC

LOL, CC! (What's sciatica? )

What about fainting? Is that a real symptom, or is it just in movies? And what's the soonest somebody can find out if they're pregnant (assuming it's a planned pregnancy)?

Shortly after finding out I was pregnant with my first child, I went to the corner market to buy some food when I suddenly felt decidedly woozy. I remember I sort of squatted down in the isle, facing the shelves, and closed my eyes, thinking, "I'll just rest a second, and if anyone comes by I'll pretend I'm trying to decide which of these cans of veggies down here on the bottom shelf I want to buy." Just then, a woman asked, "Are you all right?" and I was like, "Oh, yes, I'm just looking at these cans here." The woman said, "You fainted!", and I opened my eyes to discover I was no longer in the isle before the canned vegetables, but I was sitting on a chair in the back of the store, with several very concerned employees hovering over me. I can only presume someone found my lying on the floor and carried me to the back room, although I have no recollection of that at all. It was a very strange (and rather unpleasant) experience.

- Vicki

My sister-in-law regularly had fainting spells while she was pregnant. It was mostly due to her low blood pressure, though. She had to wear support hose during most of the pregnancy, so she wouldn't faint. She had the blood pressure issues before the pregnancy, but it got a lot worse for those months.

With the new early pregnancy tests, you can find out if you're pregnant within (IIRC) 24 hours. The problem with that is that many, many pregnancies normally end as miscarriages before a woman would even know that she was pregnant. She just thinks she was a few days late.

This happened to my close friend's son and daughter-in-law. Because they had been trying to get pregnant for awhile, they were using ept's constantly. She found out that she was pregnant (about 24 hours after the fact, IIRC), excitedly told everyone, and lost the baby a week later. Her doctor told her the information I gave above. So when they got pregnant again, they didn't tell anyone until the traditional 4-6 weeks later (after she'd missed a second period). They now have a beautiful baby boy, but the scare from the first miscarriage (which wouldn't even have been a scare if not for the info from the ept) tainted her entire pregnancy. Everyone was constantly terrified that she would miscarry again.

sciatica [sa&#305;'æt&#305;k&#601;]
noun a form of neuralgia characterized by intense pain and tenderness along the course of the body's longest nerve (sciatic nerve), extending from the back of the thigh down to the calf of the leg
[ETYMOLOGY: 15th Century: from Late Latin sciatica; see sciatic]

Nothing else to add due to lack of experience. <g>

Julie

Sciatica: pain that hurts even more than intercostal pain (which I forgot to mention above).

Stand a bit funny, or sit down wrong, or take a step wrong, and get shooting pains from the hip or thereabouts and down. Hurts like the dickens.




I don't think that there are any pregnancy tests that can test before about 7-10 days. Even blood serum tests are only reliable after about 10 days. I think the earliest OTC tests claim 11 days, although I admit to not having been in the market for several years.

*googles* From here :
Fainting during pregnancy: Don't do it, you'll scare people. And if you're REALLY lucky, they'll call an ambulance, and you'll have to miss your next class, while you sit outside and wait for the paramedics. Then you get to convince them that you're fine and really don't need to go to the hospital.

First pregnancy: preeclampsia.

Second pregnancy: premature labor, lost plug.

Third pregnancy: he dropped early and was in the hospital for 10 days after birth.

I quit after that; I'm not really good at it.

Food cravings: I did the pickles and ice cream thing one night, but that was actually because I was looking for something I couldn't figure out and that came the closest to the taste I was looking for. Mostly it was strawberry milkshakes, clam chowder and BLTs with lots of pickles and tomatoes. And there was the time I headed out to the local Baskin-Robbins for a banana split at eleven pm.

Sciatica: I only had that with the twins. The others caused low back pain in the last month but nothing else much.

Fainting: never. Never even tempted to faint. (lots of low-grade nausea, but I only actually threw up about four or five times with the entire six pregnancies and never fainted)

Emotions ... well, my hubby always called those times "The nine-month nutsies". You figure it out.

Lots of fatigue the first three months, then tons of energy and the libido kicked into overdrive. Then more fatigue the last couple of months until I'd get that energy burst. My hubby would come home and find me cleaning cupboards and say he was going to put the suitcase in the car just in case.

And as for the actual event, my first kid took me 4 1/4 hours flat from start to finish. Except for the fourth kid, he took the longest. The second one took 1 hour and 56 minutes. We almost didn't make it to the hospital with the 3rd because there was a football game going on and he wasn't wasting any time either. My 4th took 8 hours, but I attribute that to the fact that she's always been my problem child She was a handfull from the start and was the one who went into the Marines just to prove that she was tougher than everybody else. Thank God they finally managed to teach her some discipline ...

Nan

Coming a bit late
There was a segment on triple J (radio) where they asked ppl to call in with their stangest cravings. I can only remember one because its kinda strange. Grout, you know the stuff between the tiles. The husband came home to the wife licking the grout The doctor somehow attributed it to low zinc levels, weird

Thanks, everyone, for all this useful information!

Just so ya know, it's *never* too late to post something to this topic because the first story I'm using the info in is nowhere near finnished, and I'd also like to keep this info on hand for any subsequent stories my muse whacks me over the head wi---I mean, comes up with.

Once again, thanks everybody!

Thanks Queen of Capes I've been trying ( mostly failing ) to write a story and your tread will be a great help.

TLAT