I married my husband on my 18th birthday. A little over a month after our first anniversary, we found out about our oops baby. We had been using condoms, and I guess one failed. We were scared, since we were so young, but excited. I knew my body would change, but I was fairly confident that my belly would bounce right back like everyone said it would because I’m so young. Then I developed preeclempsia. I am 5’7″ and started at 121 lbs before pregnancy, dropped down to 119 right after I got pregnant, and then barely gained 12 lbs in the entire first two trimesters. Then I started jumping up at least 5 lbs a week from water [...] Continue Reading…
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When I was six months pregnant, I stepped out of the shower one day and caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. Looking at my bulbous belly, I realized then and there that the only way my daughter – I already knew the baby was female – could be born was by caesarean section. I went into labour naturally three months later. After 36 hours of futile pushing, however, I found myself strapped to an operating table as a team of doctors cut my little girl out of my abdomen. (I was conscious during the surgery.)
My caesarean was necessary. The baby was too big; I was too small; and without medical intervention, both she and [...] Continue Reading…
December 11 2010 marked an important date in my life: it was the day I stopped breastfeeding my two-year-old daughter Gabriella Michelle. I hadn’t deliberately planned to wean her on that very day. But I was unexpectedly put on an anti-seizure medication that the doctors told me was incompatible with breastfeeding. So I stopped nursing her right then and there.
It wasn’t much of an adjustment for Gabriella herself. She had been eating solid foods since the age of six months, and by the time I weaned her she was basically on a threemeal-a-day schedule. At that point I only nursed her before bedtimes and naptimes. She was using the breast more as a pacifier [...] Continue Reading…
