Pregnancy Experience Update, 36 Weeks - Later Ever After, BlogLater Ever After – A Chicago Based Life, Style and Fashion Blog

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What a week it has been! I have been working hard to prepare a few posts for you guys once the baby arrived. In between that prep time I had my regularly scheduled content in the works. The most recent post I was working on was a pregnancy experience update at 36 weeks. Well this baby had other plans and arrived at 36 weeks and 4 days! So the pregnancy experience update post is now a look back at my pregnancy experience post!

After looking back at the last 8/9 months I realized I haven’t really shared much about my pregnancy experience on the blog. While you can see my belly grow in pictures I haven’t shared many details. There are a few reasons why I haven’t shared much.

First, I’m actually a super private person. I know it makes no sense as I have a blog for the whole world to see, yet I’m a private person? But I tend to keep a lot of personal details to myself. However, in 2019 it’s something I’m going to work on. Your overwhelming feedback has been for me to share more real life experiences with you on the blog, Instagram and Facebook, so that is my goal for 2019.

The second reason why I haven’t shared much on my pregnancy experience is because I didn’t want to overload you with me being pregnant. While it’s a huge part of my life, it doesn’t necessarily define my entire life. It’s exciting and I can’t wait, however, I view it as a new piece to the puzzle of Amy. One I’m happy to add, but not one that is completely taking over (famous last words, right?!)

In the past, some of my favorite bloggers have become pregnant and their blog turned into a baby blog. I wasn’t too happy about that and jumped ship. My blog is focused on doing things on your own terms and on your own timeline, so that is the central theme surrounding Later Ever After and the reason why I hope you are all coming here.

Speaking of doing things on my own timeline, I want to remind you that I’m 38 years old and having my first baby . Yes, that is later than most people, but I’m not most people 🙂 For those of you wondering, this was a natural pregnancy. I believe what is meant to be, will be, and for me it was having a baby later in life. Nothing wrong with that. So how did this pregnancy go? Let me tell you….

How Do I Feel

For the most part I felt really good throughout the whole pregnancy. Most of the time I forgot I was pregnant until I looked down at my growing bump. I had the occasional morning sickness, but worked through it.

Growth spurts are real though! I could definitely tell when she was growing. During a growth spurt I would have uncontrollable hunger, exhaustion and soreness in my growing belly. The growth spurts usually last about a day or two and then I go back to normal.

Around week 29 I hit a rough patch. The exhaustion, hunger and pain started to really gear up and stayed for a a few weeks. I just felt large and uncomfortable all the time. My belly grew a ton during this period, which means she was growing a ton. I’m on the other side of that now and feeling pretty good. I’m sleeping pretty well, working out normally and indulge in the occasional nap 🙂

Working Out

Working out during pregnancy was extremely important to me. First, I wanted to continue with the healthy habit I spent a couple of years working on. Prior to being pregnant, I religiously went to Pure Barre at 6am every week day morning and on the weekends. I truly loved it. Pure Barre allowed me to continue working out and modify the exercises based on my mobility and size. Now don’t get me wrong, I eventually moved the workouts to night time, as getting up super early became more difficult and I knocked down my daily classes to about 3-4 times a week. I loved going while pregnant and took my last class fours days before giving birth and enjoyed every minute of it!

I do recommend that you speak with your doctor before jumping into working out while pregnant. My doctor was great, as he encouraged it during my whole pregnancy.

Weight Gain

It’s such a crazy concept to accept gaining weight while pregnant. I’ve spent a lot of time working to maintain my weight and then out of nowhere I’m expected to gain 25-30 pounds and that’s normal? It’s a crazy concept and a hard one to wrap your head around.

I told myself when I got pregnant that I wouldn’t focus on the weight, but instead maintain a healthy lifestyle still and ignore the weight. Total weight gain in this pregnancy was 36 pounds and it’s hard to comprehend. I know I am growing a human, however it’s still hard to understand. My goal was to walk everywhere (a little slower though) and workout when I can because “A body in motion stays in motion!” I know I have some hard work on the other side to get back into shape and I’m ready for the challenge.

Overall Feelings

Pregnancy is truly the miracle of life. Your body grows a human, it’s wild! While I am so grateful for this experience and so excited for this little baby, I was not so wild about being pregnant. It’s something me and Mike actually laughed about the whole time. He’d like to say “what did you think was going to happen?” Its a line I use all the time. I knew pregnancy was going to be a lot of change at once, but I didn’t realize how much and how I would handle it. My biggest problem was realizing I’m not as strong as I thought I was and that was a hard pill for me to swallow.

My Biggest Struggle

Getting dressed every day was by far the biggest struggle I had. I missed my clothes so much, more than I thought I ever would. I tried to fight buying maternity clothes for as long as I could and still tried to wear my pre-pregnancy clothes when I can. I’m thankful that I was able to partner with MM LaFleur for a non-maternity, maternity wear feature as that kept my sanity.

While maternity clothes have come a long way, they still aren’t fabulous. Maternity clothes don’t fit like regular clothes. Your body changes so quickly during pregnancy. So what worked in month 6 isn’t working in month 8, and that’s just life. While pregnant, I still craved all my old clothes and liked looking at them in my closet. But now, I’m looking forward to tucking in my black turtleneck and rock my skinny jeans this spring. I have created a maternity shop with my favorite items I’ve been wearing. You can find it here.

In general, I’ve had a very standard text-book pregnancy experience, that was a bit easy, so I can’t complain at all. I do believe it was so easy because of my age. My body is how my body is going to be at this point, I’m 38! It is, what it is. I didn’t have crazy emotional swings or outrageous crazy cravings, however I ate a lot of cesar salads and egg mcmuffins!

I end this post with a baby in my hands and couldn’t be happier. Oddly enough its only been a week with this little one and being “pregnant” seems like it was years ago! It’s a whole new life experience that I’m enjoying, It’s very rare to experience something for the first time as an adult and having a baby is one of those special moments. I’ll still be blogging when on maternity leave, but it may be a bit modified.