26 weeks with Olivia: Apparently, I get Braxton Hicks from having sex

Before I got pregnant, I used to think Braxton Hicks happened a lot later on in pregnancy. Like midway through your third trimester. Let’s be honest, everything I knew about pregnancy could have fit in a small little box. Maybe a snack-sized Ziploc bag. Along the way, I have picked up some things from other pregnant friends: Your joints and ligaments are loosening so be prepared to be really clumsy and drop things. You can have really bad insomnia. You have a lot more vaginal discharge and things are just kind of gross down there. (Sorry, I should have prefaced this with “WARNING: I AM GOING TO DISCUSS VAGINAL DISCHARGE. DADS, AUNTS, AND ANYONE ELSE SKEEVED OUT OVER HEARING ABOUT MY LADY BITS: MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T READ THIS.”

Ok. Where was I? Yes, gross vaginal discharge. I knew not to lay on my back. I knew to expect round ligament pain. But…apparently there are some things people didn’t want to tell me about how your body acts while pregnant. This mainly has to do with sex or vagina stuff. Like, did you know your uterus will contract into this weird pointed shape after orgasm? Yeah. Found that one out on my own. Basically the first time it happened I thought I was squeezing the life out of my baby and she was pressed against one side of my uterus like GAH! Get me out of here! The second time it happened, I was so freaked out that I had no choice but to bring it up with my doctor. Yes, he told me, that’s perfectly normal. You are having a contraction and an orgasm will bring that on. So I huffed to him that no one ever told me that would happen and I thought something was seriously wrong and he laughed and laughed and told me what did I expect? Was that something my mom was going to forwarn me about? No, I told him hotly, but my friends could have said something during all those girl talks about the weird pregnancy stuff.

Thanks a lot, jerks.

So I knew to expect this and once I knew it wasn’t torturing my baby, found it to be slightly hilarious, like, “Look, Chris, check this out!” Until this weekend when it happened three times in a row. (The contractions, not the orgasms. I wasn’t apparently blessed with that perk of pregnancy.) I knew that if these Braxton Hicks—sort of practice contractions if you will—happened four or more times in an hour you needed to call your doctor. Well after the third contraction, we stopped and I went to the bathroom. When I came back, I lay down in bed and it happened again.

Well crap, I thought, now what? So I started texting my friend and then started getting worried. She suggested I obviously rest on my side but maybe call the doctor because too many could put me in preterm labor. She also gave me kudos for continuing sex in my later second trimester. Apparently all those articles I’ve been reading about having All Of The Sex during pregnancy are not necessarily true to real life.

So I called my clinic and as I was leaving a message for the receptionist, I had another contraction. The on-call doctor called me and I told her what was going on. She wanted to know what I was doing right before that so I was all, “Well, I was, I mean, we were, um, having sex.” Dies. Ugh how can I have no problem talking to people about sex, but the minute I have to tell a medical professional I was trying to pregnancy-bang my husband, I get all shy and OMG don’t look at me??

She told me to go to the bathroom and empty my bladder and then drink a big glass of water and lay on my side for an hour. I was to call her back or come into the Mom Baby Center if they got worse.

“And,” she added, a smile in her voice, “You probably don’t want to do any more sexual activity until thirty-two weeks since your uterus seems to contract too much during it.” So I thanked her, so grateful because my pregnancy-after-infertility mind was going crazy and I thought for sure they would admit me for preterm labor that day.

I got off the phone and hissed to Chris that that was it and I was never having sex with him again and made him refill my water bottle. Luckily, the contractions subsided and I took it easy for the rest of the night.

So. There you go. For anyone that had no clue that could happen, you’re welcome.

Let me leave you with a PG story now.

We got the dressers painted for the nursery that I bought a few months ago! Yesterday, we went out to some stores looking for a glider that was on sale, because seriously, those things are like $400 at Babies R Us and I just can’t justify it. Chris happened to lookup an ad on Craigslist and found a used glider nearby for $30. The ad was just posted so we jumped on it, borrowed an SUV, and went to look at it. It was in great shape. The family was so nice and asked if we wanted anything else they were selling for their baby stuff. So for another $30 we also got a baby jail that was retailed at $90, a Bumbo, and a bouncer that looked new. I couldn’t believe what a fantastic deal we got. The nursery is slowly coming together. I could meet this baby in thirteen weeks.