My Internet Friend Said To Call You

Sorry for the false alarm story :) I'm still hanging in here.

Dont think im not trying!

When I first got pregnant, as I'm sure many of you can relate, I was constantly online checking and rechecking the "pregnancy symptoms" list. What a joke. Right?

Every symptom can be explained by many other issues, or pregnancy. Complete paranoia.

Then even when you know you are pregnant it becomes a fact checking "Is this normal" (again constantly googling random strings of information.)

There's a whole tribe of us online, comparing stories, the first time moms sucking in the words of all the other moms who already have been through it.

Some are more paranoid than me, "you feel nauseous?! Call your doctor NOW!" Others are condescending "people get pregnant every day, deal with it."

I love me some baby blogs and forums. If you have a question all you have to do is write in your number of weeks and problem and you can find whole strings of women telling you everything from it's normal to it's life threatening. Love the Internet.

If that doesn't work there's always Facebook mom friends to ask questions to. It's lovely.

I feel bad for doctors-especially of first time moms. I've called many a time frantic and stressed because of little "signs" that are, of course, normal.

I've diagnosed myself many a time, a few times being right, more times being wrong.

Doctor mentions "high blood pressure, protein in urine, low white blood cells, anemia."

Then I'm like a crazy person looking up symptoms of those symptoms! Haha.

"Hey Colton, according to bigscarymama on babymaking101.com my anemia can be the reason I'm so ornery all the time! And chocolate can really help!"

Yup, we eat that stuff up.

Anyways, now that it's closing in, I'm again paranoid and searching every time I have a symptom.

Cramping-labor
Nausea-labor
Feeling "well"-labor
Flu symptoms, feeling down-labor
Extreme energy-labor
No energy-labor
(You can see where this gets confusing.)

And let's not even get started on at home induction method.

I've had people swear by drinking castor oil, and others swear off of it.

Sex, pineapple, stairs, bouncing on a ball, spicy food, foot massage, "telling baby it's okay to come," walking, nipple stimulation (for hours on end.) You name it.

So far Colton and I have tried the foot massage, walking, and of course we had a little talk with our son about his arrival.

Other than that I haven't bothered. For every person saying one worked, five others say it didn't. If eating a whole pineapple while hanging upside down on an ironing board did it for you after 3 days, more power to ya. Seriously. You are a champ.

But as for me, I can't stomach half the ideas and am too tired to attempt the others.

Man I'm a whiner :)