Planned pregnancy vs Surprise pregnancy

You know how we all have a plan in our heads of how our lives will end out, well I always saw myself having 3 children, but after I had my second, Ezra - I felt like I was in a settled place with two. I had my girl and my boy, both are so amazing and the love I get from them is enough for anybody. We were content with having just the two, and decided that for now it was enough and maybe one day in the future we would considering having another. The universe has a funny way of planning your life for you, you can't ever really have an exact plan for your life because something will always appear or change in your life without you expecting it to.


I suppose - practising "safe sex" is a must for avoiding pregnancy, but for me I always felt that taking contraception would not only mess with my health, physically and mentally but also blocks fate and stops things that should happening naturally. The one real reason to have sex is to make babies, and yes it's fun and exciting but it's so much more about the connection, bringing two bodies together, making an emotional bond between two people. I don't want to block that connection with a bit of rubber between us. This is just my personal opinion - I am totally against using contraception for myself, and me and my partner have always had unprotected sex, whilst only getting pregnant when we have been trying - until now...

Although it took me a little while to get used to the fact that I would be having another baby, I am over the moon that this has happened for us!! (I can confirm my partner has made a tough but solid decision to take care of "contraception" so this will officially be our last child) I suppose that little picture I had in my mind growing up really was how my life was going to end up :)


I have found that there are a few difference in a planned pregnancy and a surprise pregnancy, so thought I'd make a post showing what I feel is different.

  1. The Feeling of Time
    When you plan a pregnancy, you wait months to get pregnant at the correct time of the month, you wait a long 12 weeks before you get to see your baby for the first time and then the whole 9 months of pregnancy becomes such a drag because you are awaiting your tiny baby (possibly first baby) and the anticipation of waiting for so long seems to make it feel even longer!!
    With my surprise pregnancy, I didn't know I was even pregnant until I was already 9 weeks gone, so that's already shortened the time because I don't have to try and get pregnant, which can take months - and I'm already only 3 weeks away from the 12 weeks dating scan so a surprise pregnancy defiantly feels like it goes much quicker than a planned one.

  2. Body Changes
    With my pregnancies with Amelia & Ezra, I knew for so long they were going to exist, and the pregnancy were going to happen so I guess I somewhat mentally prepared myself to have to allow my body to grow and to deal with aches and pains and any other pregnancy symptoms that are thrown at us
    After finding out I was pregnant at 9 weeks, I started growing almost immediately and I'm going to be honest and say that it did make me quite sad to see my body growing uncontrollably. It had been 3 years since I had a baby, my tummy muscles were kind of sagging, so even though my tummy was flat, it wasn't toned - but I was happy with my weight, I was happy that my clothes fit and I had somewhat natural curves. A lot of woman are very conscious about their bodies, and put a lot of time and effort into looking the way they wish, and although I don't really care much for my appearance, it's defiantly a shame that I'm going to have to spend the next 20 weeks in my partners clothes rather than my own.

  3. Telling people you are Pregnant
    This one is actually kinda funny, because when you are trying for a baby you normally tell people you are trying, so then you reveal the deed is done and the bun is in the oven, people are normally over the moon with excitement for you, it's a simple "OMG Congratulations blah blah" and then they normally stop caring until your baby actually arrives..
    But when nobody knows there's a baby coming - it's just a big shock to everyone. You get questions like "are you going to keep it?" "how do you feel about it?" and it's kind of like people are saying "it's okay if you don't want it".. Now I'm not the type of person to get rid of a baby, EVER. But I can understand why some people say these things. Just because a mother is confused about her baby and a surprised pregnancy doesn't means she doesn't want her baby, everyone has to allow time to get used to things and such a big change as having a baby can take women a longer time to get their heads around.

  4. Preparation
    It is so much easier to be prepared for something that you know is going to happen, as soon as you finally get the positive pregnancy test you want to go out and buy your precious baby their first outfit, every time you go shopping you seem to find yourself being pulled into the baby shops to adore all the cuteness and most of the time you are tempted to buy at least one thing. You over pack your hospital bag, time and time again and you are reading and waiting for baby to arrive weeks before he/she is even due!
    I'm 18 weeks pregnant and currently own about 5 things for the baby. After getting rid of my other kids baby clothes I literally have to start again from scratch. When I look around for baby stuff I only seem to be drawn to the stuff that baby is actually going to need - rather than just getting things because I think they are cute or clever products. I'm hardly even going to dress this baby for the first few weeks - we are due Jan 1st so it's going to be freezing, so to make baby as less restricted as I can I'm going to be using swaddles and knitted blankets, rather than buying a ton of outfits that baby is only going to wear once or twice.

  5. Pregnancy symptoms
    I'm sure it's just me who got this - but my symptoms from a planned pregnancy are so much different from a surprise one. I've actually had 4 planned pregnancies - but only two made it to full term. For all of these 4 pregnancies I have had near to no symptoms at all - no sickness, tiredness, and the only craving I really had was ice cream or water.
    The only reason I did a pregnancy test this time round was because I thought I came on but the next day it stopped (this is spotting) I had never had this before during pregnancy, so I feel it was almost like my body telling me (hey, haven't you realised your pregnant yet? Here's a spot, just to let you know) secondly I started feeling really sick and actually ended up in a hospital a month or so back with one of my sickness episodes, which I was told wasn't related to my pregnancy - After I was discharged (I was about 10 weeks pregnant at this time) I was feeling and physically being sick every day for a good 6 weeks or more!! What's even weirder is I didn't start feeling sick until I found out I was pregnant, like it triggered something in my brain saying your pregnant now better start feeling it!
Even though all pregnancies are different, they are all an amazing experience to go through - I personally hate and love being pregnant at the same time, the getting fat and restless and swollen feet and sickness are all crappy things to have to deal with, but knowing that inside of me an unconditional bond is forming and my body is capable of growing and nurturing a teeny tiny baby from a ball of cells just truly amazes me!
Let me know if you have any differences from your own planned vs surprised pregnancies!

No comments:

Post a Comment