I woke up this morning and slowly started getting myself alert by doing my usual thing: checking email and reading news on my phone. But when I got up and out of bed, my stomach suddenly started hurting. So I decided to lay in bed for about ten more minutes to see if the ache stopped. It didn’t. Maybe I just needed to use the bathroom, I thought, so I went on to the toilet and did my thing, bowel movements and all. Even after that, I still didn’t feel better, and the aching felt especially strong when I was standing up. So I went back to bed to lie down to see if the pain would subside. I quickly Googled “stomach ache while pregnant” to see what results came up, and the results said that if the pain lasts for more than 30-60 minutes of resting, then I needed to call my doctor. I wasn’t experiencing any dizziness, lower back pain, fever, or bleeding, and I know for a fact that my water didn’t break, so this couldn’t be pre-term labor, right? I honestly wasn’t sure and just hoped for the best. I touched my stomach and noticed it felt rock hard, but I could feel the baby moving every now and then inside. Maybe this was a combination of stomach ache and Braxton Hicks (fake) contractions?

About 15 minutes later, the pain fully subsided, as did the hardness on my belly. And I could feel little baby squirm around again inside, kicking me on my right side. Phew, I thought. That was a relief. I’m at week 29, and ideally for the baby’s health, I’d like us to be as close to full term as possible. It’s a bit funny (and terrifying) that something as seemingly simple as a stomach ache can be a bit alarming while pregnant because a stomach ache can oftentimes be much more than just that when you are pregnant with a tiny growing human inside you.

While many expectant moms and dads exclaim, “I can’t wait to meet baby!”, I am definitely not at that stage just yet. I can wait just fine for the baby to grow more and come out. I have quite a long list of “to-dos” that are both necessary to make sure baby is taken care of when she arrives, as well as fun to-dos that I’d like to do with my full baby-free freedom, which has numbered days now.