Pregnancy at 23 vs 33

I don't think I had realised how much harder pregnancy would be at 33.  I am not considered an older mother yet, but compared to the 23 year old me who breezed through pregnancy, I feel like one.  My body took it in its stride back then, with mild tiredness in the first 12 weeks but a mostly easy ride but at 33 I found the first 13 weeks were so incredibly tough.  The nausea kicked in around dinner time and would sometimes wake me up in the night.  The tiredness was all consuming and some days I barely got out of bed.  There were aches and pains that I don't remember before and an overall feeling of weakness that I wasn't used to.

Of course looking back at 10 years ago, before I started blogging, before I recorded these things, I could be looking back with rose tinted glasses, but I know that it was never this tough.  The fact is my body is older, scarred, tired.  I have four children to balance, I have stomach muscles that remember how to fall apart at the first sight of those two blue lines, I have a job that allows me to work at home rather than forcing me to run around a restaurant  for 12 hour shifts and I just don't have the same energy and enthusiasm as first time Mum me.

I am in my second trimester now and things have eased, I have my energy back and the nausea has gone, but I still find myself aching after a busy day, holding my back in a way I didn't before and even though I still love this middle part of pregnancy, it feels very different from my first.

In other ways, being older and more experienced is wonderful.  I feel much more able to advocate for myself in the medical settings, I am not afraid to ask for more information or to speak to someone else if I feel it is the best thing for my baby and I.  I wish I had the same confidence at 23 as when I look back at my pregnancy care, I see the gaps where things could have and should have been better.  I feel more comfortable making decisions now, more able to say no to things and to put myself first and more secure.

I definitely feel older this time around and I will be 34 before I deliver this baby but I am hoping being older and more experienced will mean I don't take any of it for granted.  At the moment I am in that wonderful middle trimester where I am growing but not too uncomfortable but I am already concerned that the last trimester might be a bit of shock to my body too if the first was!

If you have had pregnancies with a big age gap did you notice a difference?