insanity

all the books and doctors tell you about "mood changes" due to the increased hormones. apparently there is such a wild cocktail of hormones coursing through your veins that it's like pms on steriods. what they don't tell you is how insanely nuts you feel all the time and how hard it is to keep it all together.

my husband, bless his heart, is taking most of this in stride. he's reading all the books too, especially the ones that tell the husband your wife will be as sweet as pie one moment and a raging witch the next, for no apparent reason. it's not your fault. she's just pregnant and hormonal. so he [mostly] let it roll off his back when i blew up at him in mervyn's on saturday.

in retrospect, i do still think he acted somewhat inconsiderately. but had i been a normal (read: not pregnant) wife, this would have rolled right off my back. he might have gotten some smart remark directed his way when we left the store, to vent my frustration. but not this time - oh no. i was fuming and let him know it, right there in the store. then i stormed out of the store (with brian calling after me), got in my car, and left. then i started sobbing.

the hardest part about these "mood swings" (they are so much more than mood swings!) is that we pregnant ladies know we're being nuts and unreasonable when we go off of you guys, and yet we just can't stop ourselves. we hear those words coming out of our mouths and are appalled at ourselves. that just makes us feel more insane, because we know this isn't really us, and yet we're acting like that. most of the time [i think] i can keep my emotions in check, but when i can't, it really makes me feel insanely crazy.

we are at: 13 weeks.

getting plumpy

my lovely hubby commented this morning that i was starting to look pregnant. (those were not quite his exact words, but that was the general gist of things.) i love him, but this is not exactly what i wanted to hear at 8am as i was getting out of the shower and trying to figure out which pants i can still fit into. poor guy, i didn't take it exactly well and i know what he meant - that he enjoys seeing the woman he loves start to visibly show that she is carrying his baby - but he just kept digging himself into a hole. i reminded him that the baby books he's been reading voraciously are quite adamant that daddy should NOT under any circumstances comment on how much weight mom is gaining or how flabby or saggy her bottom is getting.

unfortunately, he's noticed what i've been noticing for the past two weeks or so: that my body is really starting to change. at the moment i'm not thrilled about it because i don't really look pregnant unless you know intimately what i look like un-pregnant (like brian does). otherwise i just look like i can't lay off the krispy kremes and halloween candy. my pants still fit for the most part - the waistband is just tight - but i did discover this morning that the cummerbund of my gypsy costume doesn't fit anymore. (i had to find a different, less restrictive costume to wear to hand out candy tonight.)

all that to say, i cannot wait for when i actually start looking like a pregnant lady. then at least i have an excuse to eat all those krispy kremes.

we are at: 12 weeks 5 days.

11w3d

spot waved at us!


it looks really blobby in this photo - the doctor said we have a little kidney bean. the head is on the right and its bottom is on the left, and a couple times spot raised its little hand and waved. the doctor said everything looks good - spot looks healthy and has certainly grown since last ultrasound and is very active. (is that good or bad? good i guess, since it means the baby is healthy - but i'm thinking i might want it to be a little less active later on when he/she is kicking me in the ribs.)

next time we go in - one month - we get to hear spot's heartbeat!

8 weeks

i meant to post this a while ago, since it is 3 1/2 weeks old now. well, better late than never, i guess. here is the first "baseline" belly shot, at 8 weeks along:


yeah, so not showing yet. anything you think might be a baby bump is really just carb belly. it's the only thing showing these days, as i don't have the energy to suck it in anymore.

because i can't go to work naked

i've been dreading maternity clothes lately, because i don't want to look like a tent. i know i am going to get huge and pregnant and my feet are going to swell and i will generally just be fat, but i don't want to look even more huge in maternity clothes. of course, the only real reason i have to have maternity clothes anyway is because i can't go to work naked or in brian's t-shirts, so i wanted them to at least look semi-cute.

enter alice, my closest girlfriend with style sensibility galore. we went to old navy yesterday (read: super-inexpensive and stylish!) and she helped me score a billion cute things for only $200. two pairs of work khakis, a sweater-jacket, five camisoles, five tees, two blouses, and a cute dress. the icing on the cake was the super-awesome teal ballet flats i picked up also. our ob/gyn recommended flats to begin with as pregnant women (not now, but later for sure) tend to be off-balance with their changing bodies, and alice pointed out that when my feet swell i will likely only be able to fit into flats. and cute shoes are a nice pick-me-up when one is feeling fat and yucky and hating one's clothes.

along the same lines, my burda maternity patterns arrived on saturday. burda had the best selection of cute maternity clothes and the patterns did not break the bank. (we're talking $22 for five patterns. awesome.) so i need to get started on a couple tops and dresses, a pair of black pants for work, and altering a pair of existing old jeans to supplement the old navy haul.

we are at: 11 weeks.

sleepless in sacramento

i hate that i am not getting any sleep right now because i know it will only get worse. i mean, we still have 6 months to go, and then a newborn to contend with! but it's annoying now, because really for the first time in my life, i can't sleep through the night, and i'm so exhausted during the day. i am not sure if the exhaustion is because of my strange sleeping or just from being pregnant in general. this is what i am dealing with:

9 pm - oh so tired. get in bed and read a little or watch a little tv. fall asleep approximately 20 minutes later.
11-12 pm - brian comes to bed. i'm a very light sleeper now (i never used to be), so even though he is a gem and does his best not to wake me, he still does (no fault of his).
130 am - second wake-up. first bathroom trip, just in case. though i know it doesn't exactly help the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night problem, i also drink about a half a cup of water. i'm parched when i wake up. go back to bed and lie there for 15 minutes trying to fall asleep again and feeling wide awake.
330 am - third awakening. second bathroom trip and small drink (parched again). go back to bed and lie there for another 15 minutes trying to fall asleep.
5 am - fourth awakening. third bathroom trip (just in case) and a tiny drink. go back to bed and lay there. doze very lightly until alarm goes off.
615 am - alarm goes off. get up, even though i'm exhausted, because i've been laying there basically awake for the last hour.

if i'm lucky and it's the weekend, i get up (no alarm), have breakfast, and read the paper - and then go back to bed till about 8 am or so. i also get to take a nap sometime after lunch. on workdays of course this is just not possible so i'm just tired and fall asleep earlier than usual at night.

ugh

morning sickness. or at least i think it is, as i'm not vomiting. just nauseous and achy and feeling generally like i have a mild flu that just will not go away.

only four more weeks until the second trimester starts, which everyone says is the glorious part of pregnancy. i can't wait.

completely normal though the husband disagrees

everything in those tests came back completely normal. and man do they test for a lot! i now know that i have enough red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, and platelets. i'm not anemic and i don't have hiv or syphilis or gonorrhea or cervical cancer. i'm immune to measles/rubella (see, vaccines work!), i don't have a uti, and i'm a+ blood type. hooray for average!

first glimpse

we had our first prenatal exam today, and the nurse did a full physical on me. i am not sure brian was prepared for this. i tried to prep him beforehand of what they would do (the pelvic exam, pap, et cetera), but he still looked uncomfortable and a little stunned when the stirrups came out. poor guy. i feel for him (i mean, he's never had a pelvic exam, so how would he know what to expect?), but really, he has to toughen up if we're going to get through the whole labor-and-delivery thing.

along with the exams and my complete medical history (including when i had my last alcoholic drink - how should i know that date?), the nurse also did an ultrasound to determine fetal age. we thought i was 8 weeks 2 days along, but apparently it's only been 7 weeks 3 days, give or take two days. which puts conception right around august 11, which is what i've been thinking all along. which also pushes my due date back one week to may 11.

she also sent me down to the lab to have a bunch of bloodwork done. they took five vials of blood. five vials. what the heck do they need with five vials? sheesh. i wanted to ask the tech if she would like my credit card also? or fries with that? five vials.



we also got to see our baby's heartbeat, which brian said looked like tiny clapping hands. that has got to be the absolute most amazing, beautiful thing i have ever seen in my life. it's only about 1/2 inch long, about the size of a blueberry, and yet it has a beating heart that we could see. we both agreed that we could have stayed and just watched that little heartbeat all day.

brian is insanely concerned that i will miscarry. everything he's read says that the seventh, eleventh, and twelfth weeks are the most dangerous for miscarriage. here we are right in the seventh week, so he's a wreck that i'm up and walking around. he completely nixed me painting the wall in the living room also, which is annoying.