You Almost Forget Sometimes...

Being past the stages of endless waves of nausea and the ever-present worries of miscarriage, it's easy to forget sometimes that I'm pregnant.

There are plenty of reminders, though: the overpowering smells of just about *everything*. The Sweet&Low taste chocolate has adopted. The way the mere suggestion of any particular food item can make it suddenly the most appetizing thing in the world, even if it's something I regularly avoided before now.

Then, of course, there's my mom. We met up with them Saturday morning at IHOP for breakfast before we started in on the monumental task of getting us moved and preparing the old place for the final walk-thru. She walked in the door, looked at me with wide eyes, and said, "How could anyone NOT figure out you're pregnant?!?" Asher tried to explain that I regularly wear loose-fitting, flowy shirts, so the expansion in my midsection was not noticeable to others, but Mom said it wasn't about my waist at all, that my FACE looks pregnant. That it's got a fullness and roundness to it that's unlike the fullness of weight gain and can only be attributed to pregnancy. Funny, I always knew she'd be able to tell I was pregnant by looking, even if no one else in the world could. :o)

Another pretty clear reminder is my breasts. Some days, they don't ache, they're not sensitive, and I wonder if we've moved past the rapid-growth stage. Other days (like yesterday, for example), I discover brand new stretch marks, indicating even MORE growth, and that familiar hypersensitivity is back, full-force!

I really do understand, though, why so many books glorify the second trimester. The majority of the worry is gone. The most unpleasant symptoms are gone... for now, at least! You just feel GOOD, and there's the added bonus of knowing what amazing little thing is growing inside you. I'm enjoying pregnancy quite a bit... And I can't wait to meet this little one!!

Catch a Breath

It's been a little hectic the last few days!

Asher had the Bar Tuesday & Wednesday, so he went to his Mom's Monday night and didn't come home again until Wednesday night. Too exhausted to do much else, we went and got some dinner, then he crashed. Since then, it's been a struggle for me to try and get through the day at work, then go home and try to move stuff... And our schedules don't seem to be matching up too well right now, so when I was home and ready to work last night, he was sound asleep! I did manage to enlist his help, however, in transporting the animals to the new place and setting them up for their first overnight stay in their new home. Other than that, though, I wasn't able to get any help with what I was doing last night, and I hate that I wasn't there to help him during the day.

Mom & Dad are going to get into town around 8pm tonight, and we're going to start work first thing in the morning. They've asked that we have the rooms that need to be painted cleared of all furniture so they've got room to paint and don't have to take up time clearing out, since they're going to need plenty of time to allow for drying between coats, and they've got to head back home on Sunday. We are NOWHERE near ready for that... But Asher said his dad would be available to help him out all day today, so hopefully they'll get us a lot closer to that, and I can try to finish it up when I get home from work tonight. Asher's friends have some dinner event planned for tonight, but if we're not in a good position to start work in the morning, I'm going to have to skip out on dinner and do what I can to move us in the right direction tonight. :o(

I feel like my stomach is huge today compared to yesterday. For a few days, I've felt like I couldn't get a full, deep, abdominal breath because there's something stopping me short of filling my lungs... Now I feel like I can hardly breathe if I'm sitting upright, almost like my hips and legs are in the way of my expanding middle. I know I still don't look pregnant, but my new shirts are starting to rest against my stomach instead of hanging loose in front of it, and I wonder how long it'll be before the world starts to notice what's happening.

I keep flip-flopping between whether I think I'm carrying a boy or a girl. I have days where I'm firmly convinced it's a girl and find myself thinking 'she' a lot in reference to the baby, and equally as many days where every time I picture the baby, it's a little boy dressed in blue and wearing a baby's baseball mitt. Sometimes, I'll find myself switching pronouns mid-sentence as my image shifts from one gender to the next. I know the ultrasound in 2 weeks will be too early to tell gender, but I am nevertheless hopeful that maybe we'll luck out and manage to get a perfect shot of something that looks clearly like one or the other because I'm just too excited to wait much longer to find out! The thought of waiting 2 full months more to know is just brutal!! :o)

I find myself waddling a teensy bit these days. I can feel where my hips are starting to loosen up and shift, and my back's a strange mess some days of things that feel like they're not entirely in the right place. I'm already starting to instinctively reach out to brace myself as I stand up, in case I need the extra push--of course, I don't just yet, but I think it's just this sense of being slightly off-balance all the time that makes me feel a little more wobbly than usual.

Standing up or changing positions too quickly, I'm feeling the sharp twinge of ligaments stretching. That's been going on for about 2-3 weeks now, but with much more regularity in the past week. I'm also experiencing a sense of being larger than I am. It's odd, but I'm very keenly aware of my middle being larger than I am accustomed, so I've started allowing more room than is really needed to fit through a crowded room or even a doorway. Then there's this protective thing that's started happening, where I don't hug anyone straight-on but rather to the side, like their hug is going to somehow squish the baby! I know most of it is in my head, but it's funny to see these changes taking place so gradually that I don't even notice until after I've been doing it a while! When I'm nervous or uncomfortable, too, my hands go straight to my belly, and I feel like I'm trying to comfort the baby, shield it from my nerves or something. In a crowded store where I can't find what I need, the more my jaw tightens and my heart rate speeds up, the more I try to "soothe" the baby. It's very fun and odd at the same time! :o)

Picture Time!

I felt the need to edit this one a bit before posting. For one thing, I'm in a bra in this picture, which somehow seemed inappropriate, so I "spray painted" over it to give the illusion of a little more modesty.

Secondly, because the picture quality is low and the background color was at times hard to distinguish from my skin (that's what I get for standing my pale tummy in front of a white door!...although it looks much darker in the picture because of the poor lighting), I outlined my belly and back with a darker "spray paint" to make the lines more clear.

The third thing I did was to put in an arrow labeling where my bellybutton is. Because I'm wearing maternity pants in the picture (and an odd style, at that--they're low hip-hugging pants with a belly panel that covers up well over the navel, so it's an odd combination of lines that I keep well-concealed under long shirts, I assure you!), a glance at the picture may leave you wondering what's where! At least, my first look at it disturbed me, thinking I couldn't tell where my hips, my waist, etc. were under those pants... So the belt is sitting right at my hips, and the arrow points directly to my navel.

So, yes, this picture looks a little strange... Perhaps a bit comical. But it's so you can see the swell of my belly, the curve of my back (my posture is beginning to change to adapt to an altered center of balance), and the general overall changes in shape taking place with my body.

YAY second trimester!! YAY BABY!! :oD

Dude.

I TOTALLY chickened out!! :o(

I was going to announce publicly on Facebook & MySpace today that I'm now in my second trimester (and oh, by the way, pregnant) so everyone would see... And once I signed in, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I posted a cryptic Facebook status that says "Whitney is 1/3 of the way there!" and a MySpace blog about Asher beginning the Bar today and then, at the bottom, added "In other news, I'm now in my second trimester and 1/3 of the way to having a baby!" and left it at that. Very unassuming, all things considered... Most people will miss it, if they even read the blog titled "Asher Takes the Bar!" in the first place. I don't know... I just didn't want to steal his thunder, really, and he hasn't told his family yet, so I felt kinda bad making a huge display of it all...

I asked him last night after we had dinner with his Mom if he was waiting until after the Bar to take it. He gave me a very firm YES. I guess he's got more than enough stress on his plate right now without the added strain of breaking the news to his mom. He's afraid she won't be enthusiastic about it because we're not really financially ready for a child yet, but I don't know... I mean, he obviously knows his mom FAR better than I do, but my mom wasn't thrilled about the timing and is still excited about the baby. Women are like that sometimes... It's hard not to get excited and silly and a little obsessed when there's a baby involved, even if it's not under the best of circumstances. Just look at all the mothers of teenage girls who get pregnant: the mothers are, of course, furious in the beginning, but soon yield to the desire to buy baby things, talk about pregnancy, and generall go all ga-ga over the baby-to-be. So I don't think she'll take it quite as hard as he thinks she will...

But, then again, he knows her better than I do, so we'll just have to wait and see, I guess. :o) This will be her first grandchild, so I think even if she starts out unhappy about it, she'll be won over pretty quickly. Maybe the next ultrasound picture will do the trick. ;o) Frankly, I don't think she'll be surprised to hear the news after seeing me last night, looking fairly prego... Tee-hee!

But yes. I am now officially in my second trimester. I am 1/3 of the way through this whole process, and I'm just starting out in what they call "the golden era of pregnancy".

And my genius husband is busy at this very moment acing the first half of his Bar exam. :oD

Her Royal Pregnance

Last night, Asher informed me that 'pregnance' is the proper term for 'the state of being pregnant'. "It is also," he said, "a title, as in 'Her Royal Pregnance.'" I told him he had just named my "coming out" post for MySpace and Facebook about the pregnancy. ;o)

Today is the last day of my first trimester. Tomorrow's "not a magical date," according to my mom, but it is to me. It's the date I told myself would make this pregnancy real. The date they say dramatically decreases the odds of miscarriage. The date that means you're already 1/3 of the way through! It marks the time when morning sickness is expected to decrease, energy allegedly returns, and you start to feel the best you will during your pregnancy. But, above all, it means my baby's still alive, and he/she is likely to stay that way.

The end of the first trimester is also when many pregnancy books, websites, and online forums suggest breaking the news to friends, family, and coworkers who hadn't already known. Partially because of the decreased risk of miscarriage after this point, but also because there's not much longer that you'll be able to hide the little one's presence! ;o)

So tomorrow morning, I will post on MySpace and on Facebook that, yes, I'm pregnant, and I'm officially in my second trimester. Some of my friends will be angry because I didn't tell them in person before breaking the news online to the public, but I had my reasons for keeping things to myself. Between fear of miscarriage and knowledge that a few of my friends would be less than supportive about the news, I figured it was best to keep it to myself until I knew the pregnancy was viable and was progressing normally. Plus, I don't want anyone trying to ruin this for me. I'm THRILLED about this baby, and it's nobody else's concern whether or not it's a "good time in my life" for it. No one has the right to bring me down from my cloud, darn it! :oD

Mom's already slipped and told my aunt and my grandmother; now she can spread the news to her 3 other siblings and any of her friends she feels like telling. Now I can post pictures of my swelling belly on my MySpace and Facebook profiles and tell everyone how excited I am! Now I can finally breathe a bit easier, knowing that yes, I WILL have a baby--and soon!!

The Taste of Pregnancy

When I found myself scraping every last bit of grilled onion off my empty plate and devouring it greedily, I knew something was up. Why did they taste so sweet, like candy, when they've always tasted bitter and gross to me?!?

Then Sprite started to taste very much like salt water.

Chocolate tastes VERY much like sweet&low or equal or some other artificial sweetner... And it tastes very little like anything else.

Snack cakes taste flat and dull. No sweetness, no tartness, no NOTHING. They're not BAD, exactly... Just not enjoyable.

Coke tastes bitter. Caffeine-free coke alternates between tasting like mana from heaven and like dirty pool water. Acidic pool water.

My cheetos didn't taste the least bit cheesy... They had a sort of sour flavor to them.

Fruit SINGS in my mouth when I eat it! It's bursting with flavor which, although different than I remember from pre-pregnancy, is DELIGHTFUL!

Now that I can keep down chicken again, it's absolutely marvelous. Beef, on the other hand, tastes slightly sour.

So you can understand why it takes me much longer now to select an entree off a menu than it did a few short months ago... I never know what to expect from my food! Old standby favorites leave me cold, while I find myself drooling over descriptions overflowing with foods I fiercely avoided for the past 24 years. Poor Asher seems to be terribly confused at the changes in my usual ordering habits and my unexpected unfavorable reactions to foods I have always loved. Heck, even ice cream is starting to taste less pleasant, while fruit popsicles are suddenly heaven.

Pregnancy is WEIRD.

Heels Hurt. :o(

I think I'm going to have to invest in some new (flat) work shoes. Right now, I basically have two pairs of shoes I wear to work: the brown ones, which look nice enough but feel like tennis shoes, and my black heels. I wear the heels more often than not, primarily because I own more stuff that goes with black than goes with brown.

Well, after walking and standing a bit more than usual this morning, my poor feet are swollen and achey. :o( I'm hoping it's just because I was up on my feet putting away snacks & loading the soda machine for half an hour after about an hour-long trip to storage where I was on my feet... I'm hoping that they're not just swelling up for the sake of swelling!

I just took one of the boxes from our latest snack purchase at Sam's, taped it shut, wrote in huge black letters on every side of it "Do NOT trash!!" and am now using it to prop my feet up under my desk. Theoretically, that's supposed to help... Guess we'll find out! :o)

Asher and I have been together for a year now. We're supposed to have dinner tonight to celebrate, and we're supposed to purchase the washer & dryer tonight, too (he was too tired to go last night). When I woke up this morning, he was all cuddly and affectionate and sweet... I didn't want to leave bed! I am SO happy to be married to this wonderful man and carrying his child! *giddy giggle*

Home stretch to the 2nd trimester!

Today, I caught my reflection in a window as I walked past and realized my posture's already beginning to adjust to the baby's presence. My legs are wider apart when I walk, I take slightly smaller steps, and I lean ever-so-slightly back at the waist as I move... It's odd. I hadn't even noticed the changes taking place, and yet, there they are!

I'm counting the days now until I can breathe a little easier, knowing I'm in the second trimester. Granted, there's not really a lot of difference between odds of miscarriage right now, at 11 weeks and 1 day with no signs of trouble, than there will be 6 days from now when I'm labeled "12 weeks"... And it's all an estimate really, anyway, so each individual day is far less important than the week-to-week stuff... But after what happened before, I can't help but be paranoid, and this countdown leads to the first important milestone that can help me feel grounded and comfortable and confident that everything's alright.

Since my new insurance kicks in before my next OB appt, I think I'm going to go ahead and opt to do the ultrasound they normally do at that visit (we weren't going to do it because my current lousy insurance only covers one u/s for the ENTIRE pregnancy, but the new one covers standard care, including more than one ultrasound). That will be another reassuring milestone for me... And I'm sure the pictures from this one will be far more interesting than the 6 week ultrasound. ;o) My next appointment's in 3 weeks... I'll be 14 weeks & 2 days at that point. Still too early to determine gender, but never too early to give me another glimpse of the growing life inside me. :o)

Here's the pics for this week:


My right side


My left side

Clean Slate

A coworker is getting married in September, and she emailed this morning asking everyone for their addresses so she can send invitations. I was halfway through typing mine when I realized it could be different as early as, well, tomorrow.

Granted, we'll still be in our current apartment right up until the end of the month... But if she mailed it the middle of next week, for example, it might not arrive before we're gone. Which, really, is terribly exciting. :oD

I'm most excited about the move because it's a clean place, a chance to start anew, to dump all the stuff we don't want/need/use, to organize things in such a way that we're not prone to just throwing things on the floor or letting things pile up because "there's nowhere else to put them," and, most of all, a room for Baby. A bedroom for us, a guest/computer room, and a baby room. The original plan was to keep the cats locked in the room with the computers... But that won't work if it doubles as a guest room. In the very beginning, though, the baby's room can be a guest room, since the baby won't be showing up for several months yet and, even then, will be sleeping in our room for the first few months. Whatever, we'll work something out. Since two of the cats will be relocating to the outside, it won't be a huge deal if the other 3 run loose in the apartment. We'll still lock them out of bedrooms, and it'll be fine. I'm SO excited about having a back yard for the puppies--now I just need to build them a great big dog house that they can share, and I'll feel like a good mommy to them after all this time. :o)

I'm glad we're moving now, as I ease into the second trimester, and not a few weeks ago while I was still ill all the time and lacked any energy whatsoever. I'm starting to feel pretty "normal" again, so my current plan is to load up my car once a day in the evenings after work and move stuff over to the new place, beginning tonight if we can get the key that early, tomorrow night if we have to wait a day on the lease signing. If I can manage to do that and stick to it, there won't be a whole lot we'll need to move this weekend (assuming Asher feels comfortable taking time away from studying, but since the Bar's Tues & Wed, I won't blame him if he'd rather study and rest!), and we can get the bulk of it out in pieces like that without even having to really pack it into boxes or rent a truck or anything... Of course, we'll need a truck for the furniture (beds, armoire, 3 dressers, a couch, piano, etc.), but otherwise, I've moved in carload installations a few times, and it's never been too much trouble. Saves you boxes, lets you see everything as you unload it in the new place so you know where things are when you need them and don't have to dig around, and keeps it in smaller, more manageable chunks rather than a great big overwhelming and exhausting weekend of frantic packing and moving.

If we need help, Mom said she'd come up next weekend (she took off work just in case) and help us paint, finish moving, clean, etc. I think mostly she wants to see the new place, wants to see what size I am, and wants to bring up some more maternity/baby stuff. Which is totally fine by me! ;o)

10 weeks, 3 days - Pictures!

The shots of my belly came out pretty blurry... Sorry 'bout that. It was the best I could do for now. Mostly, I just wanted to show off that I am wearing *actual maternity clothes* today! Woot! :o) Most styles won't work yet, and the pants are a little bit on the loose side... But they are COMFORTABLE AS ALL GET-OUT!

And I feel all cute and maternal. Which is all that matters. :oD



My "glowing" broken-out rounded-out face, haha. :o) I'm a happy little Mommy-to-Be, though!


10 weeks and 3 days, the overall appearance


Just my belly!

Caffeine, Please?

I slept last night. A LOT, and well! (Aside from a time or two when Asher woke me up with his hysterical LOUD laughing at Family Guy clips on YouTube, which he bugged me and tried to make me watch when he realized I was awake, but there was no way that was going to happen!)

I set my alarm and turned off the light about 9:30 last night. Then, I overslept this morning, so I didn't wake up until 7:30 (ten minutes after I needed to be on the road... oops!). That's a solid 10 hours there... So why do I feel like I'm going to pass out face-first in my keyboard??

I feel like there's almost nothing I wouldn't do for a fully-caffeinated venti peppermint mocha with an extra shot of espresso that would miraculously be totally harmless for Baby. Some days, no matter how much you've slept or how little energy you've exerted, being pregnant is just too exhausting to have to do without the caffeine. :o(

The good news: I feel good today. I don't feel dizzy and mildly nauseous. Despite being moments away from falling asleep, I feel healthy and a sort of energy deep within. I know I'm so tired because, despite all my best efforts, my body's working in overdrive right now. But my face, while broken out, really IS starting to take on that "glow" they say pregnant women have. My body's starting to look less like a tubby woman's and more like a pregnant woman's. I'm feeling warm and optimistic and really happy.

Plus, I look totally pregnant-cute in the new clothes Mom sent me. ;o)

We're halfway through the 11th week. Tuesday marks the beginning of the LAST week of the first trimester. I'm almost there!! And it's awfully fun to think about how cute my belly's going to be in just a few short weeks... *GRIN* I'm totally into this pregnancy thing. I feel a bit like I could conquer the world right now.

My Mom is the GREATEST EVER!

Monday, after I got so sick from my dress being too tight, my mom told me she had bought some maternity-ish clothes on clearance for me, and instead of waiting until I got down there, she was going to ship them to me so I could start wearing them. She said most of them weren't maternity, just loose shirts in sizes bigger than what I've been wearing, so I could wear them as "transitional" shirts until I'm big enough for actual maternity styles. She told me there were 7-10 shirts and a few pairs of actual maternity jeans in different styles.

Well, at 8:30 this morning, an ENORMOUS box was delivered to me at work. Inside were more clothes than I dreamed possible of fitting into a box--even a box this large! I won't be able to pull everything out and really check it all out until I get home this evening (I'd never be able to squeeze it all back into the box by myself!), but from what I can tell, there are TONS of things in there, many of which are pretty cute! A lot of it is pretty standard styles in solids or stripes, but there are multiple sizes in tons of 'em, so I should be set on clothing for a LONG while now! There's everything from juniors' XL to full-blown maternity sizes in there. I think Mom's determined that all I should have to buy for myself as I continue to swell is maternity undergarments. I really think I'm set here!! :o)

So here, in one day, I've gone from only 2 shirts and 2 pairs of (maternity) pants that really were still comfortable to an entire wardrobe that should carry me through the next few months. Everything's cotton and soft, so it should be great regardless of what the weather does. There appear to be a few pairs of maternity jeans as well as some other pants styles...

Let me just say, the great thing about maternity pants is that, as long as your shirt is long enough to cover the elastic waistbands they add to the top of them, most of the time they don't look any different from regular pants. And you can start wearing them pretty early on because the only real difference between them and regular pant fits is where that elastic waistband comes into play, so they're really very versatile in terms of tummy size!

Anyway, I am in a VERY happy place now! TONS of free brand new clothing that will be comfortable and that will last me a while so I don't even have to think about shopping now. Good for my stress levels (I HATE clothing shopping!), GREAT for my bank account, and invaluable for my sleep schedule (since I often go home from work and crawl straight into bed, leaving little time or energy for shopping).

Plus, it's incredibly exciting that my life is already changing because of the baby. Not only is my entire diet different, I'm beginning to look and dress differently, FEEL different... Yes, as we approach the second trimester, life is starting to get pretty pleasant. I just can't wait until we can break the news to Asher's family and friends and until Baby's big enough that the world can see without us having to tell! :oD

This Doesn't Taste Right...

One thing I just can't seem to get used to with this whole pregnancy thing is how nothing tastes the way it's supposed to!!

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to stop drinking caffeine. Being a huge soda gal, I naturally switched over to Sprite. Within a week or so, it began tasting salty and rancid. Every time I drank Sprite, whether from a bottle or fountain. That's about the time I started craving fruit juices and drinking lots of water, so I suppose it was nature's way (or Baby's way?) of telling me I could be making better beverage choices.

Then the cravings set in--mustard, hot dogs, onions... Things I never liked much before but that suddenly taste SO good!! ...Assuming, of course, I get them when I want them. Otherwise, they taste even worse than before.

So today I went out and got some lunch. As I was finishing up my meal, I suddenly was hit with this intense craving for chocolate chip cookies. My lunch had left me with a very salty taste in my mouth, and I wanted something sweet to counter it. Well, without cookies available to me, I stopped off at the vending machine downstairs for the next best thing: a candy bar! I settled on a Reese's, because it just sounded DIVINE... Now, one cup in, I'm finding it much less satisfactory than I had hoped. Mostly because, well, it doesn't taste like Reese's. I don't know how else to describe it. It just doesn't taste *right*.

That seems to be how it is with everything these days... It may taste better than it should, it may taste worse... But absolutely NOTHING tastes like it used to. And let me just say, if Coke tasted to you the way it tastes to these pregnant taste buds, you'd never touch the stuff again!

In other news, I *FINALLY* managed to get my referral sent where it needs to be, and I was able to schedule my first OB appt. for early next week. I'll be exactly 11 weeks into my pregnancy the day I walk in for the OB history appt. with the nurse, which is a bit beyond obscene (they wanted me there at 8 weeks!), but at least it's scheduled now and I can breathe a bit easier. I'll probably have to turn around and schedule my OB visit with the dr. for the next week (surely she'll want to have examined me by the end of the first trimester!!), but that's alright. I'm finally going to get IN. And maybe this way, I'll have the new insurance before I get too far into my copay for the delivery charge... Which would be nice!!

Unhappy Tummy

That was violent and horrible and lasted entirely too long.

Apparently, I'm not *quite* out of the woods with the morning sickness yet. Bah.

:o(

At least that's the first time it's happened in over a week. Definitely an improvement!

Time to Go Shopping

Since most of my pants are uncomfortably tight now and the pressure on my waist makes me nauseous, I had decided to wear some of my more loose-fitting dresses and try to put off shopping for roomier clothes as long as I could. Last night, I decided to wear my very flowy blue dress today, which fits snugly around the ribs but has an ENORMOUS skirt that allows for lots and lots of room below the rib cage. Well, surprisingly, when I went to put it on this morning, I couldn't get it zipped up! I had to ask Asher for help, and while he struggled with it, he made the VERY foolish comment, "Why don't you wear something that's your size?"

I could have killed him.

It IS my size, I pointed out. My pre-pregnancy size. And I've been putting off buying new clothes to save him money as long as I could, but would he like me to go out and buy a bunch of stuff now, since this squeezing into non-maternity stuff clearly offends him? Grr... It's his durn fault it doesn't fit, anyway. :o(

As I'm sitting here, working at my desk, though, I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to breathe in this dress. While my abdomen feels free and great, my expanding ribs are pressing against the dress, and I'm feeling slightly claustrophobic. If this dress is already too tight for me to wear again, I have absolutely ZERO faith that any of my others will work any longer. Meaning it's time to find some very large, very long shirts and switch to the maternity pants I already own. I've had several people recommend Old Navy's maternity clothes, so I think I'll make a trip there and one to Target. Hopefully, I can find something large enough to last me a while without looking ridiculous for now...

Very long, empire-waist shirts that are a size or so too large. Maternity pants. I think that's probably all I'm going to be able to squeeze my growing waistline into until I'm obviously pregnant enough to wear maternity styles. Who ever would have thought it would happen so soon?!?

Unexpected Bonuses of Bad Fashion Design

I never thought I'd be grateful for clothing styles that make people look fat.

Or that make people look pregnant.

Today, however, one such shirt is saving me from certain doom. :o) We're having dinner at Asher's grandmother's house tonight because his cousins are in from Houston. Asher's not ready to tell his family the news just yet, and I'm not exactly wanting for the extra attention from his side right now, so I'm perfectly content to keep it a secret.

The problem is, my belly doesn't seem quite as willing to cooperate. It has its big days and its smaller days, depending on how my organs feel like distending and shifting on any given day, and today is DEFINITELY one of the big ones. The baby is starting to get big enough to make a noticeable bump, plus there's the extra layer of "padding" the body puts on to store up nutrients for the baby, and the fact that everything inside me is full of air and fluids and extra blood and food that's digesting at a snail's pace...

Anyway, I have a green shirt that I've always liked because it's comfortable and a pretty color, but I always hated that it made me look slightly pregnant. It's a popular style these days, though, and it has the unfortunate side-effect of making even the teensiest girls look like they're in a family way, so I cleverly chose to wear it this morning. My swollen belly is perfectly masked under the ballooning of the shirt, and unless I put a hand on my stomach to illustrate where the shirt ends and my body begins, you'd never be able to tell it was anything but the lay of the fabric.

Now, my only concerns are the "pregnant glow" I'm already getting comments about and my unpredictable stomach. I think as long as I don't get sick during dinner, we'll be able to make it through tonight without anyone guessing our happy little secret. :o)


My shirt as it normally hangs


Holding it against my swollen belly


Close-up on Baby's Bump!

Yesterday morning, upon waking from a bad dream, I got so upset that Asher wouldn't hold me that I started crying my eyes out. Yesterday evening, he was being playful and teasing me at IHOP, and I started crying my eyes out. Right now, sitting at my desk at work without anyone bugging me, I feel a little bit like crying my eyes out. Silly hormones, haha. :o)

I'm VERY restless today. I keep getting up and walking laps around the office for no reason whatsoever. I'm looking for excuses to get up and walk across the building, just so I can get up and MOVE. A full half of our office is out today, so it's quiet and slow around here, and I guess the shift I've made away from soft drinks and toward water, juice, and chocolate milk each day has given me some sort of energy surge. Granted, I'll still be asleep by 8pm tonight... But while I'm awake, I've got too much energy to sit still!! :o)

I have my pointless waste-of-time-and-money dr's appointment this afternoon at Goddard. I have to go take a completely unnecessary pregnancy test to confirm the pregnancy I've already confirmed for my stupid insurance company. Apparently, until I have *GODDARD* confirm it, I can't get a referral to schedule my OB appointments, so I'm going to be another two weeks or so before I can get in for my first OB appt, even though they wanted me in the beginning of this week. Guess that's what happens when people ignore your phone calls and messages for 2 weeks and don't let you know what you need to do to make things happen. Grr. I am SO glad that I won't have to worry about this stuff in a month.

I almost wish I could just hold out a month before my first OB appointment, just so I wouldn't have to waste the time and money now and could just go under the new insurance (thank goodness my OB is on my new plan!)... But I need to get the background appt with the nurse done now so I can see the dr next time... And that appointment's going to be due right about the time the new insurance kicks in. So, for now, I'll play along and pretend it doesn't bug me, and I can forget all about it soon enough.

The morning sickness is MUCH more manageable now. As long as I eat breakfast and drink some juice in the morning on my way to work, fix myself a tall glass of water as soon as I walk in the door, keep my water full all day, and snack BEFORE I start to feel hungry, I'm fine. Then, at lunch, if I make sure to eat only the things that sound GOOD to me, it's easy to make it through to dinner. Dinner is the easiest, because my stomach's fairly settled by the end of the day. Basically, as long as I eat something I consider a "safe" food (i.e. not chicken!!), I'm golden.

The new irksome symptom I've developed is dry skin. After I shower, my whole body seems to be dry, itchy, and flaking. I went yesterday and bought some lotion for my body and face, and I also picked up some cocoa butter/stretch mark cream to help reduce the inevitable stretch marks. I felt a million times better after lotioning up yesterday. Unfortunately, I forgot to put some on this morning, so I'm a bit uncomfortable at the moment. There's some hand cream in my desk, left over from a previous tenant, but I'd have to go to the bathroom and strip to be able to access the areas most in need, so I think I'll refrain for now.

My dr's appt. is at 3pm in Norman, so I had planned on leaving at 2:30, hopefully getting back about 4. If it runs a mere five minutes late, though, I may have to consider just staying in Norman. Driving the half hour back just to sit for an hour and then fight traffic for another hour back to Norman is a painful thought, but if I'm not even going to get a full hour in back at work, I don't see how using the extra 1/5 tank of gas is worth it. We'll see how that goes. If I end up staying in Norman, at least it'll mean lotion sooner, some extra rest time, and less of a headache at the end of the day. :o)

Motion Sickness

One of the worst side-effects of this pregnancy is the affect it has had on my motion sickness.

I've always gotten mildly queasy in the passenger seat (or, heaven forbid, the back seat) of cars, particularly if I'm the least bit too warm or dehydrated. But now, this morning sickness is such that I get ill even when *I'm* the one driving. If Asher bounces the bed too much getting in or out, my stomach turns. You don't want to even SEE me in the elevators on the way to and from work!

The most unexpected part of this, however, is problems online. It seems that just about every website has animated advertisements of some sort, with images sliding in and out of the screen, flashing lights, or cartoon characters jumping up and down. Or maybe it's just a clip from a new movie or of a television advertisement.

Whatever the specifics, with each flashing light or movement of a character's arms, my head reels and my stomach threatens to unburden itself of all its contents. It is SO INCREDIBLY INTENSE a wave of nausea that overwhelms me each time I'm exposed to one of these ads that I'm finding myself avoiding certain sites I used to check daily out of fear of losing my lunch.

On the (much) brighter side of things, Mom asked me today when we'll find out Baby's gender. I told her that, according to everything I've read, ultrasound can't really tell in most cases until about 14 weeks, and most people and doctors seem to recommend an ultrasound closer to 16-20 weeks in to determine gender. Mom told me that 20 weeks is much too late. I asked her why, and she said it's because she only has 90 days to return either all the pink or all the blue stuff that she's already bought! I find it so ridiculously cute that she's already going out and stocking up on baby sleepwear, bedding, etc... And I'm not even through the first trimester yet!

I can't help but smile at all this, knowing she's doing it because she already loves this baby. I mean, I know how much *I* love this baby and how excited *I* am to be having it, but it's really something else entirely to see that other people feel the same way.

I'm curious to see a) when Asher feels comfortable sharing the news with his family, and b) how they react. We're having dinner Friday night with his cousins, who are expecting a baby some time around New Year's, as well as his mother and grandmother, I believe, and I'm not entirely sure how well I'll be able to hide the news if my stomach isn't feeling cooperative... I'm worried enough about being green after the drive up there, but if they serve chicken, I'm sunk!