Symptomatic

This week was all about symptoms. Last Tuesday I had my first bought of nausea. About an hour in to feeling just unable to move, I also felt REALLY hungry, which wasn't all that unusual. So, I decided I better eat something. Miraculously, that totally did the trick and I felt great the rest of the night. As I was getting ready for bed that night I told myself that I'd make an effort to eat frequently and at the first hint of nausea and I was sure I'd be fine.

Well, that turned out to be wishful thinking and I've felt some degree of nausea every day since. Sometimes it feel debilitating. The worst of it seems to come in the evenings between lunch and dinner, but I can keep it pretty under control if I eat. So I'm eating constantly. This is a little disconcerting given the fact that I'm trying not to gain too much weight, especially in trimester 1. But I guess being fat is better than being sick, so I'm going with it.

Anything healthy which I was on the fence about before being pregnant seems to make my stomach just roll. The smell of broccoli is just awful. The texture of things bother me. Today I threw away a pile of potato chips for no reason other than looking at them made me feel sick. My sandwich at lunch tasted great, but I'd waited too long to eat so I was nauseated all while enjoying the taste. It was a totally strange experience.

In addition, I'm completely exhausted all the time. I've been trying hard to hold myself together at work since things have been kinda crazy, and will only get worse in the coming weeks. I'm very nervous about how my bosses will take the news since I've only been with the company a few months and will deliver when I've been there about 13 months. They are great and would never in any way not support me, but in a way, I feel like I've let them down by doing this selfish thing. Many, if not most, of my co-workers really live for the job, and only one of my co-workers is a parent. So, I feel like maybe they won't understand my choice or will be frustrated at the ways my leave might set back the team. Anyway, I'm trying to accumulate plenty of accolades before I drop my bomb and being tired at work does not help my plan.

My boobs are finally starting to settle down and I'm no longer wearing a sports bra to bed. However, they've grown a good bit and are already all vainy and gross looking. I basically have a map of the Venice canals on my breasts. Fun.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting with the first of 2 midwife groups I'm considering if we got with homebirth. Sadly, the second one has yet to respond to my email, so I guess I'll have to try to set up an appointment by phone. I called my OBGYN's office today because I got a letter from my insurance saying my ultra-sound request was denied. I asked if I still needed to come in and the crabby receptionist started grilling me about whether I intended to keep using their office and why I wouldn't come to my appointments. She calmed down when I explained that no one TOLD ME what the regular appointment schedule was like and so I honestly wasn't sure. Sheesh! Yet another reason I'm not sure this team is right for me. I'm thoroughly bummed out at the thought that I'm going to have to interview both midwives & OBs before I can make final decision.

In a barely related aside, I was talking to my mom today about why I wanted to deliver naturally and how important breastfeeding is. She said something like "well it's hard because a lot of women don't have enough milk as the baby gets older." I explained to her that while that can be true, it's mostly due to human error and not the body being truly unable. I know that she'll support my choices and she'll listen to me when I explain why my thinking runs against the norm, but it frustrates me to no end that the general population is so unaware of the actual benefits and actual challenges of breastfeeding. I told my mom that while I might have trouble breastfeeding (in fact, I'm kinda figuring that at some point, it'll get really HARD) I don't want her to tell me it's ok to quit. I want her to know that this is more important than my comfort and my struggles and for her to tell me to just suck it up and find a way. I don't know if she can do that, but I know she'll try.

Tomorrow a review of the midwives.

More reading and more symptoms

When I found out I was pregnant the firs thing I wanted to do was read every book I could get my hands on. My husband suggested that I look into the site "swap.com" and so I spent an entire evening logging all our existing reading material into this website so I could see if anyone wanted to trade my cookbooks for their pregnancy reading. I ended up getting 3 interesting books which thus far help to satisfy my thirst for knowledge about pregnancy.

I also created a new twitter account when we started trying to get pregnant so I could follow and befriend other people trying to get pregnant. I ended up getting hooked up with a couple different news article crawling twitter accounts and since then I've been reading practically every new study on pregnancy that's out there. Among the most frustrating are two articles that came out very recently, one saying that babies of mothers who overeat during pregnancy are predisposed to obesity and the other say that babies of mothers who undereat during pregnancy are predisposed to obesity. Between the two articles I'm completely baffled about what to do. I also read that if I eat crappy foods while pregnant, my kid will only want to eat crappy foods once they arrive. The problem is that I'm already developing some nausea when I get close to veggies. I'm not surprised by this since, generally speaking, I hate vegetables and have to force them on myself under the best of circumstances.

In other news my breasts have gone from "sore" to "downright painful". I'm already not a great sleeper. Because of back pain, I tend to flip over multiple times during the night and since I developed this lovely symptom, every time I flip over, the discomfort basically wakes me up completely. Yay! So I've resigned myself to employing the assistance of my most supportive sports bar day and night.

I also had my first creepy pregnant dream, which honestly I had hoped to avoid although I knew that wasn't likely. I used to have crazy wedding dreams before and during my wedding planning, so I kinda knew it was coming. Last night, I dreamed I delivered the baby, fed it, and then returned later and it was some kind of loaf of bread. I was freaking out that something terrible had happened, but my husband and others kept assuring me everything was fine. Awesome.

I'm only 5 weeks, 2 days, and I can't yet wrap my mind around feeling like this (not just the physical symptoms, but also the anticipation) for another 35 weeks. I mean, how is that even possible?