Early Weeks

I’ve been pregnant for almost three months!  Here’s what you missed (it’s not been pretty):

 

Week 5

I’m sorta tired and my stomach is in my throat sometimes and the gas… oh, I remember this nonsense.

 

With Charles, I ate my weight in cottage cheese.  With Jamie, I ate Oreos, sometimes an entire package in a day.  This baby is a salad baby.  It’s the only thing I want to eat at all.  I gagged at the sight of the chicken I made for dinner last night.  Butter and cheese hold no appeal.  But salad?  Glorious salad, I could have it for every meal.  Don’t hate me, I swear I’m not salad martyr pregnant lady.  It’s just what I want.

 

Looking at Pinterest makes me gag.  Looks like I’m giving up The Devil’s Website for a while.

 

Week 6

I had an epic tantrum last night.  Me, not one of the boys.  I have been feeling pretty poorly, as one does when growing a child, and Tony and I had made an agreement that he would come home after work and make dinner for us while the boys and I were at Baby Boot Camp.  Only he called me at 6:10 and was just leaving the office in Bellingham.  No food prepared at home for this ravenous, sweaty mama.  I went home and found that we didn’t have enough chips, had no olives or sour cream, and nothing else remotely ready to make into food.  I made the world’s plainest nachos for the kids and when Tony got home I screamed at him and threw a monster fit.

 

Sometimes it happens, right?  I’m pregnant, I was really hungry and also feeling like I was going to barf, and I couldn’t express myself in any way that didn’t scream bitch.  Well, as it has been pointed out to my by both my mother and my brother (but not my husband, because he doesn’t like to see me cry), I am a total bitch while I’m pregnant.  Which is why I probably won’t see much of my mom for the next nine months.  Poor brother of mine is stuck with me at work, though.

 

Plus, you know what sucks?  Pretending that nothing is wrong because it’s “too early” to tell everyone that we’re having another baby when I am miserable.  I want to sleep and vomit.  That’s all. 

 

We went to dinner last night, to Hibachi, and the fat and salt was too much for me.  I spent the entire night writhing in pain.  It was horrible, so now I’m back to bland foods and no grilled vegetables to try to avoid the gas.  Pregnant ladies cannot win with food.

 

Week 7

Sick.  So sick.  Cannot move.  Barfing in the middle of the night.  Water tastes bad.  Sick.  I honestly don’t know how I’ll make it through several more weeks of this.

 

Heartburn is back, along with it’s friend, Tums, world’s worst-tasting supplement.  Why can’t they taste like SweetTarts?  If they did, I would probably vomit, though.

 

I remember now why I get so fat when I’m pregnant: to keep from vomiting, I have to keep food in my stomach AT ALL TIMES.  But I can’t eat anything good for me, or I’ll vomit.  My early taste for salad is gone, and now I eat mostly rice.  Rice with butter.  Rice with ranch dressing.

 

I’d love to exercise, but when I get home from work, I push myself to do dishes and laundry and I gag through dinner prep (if my family is lucky - some days I abandon the thought of cooking dinner and then we have cereal), and then I fall asleep on the couch until it’s time to pick up the kids, at which point I try to be fun mom, but mostly I just read stories to them on the couch.

 

Week 8

No more rice.  Don’t come near me with a potato.  Tortillas make me gag.  I’m stuck in that awful hungry-but-nothing-tastes-good cycle.  First trimester is just a gross bundle of misery, and I’ve added to it extreme bloating – so I look 15 weeks pregnant when I’m only 8.  I didn’t even begin to show until the second trimester last time.  This time, I’m “sharing” news with certain friends and coworkers because it’s becoming obvious.

 

Gas baby

 

I’m super tired but I sleep badly.  I have tried running a little, but unless I get the timing juuuuust right (in the morning, when I’ve had food, am not already feeling rotten), the exercise just makes me feel worse.  I haven’t been to a workout class in weeks.

 

We told our families at Thanksgiving and everyone was duly shocked.  My mom said something rude and then spent the weekend making it up to me by cooking for my family and my freezer, and my dad was just nonplussed.  He must’ve spent 30 seconds with a shocked look on his face, unable to say a word.  Sometimes it’s the little things that make you the happiest, you know?  I’m glad that after 32 years, I can still render my father speechless.

 

Week 9

I vomited so hard last night that I broke capillaries in my eyelids, so I had to cake the makeup on pretty hard this morning.  Mornings are going okay, but afternoons and evenings are a downhill slide into hell.  How many more weeks must I endure?

 

Oh, and Taco Time and I want you to know that pinto beans taste WONDERFUL and are a great counter to the dread pregnancy-induced constipation.

 

Oh!  And Tony had surgery on Friday, which was just the worst.  He’s unable to take care of me, I’m unable to take care of him, and the kids… well, let’s just say they’re watching a whole lot more TV than every before.  Thank God for friends – I let my fitness group in on the secret and they have brought meals and taken my children for playdates.  I could not be more grateful.

 

Week 10

More of the same.  Sick, sick, sick, WILL THIS NEVER END?  I feel like there’s definitely a point in the first trimester where I am convinced that I will never feel well again, and I have hit that point.

 

I am so sick by 4 pm, but I’m also hungry at dinner time.  I usually choke something down to cure the “I’m hungry” queasiness, only to have it come back up a couple hours later.

 

Also, I need new bras.  And potentially a new wardrobe – I have quite the belly (mostly gas/bloat), so my pre-pregnancy clothes are out.  But it’s not really a “pregnant” belly yet, so maternity clothes are out, too.  I’ve been wearing the same three loose dresses for two weeks straight.

 

I wish I could have a meatloaf sandwich every day.  Someone get on that, please.

 

I belch like a pre-teen boy: loudly and often.  I should learn how to say the alphabet when I burp; I’d probably make it through all 26 letters several times a day.

 

Week 11

I am managing to make it until 7 pm before I feel truly terrible now.  This is an improvement, if a small one.  It means that I am not such a dangerous driver, distracted by my own nausea, when I pick up the kids from preschool.  It also means that I can eat dinner without gagging.

 

We had our first doctor’s appointment and got to hear a wee, bitty heartbeat.  We won’t have an ultrasound until 20 weeks or so, so this is our only confirmation that baby is alive until I start to feel kicks.  Such a relief.  I also got a nice prescription for Zofran, so I’m feeling a bit better in the evenings.