The Not-So-Divine Secrets of -Motherhood-

Ten weeks tomorrow

So tomorrow marks ten weeks. We should go out to celebrate. The realist in me didn't think I would make it that far. The pessimist in me is wondering if I will make it to the finish line. But enough of that- I can't keep sending myself into a tailspin.

Today was by far the worst day of morning sickness yet. I am eternally thankful that there is no vomit involved, but the constant hangover is almost too much. I enjoy wine (when I'm not pregnant) and my house is actually decorated with beautiful paintings of wine. The other day I realized that I had to shield my eyes from one of my favorite wine paintings because just the thought of it reminded me of that constant hangover that I call morning sickness.

I have another appointment with my dr on Monday the 3rd. I went for a follow up last Tuesday and the nurse was a little timid as she told me that she didn't think they would have the opportunity to hook me up to the doppler to hear the baby's heartbeat. I know she was shaking in her clogs about having to tell me that but at least I was at peace with it. I can't say the same for my appointment coming up in a week. I'm thinking about renting one of those dopplers for the remainder of my pregnancy. I know I pay at least that much in copays so I should be kind and save my insurance company the cash.

Just a funny mental image to leave you with for the night. I just realized as I was sitting here typing (in almost full recline in this office chair) that my yoga pants are snug just below my rounded tummy and that my tank top is no longer the appropriate length. I remind myself a little of Homer Simpson. And yes, at only ten weeks I already have a belly. It's so cute I stare at it every time I walk by a mirror. Ask me about that in seven more months.

Heartbeat strong

So I must have played the part of a convincing lunatic yesterday. My doctor still hasn't run me through my first real OB visit but they did take me right to the ultrasound machine. I love that they know that about me already.

The first thing I was excited about was graduating from the magic wand to the belly ultrasound. My husband would have been happy. I was a little worried that they wouldn't be able to do the tummy ultrasound and that I would have to endure the wand again but with enough jelly and an educated touch they found my little nugget right away.

This time I didn't see the heartbeat as clearly as I did the first time. I felt a little like Rachel on "Friends". I don't see it! But then he turned up the volume and there was a reassuring thud thud thud. I thought at first it was my own heartbeat until he showed me it was really coming from my little alien.

He flipped it to 3D and I got to catch my first glimpse of the baby. (Although at eight weeks on the dot there was nothing baby about it.) I'm not going to pretend to be all sentimental about it. I was excited to see it in 3D but only because I have that morbid fascination with medical information. I couldn't clearly see anything that really resembled a baby- it really reminded me more of a cashew. And I guess the baby itself is 1.5 centimeters long.

All that stress for a mere half inch? It's going to be a long nine more months.

Quiet Insanity

So you may notice that I haven't posted for a few days. You would think that would be a good thing, right? That I've been too busy to think any crazy thoughts or to search any stupid medical terms on Google. Well, yes and no.

I've been consumed with morning sickness minus the sick and not just in the morning. It started off about two weeks ago- and it was cute then. I was excited that the only thing I could eat for breakfast was dry toast or ginger ale. Of course, I thought since it was only from about 6:30-8:30am that it was all psychosomatic. Maybe at that point it was.

A little over a week ago it turned into more of a general all-day feeling. It wasn't really interfering with anything- I could still eat regular meals and was still starving like you wouldn't believe. It was still a little cute then too.

About three days ago it turned into "DO NOT SAY THE WORD BEEF IN MY HOUSEHOLD". Don't say it, don't think it, turn off the tv when an ad comes on. The thought of beef makes my stomach roll. We had a leftover roast in the fridge that I tried for four days to bring myself to throw out. I couldn't even touch the container! I finally had to ask my husband to give it a proper burial while I was out at the grocery store. I love that man. I think he even threw out the plastic container. Good, because I can't even imagine using it again after it contained that vile piece of meat.

My in-laws are here. Normally I am pretty stubborn when it comes to my household chores. I wouldn't have my own mother do my laundry, I'm not about to let my husbands mother do it. But honestly, I do not have enough juice in me to fight it. I have been sitting after dinner and letting her do my dishes- a cardinal sin in my house I might add- without a twinge of regret. There is nothing like a few weeks of pregnancy and a little nausea to reduce your ego to the size of a jelly bean.

I spent the whole weekend fighting off the waves of nausea, alternating between sleeping and eating all day. I got nothing done and didn't feel any worse about it. So if nothing else, pregnancy will dull your sense of self-respect.

I have however discovered that I have about zero interest in sweets (good thing because my husband is constantly fretting about my returning to my pre-pregnancy body). What I do have a craving for is anything sour or salty. Yuk! So think along the lines of lemonade, Icebreakers Sours, tart green olives from the deli, tangy italian dressing- you name it. And I guess since the B word is out I will have to get my protein from chicken, eggs, and nuts.

Guaranteed to provide a gassy outcome. Fabulous.

Approaching Jubilation

So each day I let myself feel a little more excitement over this. I'm really hoping that I'm not setting myself up for some giant emotional letdown.

My husbands family will be in town to celebrate his dads 65th birthday. And maybe it wasn't on this blog, but on my other one I used to talk all the time about those prime opportunities to tell a family that you are pregnant, none of which I could ever take advantage of. For example, holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Summer trips. You know.

The funny part of that is that I always planned my holidays around the hope that I would have something to share. This time I planned my holiday around the fact that I had nothing to share and didn't care. Amazing how that worked! For a change I do have the prime opportunity to tell his family that we are pregnant!

I told one of my other sisters today that we are expecting. She lives in Ohio so it had to be over the phone but I could hear her excitement. And that gets me a little excited too. Today I am seven weeks some odd days. (you would think I would have it memorized but I'm trying not to). That means in some more days I will be eight weeks. Not bad! Time has gone relatively quickly- when I'm not an obsessive freak that is.

So the next two weeks we will have company in town. I'm going to try to take the laptop to bed and sneak in a blog or two. I'm sure that after the first 48 hours I'll have something to bitch about, I usually do. It's usually something petty but my imagination can work it into something pretty good.

Stay tuned.

A Day in the Life

So here is a sample of one of the days in my life lately, beginning at midnight:

12:00am- get up and pee. Bladder is the size of a pistachio.

1:30am- awaken to the sound of a lawnmower coming from my stomach. Schlep downstairs to rummage for something edible.

4:00am- pee again. Try to settle back into a comfortable position for the last two hours before the alarm goes off.

4:30am- check the time again. Crap, only an hour and a half left to get a good sleep before the alarm goes off.

6:00am- alarm goes off. Since I just fell back asleep I'm going to hit snooze three times. That should ensure that I get about eight real minutes of sleep and my husband gets none.

6:30am- head downstairs to rummage through the pantry again. Nibble on something dry and tasteless. Down a glass of whatever is handy, water, juice, milk, ginger ale.

7:30am- get to work. Immediately start thinking about what to eat next.

8:00am- have a snack. Granola bar, yogurt, or piece of fruit.

8:06am- begin planning what I will eat next.

9:45am- eat another snack. Granola bar, yogurt, or fruit, whatever I haven't already polished off.

11:00am- early lunch. Two servings of whatever is leftover from the night before. Unless I ate that at one of my earlier sittings. In which case I have to make a mad dash to El Pollo Loco for a supersized Pollo Bowl.

12:50pm- early afternoon snack? Cheese sticks and crackers?

2:20pm- Another snack. Veggies and dip.

4:00pm- begin thinking about dinner. Calculate amount of time left between stomach self destruction and prep time for each meal. Better think of a snack.

5:30pm- forage through the pantry like a wild bear in a campground. Tear open packages and eat handfuls of whatever is in there. Except the dry pasta. I do draw a line somewhere.

7:45pm- bed time snack. Usually another meal along with a full glass of milk.

9:30pm- just drifting off to sleep, wait, have to get up and pee.

11:00pm- my husband just drifted off to sleep. Now I have to get up and pee. Sorry sweetie.

Things are quiet...

So far so good. The nausea comes and goes. Yesterday was an excellent day. I wasn't ill at all. Today so far has been ok, just a little queasy every now and then. I'm just thinking about going back to bed for a morning nap. Just for the hell of it.

We told my parents yesterday. After six years of them hounding us to have children I expected a little more fanfare. It was one of those, "oh, good for you" kind of responses. Truthfully, we were a little ripped off about it. We're hoping for a much more dramatic response from my husbands parents. At least a tear or two.

We've also shared with our closest friends. I'm just really hoping that everything is good and healthy because I know I won't be able to go back and tell anyone all bets are off. I shouldn't have told anyone to begin with but honestly, you try for two years and then see what happens when dreams come true. I find myself telling complete strangers with total ease.

Have I mentioned how much I love my husband? I mean, really love him. Not just for his contribution, but for the fact that he has fully embraced my whole frantic mentality over the last two years. Knowing that he loves me enough to have stuck with me through all of this is pretty big. Other couples have divorced over less.

And he is definitely earning his place in heaven. Now that I can't scoop the kitty box he has to do it alone. Not that he was excited about getting any cats to begin with but we've had these ones for seven years so I guess they've grown on him. The hardest part is that our primadonna cat won't go in the box if it contains any more than two clumps in it. She will neatly leave her deposit on the carpet that the box sits on. Fortunately for us, the box is in the garage. It's unsanitary enough to have a cat box, much less to have one where the cat repeatedly dumps outside the box. Previously it fell on whoever saw it first to clean it up. Now I can neatly step over the present on my way out the door. I'll have to do something nice for my husband when all is said and done. Hey, I have an idea, how about I just give birth? That should even the score.

I guess I finally am getting a little excited about this. After seeing the heartbeat I know that our chances of miscarriage drop dramatically. There is still that small minority of pregnancies that don't make it even after seeing the heartbeat but I'm not going to fall into that category. It's mind over body sister. Just keep remembering that.

Aaahhhhhh.

Hear that sigh of relief? So my day started at 3am. I can't help it but each night I wake up starving, I think it is the noise of my stomach grumbling that wakes me, not the actual hunger pains themselves. I got up, drank a glass of OJ, and headed back to bed. I fell into a fitful sleep for three more hours.

Right at six on the dot I got up and decided I felt well enough to eat breakfast. I had two pieces of dry toast with a glass of 7-Up. So far, so good. I took a shower. I got dressed and was ready by 7am to go to the doctor. Keep in mind, my appointment wasn't until 8:15. So I headed downstairs to type a few frantic words to my good friends at Baby Center.

Anyway, it washed over me in about six seconds flat. I was shaking and so nauseous that I didn't think I would be able to push in the clutch in my car. (I should have outgrown the need for a six speed manual transmission in my early 20's but I insisted that I needed that extra gear in this Audi. I'm cursing myself now)

My husband drove me to the appointment, all the while I am sitting in the passenger seat breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. I have also found that sugarfree IceBreakers Sours work wonders for a sour stomach. Believe it or not. I'm gulping water like I've just crawled ten miles through the Sahara and popping IceBreakers Sours like an addict.

I forgot. Traffic is bad in the morning and I just drank half a gallon of water. I already had a bladder the size of a dime and being pregnant has not helped. At least now I had something to take my mind off the impending ultrasound.

We breezed right in to the doctors office and there was only one lady there before us. She was wearing mix-matched socks. One was pink and one was orange. I had to assume that it was on accident because I could think of no earthly reason why a grown woman would be so punk. I was fascinated by those socks. I don't even think I really got a good look at the woman.

The ultrasound tech called us in right away. I love that woman. I love being prompt. That old high school military background has drilled into me that if you are on time, you are late. And that really describes how I feel about it too.

I had to do the striptease and wrap myself in the Bounty sheet. I hopped up onto the table, both eager but with trepidation. What if? What would we do? How would I get through the day? The weekend?

She fiddled with the machine for a minute and then produced the wand. It was promptly obscured by my paper towel leg tent and two seconds later an image popped up on the screen. Last week my husband thought they were going to do the ultrasound outside, on my stomach. He was horrified that the doctor popped this wand into me and dug around looking for something. He admitted that he felt a little uncomfortable to see another man just violate his wife. I laughed, because if you could have seen the expression on his face you would have too.

So the first thing we see is a nice ROUND gestational sac. It looked nothing like the banana that it was last week. Sigh. Things are looking up for me. She goes pretty quickly over that part and I see a little smudge on the screen but she has already moved on to my ovaries.

The left one had a bunch of dark spots. I asked if that was bad and she said that they were just follicles. Where the hell were those things for the last two years? So she moved over to the right side. I started to get a little worried when there weren't a bunch of dark spots, just one big dark spot. Is that a cyst? I do have a cyst on the right side. Is it going to affect anything? She said that it was a cyst, known as the corpus luteum. That is what sustains the pregnancy until it can sustain itself. Well, by all means then, stop poking and prodding that thing. Just let it rest- it's got a job to do!

It felt like forever although I'm sure it was no more than four minutes. She took lots and lots of pictures and measurements. I think the window blind guy can get an entire job measured in less time than that. Finally she moved back to the only thing I cared about- the gestational sac.

Have I mentioned yet how beautifully round it was? It was beautiful. And what was even more beautiful was the perfectly round yolk sac that was inside. Nothing like the elongated flat empty sac we saw last week. It was perfectly round and attached right to the side of it was my little snowman. I guess it also resembles a peanut. I didn't care- it was there and I could see it.

She hovered over it for just another second and there it was. The flicker of a heartbeat. Pregnant women are already an emotional lot but I grabbed my husbands hand and started to cry. Actually, maybe I was already crying. He squeezed back.

I love him for his quiet strength. All week he was so reassuring, so confident. Come to find out he was just as scared as I was that the little gestational sac would be empty and flat. He was just as happy as I was to see that heartbeat. Actually, I think he was more happy. Because at least with that he knew that I would be pacified for a few more days. Until my next panic attack sets me off.

So, all in all, things are really looking good. I'm actually starting to believe in this. We are tentatively rearranging our vacation schedule to delete the five day trip to Mexico and add a Christmas trip North to visit his family. With a newborn in tow.

The Waiting Game

I haven't posted for a few days, not because I have had the self discipline to stay away from the internet but because I spend too much time reading through medforum.com or whatever that site is that always comes up whenever I put in the usual combination of HCG, progesterone, and early pregnancy.

I was thinking that I'm doing pretty good- so far I've made it halfway through the week without sending myself into hyperventilation mode. However, tonight I thought I just saw the faintest spot on the teepee when I went to the bathroom. If I start spotting I just know I will mentally lose it. So I'm willing myself right now with every ounce of being to just keep this thing in with no spotting. Don't get me wrong, I know many women have some spotting and go on to deliver perfectly healthy babies. The problem is that I was already freaking out about my progesterone decreasing a little.

So right now I'm just trying to make it to Friday. I'm like the little train. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. I know I can, I know I can, I know I can.