Weeks 6 & 7

Well I am almost 7.5 weeks along and things are just trucking along over here. In week 6 my nausea was intense leading me to throw up once and have intense dry heaving sessions a couple of times. Most times I find it is because I am hungry or am not eating enough. The one time I threw up it had started with nausea and so I tried eating an apple as a snack but that came right back up halfway through eating it. As soon as I get hungry the nausea starts and my body craves specific things and at that time it did not want apples. I am LOVING carbs right now though. I cannot get enough and Brian loves it. Pasta, pizza, PB&J sandwiches, cereal, all awesome. I brought a salad with me to work yesterday and the smell, texture, everything about it was revolting but I crammed it down because I knew that I needed some veggies in my body. I am still drinking coffee but am trying to ween myself off of it slowly. I usually fill my to-go mug half way and then fill the rest with hot water. Next week I will probably try to go down even more with the hopes of my body slowly giving it up. Also, carbonated drinks are amazing right now. I have never been a big pop drinker, but if we go out to dinner a diet coke sounds amazing. Or if I am home I love perrier with lemon, I think it is the bubbles that really hit the spot.

The mornings and evenings aren’t too bad for nausea, but afternoons are terrible. Usually starting around 1 pm I get nausea (how bad depends on my eating for the day) and then by 4 pm I am exhausted and it feels like a really bad hangover or the flu with my body just not wanting to move. I get really tired on my drive home from work which causes me to get home, put on my stretchy pants and lay down for a few minutes on the couch. I get a second wind between 6-7 and then by 7:30 pm I am ready for bed. My eyes get really tired but when I go to bed it takes a little bit to fall asleep most nights.

Physically I still feel pretty good with no obvious pregnancy symptoms that people are catching on to at work. Mainly it is still just things that I notice about myself on a daily basis. For one my boobs are very sensitive and the veins on my chest and breasts are a lot more pronounced and visible it seems. I am noticing too that some days my uterus feels like there is constant heat and energy there. Last Saturday it felt massive and very active. We were doing errands all day and by the time we got home I felt so exhausted and it felt like my uterus was the size of a melon and just throbbing so I made sure to lie down and rest a bit in case it was going into overdrive because I was pushing too hard. Most times I notice my uterus in the evenings and at night and it feels hotter at those times. During the day it could be because I am busy working so don’t really notice it, or maybe the nausea overrides the uterus feelings.

I have done some incline walking on the treadmill as my exercise but not very often and I found that afterwards I would feel like I had the flu and just super run down afterwards which was not a nice feeling. I really miss running and sweating during an intense workout but I am afraid that I will push myself too hard or get my heart rate too high and then it wouldn’t be good. Most days though I just want to do nothing. I feel pretty lazy about it, but it is really hard to mentally get up and do something or go somewhere and I don’t think our winter weather is helping at all.

So far my emotions have been pretty good and steady with no crazy crying or anything. I do get annoyed at little things a lot easier, but I am not sure if that is pregnancy related or not. For the most part, the biggest thing I am noticing is my eating habits and food aversions. Meat and vegetables just do not sound appealing to me at all. If they are on a plate in front of me I will eat them, but the thought of them and the smell of it makes me gag, especially the thought or raw meat like pork or chicken.

Some days I convince myself that I feel nothing though and that scares me. My biggest fear is that one day I will wake up and all the symptoms will be gone and I have miscarried. I am unsure how to get over this mental hurdle so I made a BodyTalk appointment and hopefully Kate can help me let go of fear and just focus on the positives. When I am going to bed I think about a growing belly, a healthy heart beat, and visualize myself waddling around about to pop. Sometimes I think about the newborn stage, but for right now, the pregnant belly visuals have been helping me focus on the positive and letting go because ultimately everything right now is out of my control. All I can do is make sure my body is healthy and nature will take care of everything else.

xo T

11.5 Weeks

So here we are at almost 12 weeks (finally!). I CANNOT wait until Monday when we get to hear the heartbeat for the very first time. Earlier on in the week I was seriously contemplating calling and switching the appointment to Friday so that I wouldn’t have to wait as long but that isn’t helping me manage my impatience.

In terms of symptoms I feel leaps and bounds better than I did in weeks 6-8. I don’t think I realized how miserable I was until I didn’t feel like that anymore. During Christmas I had a bit of worry when I had no symptoms at all anymore but I had to keep reminding myself that being nauseated for most of the day should not be the only indicator of a little baby in there. Then a couple days later I was dry heaving again and all was right with the world. A couple days ago I had my first bout of throwing up everything I had previously eaten and that was not much fun. Before then it was just little bits here and there if I was hungry and didn’t eat right away or drank coffee. But this time it was my whole bowl of cheerios for no apparent reason! Rude.

I have had really intense, almost pinching, pains in my boobs the last couple days and last night it hurt enough to wake me up. I think it is everything getting ready for the milk but ohmygod does it hurt! Since the nausea has subsided for the most part (I can now survive a morning at work without inhaling sleeves of crackers like it is my job), I have become even more aware of everything happening “down there”. I really notice happenings right after I eat, especially if it is sweet. Sometimes it makes me laugh to myself because I eat my popsicle (which taste AMAZING right now I even have Brian hooked on them) and shortly after it is like my lower abdomen is dancing away and I visualize a little lime-sized bean in there moving and shaking away. I would think this is coincidence but it happens 95% of the time after I eat. Like the food makes a beeline to my uterus.

I finally bit the bullet and bought some maternity clothes last week as well. Well technically my mother in-law bought them for me, as she gave me a cheque for maternity clothes at Christmas. I can still fit my pants for most of the day but by 3 pm that button is undone and is painful to do back up. My work pants that used to be super loose on me are now my staple as they are the only normal, non-legging, pants that I can wear without having to button up every time I stand up from my desk. First I tried looking at Value Village for some maternity pants but they were like a time warp to 1992, acid wash included. We decided to then check out Old Navy and scored a really good deal on a pair of blue jeans and a pair of black dress pants for work and we got both for under $40.

*In order to have full-disclosure, I did have a bit of a meltdown with the buying of maternity pants. It was one of those hormonal breakdowns that makes perfect sense in your head but when you are blubbering and telling your husband about it he just stares at you like you are speaking gibberish. Let me back up and explain what made me emotional about this shopping endeavor. The night before, Brian and his friends went out to a bar for some drinks. The next day on our way to get maternity pants, I lose it and this is why: the previous night my husband was around young girls with hot bodies and then next day he has to accompany his wife to buy her bigger pants. I bawled in the Value Village parking lot for about 30 minutes and then we talked it out (obviously no on is in the wrong here except for hormones) and then went shopping. Poor guy. At least he only has 6 more months of this right?! 😉

On a slightly less dramatic shopping trip, my mom took me shopping for maternity clothes and I scored two long sleeve shirts, two t-shirts, and a pair of leggings that look like dress pants but feel like pajamas (WIN!). I have tried to be more consistent with walking this week as well. Monday felt like week 7 again and so I tried walking for 20 minutes to see if that would help – it didn’t but at least I tried. I have such a strong itch to run but right now I get winded just from walking up the stairs too fast. I am going to blame this on the extra blood flow and not the lack of physical exercise from the past couple months.

Slowly but surely more people are finding out about this baby, whether Brian or I tell them or our parents tell them by accident. Each and every person is so excited for us and it makes me more excited to see how much love this baby is already surrounded by. Again I cannot stress enough how excited I am for Monday! Grow baby grow!

xo T

First Trimester – Eating

To show how drastically my eating has changed since the first trimester (I am now 13 weeks) I thought I would do a comparable “Day In the Life”. Please don’t judge me for what I am going to admit to shoving in my face during the early weeks.

**These situations did all happen in the First Trimester, just not all of them on the same day.

8 Weeks

7:00 am – wake up feeling nauseated

7:15 am – down a big glass of water and eat a giant bowl of cheerios while doing hair and makeup

8:30 am – get to work. Try drinking coffee and it comes right back up.

9:15 am – start getting nauseous again (a sign that I should eat something). Try eating an apple. That does not work and halfway in, it comes right back up.

9:20 am – start getting the cold sweats and begin freaking out because I don’t want to throw up again. Start shoving saltines in my mouth to make the nausea go away; that finally works. (I was still naive enough to think that anything but carbohydrates would make the nausea go away… I learned quickly though)

11 am – start getting hungry and quickly realize that I did not bring enough food to sustain me for the whole day (most days I ate way more than Brian did. I was a tank). Started eating my leftover pasta dish that I brought while texting my mom to see if she could bring me a bagel and cream cheese.

12 pm – continue snacking on copious amounts of saltines and peanuts from my desk drawer stash at work. Try eating the salad I brought thinking I could stomach it but end up just picking at it while intermittently gagging

12:45 pm – my mom brings my bagel and angels sing ‘Hallelujah’

2 pm – 5 pm – ate my weight in peanuts.

5 pm – arrive home and immediately fall onto the couch in the fetal position. My body is so tired and achy, making dinner for tonight is out of the question.

5:15 pm – start getting nauseous again so drink some orange juice until dinner is ready.

5:45 pm – Brian makes the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life.

8:30 pm – fall asleep while on the couch.

8:45 pm – stumble to bed.

12 Weeks 

7 am – wake up feeling slightly nauseated

7:15 am – down a big glass of water and eat a giant bowl of bran flakes while doing hair and make up

8:30 am – get to work. Make myself an herbal tea

9:30 am – get slight nausea, so before it gets too bad I eat a granola bar from my desk stash at work

12 pm – eat my chicken ceasar salad that I brought for lunch with an apple on the side.

2 pm – snack on a hard boiled egg

5:15 pm – start making rice for the crockpot meal that has been cooking all day

9 pm – go to bed

 

So as you can see… it gets A LOT better.

 

xo T