Lilypie Pregnancy tickers

Lilypie Pregnancy tickers

Monday, February 21, 2011

I Have a Bump

I'm 9 weeks pregnant today. Squishy is about the size of a plump, green grape. This morning when I woke up I rolled over onto my back and instinctively put my hand on my lower belly and there it was! My tiny, little bump is there! And it's so darned cute! Then I got up to relieve myself and it was gone. I can't wait until it's still there even when I don't have to pee but I'll take what I can get. I love this point. It momentarily justifies all the puking and misery I'm dealing with and makes it feel more real. It's a nice reminder that the ick I'm going through is all for a reason - and a darned good one too.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Professed Fears

When a woman finds out she's pregnant, she begins down a road of a wide range of thoughts and emotions, some which are valid concerns, others are completely irrational, paranoid delusions, all contribute to the volatile state of delicately fragile emotions beheld by the owners of abdomens swollen with new life around the globe. This is a bond we share which transcends language barriers, cultural differences and vast oceans.

After the reaction of a positive pregnancy test we usually walk around in a cloud of racing thoughts ranging from, "what will I/we name this little baby," to "I should make an appointment with the doctor," and a bazillion other ideas which are packed tightly into that space between a woman's brain and reality. This results in "pregnancy brain" whereby a woman will be driving down the interstate and completely forget what she's doing and why she's there.

And then it happens. Fear. No, I mean FEAR! Not the fear that there might be something wrong with the baby, not the fear that something could go awry. No, I'm talking about the kind of fear that stops you dead in your tracks and makes you form an escape plan beginning with a stash of money kept secretly and conveniently in your box of feminine supplies and a fully packed overnight bag behind the toilet just in case your fear comes to life and you suddenly have to purchase an anonymous flight to some distant and forgotten place like the jungles of South America to hide in shame among the indigenous people, clad in nothing more than a loin cloth and a small animal bone horizontally impaling your septum.

What could possibly cause these wide-eyed, insomnia-inducing, paranoid schemes, you might ask? I'll tell you. Horrific visions of mortification in the form of uncontrollable body functions. What if I poop when the baby is coming? Worse, what if my sweet husband, who doesn't even know my body is capable of such a disgusting and unclean process, witnesses this event? I will forever be marked with shame. I may as well walk around with a scarlet letter P on my sleeve because I will no longer be worthy of the dignity and status enjoyed by other women who have managed to completely conceal the fact that they even own such an offending orifice.

Another fear which startles a woman into forming an escape plan comes earlier in this process than the delivery room: What if I toot during s-e-x? This is of particular concern to me at this point in my pregnancy being that the swelling in my abdomen comes not from the development of new life but from bloating and gas. The aromatic, flatulent wind sock that I've become strikes FEAR into my heart, keeping me wide-eyed and feigning a headache to avoid the embarrassment which is eminent should we engage in intercourse. The thought has occurred to me that I could put on a video or soundtrack of trumpeting elephants and set a fan on the nightstand, aimed south but something tells me Josh might become suspicious. And rightly so; the sound of trumpeting elephants isn't exactly romantic background music.

These fears plague every pregnant woman from the primitive and forgotten tribes of South Africa to the porcelain dolls of the orient to the cheeseburger-hoarding Americans from sea to shining sea. But these are also the secrets that are not passed on. I am breaking an unsaid, sacred covenant among women to tell you of these woes. No been-there-done-that wiser woman ever tells the naive first-timer that she needs to come to terms with her back door and all of it's evils before considering allowing her husband into the delivery room. I don't know why but it's always been this way since the beginning of shame.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I'm Bringing Back Scary

I look really rough nowadays: greasy hair; oily, pimply skin; random, blotchy patches of discolored flesh; the stench of bile which envelopes my body like an aura; bleeding gums; and gas. Yes, I said gas. I know you don't want to hear about it but it's one of the not-so-pleasant side effects of pregnancy. It might actually be the worst symptom because, unlike vomiting and insane stomach cramps, it affects everyone in a 20-30 foot radius. In public, this unpleasantness parts the masses while the elderly lie crumpled in my wake, gasping for breath in heaps like beached fish flopping around, desperately hoping their panicked fight will bring them back to their life-source.

I suppose the morning sickness is a blessing because I don't leave the house now. Ever. I've become nothing more than a mysterious hermit that people hear stories of; children scare one another with these haunting tales of the creapy, smelly, pizza-faced lady on Agassiz Street who vomits incessantly and never comes out of her house except on the full moon to scare the bejeezus out of 10 year old little boys. Parents use these same tales to scare their children into obedience. Yep, that's me: pale-green, anemic-looking, stinky and antisocial. Isn't that a lovely picture? Yea, I'm not getting laid for a while.

Friday, February 11, 2011

First Trimester Woes

Morning sickness is in full swing now which is why I haven't been writing much as of late. When my head isn't poised over the pot, I'm pathetically lying in bed groaning with the discomfort of indigestion, acid reflux and heartburn. I consider myself very lucky lately if I only puke once during the day but alas the norm is, well, every time I eat. Cravings and food aversions are wildly unpredictable, like the swinging, vomiting arm of a pendulum. What I love and crave one day becomes my Kryptonite the next. And I'm being visited by the haunting acne of my youth, only I don't remember it being this bad back then. This means that many of the developing belly pictures I'll be taking during the next several months will likely be headless.

On any given night, as I'm turning off lights and tucking my sweet babes into bed, preparing to crawl beneath my own sheets, I stop in the kitchen to take my vitamins. I fill my hand to capacity with my prenatal vitamins (2 capsules twice a day only I can't seem to hold them down in the morning), Omegas, B-complex, Vitamin C and a Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc combo. That adds up to six gigantic horse pills that I swallow in a flush of water down my gullet every night. Normally this is not a problem. While many folks (Josh included) squirm at the thought of having to swallow even a teensy Tylenol caplet, I scoff, toss my head back and swallow vitamins and other medicine with champion skill. Only not now. The slightest brush from the mere aura of said vitamins even approaching the back of my throat sends my gag reflexes into a dramatic display of tumultuous, spasmodic wretching. So now I've cut back to the bare necessities: my prenatal vitamin and my omegas. I figure the prenatal has a bit of vitamin C, B's, Calcium, Magnesium and Zinc so if I can just choke down half of the number of capsules then I'm doing pretty good. Besides, the aftertaste of B complex is not the stuff romance is made of, not that bile is any better or that I'm feeling anywhere near romantic but I digress.

My precious little squishy is in the middle of the 7th week which means that he or she is slightly bigger than a blueberry, approaching kidney bean size (just over 1/2" long by Monday). If I were to choose to go see an Obstetrician right now I would be able to see Squishy's heartbeat on an ultrasound and it would likely be somewhere between 120 to 200 beats per minute. As it is, I don't see any reason to jump up and run to have a scan done. While puking is not my idea of a good time, so far my pregnancy appears to be progressing quite normally. I have not lost any weight, still at 172, but if I did, that would be very normal. I'm still planning to begin tracking Squishy's heartbeat at around 14-18 weeks. Hopefully I'll be past this puking business by then and, fingers crossed, able to enjoy the remaining months of pregnancy nausea-free.