Tag Archives: pregnancy

First trimester recap!

Since I’ve been silent until last week about my pregnancy, I wanted to write out a full recap of the 1st trimester and what I’ve experienced! In fact, this week, all my posts are going to be baby talk. Baby talk, body talk, and belly talk. But don’t worry–I still love food (I think) and books and photography, so I promise that eventually I will branch back out and write about something different. In fact, I have a few recipes ready to go (Heidi’s Drunken Noodles, an awesome Black Bean Soup, and I’m putting together a post on an amazing pizza crust that Erica shared with me)–but this just ain’t the week for ’em. So if you’re a dude, you’re just here for the food, or baby talk makes you want to pull your hair out and shout “Shazzam!”, well . . . I hope to see you back around here next week! Go forth, be happy and prosper, my son.

But as for the rest of you! Let’s dive right in, shall we? Here’s what all went down (and it’s a looooong post, so grab your coffee and feel free to take a potty break):

-I thought I was scoring big with a complete lack of morning sickness . . . And though I’m thankful that my first 2 months were so normal in the bodily sense, this initial lack of sickness was a big part of the reason we chose not to extensively share our news until the first trimester was over and done with–I was concerned by this lack of symptoms. What did it mean? That maybe nothing was actually happening?? That this whole pregnancy thing was just a figment of my overly active imagination? Some kind of psychologically induced placebo pregnancy?

– . . . up until week 9. Starting week 9, the sickness began. It tapered off about 2 1/2 weeks later, but now that my second trimester has kicked off I’ve unfortunately had a little relapse (ugh–more about that Thursday, with all the gory details). Thank heavens it’s (supposed to be) almost over, because those 2 1/2 weeks and this little recurrence have been no fun. And the sickness wasn’t “morning” either–it was all day, any day. Some days it was better, and I only felt like throwing up a few times and for a few minutes at a time, then it passed. But a couple evenings when it was particularly bad, I was reduced to a helpless pile on the couch, not wanting to eat, sipping club soda in a last ditch effort to calm the beast of my stomach, and crying because I felt so helpless. My husband was a champ through this, and with his compassion and humor it turned into quite a bonding experience. That doesn’t mean that I would willingly relive it though! Let’s just make that clear.

-Bloating. I’m sorry for that hideous word, and I told myself I’d never use it, but it was a huge part of the whole “not feeling well” thing. Basically, I would eat a fig newton and a handful of peanuts, and minutes later feel like I had just eaten a 5 lb turkey and two whole pies. With a whole can of whipped cream sprayed over everything. Blech. Apparently digestion slows down so that nutrients can get to the baby . . . so that’s good. It just doesn’t feel good. Plus, it meant that I could pooch out my stomach so that it looked like I was something akin to 7 months pregnant instead of 2 or 3. Scary stuff.

-Purchases: I thought I was going to be able to say that we had purchased exactly zero baby things. Zero baby books, zero maternity clothes, zero baby furniture, zero, zero, zero. But . . . then I came across this adorable little fleece jacket for 99 cents at Salvation Army.

Look! It says “cuddly”!

And some adorable little grey Gap legging thingies.

With knee patches!

And an adorable Old Navy striped onesie . . .

. . . also with precious little knee patches.

So the truth is that we’ve bought 3 things. But! Rummage 2012 is coming up in May! I anticipate that more than a few purchases will be made there.

–I juiced! Every weekday morning, right before my devotional, I down a glass of that green veggie liquid. Though I started right before finding out I was pregnant (the morning of The Day, specifically) and meant to do it anyway, I love the thought of all those micronutrients strengthening my little one. Go carrots! Go celery! Go spinach, go ginger, go cucumbers! I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

-I’ve been faithfully popping those vitamins. Well . . . except for the days I forget.

-I’ve kept my diet pretty much the same. I’ve cut back on coffee, but that’s mostly because once I started juicing, I lost the taste for more than about 1 cup. Let it be known that if my taste for that second cup returns, I’ll totally go for it. I’ve done a lot of reading and have decided to do my best to eat healthily, remain physically active (Pilates! yoga!), and not worry about the rest. I don’t want to obsess about this and that when my gut tells me that my dietary choices during pregnancy are mostly common sense. Eat your greens. Don’t over-indulge in anything. Eat regular meals. Don’t binge on the thing you’re craving even if you really feel like it. Everything in moderation. You know, that kind of stuff.

-Cravings: Nothing much until week 9. And then, all of a sudden and with no seeming explanation, I really wanted lasagna–my friend Carrie’s recipe with the goat cheese and the fresh mozzarella and the fresh basil and the rich sausagey tomato sauce. I get food impulses all the time (being a food blogger and food-blog-follower, this is kind of inevitable), but this was different. I rarely crave heavy cheesy things, but oh man–all I could think about was this melty, decadent lasagna. Then, that weekend, I severely desired that Naked juice called “Mighty Mango.” It was 10pm, and I thought “I could just go to the grocery store right now and satisfy this itch.” But it was dark . . . and I was tired. So I bought it the very next morning instead. And it was heavenly. Since then, I’ve wanted fries. Fries, fries, fries. Slathered with mayo and ketchup. And hot, buttery white rice. And boxed mac and cheese.

-Food aversions: sadly, many of my favorite things are anathema. Fried eggs . . . ugh! Thai noodles (which I normally love) . . . can’t look at the stuff. Popcorn . . . not feelin’ it (shocking! Seriously, do you remember my history with popcorn?) That Bacon and Kale Skillet I made for so many weeks in a row? The mere thought of it makes me retch. Most of these aversions started in week 10, soon after the sickness began. I’ve started thinking that things are way over-salted when my husband claims they’re perfectly seasoned. As a food blogger and food lover, not being able to trust my taste buds is really wigging me out, people!

-Weight gain: I weighed about 132 last fall at a Dr’s appointment (and yes, that was the last time I weighed myself since we don’t own a scale). And at my end-of-12th-week appointment (and after a huge lunch of eggplant stew, garlic potatoes, and a mountain of white rice), I weighed 133. . . . so pretty much the same. “Hooray!” you might think. But no. Apparently gradual weight gain helps avoid stretch marks and other unseemly things, so dangit! I need to start putting on some pounds, people. Let’s get this thing moving!

So far, at 12 weeks here, you can’t really tell that anything at all is happening . . . but I’ll be posting more pictures as the baby makes him or herself more evident!

This may very well be the last time in my life that my stomach is flat. I’m slightly terrified by the fact that in 6 months, my body will be forever changed. But I’ve heard the sacrifice is worth it! So don’t let me complain. Help me help myself.

-Fatigue! This hit on a Thursday. March 2nd to be exact, the second day of my ninth week. I noted this day because though I’d been feeling tired before, it was nothing crazy. Nothing out of what might be normal to feel after a hard, long day. But on that Thursday, everything changed. It hit, and it hit hard. I was miserable . . . but glad to at least be experiencing a sign that somewhere, something was going on inside.

-Names! We’re talking about them. We’ve agreed on a girl’s name–three in fact–and one boy’s name that I was skeptical of at first, but to which I have been won over.

-Clothes: I still fit ’em. Though I’m convinced my butt has grown about 5 sizes, that must be mostly emotion speaking since my pants are still fitting in a normal way, and the scale confirms that not much has changed.

-Boobs. They are totally not the triple D size that I was counting on. Having never experienced this whole “nicely sized chest” thing, this is one of the things I’m quite excited about. Alas . . . still nothing to report. And when there is something report, I probably won’t talk about it because that might be unsavory. So basically, the time I don’t talk about my chest area being its usual unassuming self, you can privately surmise that its volume is meeting all my hopes and dreams. I want to experience cleavage, at least once in my life.

-Week 11, occasional dizziness started. I almost passed out after church as I was talking to my friend Beth. And I’m not talking about a little faintness–I’m talking about a down-on-the-ground am-I-dying type of feeling. This precipitated the earlier-than-planned spreading of the news in our church, because of course then I had to explain to Beth, etc. etc.

-Patience: it was hard not to tell. Especially when I was feeling exhausted and started having pregnant-brain at work. I wanted to say to my boss: “It’s not that I’m slacking! I’m pregnant!” But getting that first appointment at the end of week 12 to confirm everything was a-ok before telling him was essential to me.

-Which brings us to pregnant-brain. Which is entirely different than my regular brain. I think that at times, the entire contents of my cranium may have been taken by aliens, replaced with a version that hasn’t been Beta-tested, and then returned when I was sleeping. Then taken again sometime during my morning coffee. Then returned. It comes and goes, and you never know when it’s going to hit. The first sign of this, in week 8, was at the grocery store. I had the pen and the list. I went over to pick up a red onion. I crossed it off the list. I picked up a bag of kale and a bag of cucumbers. I returned to the cart and to my husband, all set to cross off “kale” and “cucumbers” . . . and the pen was gone. I retraced my steps three times. I had the vague, disquieting feeling that I had actually set it down amongst the vegetables . . . but I couldn’t remember. In the space of 2 minutes, that pen was adios, muchachos forever. Generally, my brain seems to have slowed down. I’m not as efficient around the house. It takes me longer to cook. It takes me longer to clean. Sometimes I have to talk myself through accomplishing a task–out loud. Like a crazy lady. Oh well.

-Housing and transportation: we’re moving at the end of August. We’ve loved our apartment (the burglary not so much, but oh well), but the so-not-soundproof nature of our ceiling and floor, the lack of laundry facilities on site, the general grody oldness of the bathroom, and the terrible parking on our street have convinced us that we want to have this little one elsewhere. And we want to get a car. Not to use daily–we’ll still be good, green-as-possible citizens and use the El and buses of Chicago–but for trips to see family with the baby it would be quite nice. And to have on hand for emergency hospital stuff. Like, um, when I go into labor. Yup. (And come on–is that really going to happen to me? Really? I don’t think so.)

-Appointing a new photographer. With my love of photography, it’s important to me that there be pictures of the process–and of my soon-to-be growing pregnant belly. As the person who wears the photographer’s hat in our household, I’m forcefully passing the camera into my husband’s hands and appointing a new family photographer. Before he took the above pictures of me, I tested the light and the background on him. “Here, turn to your side like you’re showing me your pregnant belly!” I commanded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heh heh.

He’s more than willing to let me order him about and show him all the settings on the Nikon, and puts up with my bossiness with utter grace. Thanks babe!

And thanks, friends, for all your kind and encouraging comments, and the awesome stories you’ve shared. You’re already making this process more joyful for me!

Happy Valentine’s Day dear . . . I’m pregnant!

(see yesterdays’ post for part 1)

So there I was, at about 4:30 pm on Monday February 13th, alone in the bathroom with a peed-on, positive pregnancy test in my hand. My heart was racing, my face felt hot and happy. I looked at myself in the mirror. I am looking at a pregnant woman, I said to myself. I have a baby inside me.

The wheels started turning–how was I going to tell my husband?

He was due home at about 6:30 pm, and of course one option would be to run into the hallway screaming as soon as I heard his key in the lock “I’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregnant!”

But there was a small hitch–we had friends coming over at 6:30 as well. I was going to be making dinner, which incidentally I really needed to get a move on. No, I didn’t like this scenario at all. There was no way I was going to let him walk in the door, shout “I’m pregnant!”, run back to the kitchen to make sure the eggs weren’t over-poaching, and then have our friends come in 60 seconds later as the astonishment was still playing all over my husband’s face.

Uh-unh. That wasn’t the way I wanted to make my revelation or have our first precious talk about the joys ahead.

I’ll just wait, I told myself. The next day was Valentine’s Day, and wouldn’t that be a perfect and memorable day to tell him? I knew I could keep it to myself for 24 hours, and I actually started getting excited about having this wonderful secret that no one could guess at–and it would be just mine. For one day.

Anyway. My husband came home. I acted normal. It was kind of fun, actually, modulating my speech to sound like I thought I would under regular circumstances. He noticed nothing, which is incredible since he really can normally detect the smallest change in my behavior or tone of voice. Our friends came over shortly after (Hi Felipe! Hi Rebecca!) and we had that awesome Tomato Kale skillet over rice. We talked, we laughed, we had fabulous madeleines courtesy of Rebecca’s baking skills, and all along I held my secret in my heart like a precious treasure.

The next morning I glowed on my ride to work. I could feel the happiness radiating from my face as the train rocked me back and forth, as the bus made its starts and stops. I’m having a baby. No one knows, no one can tell, but I’m having a baby.

I stopped in at Walgreens to buy another pregnancy test on my way to work, and took it in the little bathroom as soon as I got to the office. Why, you may ask? See, I was afraid that some funky thing with my body may have given a false positive. I’d recently watched a ridiculous (and hilarious) episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon gets false positives on a whole bunch of pregnancy tests because of a whacko ingredient in a bag of Mexican chips she’d been inhaling. And since I had just started juicing in the morning that very Monday, what if all those micronutrients that my body wasn’t used to came out in my urine and tricked the test?

Irrational, yes, but I had questions. I had doubts. Thankfully, the second pregnancy test still showed a line. A little faint for my taste (it was the cheapest test), but obviously there. I was relieved, and let myself feel a little more excited.

Will you laugh at me if I admit that I took yet another test a few days later–just in case?

Anyway, that same day while I was still at work, Tuesday February 14th, I called my insurance company. I asked question after question until I had a firm grasp on my benefit package. What’s included, what the deductible is, what doctors are in-network, if midwifery is covered. Incidentally, the first person I told “I’m pregnant” was the Blue Cross Blue Shield customer service rep. She said “congratulations.” Thanks, customer service rep. I’m sorry I don’t even remember your name.

I read up on the midwife group at Swedish Covenant Hospital and made an appointment with them for March 28th, when I would be at the end of my 12th week. The woman who answered the phone said anywhere between weeks 8 and 12 was normal for a first appointment, so based on that I had no qualms about waiting that long.

I wanted to wait a little longer anyway to get in to a medical professional–that may seem odd–but I figured that if I was going to have a miscarriage (which is more likely to happen in the first trimester) then I would prefer not to go to the doctor beforehand. Because that just makes pregnancy seem more real. And the more real it seemed, I reasoned, the more pain I would feel if I lost the baby. Does that make sense? Anyway, right or wrong, it was simply the way my heart was reasoning.

Valentine’s Day evening, I got home from work. I started dinner. My husband got home from school. We filled each other in about the various events in our days. I was bursting with my news, but the moment wasn’t right yet and I let my husband think that I was just really excited to give him my Valentine’s Day gift. I suggested that we eat dinner in the living room (way more intimate and snuggly) and give each other our Valentine’s Day gifts there. He had written a card I wanted to read nice and slowly, and I had personalized a mug that I bought at Starbucks, which had been hiding in a dresser drawer for a few weeks. That very evening I had filled this very tall mug with a bunch of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, and buried the positive pregnancy stick in the middle.

I brought out the cup. I handed it to him. He read it slowly, turning it around in his hands (it’s a cup with a long list of all the nicknames I have for him, in case you were confused).

My heart was beating hard, and I noticed my hands had started shaking. Am I nervous? This was not what I was expecting to feel.

Then he started rummaging in the chocolates, and pulled out the stick. “What’s this?” he asked, genuinely confused. And then he thought for a moment and looked at me. He was still looking a little perplexed, so I squealed “I’m pregnant!”

Embraces, tears, and an evening of dreaming out loud ensued. I forced him to sit through an out-loud reading of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” weeks 1-6.

Of course, the next step was to decide when to tell people. Some people would have picked up the phone immediately, but we decided not to. I was experiencing no symptoms, no morning sickness yet, nothing, and the “miscarriage” refrain kept singing in my head. So we decided to wait until the risk was more minimal before sharing with our families or anyone else.

Needless to say, that plan didn’t work out so perfectly. Because that very Thursday, two days later, my friend Carrie came over to hang out before Bible study, looked me in the eye and asked in a no-nonsense tone: “Are you pregnant?”

We’ve been pretty open about our cycles, our dreams and our hopes with each other, so this wasn’t an altogether unusual question. I wasn’t planning on telling, but I hesitated a second too long with my answer.

And in that split second, she had my number. I didn’t even have to say anything before she was embracing me and saying “Oh my gosh!!”

So she and Eric were the first to know, and have been faithful friends in prayer about this baby ever since.

Since I have many women in my life who wouldn’t hesitate to ask a direct “Are you pregnant” question, I had to prepare an answer that wouldn’t be a bold-faced lie but also wouldn’t give away something we had decided to keep private for a little longer. Our solution was “well, no news yet,” which yes–I totally had to use on my Mom. Sorry, Mom.

Despite our efforts, the news slipped out to a few more people–some church friends (especially after I almost fainted in front of them), some people in our Bible study, etc.–but I’ve enjoyed the slow and gradual reveal.

So there you have it! As of today, the first trimester is over. I’ve been dreaming about baby James a lot. I had my first appointment one week ago, and there will be so much pregnancy and baby talk on this blog that you can’t possibly be ready.

More soon, and thanks for accompanying me on this journey!! I’m excited to share it with you all.