9 weeks

Nice farmer's tan, eh?  Guess I could have used a little more sunblock when we went to the track meet last weekend.  Things are and feel pretty much the same as last week, which makes sense because the baby has only moved up in fruit sizes from raspberry to green olive/grape.

I've been feeling less crappy or at least better able to head off feeling crappy.  I'm still having a hard time with meat and vegetables, but I have been trying to get in one serving per day (as well as a few of fruit).  I've actually noticed that if I make sure to eat a little something as a snack between meals, I feel less queasy and more able to make good choices at meals.

It doesn't always work out that way.  We went out to a celebratory (London + baby + anniversary) sushi dinner (shhh, don't tell my OB) last Friday and that went down fine, but it afterward when we went grocery shopping, it was impossible to come up with anything remotely healthy that I could take for lunches for the week.  We stood in the bread aisle at Target while Daniel suggested every food he's ever seen me eat and I rejected each one.  Then we landed on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I decided... yeah maybe I could eat that... on cinnamon raisin bread.  Weird.  We have stir fry set out for dinner tonight, and while I was kind of concerned about doing steak + broccoli, eating something savory and at least somewhat healthy for dinner actually sounds kind of good.

Exercise has been a casualty of this process, too.  I wouldn't care too much except that my eating habits have been SO bad and I don't want this to turn into a 50-lb pregnancy.  I mean, I'm eating for two, but one of us is the size of an olive (not even a Kalamata olive).  Right now I'm still doing yoga 4 times per week and jogging 6 miles 3x per week.  Before I really started having morning sickness I was doing an additional 3-4 miles 2x per week before yoga, but I've had a heck of a time adding that back in.  It's just been sooooooo hard for me to get up early.  My former willpower seems to have bought the $1 Megabus ticket and is on the way to Cancun.  If I run before yoga I have to be out of the apartment by 5am, and I dunno... I just can't do it.  Part of me says, who cares, wait until T2 and then add the days back in and part of me says I need to do what I've always done and just get up.  I really don't want to gain too much weight here in the beginning and if I continue only running 3 days per week  I may have to invest in some prune juice.  Meh... I don't know.

We'll see what the coming weeks bring.  

8 weeks

The official 8 weeks picture (taken on Saturday, May 12):

Weight: 131 lbs.

I probably look totally normal to everyone else, but I feel really thick through the middle.  Part of that in this picture is that I'd just gotten back from running and guzzled a lot of water and eaten breakfast right before it was taken.  All the pants and long-sleeved shirts I bought to accommodate my pre-pregnancy weight gain (long story) still fit okay, but all my summer tops fit my "normal" body which means most of them don't fit this body.  But... I'm trying to make do with what I've got for now because I'm going to get a lot bigger before I get any smaller.

I ended up having a fairly good weekend nausea-wise.  I was tired and felt kind of gross on Saturday, but I rallied on Sunday and had a great afternoon at the Big 10 track meet.  Biking to church + set up + biking home + walking to the track meet + walking to get ice cream + walking home was tiring, but it was such a relief to feel more or less like my normal self.

Right now first thing in the morning, mid-afternoon, and right before I go to bed are the worst times for me nausea and headache-wise, which sounds (and sometimes feels) like all day, but I usually actually feel pretty good around mid-morning and after dinner.  I'm down to taking one Zofran first thing in the morning and managing my symptoms with Tylenol and granola bars the rest of the day.

It makes me appreciate how truly awful it must be to have a chronic illness.

On the happy/ exciting side of things, Monday was my first OB appointment.  All my labs came back normal with the exception that I'm a little low on iron, and my doc seemed happy about my physical health and habits otherwise.  I quit caffeine back in January and- as a side benefit of my nausea and food aversions- gum, diet soda, and other artificial sweeteners are revolting list right now.  I'm remarkably vice-free!  Now if  I could just eat some meat and vegetables...  

The highlight of the visit, though, was the first "unofficial" ultrasound to check for viability.  Daniel didn't come to this appointment partly because I was going to spend most of it getting a pelvic exam (and I'd like to keep some of the mystery alive) and partly because I was terrified that the sonogram would show bad news and I would be a total disaster.  The doctor warned me that not seeing anything at 8 weeks wasn't necessarily bad news, but she *hoped* we'd be able to see a heartbeat to indicate things were going normally.

She started the ultrasound and I laid back and watched the screen.  Right side - nothing.  Left side - there it was.

The baby is the thing on the left side of the shot that looks a little like a fuzzy seahorse.  The white line trailing off from the bottom of it is actually the edge of the amniotic sac.  Although you can't tell from this picture, the baby has a head and arms and a torso and a tiny little heart that was beating away.

If I were the kind of person who cried from joy, I would have done it in that moment.  All I could do was smile.  In that moment, the headaches, the nausea, the tiredness, the worry about childcare and finances after the baby is born, the stress over not traveling for Christmas, the weight gain,  the time off of running, the vague excuses for not running or racing, the jealousy in having to celebrating other women's pregnancies, the tears, the disappointment that had followed me every 30 days, it all disappeared.  Just for a moment, there was only me and that tiny grey smudge with it's tiny white flickering heart.  And I think, I hope, I pray, it's all worth it.

I doubt I'll EVER want to remember this week

But in case I do, here's a snapshot of life at 8 weeks pregnant.

I'm sitting at work at 3pm on Friday with no deadlines looming over me.  My head hurts.  My stomach hurts.  I'm counting the seconds until I can take more anti-nausea medication (FYI, it's 7200).  I want to go home and lay down, but if I did, my heartburn would get really bad.  I'm surprised the human race did not die out long ago.

I'd been feeling a little bit of queasiness/nausea since around week 5 - most of it actually in the afternoon- but nothing prepared me for full-on, How am I ever going to survive 5 more weeks of this? morning sickness that hit me last Sunday night.

That's right.  Night.  After feeling pretty good all day, I experienced revenge of the homemade pizza and cinnamon Life cereal (How could I possibly have thought that would be a good combination??) every hour on the hour from 11pm to 6am.  Fortunately Ron and Barbara (my bosses) are out of town this week for ARVO (the vision conference in Ft. Lauderdale) so I could e-mail in sick and lay on the couch, trying to choke down the orange Gatorade Daniel had valiantly fought early morning rush hour traffic to bring me.  I felt like I had the stomach flu.  More than that, I had the headache to end all headaches, which could only be relieved by the pleasant distraction of gagging 3 sips of orange Gatorade back up into the toilet.

After work, Daniel took me to urgent care, where I was introduced to my new best friend Zofran (anti-nausea med).  After two days of taking full doses of Zofran and Tylenol at the closest intervals allowed, I started being able to think about eating things that were not pretzels.  I worked from home on Wednesday and went back to work on Thursday.  I curse losing 2 days of my precious maternity leave/ baby sick time to my own sickness, but there was nothing to be done for it.  I still don't feel very good, but I did at least get out for a walk every day but Monday, and I returned to yoga this morning.  Tomorrow should be a return to "running" again.

The biggest surprise- other than the crushing fatigue and nausea and the fact that one morning around week 5 I woke up in Dolly Parton's body (if you know what I mean...) - is the food aversions.  I haven't really had any cravings.  It's more like each day there are one or two things that don't automatically make me want to hurl, so by default they sound pretty tasty.  Every night we spin the wheel of acceptable foods to see what's for dinner.  Last night it was tortilla chips.  And a McDonald's chocolate milkshake.  Which has now been stricken from the list.

An easier list to develop is the list of foods/food products I cannot imagine ever consuming again.  EVER.
1. Vegetables. Any kind.
2. Soda.
3. Gum.
4. Meat.  Any kind.  Especially sausage, which we have tons of in the freezer from our meat box.  Daniel, I hope you are hungry for sausage.
5. Eggs.  Any kind. Omelets seem especially revolting because they have the potential to include vegetables.  Shudder.
6. Fish.  Any kind.  Maybe I could do fried.  Probably not.
7. Salad dressing.  Any kind.
8. McDonald's chocolate milkshake.
9. Fruit.  Although canned peaches might not be so bad.
10. Life cereal.  I think this one is truly out forever.

And I could go on.

Almost more horrifying than food is the smell of food.  Cooking- gah!  Everything about eating is fraught wither peril.  I feel sick, then I eat, which makes me feel more sick, but in a different way.  The only things I've been able to get down reliably this week with few side-effects are Amy's microwavable bean burritos, granola bars and mini pretzels.  I'm eating the way a 5-year-old would eat if he had negligent parents.

The one thing keeping me going is that I have my first OB appointment on Monday.  It'll be a full physical, but the nurse thinks that the doctor will do a sonogram to date the pregnancy.  I'd like to think that feeling as bad as I do is good insurance that nothing will go wrong in these early weeks, but it will be nice to have a proof that the little kidney bean inside me that is sucking my life away is actually real and not a horrible, nausea-induced hallucination.  

Kid, this better all be worth it.

Cuatro de Mayo

So it's been awhile since  I wrote an actual blog post.  The turtle thinks that's unacceptable.

Harumph.

We actually have been doing a few fun/different things, but I've been lazy about taking photos and no photos = lame (-er than usual) blog posts.

Last weekend our church had it's yearly PR event called Love Madison where services are canceled and members are encouraged to do some kind of service project.  Our life group signed up to help the oldsters at St. Mary's Care Center play bingo.

The first thing I will say is that for every person who drooled and tried to eat the bingo chips, there were three more who where there to WIN.  This was a matter of pride... not to mention we were giving out quarters and colored pens.  Do not try to get between a slightly senile woman and her purple pen.

Daniel was the caller and he kept them in line.  Between the partial blindness, partial deafness, and out and out cheating, this was not an easy task.  But he managed it... with style.  
  

I work out.

Last night we went to the Epic computer science picnic, and it was a lesson in how the top 1% live.  Judy Faulkner just cracked the billionaire mark, so I guess it's a small thing to feed 200 people all you can eat steak and lobster (and lemon meringue cupcakes....  mmmmm).  When Daniel finally thinks up something cool and makes us a zillion dollars I'm going to eat nothing but lobster tails and lemon meringue cupcakes for an entire week.  Watch me.

Tonight we are out for a fancy dinner at Culver's and a trip to the Stoughton Opera House to hear the Tony Rice Unit.  Other than that, we don't have much else going on this weekend.  Daniel is playing in church on Sunday with the choir, and I'm excited to finally be able to run in shorts again.  Hope you have a good weekend!  

The Weather Channel predicted it might snow last night.

But fortunately it didn't.

Hope you also pinned a glucose monitor and some Metformin...

As seen on Pinterest:

1. The ultimate pretzel crusted peanut butter candy cookie brownie 

2. The ultimate chocolate chip cookie n' Oreo fudge brownie bar

3. Cookies n' cream Oreo fudge brownies

4. Ice cream cake cookie cupcakes

5. Peanut butter cup brownie torte

6. Nutella stuffed French toast

7. Lego cake(!)

8. Cookie Monster cupcakes

9. Cheesecake filled chocolate Easter eggs

10. Deviled Cadbury creme eggs

Five Things Friday

1. The last thing Daniel wants to think about the week before Easter:

2. Our friends' baby = Gizmo?  I'm going to have to say yes on that one.

Editor's note: Her dad put these photos together.

3. Sloth photobomb:

Speaks for itself.

4. Just in time for Easter, it's a 27-lb gummy bear!  Burn off all 10,000 calories by doing kettlebell swings with it before you chow down.

Or if you're more of a megadrile fan, there's a 3lb, 2 ft. long gummy worm.  Coming soon to Daniel's side of the bed when he least expects it.  Maniacal laugh.  Maniacal laugh.

5. On a semi-serious note, this is a really cool live map of wind flow in the US: http://hint.fm/wind/

Have a good weekend!