The Footy Player

I felt my first "kick" today!

Although most sources say that you feel them beginning about week 16, they also say that women who've already had one feel them earlier because they recognize it for what it is the second time, instead of dismissing it.

Well, this may be my first pregnancy but I'm not dismissing it. And I've looked at a number of discussion boards and found plenty of women claiming to feel them earlier. It didn't feel so much like a "pop" or "flutter", but rather an odd slow internal rolling sensation. (Somebody's trying to get comfortable?)

The midwife did tell me that I might feel movement earlier than some, now that I think of it.

Not Much

Am gradually feeling better; first week with no actual barfing. I'm starting to get the thing where people can't resist looking at my belly when they're talking to me to see if it's really what they thought they saw.

I picked up some maternity clothes at the local second-hand store. They do leave less of an imprint on my waist area. However, I need more trousers, as I now have one pregger pair that more or less fits, and a few pairs of loose stretchy pants I can kind of pull down in front. I also found a calf-length dress of the type I believe is known as a pinafore. At least it's just plain black, because I'm not the everyday dress type. It really makes me look like I have a giant belly already.

There is still a lot of dull-colored teensy floral crap out there for pregnant women. I do hear that at the maternity stores in the malls, they have business-type clothes and so forth, but I'm afraid that they would be really expensive. Heck, I resent buying normal clothes at the mall for that reason, let alone specialty clothes.

However, I also just heard from a friend that Target has some nice normal maternity stuff, so maybe I'll go there. I just feel really bad spending any money at all right now, as we are battening down in preparation for TheLimey to quit his job next year to care for the critter, and have us still be able to pay on all our various bills and so forth.

The Bitter with the Sweet

Today I pretty nearly fulfilled a stereotype as I sat down at the coffee table with a plate of dill pickles and green olives, and a dish of ... sherbet. (Ice cream would have been too sticky and gummy!)

It seems like I have suddenly started to show in just a matter of days. I can still suck it in and just look blockish about the waist, but it's not terribly comfortable.

I am happy that the oh-so-unflattering empire-waist babydoll style of tops has been so popular the past year or so. Now I can get used everyday tops on eBay without having to go the more expensive maternity route!

Trousers, now, will be a different story. I can only go unbuttoned for so much longer. (Plus, they fall down.)

12 Weeks Today!

Happy Conceptionday to me ... as it were. Now does the illness drop off all at once as I develop that second-trimester glow? Or does it take 24 hours?

Actually, this trimester business (as all other matters of timing in pregnancy) seems a little arbitrary. I've seen descriptions of week 13 being the last week of the first trimester, so ... a name is just a name. I will consider the first trimester over when it feels over.

I had a great day yesterday, health-wise. (Actually, that's misleading. I've been healthy the whole time, just feeling terrible.) I didn't even take a nap yesterday, even though I taught two classes and had a one-hour phone conference with a student. Usually this activeness means I feel reactively terrible the following day, so we'll see.

A Not Untypical Day

Like yesterday.


-awake ravenous and/or nauseated at sometime between 2am and 4am, having gone to bed around 10:30 or so. Remain awake for 10 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the whim of the gods. Possibly eat several pretzel sticks and a can of V8

-awake at 6am when husband's clock radio goes on and stays on for a good two hours, dammit

-go back to sleep until 10:30am

-spend 20 minutes convincing self that I am not going to throw up

-spend 20 minutes throwing up (not that there's anything in there)

-stumble downstairs and fall onto couch

-drowse through an episode of Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks on Public Television

-sleep until 3:30

-try not to loathe smell of own hair while eating cottage cheese and Wheat Thins

-while sitting as inert lump on couch for next two hours, try to force self to get up and take shower before husband returns from work. Also feel guilty for all the work that I should have done during the day but wasn't awake for

-get in shower just as husband returns from work

-eat an apple while he eats a normal dinner of some kind

-feel ready to do half an hour's work at about 8:30

-feel ready for bed at 9:03

-take prenatal vitamins and Viactive calcium chews with chamomile tea

-goto line 1

Bluh

Have been barfy and hungover-feeling again today, and slept for hours, though it had mostly subsided to a dull roar until lately. Maybe I did too much over the weekend.

Oddly, leaving the house seem to make me feel sick the following day. Even just being out for a few hours is pretty tiring. (All we did was to visit the tax preparer!)

Even talking on the phone wears me out, especially with people I have to be cheerful or personable for. (This tells me that it takes a lot of energy to be "on"!)

Today I have only had an apple and a small bowl of cereal, otherwise nothing to eat or drink. Bluck. I may try for some cottage cheese and Wheat Thins later (one of my staples.)

Other staples I've settled into: bouillon broth with brown rice and egg beaten in while it's on the boil, cottage cheese and canned fruit, mini-pretzel sticks and V-8 (especially when I wake up in the middle of the night. It makes me feel I've eaten something.) And of course yogurt, especially the little drinkable bottles.

I now have a wispy, curly, 2-inch fringe of hair around my forehead: the hair that fell out when I went off the pill has decided to grow back. And my nails continue to grow at an accelerated pace. Even the toenails, which is particularly annoying.

One odd thing is that as soon as I got pregnant, my abdominal muscles started feeling sore, like I had been doing sit-ups (I assure you, I hadn't.) I have to be careful when I cough or sneeze to be leaning over with my hands on my knees for support. Once I just sat up in bed too fast and got terrible muscle cramps for my trouble. Weird.

On Being a Bouncy Castle

The still photo doesn't do it justice, but here's the sonogram from Thursday. It was indescribably different with motion. (Click for bigger version.)



I thought that the boinging looked like the baby was practicing to be an astronaut, but TheLimey came up with what it really looked like, which was living in a bouncy castle (or moonwalk for us Yanks.)

Since he was really close to hiring one of those for our wedding reception, it's clear that bouncy castle affinity is an inherited trait.

Boing!

Yesterday TheLimey and I went to the (new) midwife. We're not sure what we're going to do now that we're moving to a town that will be 60 miles away from that practice, but hey, might as well make the appointment. I have filled out so much paperwork lately that I got a little cocky, answering the question "Do you smoke?" with "No, but the baby does. --KIDDING!"

TheLimey was a little nervous entering the hallowed halls of women's health care, but I'm very proud of his participation. For someone who's squeamish about hearing the word "veins", he's making great progress.

He was a bit surprised that the midwife was a slender young thing with blue eye shadow rather than a portly, middle-aged woman with a bun. Okay, I guess I was expecting someone a little older, too, but I could tell she knew what she was talking about when I asked her complicated questions. (Also, I recognize that people in positions of authority are getting younger and younger relative to my age, so I might as well start getting used to it now.)

I'm still losing weight, but I've been able to eat some nearly-normal meals lately, so it may be turning around.

We did get to see another sonogram. It's hard to resist. This one was transabdominal, so I didn't have to Assume The Position in the presence of my husband, which I don't know if he's ready for just quite yet. (We talked a bit about boundaries in unpredictable situations and I just told him to not do anything he didn't yet feel comfortable doing.)

The sonogram was actually quite funny. The baby was jumping and jumping like a little mad thing in its compartment--boing, boing, boing! And waving its little arms and kicking its legs. We were all laughing. The midwife was surprised at how active it was, which made TheLimey worry that it must mean something bad. However, she reassured him that it just meant it's a strong baby and I have a lot of pregnancy hormones (tell me about it!)

He was so pleased and happy all afternoon, that he bought me a big hardbound, gilt-edged collected-novels-of-Jane-Austen from the bargain books at Barnes and Noble. (Really, he would've gotten every other book I picked up, too, but I declined.)

For Those Following Along at Home

Every week I do the same image search for baby development pix (but for that week), and every week it comes up with a completely different set of websites, although many of them have all the weeks pictures. Why would this site come up for 11 weeks, but not for 9 or 7 or 5??

I continue to be irrationally annoyed by the system of counting fetal development from before it was even conceived.


* * * * * *

Some of those comments under there are really sad and disturbing. "I'm a teenager and I haven't told my parents. This baby will love me forever, which is something I've always wanted!"

Wow, good luck with that, kid. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to have a baby to have company? You're going to be company for the baby; it's not going to be company for you.

All in the Family

After communicating with my mother's two sisters, I have discovered that this pregnancy misery apparently runs in the family. One aunt lost over 20 pounds with her first pregnancy, and apparently my mother was so ill with me that they thought they were going to have to take her to the hospital. (As TheLimey worried about during that recent really sick week of mine.)

How come I've never heard anything about this before? Geez, you'd think no one in my family talked with each other. --Oh yeah, they don't!