It’s been a while since I’ve put any pregnancy thoughts on paper because I feel like I am just now recovering from a six week long battle with the stomach flu… or a six week long hangover…or a six week long stormy trip at sea…I could go on, but I won’t. Day after day of waking up and feeling queasy - but hungry - and then not really wanting to eat. Today marks the day of the end of our 13th week and I am finally starting to feel better. I feel a little like I’ve been asleep all this time and now slowly waking up. I am waking up to piles of school work, unbalanced bank accounts, sunken eyes and pale skin, and a poor husband who is exhausted from running a one man housewife/breadwinner show.
Up until now, most mornings went like this: Jason gets up and makes me a bowl of cereal which, at the beginning, I often ate before I even got out of bed. Then he’d get ready for work and leave and I’d get up and get in the shower. For some reason shampoo and soap made me super nauseous and it became a regular thing that that bowel of cereal would reemerge right there in the shower. After that I would feel periodically better, get dressed, head out the door and pick up my second breakfast (a bagel with cream cheese) on my way to school. The first few times I actually threw up I got scared that I would be throwing up uncontrollably all day - and would call out of work with the some lame excuse (no one at work knows anything about the real reason). But soon I learned that if I ate small amounts all day I could battle off the vomiting. And most of my vomiting is prefaced by a few seconds of gagging. Which is usually set off by some weird smell or some disgusting thought. So, it’s not like I have no warning. And luckily, despite all the yacking I’ve done, all of it has been in our apartment – not once (knock on wood) have I thrown up at work or in public – or God-forbid on the subway - despite getting close a few times.
Exhaustion
This brings me to my second fun early pregnancy symptom. The level of exhaustion that can be reached while in the early weeks of pregnancy is not comparable to anything I’ve felt before. Well, that’s not entirely true. The only thing that I can remember that comes close is the exhausted feeling I used to get as a kid. If I didn’t get enough sleep I felt irritable and fragile – but not really sleepy. Apparently I was a lot of fun to be around when I was like that. Irritable tired Nina is back in all her glory now. But lucky for my parents its Jason who has to deal with it now. She comes out every night right around 7pm. It’s a totally opposite feeling to the tired feeling I got as a (non-pregnant) adult. If I’ve had a long day at work or I just worked out really hard, that tired feeling is nice. It makes one want to sink into the couch and be totally relaxed. Anyway, those days are gone and I’m back to the exhaustion of a six year old. And what makes it worse is that no one (except Aliza and Anna) at work know that I’m pregnant – so I have to pretend like I feel normal all day. So by the end of the day I’m so cranky and irritable and antsy that it’s hard to sit still and even harder to get comfortable. But at the same time I have no energy and I don’t want to do anything. So while I lounge limp and whining on the couch he slaves over cleaning, and dishes and laundry. And just to prove how out of it the nausea and exhaustion has left me – I don’t even have the energy to tell him how I would have done it differently (ie better). And some things, like grocery shopping, haven’t happened at all for weeks. We’ve been eating out every night – and by eat out I mean have food delivered and eat in. Maybe not the healthiest – but it has certainly been one of the best ways to meet my need for variety.
Food
At first, I thought I would try and be the healthiest pregnant person that ever lived. Organic fruits and veggies, whole grains, lots of organic (and hormone and anti-biotic free) dairy…and very limited food from restaurants, because who knows what’s even in that stuff. But as the nausea settled in and made itself at home for the long haul, those resolutions went out the window. First, the idea of grocery shopping was not at all appealing – even grocery shopping online made me gag (Seriously. I am not being dramatic). And second, neither Jason or I had the energy or desire to prepare anything for dinner each night. So, I think over the last five weeks or so we’ve ordered food from every restaurant within a mile radius of our apartment. I’ve made a point to eat fruit, and drink milk, and try and keep down some whole grain cereal daily. Mostly because Barbie (aka Barbara), our midwife (and long time friend of moms) gave me permission to stop choking down the awful prenatal horse pill vitamins that were upsetting my stomach further. So it was (still is) up to me to try and nurture myself and our little baby with real food. I can’t say I’ve been meeting every dietary guideline – but I can say with confidence that Jason and I at least counted up micrograms of folic acid and are confident that I was meeting the daily recommendation. But now, with the 13th week complete behind us, the nausea is much better. If something smells especially awful or I’m overly hungry or tired it still turns on me. But mostly I have my appetite back as well as my desire for healthy and fresh foods. In fact we grocery shopped for the first time this week and haven’t eaten out once. I even started bringing lunch with me to school again. Whereas a few short weeks ago, the thought of eating food that had been sitting in my bag was enough to send me into a gagging fit.
Clothing and a Little Belly
As soon as the last day of the 12th week rolled through I “came out of the pregnancy closet” at work. It’s been fun to tell people who I’ve kept it a secret from for so long. But with one small draw back. I had the feeling that my stomach was starting to grow – but no one at work seems to the think so. Everyone was totally shocked, even though I felt like they must have suspected it for weeks since I swear I saw them staring at my growing boobs and belly non-stop. But it seems that only Jason and I can tell the difference in my midsection. That might be because we’re the only one’s that see my midsection without clothes on. The scale says that I haven’t gained a single pound. It still teeters between 115 and 118 pounds, just as it did before I was pregnant. I have definitely been more constipated and gassy though which may account for the extra puffiness around my belly. That puffiness keeps me wanting my sweatpants and hating all of my jeans. I have stopped buttoning my pants ( and hold them together instead with a rubber band) under loose, long shirts. Since, so far, the rest of me hasn’t grown much, I can’t really justify buying any new clothes. But the time will come soon, seeing as this week, there are already two pairs of jeans where the rubber band trick doesn’t quite cut it anymore because I can’t zip the zipper high enough to keep it from showing under my shirt. Another interesting change: new hair growth on my belly. I know: ew. I’m really hoping that falls out post baby…. Oh the joys of hormones!
First Appointment
The most exciting part of the last 6 weeks was our first appointment with our midwife. It was scheduled late for a first appointment – not until our 11th week – so by the time I was sitting in the CBS office answering questions before the exam, I had convinced myself (and embarrassingly admitted out loud) that I probably wasn’t pregnant, but instead had developed a rare thyroid disorder that had stopped my period and made me nauseous. (This is what happens when you don’t get a blood test to confirm that positive pregnancy test). After a quick physical exam (complete with exploration of my glands and thyroid) Barbara (Barbie) announced it all felt normal and she got out her Doppler stethoscope to listen to the baby’s heart beat. After a few seconds of searching, the little fast thudding noise came through consistent and strong. It was truly amazing. There REALLY was something growing in my stomach. Something that was part of me – but not me. Something with its own little heart beat and a mind of its own. It was moving around and making Barbie/Barbara chase it with the stethoscope. Jason and I left there on cloud nine. And maybe it’s taboo to say – but after that was the first time that I felt like the pregnancy (and all the symptoms up until then) were not just about me. Everything was happening for a purpose – to build a new little human being who was now swimming around inside me. I felt an instant connection and it was truly amazing.
That feeling was only topped when we went in for our first sonogram three days later. With a midwife, they don’t do regular sonograms for fun in their own office. So you need a purpose and a referral to Saint Vincent’s hospital to get one. Our purpose was to have the nuchal translucency measurement done to screen for Downs Syndrome. However, because I’m not even 27 yet, I wasn’t feeling statistically panicked about Downs and was secretly just looking forward to seeing the baby. We waited around in two different waiting rooms in the hospital for much longer than expected while we both called work to cancel meetings. Once we were finally taken back to see the doctor, the technician asked me to lay on the bed while she took a first look with the ultrasound. It took her just second to locate my uterus and then the baby. She nonchalantly said “and there’s the baby” while Jason and I stared in awe. As she did the various measurements required, she pointed things out: “and there’s the head, and foot, and look the hand is in the mouth”. Sure enough the little bugger was sucking on his/ her thumb in there! And the weirdest thing is that it really looked like a little baby on the picture – and weirder yet – to me it looked like OUR baby. Something about that little blurry black and white image looked familiar to me. I have no idea how – but it did. Jason asked the technician to take a guess at the sex. So she relocated her ultrasound wand so that we had a shot right between the legs, and then she announced “looks like a boy”… but followed it up that she was only 70% sure. She printed us out a copy of the picture and then headed off to get the doctor. I looked at Jason and he was beaming. The thought of a boy seriously made his day. Although both of us know it’s too early to rely on the opinion of the technician. When the doctor came in, he worked quickly to redo the measurements the technician had just done. But generally the “beautiful, beautiful” he kept muttering was enough for us. The only thing we asked him was to verify that there are indeed two arms and two legs, to which he replied there are. Again we left completely elated. That night we took the first “belly” picture of me so that we would have an “outside” view to go with our ultra sound pictures. And the test results were good: With the results from the nuchal translucency measurement and the blood screen, our risk for having a child with down syndrome or a trisomy 21 disorder was decreased to as low as it gets (that’s about 1 in 10,000…before, just based on my age, it was about 1 in 852).
~Week Twelve:
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