Monday, June 28, 2010

Overwhelmed

Good things!:
  • I bought a house (I know, whoa!)
  • I'm almost out of my second trimester
  • Baby shower planning has begun (no dates yet)
  • We finally started a registry (please don't go look for it yet)
Not so good things:
  • Work is hard. My project is over budget and over schedule. I'm the "manager" and we just had a meeting about it. I'm stressed.
  • We bought a house. All good, but it's a LOT of work to get from our offer being accepted to the close of escrow. Stress, time, money.
  • Dad is recovering from major surgery and he's on my mind. I want him to get well. He doesn't even know we bought a house yet.
  • The registry needs work and I need to do more research on nearly everything.


I am overwhelmed in a way I'm having a hard time dealing with at the moment. I'm sure that college was harder than this at times. In fact, my most common answer to "How are you?" in college was "overwhelmed." It might just be my go to word for when I'm not doing well but answering "poopy" doesn't seem appropriate. Especially because life nearly always has some good stuff going on. There is SO much good in my life right now that I'm actually on the positive side of things, but the good stuff is stressful too. It's all just a lot to deal with. I have the time to unwind, but I don't know how. In the pre-pregnancy days I would have just had half a bottle of wine and felt much better. I can't do that today. I don't have a good way to unwind and it's just making me wound tighter.

And when I'm overwhelmed and stressed, baby kicks. I'd like to believe it's a comforting, "I'm here for ya mama" kind of reaction, but I think it's him getting freaked out too. It doesn't calm me down.

Oh, one final bright side: I'm healthy. So's kiddo. That's something that I really can be thankful for.

Days Pregnant: 173

Days to go: 107

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Nose bleeds continue

Not so fun way to freak out your husband: Getting a nose bleed in the shower. He looked at me with crazy eyes and then calmed down and informed me that I had a nose bleed. But his first thought was "Holy cow, your face is covered in blood".

At least this one stopped really quickly.

Days Pregnant: 171
Days to go: 109

Friday, June 25, 2010

Food is complicated and will continue to be so

Pregnancy is an adventure in nutrition. At the beginning it was just about getting enough calories as I dropped pounds and had trouble holding down food. Now that I'm mostly doing better with that (with a few exceptions here and there), I've been trying to eat a well balanced diet, getting enough of the important things and eating junk in moderation. Now, this should be something that I just do in life, but eating for 2 (in terms of nutrition, not calories) certainly helped to accelerate the process.

Earlier this week I went to a seminar talk on nutrition. Some of the things the speaker talked about were straight forward to me and things I already do. Avoid "fake" sugars like aspartame (although he said that stevia is good, I think in 10 years he'll go back on that idea), avoid fried foods, avoid farmed fish, avoid processed carbs, avoid high fructose corn syrup, drinking enough water, etc.

And then he said some things that sounded more off the wall to me, like limiting whole grains and avoiding dairy. Dairy? No, that can't be right, no one argues that dairy is good for you. Do they?

So that piece of information I took with a grain of salt and decided to look it up. Apparently there is some serious debate about the benefits of dairy. My 26 year long belief that enough dairy will help build my bones is probably wrong. For example, this website. They reference all sorts of international studies where the countries with the highest milk consumption are often the ones with the highest rates of osteoporosis. Really? That's not good.

But I'm pregnant. And my memory is that if I don't get enough calcium in my diet, my child will leech it out of my bones and teeth. I'm not even sure if that's true now. But there are so many things out there done by the national dairy council that I don't know what to believe anymore. I've been working so hard to introduce more dairy into my diet, and maybe that was the wrong idea. I have no idea.

Between pesticides on produce, hormones in meat and milk and all of the artificial things that are put into my food, I feel like there are pitfalls left and right. Real food takes time. I need to learn to readjust my thinking about food and learn to spend the time and effort required to not only go shop for the good things (because I believe they are out there), but continue to stay on top of the research so I know what the good things are. Then I need to understand that eating well will require me to devote time and thought into the planning and preparation of good meals. I know it can be done, and I'm confident that I can do it without thinking of it as a burden, but I'm not there yet.

This morning I ate multigrain cheerios with 1% organic milk and some organic greek yogurt. And I've had water to drink, probably around 16 oz in the last 2.5 hours since I woke up. If I had presented this to myself a few years ago I would have been proud at how "healthy" I was eating, but today I'm not so sure.

Next Adventure: Registering, a whole new can of worms!

Days Pregnant: 170
Days to go: 110

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Glowing

Lately, the thing I keep hearing from my coworkers as they hear that I am pregnant and approach me about it is that I am glowing. What does this mean? I really don't get this phrase. I appreciate that they are trying to find a way to compliment me and I just take it lightly. But really, it's an odd thing that we tell pregnant women. I'm not typically beaming with happiness over this (I mean I am, but it's not like I walk around at work with a big grin on my face) and my skin isn't actually any more luminous.

I was curious, so I went and googled this. I found another pregnancy blog where someone had done some research and had come up with this:

Your skin does take on a glow - and there is a physiological explanation for it. As your blood volume increases throughout your pregnancy, superficial blood vessels carry more blood which can be seen on your face. In addition, your oil glands are secreting more, so you naturally have a glow without any additional exertion.

Pfft. I appreciate the compliments, but I feel like glowing is a silly word. Especially since my skin is the LEAST oily it's been since I was a little kid.

Anyway, apparently I'm glowing.

Days Pregnant: 167
Days to go: 113

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Where'd my abs go?

There are so many parts of being pregnant that I just didn't anticipate. Like the bloody nose thing. Another one, that's becoming more irritating the farther along I get, is my semi-significant lack of ab muscles. I can't lift things, getting up off the floor is harder, rolling over in bed is requiring the use of arms and legs and life is generally more obnoxious. One irritating side effect: leaning over at the sink to brush my teeth or wash my face hurts. I can't always bend in half as far as I need to go because there is something in the way and sometimes it hurts when I can go as far as I need to.

I'm going to have my work cut out for me getting back in shape.

Flying while Pregnant

Flying while pregnant is fine. With a couple of exceptions anyway. The flight to Hawaii was seriously a nightmare. In front of me I had two grown adults who didn't sleep but insisted on reclining their seats all the way. I got a break from it during dinner when they asked everyone to sit up. Behind me I had a little kid who was maybe 1 year old who was allowed to repeatedly kick my seat, play with the tray table and sometimes nursed. Reclining into a woman who is trying to nurse is terrible. Also, reclining was not a comfortable position for me anyway. So I had so little space in my seat that I couldn't even open my laptop all the way. Maybe I could have if I hadn't been pregnant, but the laptop couldn't slide any closer to me to get open. Pfft. Oh and did I mention the screaming kid in the next isle over? Not so much a restful start to a vacation.

But I just thought that was bad. Ha. The flight home got delayed so late that it went from a 1pm departure time to a MIDNIGHT departure time. That means instead of landing at 9pm we landed at 8am. A red eye while pregnant is just absurd. I still couldn't recline and I can't really lay on my back. Oh, and I had 2 seats (thank you extremely nice desk agent!!) to myself, but I couldn't bring my knees up far enough to lay down on them. Pffft. Not being able to bend in half is obnoxious.

Oh well, I'm here, have slept 11 hours in my own bed (nap and night's sleep) and now I'm feeling human again. And when I mention it to people they just tell me to get use to being sleep deprived. Yay kids!.

Swollen Feet!

This post will start the series of posts that I wanted to make while I was on vacation but never got around to writing.

June 10
Ok, so most of my pregnancy symptoms have been fairly mild. I had morning sickness, but it was more of a general bickering with food and less an all out war. I had exhaustion, but I managed to get to work every day. I have an increased sense of smell, but for the most part it didn't impact my life. Nose bleeds were pretty sever, but workable.

Today, I have a SERIOUS problem. My feet and ankles are SO swollen. I'm sure it's because it's hot and humid here and I'm spending a lot of time either sitting or standing. But man, I can't believe that my ankles actually doubled in size they way they have. It's absurd.

Update: I'm home, back to colder, dryer weather and my feet are back to normal now, 36 hours after getting home. My ankles are still a little puffy, but I'm not even sure I would have noticed it if they hadn't puffed up so big a week ago.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Seat on the bus

Well, my first stranger discussed being pregnant with me today. I'd potentially be sad that I don't just look fat anymore, but this was an older lady (like, the generation above me) who gave up her seat on the bus because I am pregnant. Very sweet and a nice first discussion of my pregnancy. Now, what about all the other passengers around her? Yeah, lots of them should be ashamed that an old woman (her words, not mine) had to give up her seat to the pregnant lady. Shame on you guys in your twenties and thirties.

And I'm staying with some very nice people while I'm on vacation. One of them commented to me that I look more pregnant than when I got there. I've been here 4 days. Heh. So I'm in that stage.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

More uncommon pregnancy symptoms

I guess these aren't really all that uncommon, but they aren't often talked about anyway. I mean, compared to throwing up and needing to only lay on your side, these seem pretty minimal.

First, I'm itchy. Not just where my skin is stretching out, although certainly there, but EVERYWHERE. Particularly my arms and legs, but maybe those are just the easiest to reach and so they get the most attention. I actually scratched a patch of my upper belly raw this morning. Lotion helps, but does not make it go away. I'm hopeful that the really humid air in Hawaii next week will help!

Second, I just noticed that my belly is covered in hair. I knew this was a possibility, but I hadn't previously noticed any hair there. Ah, it's there today. But the internet tells me that it's safe to wax and it's relatively sparse, so I will be taking care of that today. It is pretty dark though, so even though it's sparse, I'm excited it's easy enough to remove. Ppfft.

These uncommon symptoms aren't as entertaining as the fetal movement.

Days Pregnant: 149
Days to go: 131

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

My poor little brain

I've never really been interested in politics. I mean, some stuff really gets me rallied up, like the recent ballot measures about gay marriage. But my husband just made me vote (I use the term "made me" loosely, I semi wanted to do it myself) and there were so many things on this primary ballot that just didn't seem important enough to care about. For example, I had to vote for county superintendent of schools. There were about 10 names on the ballot, none of whom I knew anything about. My husband did a bunch of research about all the issues and sometimes I voted with him, sometimes I voted against him and sometimes I just didn't vote. Meh.

Ok, not a post about politics. The main reason that I don't care about things like politics or social issues right now is that my brain is full. I'm not really stressed out about anything but there are so many things on my mind. I mean, it's all normal new parent type stuff, and like I said, I'm not actually stressed yet, but so much on my brain!

  • What I'm eating. I'm still struggling with this. I want to eat good things, but I don't always have them. Blah.
  • What I will feed my kid. How will I manage to breast feed when I go back to work? Will I even be able to? And after that, how do I nurture someone who wants to eat good real food? What if my kid has allergies?
  • Where will my baby sleep? A crib? A bassinet? Co-sleeping in my bed? I don't function well without enough sleep, can I do this?
  • Does continuing to work after he is born really make sense? I've got good benefits and if we ever want to afford a house I should have an income. Also, I'd probably go crazy at home.
  • Who will take care of my kid when I'm at work? How will we select a child care facility? Can we afford it?
  • Should I be exercising more? I'm having intermittent back pain and I'm starting to gain real weight. Would yoga help that? It's not convenient, is it really worth it?
  • How do you change a baby boy's diaper? How frequently is he going to pee in my face? Does elimination communication work well with boys?
There's probably more, but those are the things floating around in my head today. I'm also living with all of the normal adult responsibilities like paying bills and grocery shopping and cleaning. This is a whole new chapter of life and I really wish I'd had more training for it. I wish I had taken Home Economics where I could have learned how to balance a budget (not the math part, the budgeting part) and maybe how to care for a baby. I never even had the sack of flour or egg project. I have zero experience. I took one couple of day course on babysitting put on by the Red Cross when I was 11. That's the entire extent of my childcare knowledge. I've never babysat, I'm the youngest, until Jan 2009 I had never know a baby personally. And all family is far away.

I want to do this, I'm excited by the challenge, but I'm a little overwhelmed. And I don't think my husband is as worried as I am. After all, he's spending his extra research hours looking up things to vote on. I guess divide and conquer is a good strategy.

So how old are you?

So, to date exactly one person has said anything about the possibility of me being pregnant. And looking back on it, I'm not even really sure I interpreted that conversation correctly. In any case, I've had to tell everyone and virtually everyone has acted really surprised and told me I'm not really showing. Phooie, I am. My waist is now 12 inches larger than when I got pregnant. That's a LOT.

The reason for the post though, is that I keep having the conversation with people at my company. To be fair, they all started working at the company somewhere around the time I was born (within a few years), so they are clearly my elders. That said, all of them are super touchy about commenting on my weight or how I look, but about half of them have felt it ok to ask me my age. I feel like you never ask a woman what she weighs or how old she is. Now, I don't care, and they all know I've only been out of college a few years, I just find it odd that no one asks if I'm pregnant but they're all ok talking about my age.

Just a note.

Days Pregnant: 148
Days to go: 132