I'm pregnant!

Well, folks, it seems as though by the end of January 2009 Eric and I will be parents! Scary, but exciting thought! Since I wasn't keeping this blog up to date every week for the last 13 weeks I'm going to post a few blogs relating to specific topics. For this first one, since it's the most common question I'm asked, I'll relay some of my strange pregnancy symptoms. When I get through my list of topics then I'll start with regular posts each week.

For starters, I didn’t really have bad morning sickness (m/s) – it was just this uncomfortable nauseous feeling – I never had to run to the bathroom or anything. Which was good since no one at work knew about the pregnancy, except my bosses and one friend. The m/s was my only real symptom. It’s been pretty easy. This one doesn’t really like breakfast – I’ve gotten an upset stomach after breakfast pretty much every day for the last 2 months. For a few weeks there at around 9-11 weeks it was like that after every meal – I’d go through a cycle of getting hungry, eating, then being nauseous until I was hungry again - all day every day. I haven’t gained any weight because during that time I didn’t want anything at all – I didn’t want any food, no snacks, no drinks, nothing. I got my appetite back around 11.5 weeks and now just have a little bit of an upset stomach after breakfast. But it’s not as long as it used to be – it was always at least an hour and now it’s only about 30 minutes or so.

I don’t have any real cravings, yet. I have things I don’t want to eat anymore. I used to eat my oatmeal every morning and now I don’t want it. It’s not that it makes me sick – it’s just unappealing. I like fruity drinks – like smoothies, but I’ve always liked those.

I don’t like the smell of coffee generally – but now it's really strong now. I don’t have the bionic nose where I can smell everything a mile away but coffee just gets to me.

I do tend to wake up in the middle of the night now - sometimes I can go back to sleep pretty easily, other times I'm up for an hour or more. And this week I’ve started wanting a pillow to cuddle up against. They make pregnancy pillows but for now I'm just using a spare down pillow we have and it does the trick. The other day, I think Eric thought I was a pillow because he kept trying to squeeze me up into a little ball between his arms and his legs – they just kept closing in on me and I finally was like – enough, let me up!

No major mood swings yet. Little things annoy me – like the train moving around a lot or people’s bags brushing up against me as they walk by on the train. Or people telling me what I should or shouldn’t do/eat/think etc. (More on that in another post.)

I had acid reflux this week a couple of times for a couple of hours - that was uncomfortable. It didn't burn, it was just uncomfortable.

I now also have the ability to sneeze while sneezing. I know - you may be saying that has nothing to do with pregnancy - but it just started about 6 weeks ago and I was pregnant then so I say it does. We'll see after I give birth if it stops. I have been sneezing a few times a day, always twice, and usually at least one of those times is this sneeze on top of a sneeze.

And my favorite symptom - crazy, vivid dreams. These suckers are so life-like. And insane. They don't make any sense half the time - I mean, there's a plot line and it goes on for a while but the plot doesn't make any sense. Sometimes I can tell why I had the dream - something I had on my mind, something I experienced, something I saw on TV, but it's usually a few of those things, unrelated, thrown into the same dream. I remember at least one a night, sometimes more. Pre-pregnancy I know I had dreams but they weren't this weird or vivid and I didn't remember them as well or as often. This is the one symptom that I've had the entire pregnancy.

So far that's it. They aren't kidding when they say pregnancy is a total body experience. Everything changes. Mine hasn't bene horrible, or major, just different. And sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. So, I just try to go with the flow.