Catching up

It has been about a month since my last post. Exhaustion got the best of me during the first trimester. Rather than write in my down time, I chose to nap! :)

I'll try to post as much as I can about what I missed. Please be advised that some details may be skewed or forgotten due to pregnancy brain. Well, let's just start there.

As of this week I am almost out of my first trimester. Everyone experiences pregnancy differently. In my first trimester, I have found that pregnancy makes me forget things, drop things, repeat things, forget things, mourn my losses, emotional, grateful, tired, pee a lot, hungry, my back hurt and more.

• The forgetfulness and clumsiness makes me laugh. I have to write important things down or else they disappear into the ether. I have tripped up and down the stairs more times than I care to admit. I now buy the nail polish when I get a pedicure because I stub my toes so often and need to touch up the paint. I dial phone numbers only to forget who I called while the phone is ringing. I have gone to the market for groceries (with a list) and I still end up missing items when I get home. Hmm, I forgot the other example I wanted to give. Oh well!

• The mourning deserves its own post. I will write about that next or very soon.

• My emotional state is all over the charts. I can cry at the drop of a hat or explode into laughter. I go from feeling fat and depressed to feeling like a beautiful goddess. I generally feel most beautiful after an ultrasound. There is nothing like seeing the baby moving and kicking. At 11 weeks it looked like a real baby! I expected to be overwhelmed but had no idea it would be so touching. Even Larry was taken aback by the lil' bean.

• This time has really made me appreciate the wonderful people in my life. I am so grateful for my amazing husband. I cannot imagine anyone being more loving, attentive and understanding. I also had no idea how much love surrounded me. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the loss of my mom or the estrangement from my dad, so much so that I forget to be excited about the pregnancy. I have been hesitant to tell people because it will make me vulnerable or what if no one responds. Well, the exact opposite is the case. People are so excited! It is nice to be out of the 3rd month. Telling people has been one of my greatest joys to date.

• I have already touched on the exhaustion

• OMG, I thought that getting up once a night to pee was bad. Now that I am pregnant I wish I only woke up once a night. So far my record is 7 times!

• The eating! I must say it is tough to get used to the eating. They say you only need 300 extra calories a day but it is easy to exceed that suggestion. I seem to be hungry every 2 hours. I have learned that small meals are the way to go. Plus, getting too full feels awful. The hardest thing about the eating is the aversions. I do not have any cravings, but there are plenty of foods that make my stomach turn at the thought of them.

• My back is a whole other situation. I am not really even showing and I haven't gained much weight (4 lbs), but my back is killing me! If I exercise and stretch it hurts less, but man oh man, it scares me for later on when I actually have a tummy.

I will touch on a lot of these subjects in individual posts at some point or another. This was just a quick summary of what's been going on.

1st OB Appointment and changes

Last Thursday we had our first OB appointment. Below is the lil Bean.

According to the ultrasound I was 7 weeks and 5 days at the time of the appointment. This pushed up my estimated due date to April 10. As of this appointment (4 days ago), the embryo was 14.5 mm.

A lot is changing with me. Not necessarily my body, but my emotions. Mood swings are a new daily visitor. Yesterday we watched, "The Perfect Storm." I cried for nearly 5 minutes at the end. We are not talking a weepy cry. We're talking a cry from the gut as if I had personally known the characters in the movie. To me, nothing could have been more tragic at that very moment.

The other day we were walking to the gym. At the intersection a crossing guard was there to help us on our way. While waiting at the corner, a fire engine's siren began to blare in the background. The crossing guard walked into flowing traffic and stopped the cars so that the fire truck could get by quickly and without a worry. After the truck had passed, Lar and I walked across the street. I asked Larry if he thought it was as cool as I did that the guard walked into traffic. He responded that the guard was a, "hero." Right then and there I started crying. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and emotion for the crossing guard who made it just a little easier for the fire truck to get to their destination and possibly save a life.

Also, don't get me hungry. If I go more than a few hours without a bite I get snappy.

Whereas I am a mixed bag of emotions, my husband is an ANGEL. He is doing a great job keeping me calm, fed and constantly telling me that I am beautiful. Thank goodness for him and his ability to keep me grounded.

Feeling Crazy

In the last 6 days I have had 2 emotional outbursts that rendered me hysterical. On top of that, I feel super thick because I am bloated. Some women at 6 weeks cannot even tell a difference in their bodies. Because I started out 6 lbs heavier than I usually weigh, I feel gigantic AND I know I am only at the beginning of this whole process.

My outbursts came as a surprise to me, but Larry on the other hand, knew what I was experiencing was completely normal. He is reading, "What to Expect When You Are Expecting," and I am not. This has made Larry more prepared for some of the changes than I am. In fact, he was able to laugh off the outbursts while still managing to make sure I felt taken care of. He knew I wasn't nuts, just extra hormonal. I just felt crazy.

So, what were my outbursts about? Oh, well the first one was plain crazy. On Saturday night we stayed at a hotel while in Vegas. We were brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed in the bathroom which had the most horrendous lighting. Somehow, the lighting accentuated a vein that I have in my arm.

Now this vein is super pronounced for a reason. When I had my wisdom teeth removed over 10 years ago, there was a mistake made with the anesthesia. As a result I got phlebitis in the vein that they used to anesthetize me. The vein ended up collapsing and a smaller one to the left of the main vein took over. This vein, due to increased blood flow tends to stand out.

It doesn't look pronounced here, but it is in real life. I promise!

The thing is, I have never been bothered by it before. However, under the lighting in the bathroom at the Westin I saw it and almost passed out. It looked like a huge varicose vein running down my entire arm. It was popping out, dark and just plain gross. Seconds after the discovery of the newly accentuated vein I burst into tears. As pictured, it doesn't look as bad anymore. I think it was so bad because it was hot in Vegas and I just took a hot shower.

Larry started laughing but sat by my side comforting me. Like I said, he knew it was the hormones. I knew too, but that didn't help. The thing is, I don't usually cry. So this new crying for no reason situation is difficult for me to wrap my arms around. I think I had a total of 3 different moments that I broke into tears about the vein that night. Yes, 3 times!

On Tuesday night I got home and fell asleep on the couch until Larry got home from work. In the background a movie was on. When Lar got home I woke up and started watching the end of the movie. Larry was in the kitchen and asked me to come hang out with him. I went into the kitchen and we started chatting. A couple of minutes later I burst into tears and starting apologizing for being a horrible wife. I had no idea where it came from, but suddenly I felt like a bad spouse because I was fat.

My hips are hanging over my pants. Not normal for me.

Sitting up straight my tummy has rolls and I have an odd thickness to my waist and back

In reality, I know I am not fat. I am definitely a little pudgy right now, but fat is a bit of an extreme label. Again, Larry was able to laugh this one off, but I haven't been able to. I think this is where the balance of being pregnant starts to dual with my eating disorder past. I am eating healthy and exercising, but my body is changing. Despite expecting these changes this shift in body image is hard for me to grasp. Larry listened to me, hugged me when I needed it and told me he would love me if I gained 100 lbs during pregnancy. Well, as long as I eventually lost it.

Later I was on Facebook and my cousin Joree started a chat. I told her how I was feeling and she gave me a mantra. I AM NOT FAT, I AM PREGNANT. Although it seems simple and obvious, saying it out loud tends to center me and bring me back to reality. I use this mantra multiple times a day to get myself through the tough moments.

Mantra aside, I still went out and bought some new, looser tops today. I mean, a girl has to feel pretty when she gets dressed!