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.

Tired With a Chance of Smell Aversion

I am in my 8th week of pregnancy and have to say that I have been relatively lucky when it comes to nausea, food aversions, or other symptoms that can plague women in their first trimester. The most difficult thing for me is the exhaustion. Between 2 - 5 pm my world stops and I must take a nap. I generally don't have another option, it just is the way it is.

The newest addition in my arsenal of oddities are aversions to certain smells. I have heard and read about women who cannot do chicken or certain foods. I have friends who had to get rid of all the scented candles in their house. However, until now I have never heard of an aversion so crazy as my own.

In fact, I have two aversions. The first is not so bad. I simply cannot stand the smell of Benihana Restaurant. When I walk by or if I walk inside I have to get out of the vicinity immediately. The second aversion is more difficult. I actually didn't put two and two together about why it was happening until last night. I honestly thought it was just a problem.

My second aversion is my husband. I cannot stand his smell right now. I find this remarkably interesting because under non pregnant circumstances his scent is the most wonderful delight. Suddenly, I can tell when he walks into a room by his smell. The thing is, he does not smell like body odor. It is just a new smell. He hasn't changed anything, yet it is difficult for me to be around him. This is not all the time, but sometimes it is unbearable.

The hardest thing was telling him about it last night. I felt so bad, especially because he may have the best hygiene of any human I have ever met. Long story short, we came to realize that this aversion was due to my pregnancy. Luckily the internet played a hand in helping us realize that it isn't him at all. Just my nose playing tricks on me. This article about the Scent of a Man, was a God send.

After we found that other women have this same aversion we decided to do a couple of scent filled experiments. He placed a scented candle under my nose and I could barely smell it. Next was some lotion. I couldn't smell it at all. In fact, it seems that my sense of smell is not heightened but diminished. I would say that wonderful smells have become less prominent, maybe allowing for less pleasant smells to become more distinguishable. Weird right?