pregnancy brain I got my first maternity pants today, for which I am really excited. It seems ridiculous to want maternity pants this early on but almost all of my normal pants make me feel miserably nauseous. I'm wearing skirts a lot but that's already getting old.
Besides nausea, the thing I am noticing the most about pregnancy is how slowly my brain seems to be functioning. We had friends over for dinner last night and I found that I literally couldn't chop vegetables and talk at the same time. Normal things like grocery shopping seem to take a lot more effort, too. It seems really difficult to carry on a normal conversation with anyone but Keith, and I'm not sure if it's a hormonal thing, a tired thing, or what. We had a business meeting yesterday and it took all my energy just to focus on normal business for a few hours! Naps are becoming more and more a part of my regular routine.
2008-05-02 (7 weeks)
permanently seasick I'm waking up a lot at night, but the nausea has subsided slightly in the last couple of days, which I appreciate. I've been drinking lots of peppermint tea and chewing on ginger root, both of which seem to help. According to my pregnancy book, as our baby enters the fifth week of development, he or she is beginning to grow finger buds from tiny paddlelike hands and is growing at a rate of more than a million new cells per minute. It astonishes me that my body is capable of growing a human.
A few hours later: Ugh. I don't think the nausea is subsiding. I think it is just coming over me in waves. I feel awful for a few hours, then fine for a few hours, then awful again. I really love our baby but these hormones are really making me seasick right now. The lame part is that even when I am feeling a little better, I still don't want to do anything lest the nausea return. Not that I seem to be able to stop it.
2008-04-30 (6 weeks)
first birth center visit I woke up starving in the middle of the night last night. I knew I should get up and eat something, but instead I fell back to sleep and dreamed that I was eating at a restaurant. Sadly, waking up more often and earlier is becoming all too present a reality! My body wants me to have food in my stomach all the time. I'm trying, but I'm not used to eating every few hours! And it's also weird to force myself to eat something a short while before bed (so I can sleep longer without waking up starving) after having trained myself not to eat for several hours before going to sleep. This is all probably great training for parenthood, though... babies can't go for a long time without eating something, so I guess this will get me used to making my schedule in two- or three-hour increments!
Today Keith & I went to the Christian birth center where we are planning to deliver. We didn't get to meet the main midwife (she was out today), but we met the substitute midwife, midwife-in-training, doulas, and the massage person. The place is five minutes from our house, and it's exactly the kind of prenatal, labor, birth, and postnatal care we have been wanting. The first-time-mom package includes additional stuff like chiropractor visits and massage sessions, which I definitely will need and appreciate! I really like the overall philosophy, as it really seems to line up with mine/ours. The birthing center is beautiful, too. After spending some time there, though, Keith & I both kind of realized that I would likely be more comfortable giving birth at home than at the center (either of which will be fine with my midwife). It's a beautiful place (a homey old remodeled farmhouse), but aside from the big labor tub, I'd probably rather just be in my own bedroom... once our bedroom has something more in it than a mattress and several piles of clothes, that is! :) Plus we could buy a nice bedframe with the money we'd save from not going to the birth center. Medically, there is really no difference from delivering there versus delivering here, so I think I'd prefer to deliver at home if we can rent a labor tub. So, we'll see.
My stomach cramping finally let up today, so I went out and bought my first maternity shirts. Actually, I bought one online last week, but that doesn't count because I haven't received it yet. I can't wait until I am big with child. Right now I am just big with slow intestines, a side effect of pregnancy which I'd never really heard about... but I think that's enough info about my body for one day. I'm really trying not to bore people with this stuff but since only one friend knows about this site so far, it's a lot easier to just ramble to my heart's content.
