first chiropractor visit My birth package includes a few free trips to a chiropractor, and I woke up crying last night from neck pain (it's been giving me migraines for the last few days), so I went in today to my new chiropractor. I'm glad I did. Ah, how wonderful to not have a migraine right now! And it's always fun to go through the list of previous conditions... chronic ear infections, kyphosis, whiplash, extra vertebrate, car accident, tendonitis, tennis elbow, hip out of place, etc. I liked his thorough approach, and his rates are among the least expensive that I've seen, so the plan is to start going twice one week, once the next, twice the week after that, once the following week, etc. I really should be going in three times a week, but that's just too expensive. I haven't been very consistent about chiropractic treatments since going to college, as I've never really had the money, but being pregnant finally forces me to it. My hips are my biggest concern... I'm going to need a good bit of realignment to be able to deliver naturally... but I am excited about the neck and back treatment which will happen along with that!
2008-06-17 (13 weeks)
sensitivities I just can't believe how sensitive my body is!! The sun has been really bothering me... every time I've been out in the heat for more than ten minutes, I have felt extremely sick, like I had heat stroke or something. Fortunately, it hasn't been very hot here lately, but even standing in the sun for a few minutes at a time at yard sales has made me feel terrible, so I've really been avoiding sun at all costs. I'm finally starting to feel so much less sick this week, though, that I went out and did some yard work yesterday. It was only about eighty degrees, and I tried to stick to the shade as much as possible, but even just an hour or two of that left me feeling wretched all day and night. Slight fever, upset stomach, headache, etc, like the way you would feel if you spent all day at the beach and came home with a terrible sunburn. Yet I barely got a flush of sun on my skin. It just seems so incongruous to me... why would being pregnant make me so much more sensitive to the sun?
I had to leave church this past Sunday after about five minutes. The sanctuary is getting new carpet put in, and the smell from half of the old carpet being pulled up was just so terrible and filled with chemicals that I didn't feel right about subjecting our baby to it. I tried sitting in the nursing room for a little while, but it was filled with the chemical smell of air freshener and gave me a headache, so I finally just left and went to another church. (I couldn't even wait in the parking lot because the fresh smell of new asphalt there gives me a headache, too.) I kept wondering what people would think if it came up in conversation... "Uh, I couldn't take the smell at my usual church, so I came here instead." I feel like there is a widespread acceptance/expectancy that pregnant women will eat according to their feelings, but I have already encountered walls with people when I have mentioned things like feeling like I need to avoid chemicals. The urge to leave our chemical-smelling sanctuary was much stronger than any food urgings I have had since being pregnant, and yet friends and family seem much more likely to say, oh yes, go ahead and give in to your cravings for seafood and french fries (even though I know they contain brain-damaging methylmercury and hydrogenated oils) than oh yes, go ahead and by all means protect your developing child from the airborne contaminants released by the pulling up of that carpet.
Keith's support for me and for our child as I have made decisions which would have seemed ridiculously overprotective to me a few months ago (like leaving church just because of the airborne chemical smell) has really been what has given me the courage and confidence to believe in myself and to listen to my body. Our yard has tons of mown grass all over it that I have been trying to get raked up for almost a week now, yet he doesn't belittle me for trying to do it only in the early morning or late evening so as to avoid getting heat exhaustion or whatever. He agrees with my decision to keep our car ventilation continually on recirc when driving through our exhaust-filled town or nearby fields which have just been sprayed with pesticides. He doesn't get angry with me when I blitz through yard sales and go wait in the air-conditioned car because the sun is getting to me after just a few minutes. Instead of avoiding me through these pukey months, he has kept our toilets clean so that I would have clean porcelain to look at while so often leaning over it. He willingly fills the car with gas every time it needs it so that I don't have to breathe the gas fumes. He has gone grocery shopping for me, even though he hates it, because the smells have been too much for me at times. He agrees with my decision to stop weeding the front flower bed because there is so much cat poop in it that I could risk getting toxoplasmosis from it. He doesn't mock me for carrying vitamins with me everywhere I go and eating them with my meals, whether at restaurants or other people's houses. When I told him I couldn't take the smell in church (totally embarrassed, because there were hundreds of other people in the sanctuary who were toughing it out just fine), he suggested immediately that I go somewhere else... even though I wanted to wait until the end of the singing, and try the nursing room first, and see if I could handle the parking lot asphalt smell. I am so embarrassed by being affected by these things, and so afraid that people will think I'm a weirdo, that I don't think I would have been able to make what I feel was the right decision in these situations if it hadn't been for Keith's confidence in me.
2008-06-12 (12 weeks)
being sick I think I've been fighting off some kind of illness for a few weeks, and Sunday just did me in. I was awake from 2:00 am to midnight, and we drove all over to go to church, our niece's birthday party, and an alpaca ranch. I also ate some cake and Skittles. (Insert guilt here.) By the end of the day, I was so wretched! So I spent Monday and Tuesday sleeping and vomiting. Pregnancy sickness plus body illness equals misery. Ugh. (For what it's worth, I recommend not eating pineapple or asparagus while nauseous... those are by far the two most terrible things I've thrown up.) It's Thursday now and I'm still recovering. I was kinda looking forward to this week as hopefully being the start of my second trimester and the end of feeling so sick all the time, but... not yet. I had progressively gained between two and three pounds up until last week, but now after this sickness, I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I'm not really worried about it, but I do feel bad. This eating-enough-and-having-good-nutrition-while-feeling-wretched stuff is way more difficult than I expected! Thank God for fantastic prenatal vitamins, calcium supplements, and protein shakes; I sure hope they are making up what I am lacking.
2008-06-08 (12 weeks)
sharing the news We still haven't announced our pregnancy to the world at large, but it's not because we haven't meant to share it. We just still haven't gotten around to telling all the people who we'd like to tell individually. I called my grandma this morning because she is the main one who I still really need to tell personally, but she was rushing off to church so there just wasn't time. I'd really like to get the news out this week... although I really meant to do it a month ago... but we'll see. Keith's mom and my mom have done a pretty efficient job of sharing the news in St. Maries, but I want to be able to blog about stuff on Xanga without continually thinking, "oh yeah, we haven't announced it yet."
It's almost six in the morning and I've been up for four hours... I guess that's what I get for going to bed too early? I'm really wakeful lately, which is disappointing.
Pizza has been the most unappealing food to me for several weeks now, and we went to a wedding reception yesterday at which they served, you guessed it, pizza. Just pizza. It was fitting, since it was the wedding of our youth pastor, but I had a hard time not vomiting in line. I was really grateful when I was able to eat it and keep it down, though. I haven't thrown up in a few days and I am hoping that this upcoming trimester will be a lot more stomach-friendly.
My stomach muscles expanded some at about six weeks but haven't really bulged any further since then. I think I can feel the top of my uterus, but really it is so small right now that it's hard for me to believe it will be noticeable in another few months. It seems I am growing so slowly that it will take another couple of years before this baby is big enough! I have found over the last several weeks that using a rubberband to keep my jeans closed is really a fantastic method... it just gives me the one extra inch in front that I need. Right now, I see pictures of other pregnant friends and think... is my stomach really going to get that big? I think that the smallness of babies in these first few months is rather deceiving.
