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August 15, 2001
August 15, 2001
Almost 8 weeks pg
Hello everyone,
This is so weird - as I started to type this entry, I wrote “TTC # 1” at the top of the page, simply out of habit. It may take me a while to get used to that, how incredibly wonderful.
Latest Status
I had my final appointment with my RE today where I was again fortunate enough to have another ultrasound (my third in three weeks). I saw the baby’s heartbeat for the second time since finding out I was pg and again, my RE confirmed that the heartbeat is nice and strong. Also, my RE said that the baby is measuring two days ahead (already measuring at 8 weeks) so my new due date is March 30, 2002. He did say though that I will probably go past my due date as most first timers do, so not to “worry,” I could still keep my cherished April Fool’s due date if I wanted to! Haha! On 8/29, I go for my first OBGYN appointment with my new doctor where I will have yet, ANOTHER u/s. I am one lucky girl to have all these reassuring ultrasounds. With all the worrying that I do, I don’t know how I would have made it if I hadn’t had so many ultrasounds already.
The baby looks like is has quadrupled in size, (although it hasn’t), but now I can see tiny little arms and legs and a definite forehead and eye, whereas last week all I could see was a little lima bean. It was too cute. Even cuter, (don’t know if I mentioned this last time), the lab technician printed out about 10 copies of the picture and on it she wrote variations of “Hi Mom and Dad!!! Here I am - the littlest Chappelle!!!” She also made copies that said “Hi Grandma and Grandpa...” as well. Charles and I thought that when we go to visit his family in CT in two weeks, it may be fun to ask his parents if they want to see some of our new pictures. Then we plan to just whip out the u/s pix instead and wait for it all to register. I cannot WAIT to see the look on my MIL’s face. About a week ago she called Charles and told him she is simply dying for a grandchild, that she is sick of visiting her girlfriends’ homes and seeing all of THEIR grandchildren - what perfect timing our little announcement will be.
Latest PG Symptoms
I am still sick as a dog. Again, no vomiting or anything like that, just an overall feeling of intense nausea all day long. I was reading in one of my many PG books that if you had bad eating habits (junk food, etc.) the year prior to getting pg, you are 90% likely to have m/s. Well, I was surprised by that seeing as how I am one of the healthiest eaters on the planet. I never eat fast food, never eat sweets and I literally stuff myself on vegetables. I live on V8 juice and low fat cottage cheese, not because it is good for me, but because I love it. So why am I so sick? Just one of those things, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I am loving the sickness because I feel like that just means the baby is strong and growing like it’s supposed to. But some of this crap you read in these books will drive you to drink - more on that later.
My breasts are very weird. What I mean by this is that one day they may feel like they weigh 5 lbs apiece and other days - nothing. Some days they are their normal “pinkish hue,” and other days - purple. (Sorry to be so graphic but this is the appropriate site for this sort of talk - right)?
My abdomen: at night it is very big and in the morning it can be nearly flat. This weekend I was so bloated I had to already start doing the old “rubberband around the buttonhole” trick - you know, where you loop a ponytail holder around your pants button and loop the other end through your buttonhole. This way, you don’t actually close the pants all the way and they can still remain comfortable. I find it highly odd that I have a stomach already but my doctor said that even women who start out with a flat stomach can sometimes poke out quickly. My mom said she was like that, showing almost immediately so I suppose it is simply a hereditary trait.
My sleep patterns - awful. I wake up about 8 times/night to pee. Of course, I feel so doped up that I can barely move and it completely disrupts my sleep. I fluctuate from having hot flashes to being cold. My pajamas go off and on all night long. Every morning at 5:30 a.m. on the dot, I wake up with a severe case of nausea. The only way to quell it is to get up, go to the fridge and gulp down a bottle of Gatorade. Gatorade is my new friend. Then I go back to bed and sleep until 9. Unheard of for me. Getting up at nine makes me feel like I have wasted away my whole day, but these days, I am so exhausted in the mornings, I can barely open my eyes, let alone wake up.
My fingers: I have very large hands as it is. My engagement ring and wedding bands are size 7&3/4 - not one of my best attributes. Whenever I used to get my period, especially during the heat of the summer, it would be nearly impossible for me to get my rings off because my hands would swell up. Now that I am pg, even at this early stage, my hands are really starting to swell. I have always been a big retainer of water and if I had to guess now whether I am the type to have toxemia near the end of my pregnancy, I would guess affirmatively. Admittedly, the swelling has been better these past few days since the temp has dropped down from 100 to 89, but still I am concerned that I will wake up one day and not be able to take my rings off at all. I certainly don’t want to have to have them cut off. So, today Charles and I went to the jeweler to drop my rings off to have them enlarged - I won’t say to what size. Ugh. It was hard trying to guesstimate what size I should enlarge my rings to, but what I plan to do is simply wear a ring guard and adjust the size as I need to. I certainly don’t want to be ringless during my pg, definitely don’t want to be ringless. Not that there is anything wrong with it, I just want my rings.
Cravings
This weekend, I had a girlfriend (Nancy) visiting from CT. Besides the fact that Nancy is one of the most fun people to hang around with, her visit was great because I was hardly sick at all while she was here. It was like my mind told my body “You cannot be sick while Nancy is visiting,” and I wasn’t. Of course, the minute she left, I got sick all over again. Anyway, we decided to visit The Museum of Natural History on Saturday. Well, by the time we got to the museum I was absolutely starving. This is rare for me because usually I am so sick I can’t stand the sight of food. As we were waiting for Charles to park the car, I spied a hot dog stand, the kind with those nice, greasy, veiny hot dogs with all the trimmings. I just HAD to have one. So, I proceeded to order one with mustard, onions and sauerkraut - to DIE FOR. After I finished that one, I had to of course, polish off a second. Once in the museum, I became so exhausted from walking around. All I could think of was how hungry I still was. I couldn’t wait to sit down and eat -AGAIN. The only thing that sounded remotely good to me and that would take away that feeling of nausea was of course - another hot dog. As soon as we got out of the museum, I went straight over to the hot dog vendor and bought another one and ate it in about two bites. Those were the best three damn hot dogs I have ever eaten. Of course, after eating them, I felt so guilty because I had put all that bad food in my body (and thus in my baby). I couldn’t believe I had given in to such absolutely disgusting food, but then I started thinking - oh, so what! I am sure there are many pg women out there who have eaten things worse than hot dogs, right? I still do feel kind of guilty though. It is weird because I normally love vegetables, especially spinach and broccoli. Now, the thought of either of those makes me so sick. I just hope I am not depriving my baby. Let’s just all pray it isn’t born with rickets or something.
Also, I have to add that we went through some exhibit in the museum that had skeletons of fish and snakes. Seeing all those skeletons with those tiny little bones made me start thinking of fish, once again causing me to have a gag reflex. Right now for me, fish is the devil. Normally, I love fish but now that I am pg, fish is about the most disgusting food I can think of. Last night, Charles made me a bowl of shrimp flavor cup-o-soup with the noodles, you know the kind? Well, it had these tiny shrimp in it floating around the top of the cup. Looking at the tiny shrimp made me sick not just because of the utterly vile stench, but also because they reminded me of what I had seen on my ultrasound picture only a week before. The soup got chucked down the drain. All this to say, I am never eating fish again.
Another weird symptom is that I constantly have the sniffles. Charles caught a horrible cold this weekend and I thought maybe I had just caught his cold. As it turns out, I hadn’t actually caught it, but instead I just sniffle constantly. My chest doesn’t feel congested, my head doesn’t hurt or anything, just the sniffles. I read in one of my books that when a woman is first pg, she often thinks that she has caught a cold, when what has really happened is that her nasal membranes are changing and perhaps thinning a bit, causing her to have a runny nose. It is supposed to go away after the first trimester.
Pregnancy Related Books
This brings me to my next topic regarding all the pg books a newly pg woman goes out and buys after first discovering she is pg. While I am a strong advocate of obtaining all the knowledge you can on an such an intricate and significant medical condition such as pregnancy, I do believe that the majority of these books end up scaring women to death - namely me. I was reading last night about a condition called a “molar pregnancy.” Without getting into all the medical terminology, essentially this condition is one where the woman gets big very quickly (tricking the woman into thinking her fetus is growing) but in reality, the fetus does not grow at all. The author of the book had the audacity to say there was a quick and easy treatment for this condition and not to worry. As I read on, I learned that this “quick and easy treatment” consists of a D&C, i.e., abortion. Very nice. Well, by the time I had finished reading about this condition, I was convinced I had it. Because my stomach is already starting to poke out and since all the books say it is too early to show, I just KNEW something was wrong. Of course, it wasn’t but I agonized for two hours over this possibility. I am already worried enough about the possibility cleft palates and missing limbs, umbilical cord strangulation and first trimester miscarriage - I certainly did not need to know about this completely rare and unfamiliar condition. I have therefore put some of my reading on hold for awhile until I am a little further along...
Horror Stories
Besides all the lovely unfortunate possibilities offered by the pg books, I find that a lot many people are now telling me their own personal horror stories. I am wondering if anyone else out there has experienced this? For example, just when I start to feel happy because I think - great! I have made it to 8 weeks, I can worry a little less now, someone will tell me about the horrible situation that happened to them in their 9th week. I feel REALLY bad for women (or men) who have had some awful pg experience but it is really scary to hear sometimes, especially so early in the pg. No matter when I think I may be off the hook, someone comes up with a horror story about their sister or their mother or their friend and how they lost their baby right after the cut-off date of when I think I “may” be home-free. Please don’t misunderstand me and think that I am not compassionate over other’s personal tragedies, but in my constant state of worry, it is so scary to hear about the horror stories, especially ones that are so rare they are about one in a million. I guess I am just surprised that people are so quick to dampen good news with some tragic anecdote. Is this supposed to make me feel better? I guess it would sort of be like me telling a friend who is just starting to TTC all of the different heartaches I had to go through before getting pg. Of course, infertility can happen to anyone and there are no guarantees that it won’t, but there is no way I would unnecessarily frighten someone with my personal experiences. Does anyone else find this sort of thing happening to them? Very weird...
I Have the Best Husband
Before everyone starts puking, I am sorry but I just had to credit my poor husband who has been so great to me. He always has been, but now that I am pg, he is even moreso. Charles cleans all the time, he cooks my meals, does laundry and still gives me pedicures - he won’t let me lift a finger, despite me constantly telling him that I am not an invalid. He gets really angry that I write about this because he says I make him sound like a wimp, but I think credit should be given where it is due. For example, I mentioned earlier that Charles caught a horrible cold. On Sunday, the cold was simply kicking his ass, he was sneezing non-stop and looked miserable. So, around 7 o’clock, my mom called and asked me how I was doing and I told her that I was OK despite feeling pretty sick, (too sick to cook), but that Charles was REALLY sick. My mom then asked me if Charles was in bed already and I simply replied, “No, he’s in the kitchen fixing my dinner.” My mom was like “God, Corinne! Do you realize how LUCKY you are?! You are really milking this pregnancy thing, you know, you are not the first woman to be pg!” But that is just the point, I don’t expect Charles to make my dinner, I do tell him to relax, to lie down, that I can get my own stuff, but he just does it anyway. (I also have the distinct impression that he does not like me invading his kitchen space). He says it makes him happy - so who am I to stop him? Also, Charles is a neat freak like me, so he likes cleaning. I swear that man gets off on dusting with Swiffers - he buys packets of those things by the dozen.
Don’t get me wrong, Charles certainly has his flaws too. For example, he is the world’s WORST procrastinator - he puts everything off until it is absolutely necessary (or until I start bitching). This is something that drives me nuts. So, he certainly isn’t perfect and I don’t mean to portray him as such. I suppose I really just want my true appreciation chronicled in this diary for our baby’s future reading pleasure.
But really the best thing about Charles is how excited he is about the baby - he talks to it constantly, rubs my stomach, he really talks about it all the time. He talks about the name, the nursery and he even said he is so happy he will (probably) be the one doing drop-off and pick-up for daycare. Seeing as how I am not sure where I will be working by the time we need daycare next September, we registered the baby at a daycare that is near Charles’ job to ensure that at least he will be close enough to deal with time constraints. This saddened me because I hate the thought of not having the early mornings and evenings with the baby. I know how babies light up when their moms pick them up at daycare and I really want that experience. So, Charles laughed when I told him this and gloated about how he loves the fact that HE would get to have the baby all to HIMSELF, because he is certain that I will hog her every chance I get. It was very special to see him so happy about that, I never would have thought he would care.
Reflections
Aside from the obvious, (the pregnancy, birth and baby), I now find myself in awe over the fact that in about 7 months, I will be responsible for shaping the moral fiber, the self esteem, the intelligence, the love and the life of a little person. I am sure you are all like “Well, duh - what did you think!?” But I tell you, realizing this fact AFTER you are already pg is not at all the same as fantasizing about it while TTC, not the same thing at all. It is quite the sobering thought, but certainly heart-warming as well. I feel so incredibly lucky that I am finally pg, I still can’t get over it. I feel as though my life is already complete and that there is really nothing else that I need in my life right now, aside from Charles. I am so happy, probably the happiest I have ever been in my life. I am so happy I actually feel the need to repeat it.
I am SO happy.
Love always,
Corinne and her baby
EDD 4-1-02 (or maybe 3-30-02)
PS: Next week I will be sure to include my reviews of 1) Legally Blonde and 2) America’s Sweethearts. In the meantime, I wish everyone TTC many positive results, and everyone who is already pg a happy, healthy nine months and a happy, healthy baby!
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