Pregnancy and Motherhood Archive

The first baby kicks were pretty tiny but now they don’t feel like “kicks” at all. It’s more like I have a live fish swimming around in me.

Ok this morning I know it was baby kicks I was feeling. I felt kicking for about thirty minutes around five in the morning.

I think I felt the baby kick. It felt like a cross between a muscle spasm and literally having a butterfly in my stomach.

A friend emailed to see how I was doing. I told her the morning sickness / nausea is over and I’m not as sleepy as I was before. I don’t even feel pregnant except that I’m hungry all the time and I’ve gained 13 pounds.

Her reply:

Oh my God!! For some reason I wasn’t thinking you are going to gain weight.
I want to see you with you weight on I am glad your morning sickness is over. That is the worst part of being pregnant.

I went to Babies ‘R’ Us on Saturday with three friends two of them are pregnant and are also due in October. One of them is having twins. They’ve both been through pregnancy once before and so I was using them to help me figure out what I need and don’t need and what to look for and watch out for in some products. Those two left after about an hour or so and my other friend and I decided to grab one of the registry scanner things and just go to town. After that we went to a store called “Just for Kids”. It’s a second hand store. I bought a baby swing for $35 there. It was one of those things that I had previously thought unnecessary partly because I’m afraid my kid may inherit my motion sickness. The others said it’s very useful, so I figure $35 for a swing that looks brand new was too good to pass up.

I needed some safety pins to hold up my maternity pants so I bought some diaper pins. I thought it was fitting in a weird sort of way. When I took them out of the package I noticed the warning on it read, “Keep out of baby’s reach. Contains a functional sharp point. Never leave a baby unattended.” How on earth did people diaper their babies before disposables if they can’t use diaper pins within baby’s reach? - And no, it did not specify “only when not in use” it simply said keep out of reach due to “functional sharp point”. As opposed to those sharp points that don’t function? And “never leave a baby unattended” - are you supposed to watch them sleep? I know they’re cute at that age, but watching a baby sleep could get really boring.

Why do they call it morning sickness when most of us know that it’s not limited to morning? I guess “all day sickness” just isn’t as catchy. Doesn’t matter, I only had nausea except for the one time I insisted on brushing my tongue and it set off my gag reflex. No, I was brushing that far back. Just touching the end of my tongue literally made my sick. All that seems to be gone now and I pretty much feel like my regular self only I don’t fit in my regular pants and I’m still belchy.

This cracks me up…
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/64/72365.htm#Week13

Your fully formed fetus, now in about its 11th week of development, measures 2.6 to 3.1 inches from crown to rump and weighs between half an ounce and seven-tenths of an ounce — about the size of a peach.

Every week on every baby calendar thing that I see they always compare the size of the baby to some type of fruit. Because of Kurt’s genes I already know if it’s going to be a boy it’ll be a fruit - I don’t need every damn calendar waving it in my face!

The head is still disproportionately bigger than the body…

No $H*T! - That just proves it’s Kurt’s

I was at training in Seattle all this week. Because I knew I would be much too tired to safely drive home each night I took the bus instead. I got up at five each morning, got ready and out the door at a quarter to six for a thirty minute walk to my bus stop. I transfer once and then it’s a straight shot to downtown – not a bad system except the one morning I missed the first bus by two minutes and was an hour late for class.

Today I took advantage of being in downtown and went to a store that sells nothing but maternity clothes since I’m not fitting in my regular pants the way I used to. Unfortunately I don’t seem to fit in maternity clothes either. I’ve been using a rubber band to connect the button hole to the button of my pants, but that’s getting a little silly now and I don’t really want to buy another size pants for the few weeks of being in clothing limbo. I guess I’ll have to use safety pins on my one pair of new maternity pants.

So far I’m not really *liking* the whole pregnancy thing. I’ve had some nausea and headaches and a couple days that made me wondered how and why anyone would do this more than once! One high school friend who I just recently just got in touch with asked me how many kids I want. I answered that very simple question in long form: when I was in high school I thought I wanted 6 - seemed like a nice number. By the time I met Kurt (about age 22) I was down to 4. It has taken me so long to convince Kurt that having kids does not mean the end of all things fun and then it took me a year and a half to make it happen, so I’ll be happy with two. When I say two to Kurt though - he says, “I only agreed to one!” To answer a simple question in long form I’ll just have to wait and see.

Overall I have to say that this pregnancy hasn’t been too tough. There hasn’t been anything really enjoyable about it yet, other than hearing the heartbeat yesterday. I was pregnant once before (before I met Kurt) and I lost that one (obviously) hearing the heartbeat really helped relieve my fear of losing this one too.

I don’t have aversions to any foods that didn’t already exist prior to pregnancy and I haven’t had any cravings really - although at first I really wanted salty foods. Eating some fries cured that really quickly. I normally hate fries and they usually make me sick (I can’t handle that amount of grease). It apparently still makes me sick and cured me from ever making that mistake again.

Beginning around week six I was sleeping A LOT. It was so hard for me to work a full eight hour day because I was just so tired. After work I would come home and sleep for about 3 to 5 hours, eat, and then go to bed for the night. I kept joking that the baby must be part cat. I think I’m finally coming out of the coma though maybe the nausea and headaches will follow suit soon.

In the very beginning I also had symptoms that were very similar to a UI, but as it turns out the need to urinate frequently is normal in the first trimester and is due to the placement of the uterus (why the doctor at the walk-in clinic didn’t know this is beyond me) and the – ahem – unique smell and dark color were due to the pregnancy hormones.

Nothing has really made me gag as far as smells except maybe my own new smell. Nobody ever told me that pregnancy hormones cause you and all things that come out of you to smell differently. The one thing that really makes me gag is brushing my teeth, well not my teeth, but trying to brush my tongue sets me off and with my new scent I feel like my breath reeks so I’ve been brushing my teeth constantly (my dentist would be so proud). It really doesn’t help that with nearly every bite of food during every meal I must belch. It’s all rather gross. – Oh and thank you to the friend that told me about Citrucel. I don’t know how things would come out without it