I feel great this morning! A little nauseated, but that’s pretty normal until I get some food in me. (And my morning “a little nauseated” is just that – just a mild stomach rolling feeling. I don’t get the morning pukies very often.)

Last night was… eventful. Not for me… for our cat. We’re not 100% sure what happened, but I surmise it has to do with eating a whole bowl of dry cat food overnight. I didn’t get up until around 1pm and then didn’t see him for a few hours…. by evening when he jumped up on the bed beside me I noticed a problem right away. That poor cat. He looked totally bloated, VERY unhappy. He kept squatting, he could barely walk he was in so much discomfort. So we watched him until we went to bed, and planned to take him to the vet ASAP this morning if he still wasn’t feeling better. I was pretty sure he just had a stomach ache and was a little bit constipated (trust me, I have experience in the matter. I recognized the look on his face), but of course there’s always that fear. Especially with cats, if it’s a urinary blockage it could get very bad. So I spent the night pretty fitful, dreaming of taking him to the doctors.

Early this morning Den woke up and found a happy, cheerful, cuddly cat. Merlin jumped up on the bed for his normal morning snuggles, and all was well with the world. We were SO relieved!! Goodness, I hate seeing any of my babies sick. :( He looked so damn miserable yesterday. I am thankful our pets don’t get sick very often.

::

I said to Den this morning, being pregnant is the best diet I’ve been on! Yes, I was joking. I mean, yes I’m thankful I haven’t put on 20lbs so far… I did have that fear. But then instead I’m worried about the baby, making sure I feed it enough. At least milk is a good source of protein, I get lots of that… and I’m trying to eat eggs and peanut butter and meat when I can. I know I’m not even coming close to the recommended calories per day. And it’s not like I want to fill the calories up with junk. But what can you do. I eat when I’m hungry, as much as I can without getting sick. It’s the best I can do for right now, no sense obsessing over calorie counting.

I do *feel* good though. Other than the obvious complaints of nausea, the small aches that come with this stage of pregnancy… I just feel very good. Everyone comments that I seem to glow, and no I don’t blame it on my oily face! I think people just see how very happy I am to be pregnant.

Ms. C commented on my hair. I didn’t bother to put it back for this last week’s photo, so you got a pic of my hair as it is in the morning, without shower or brushing. My hair’s always had a nice curl to it… not tight curls, but enough to give it shape. And fuzziness, depending on the day. But anyways… what I’ve noticed most about my hair is that it’s both drier and oilier at the same time. How is that even possible?? It definitely gets greasy and stringy quicker than it used to. But it also feels very coarse… it doesn’t get silky after a good shampoo and condition like it used to. In fact I’m using the tiniest bit of conditioner through the length to untangle it… I realized that using my normal amount was making the oiliness worse. So I shampoo the heck out of it, comb through a tiny little bit of conditioner, and rinse rinse rinse. Seems to be working well.

The biggest complaint about my hair is not the ones on my head. It’s the ones, errr, growing elsewhere. Not my stomach (always had a couple of hairs there), not my boobs (always had a couple of hairs there too)… but up my buttcrack. (I’m sure you always wanted to know that, right?) It is driving me NUTS. Maybe it’s always been there and I’m more sensitive – I don’t know. Either way, it’s itchy, and there’s not much I can do about it. (I learned my lesson a long time ago… shaving hairs in a crack means MAJOR UNPLEASANTNESS when it grows back. And HELL NO I am not getting anything waxed when I’m this sensitive.)

People say that your fingernails grow fast when you’re pregnant. I haven’t really noticed… but my nails have always been wicked strong and grown fast. So no real change there.

Boobs, oh let’s talk about boobs. I’ve mentioned they’re a little sensitive and have gotten a bit fuller. But did I mention about the little dots? No. Well… I have little bumps around my nipple. I’m sure it’s normal… some sort of milk glands or something… but it’s weird.

So that’s my what’s happening in my body update for the week. Full of things you were desperate to know, I’m sure.

I think it’s almost nap time.

I am finally up, and posted my 17 week belly pictures. I was wrong – it is VERY obvious. Doesn’t look like a basketball in the morning though. ;) (But by evening it all rounds out and sure does!)

My weight is still holding steady according to my weekly weigh-in. I’m not gaining, but I’m not losing either.

Okay, yet more from me tonight.

First, I’ve decided that there are simply too many choices. Baby carriers. Mei Tais, wraps, slings, rebozos… I think my head is going to pop right off. Like so many choices us parents-to-be have to make, we have to go into it knowing three things: a) that all choices are pretty much equally valid, b) that we have no way to REALLY test it out until our baby actually arrives and c) it could be the coolest thing in the world, and our baby may still hate it. It’s making me cranky. I mean, you can read what worked for other people as much as you want – and I have been – but so-and-so loves the mei tais, while so-and-so loved her wrap. So really it only goes so far. They all look great. Can’t I just have one of each?

::

Den is being totally silly tonight! So after the whole “basketball” comment where he exlaimed great shock at how big I am getting, we had both gone to bed and were laying here talking and joking around. I jumped on top of him, like I always to, tummy-to-tummy. “OUCH!” he said. I knew my knee hadn’t come close to his crotch (because, umm, sometimes that happens you know…), so I couldn’t figure out what I had done! And then he said, “Your belly, it jabbed me!” and clutched his stomach in mock pain. LOL! I tackled him for being silly.

::

So my nausea goes like this: Feel hungry. Immediately start gagging and heaving. When that’s done, eat. Have to pee 10 minutes later, which puts pressure on stomach and makes me feel nauseated… rinse and repeat. Right now it feels like I just can’t find the right balance. The internal pressure on my stomach makes me feel mildly nauseated all day – not an altogether pleasant feeling. I think I almost prefered having short bouts of strong puking. At least I felt better afterwards. I have a lot of gassy burping going on tonight, and every time I burp it triggers my gag reflex. Ugh.

Quickly dropping off a link so I don’t lose it: Bravado Bras. Not the cheapest, but they fit a range of sizes… good for when you’re not sure what size you’re going to be!

A good read: Baby Bargains Blog. I have not got the book yet, but I will now. Very interesting stuff, I’m subscribing to the RSS feed.

A good reference: The Z Report: BPA in Baby Bottles. Lists all major brands and all bottles and whether or not they have BPA in them.

Which is giving me a pause. After doing significant research of which bottles would be best for my child, I singled out the BreastFlow bottles. Good for nursing babies, reviews were all excellent. But… they have BPA in them. So I’m not quite sure what to do. I did want to try the MAM Sassy Bottles, and they are BPA free. There’s also the Born Free bottles, which is a company dedicated to BPA free products (but expensive). So more research, I guess. I hate it when that happens.

Not that I think BPA is going to immediately strike my kid dead or anything. But I’m starting from scratch here… I have a choice. Why not err on the side of caution? I’ll have to think some more.

Also, there’s a similar article about BPA in pacifiers.

::

Today has been an interesting day. First, thanks to the paving going on across the street all morning, my sleep was broken at best. This led to me refusing to get out of bed until I woke up and realized it was 1pm, I was still exhausted, and I was supposed to be at work already. Doh. I ended up getting to work by 3 and not leaving until after 7. That’ll teach me.

I didn’t have a lot to do, however what I did have to do took me a long time to complete due to being restricted to a snail’s pace all day. I’m feeling a ton of aches and pangs (not pains, just pangs). It’s freakin bizarre, because I didn’t have this last week. My stomach just felt so… uncomfortable all day. I guess baby is sitting on my bladder, because I felt like I just wanted to pull my pants elastic away from my belly all day – and they are NOT tight pants. I’m also feeling aches in my left side that I swear to god is my ovary. It may still be tender, and is obviously also getting squashed now. It’s still aching on and off right now. And only my left side. I find that odd.

My hips are feeling a little… weird. I was wondering if this is the start of that ligament loosening they talk about. I haven’t felt a thing up until now, but now my hips ache here and there. Standing, bending… something just feels “off.” And maybe that sound retarded, but I know when things feel 100%, and something just doesn’t feel right. But luckily I have the kind of job where I can just sit on the floor when I feel like it and play with kitties for 10 minutes before going back to what I was doing – and no one looks at me funny. Sometimes they even join me. Did I mention I love my job?

Speaking of my job… my supervisor and I were talking a little about how I’ll handle maternity leave and coming back to work. She asked me what is “normal” for maternity leave, and she said I should definitely take the “normal” 8 weeks. (My employer is a non-profit, with a handful of employees, and I’m part-time with no benefits. Needless to say, I get no official “maternity leave” benefits or anything – however, they have no rules on vacations or leaves. People take what they need, and we all just kind of work together to make sure everything is covered. So I could take as much as I wanted, really. I just wouldn’t get paid, of course.) I mentioned how we won’t have childcare available, and she thought for a minute and said I could probably bring the baby with me to work, depending. I suppose it all depends on how baby reacts! We’ll double-check with the big boss-lady (we run everything by her), but it would be really nice if I had the option of bringing the baby to work with me.

Granted that only works until the kid gets to the crawling stage. No way baby will be crawling around at a cat sanctuary! Hells no! But as long as baby is happy with being in a carrier? That would be totally cool. And it would make the whole how-to-feed-baby-while-I’m-working a non-issue… my boobs would be right there and handy.

::

I’m at my laptop again tonight – okay, that probably didn’t need to be stated, since I’m ALWAYS at my laptop EVERY night. But as usual, I’m seated here propped up with pillows, typing away on my laptop. Den comes in and sits beside me, as he often does. (He likes to pop in here and sit with me for a few minutes, to ask me what I’m doing and basically to allow me to talk his ear off. I swear I store everything in my head until he does that, then I release it all in one stream-of-conciousness, he comments appropriately and goes back to what he was doing. What can I say, it works for us. He’s like my living sounding board.) Well today he flopped there and then said, “Oh my god! You have a basketball!!” And then he cracked up laughing. (Luckily it was happy, giddy, my-wife-is-sooo-pregnant laughter, not the making-fun-of-me laughter, because everyone knows how long he would have lived.) But no, he was totally giddy, staring at my belly with a big goofy grin on his face.

I really don’t know if tomorrow’s picture is going to show much though. It seems it goes away in the morning, at least to me. But I’ll let you decide tomorrow.

I am seriously, seriously drooling over BabyHawk Mei Tais. Expensive… yes. But absolutely frickin gorgeous, and custom made. AND I realized… DUH…. I can pick a totally girly fabric on one side… leave the other side BLACK…. and Den would actually use it! (I showed him pics of mei tais and he actually… gasp… said if it was black he’d use it. He won’t touch a wrap or a sling or anything “foofy”, but something with straps and back-pack-ish he is okay with!) I keep going over the fabric choices. I’m in love with several of them, but I won’t be able to decide until we find out if baby is a boy or a girl. If it’s a girl I am SO going pink. (I admit it… my wardrobe is almost all brown/cream/pink. Same with my jewelry, all pink.)

I also really want a HotSling. No idea what color, though a nice black or brown one would be just fine. (Of course there’s a part of me that says “Why get plain black when you can get something totally CUTE??” Not like Den’s going to touch it anyways.)

Yes…. there are definite benefits to having some items that are just for me. :D Den hates patterns… hates stripes, especially. We were forever arguing over baby bedding because I adore stripes in the right colors… and Den absolutely despises stripes of any sort. And, well, since we kind of have to share the baby, I feel like I need to compromise on most joint baby gear.

We may end up getting separate diaper bags, though. We shall see. I’ve had other people tell me that’s what they did… hubby got a black backpack, wife picked out a girlie purse-like fabric, and all is well. But I kind of like black for my purses anyways.

Yes, this is going to be an expensive baby. Yes, I’m crossing things off my want-to-buy list as I decide that it’s unnecessary “baby gear.” There will be no wipes warmer, no “diaper stacker,” no changing table. I’m even waffling on the stroller, but I think Den will want one. However, on the items I do want… yup, that voice is right there. “This is our first baby. Who knows if we’ll have a second. We’ve waited so long for this…. SPLURGE. Get the good stuff. Buy the gorgeous crip, get the oriental batik fabric. It’s worth the little extra cost.”

Though to be honest, this is our general philosophy on everything. We live without a lot in our house… we have no area rugs, we have only a hand-me-down couch that is totally gross, we have a $10 dining room table I bought at a garage sale. Hell we don’t even have a headboard or bed frame for our bed. But when it counts? We spend money. We could have bought a cheap dishwasher… but I did the research and we bought a $400 Whirlpool. We spent good money on a king size, all-natural latex pillow-top mattress (which we LOVE). Our computers don’t even need mentioning do they? (We spend a LOT on our computers! Den’s a gamer, and I’m a web designer!) The dog food I buy is $40 a bag. (I’m DAMN picky about dog and cat food, much to Den’s disgruntlement.) You get the point. We make do with a lot of hand me down crap… but when we do spend the money, we invest it in good stuff.

But for the love of light, keep me away from Diaper Swappers, okay? :D

(And I am not even going to TALK about the $500 heating bill we just got. I think we’re pretty much %!%#ed this winter, with the oil prices being what they are. I refuse to think about it.)

Did I mention the caramel squares here already? Yes I did. Well I’ll mention them again – they are sooo delicious. Lifesavers, really. I can’t/don’t want chocolate. But I do have a sweet craving, plus I find myself wandering around the kitchen sometimes. I’m hungry, but full, and if I eat anything substantial I know I’ll be puking it up in half an hour. So… the caramel squares. I grab one, suck on it for 10 minutes, get my sweet craving out of the way, AND don’t feel any worse.

The chocolate thing, it’s the only food craving/aversion that is seriously WEIRD for me so far. I avoid things like apples because, well, I totally had a bad reaction to an apple and puked it all up and a) it didn’t taste so good coming back up and b) I really don’t want to provoke any more puking. But I LIKE the taste of apples… the aversion is purely due to the morning sickness. The chocolate thing is totally different. I haven’t ever gotten sick from chocolate yet. It simply tastes gross. Just… wrong. When I think of chocolate I get an immediate “Ugh, not THAT” reaction. WTF? I am the chocolate queen extraordinaire. I am a chocolate aficionado. To be totally and utterly turned off of chocolate is… well…. simply crazy. Whatever are people going to put in my stocking this christmas?? Even cashews aren’t making me feel so hot. (Also another major love of mine… usually.)

Well, obviously… caramel squares. LOL!

::

Tonight we went over BIL & SIL’s for dinner and to watch the Red Sox game. Den’s idea was to buy a bunch of salad greens, some chicken breasts, boil some eggs, shred some cheese, and make us a big ol’ chicken salad for dinner.

Now honestly my first thought when it comes to chicken breasts is “ugh” – and it has nothing to do with being pregnant. Every time I cook up some chicken breasts they’re tough and bland and just not at all appetizing. However, BIL is an expert cook so I figured it’d be okay to let him handle it.

OMG that chicken was amazing! All he did was coat them in some oil, sprinkle some sea salt on them, and put them on the grill. They were SO tender and juicy, it was fantastic. I hope I can replicate that next time… if I can cook chicken breasts like THAT I’ll actually eat them more often! (And light knows I need a ton more protein in my diet right now.)

So the salad was really good – I especially LOVE chopped up boiled egg on top of my salad, YUM. But I was full all night. And I have to admit, that thing I was worried about with my maternity jeans, was a pretty valid worry. When I bought them they fit well, but I worried that the elastic was very tight. Not tight then, but it felt pretty non-forgiving and I worried about how it would grow with me.

Well the last two nights I’ve worn those jeans, and I tell you I get SUCH a bellyache. I have to pee every five minutes, it feels like. I don’t mind wearing the jeans for a couple of hours for an outing…. but for relaxing on the couch after eating a meal?? Agghhh. Not next time. I’m going for my drawstring sweats. Screw looking good, my belly needs to breathe people.

::

And no really, I feel like my belly got huge the last few days. I was at about “not much change” for the last belly pic at 16 weeks, but then suddenly I felt huge! Not in a bad way, oh no… just that something has popped out a ton more. And maybe it’s only how I *feel* and not how I *look* – although when I lifted up my shirt and showed Den his eyes did bug out a little. I’m really round…. I’ve lost that double-bump pudge and it’s just gotten really rounded.

I find myself continually amazed at how my body just knows what to do… how it’s adapting to this being growing inside me. I’ve had blue veins on my boobs since I got pregnant, and now I have some along the sides of my belly. You’d think that would gross me out right? But I found myself standing in BIL/SIL’s bathroom, with my shirt lifted up, turning side to side to admire my growing, blue-veined belly.

I have noticed I can’t lay in the same position that I used to, while on my laptop in bed. However, I think this may have more to do with my 3 pillows losing their stuff than my belly. I need new pillows, apparently.

Tonight when I got up to use my big computer at my desk I stopped first to put on my bra. If I’m laying down I’m fine and dandy; if I’m sitting straight-backed I’m fine… but if I’m just curled up in my chair reading forums my boobs fold over and drive me freaking nuts. I have found that my bra helps with that. (The non-underwire Hanes bra.) So I’m thinking, hmm, maybe one of those “sleep bras” isn’t such a bad idea. I’m still not sure exactly what the purpose of wearing a bra during sleeping is… but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for around the house.

I suddenly have the desire to knit a wool soaker. I didn’t even want to attempt wool. But I want to knit something, and wool soakers look pretty interesting. I don’t even know how to knit in the round (yet). (I taught myself how to knit months ago… and all I made was a couple of baby hats. Since I wasn’t pregnant at the time, this depressed me and I didn’t knit any more!)

So there was a point in time, about two weeks ago, where pregnant friends were asking about dreams. And I wasn’t having any weird ones. Well, one here and there, but that’s par for the course.

Well apparently the dream fairy caught on that I was being skipped over and has sprinkled me with an abundance of bad dreams. It feels silly now waking up saying, “I just had a bad dream!” because that’s what it’s like every night (or nap!).

Last week I was actually late for work on friday because when my alarm went off I was in the middle of a horrible dream. Someone had taken my baby out of my uterus and put it in someone else’s. And I was freaking OUT. The whole dream centered on me trying to convince people to put it back in me, that NO that wasn’t a part of IVF, NO it wasn’t normal, I WANTED MY BABY BACK. I woke up crying. I also woke up very late, because when my alarm went off I heard it in my dream but I kept saying to myself, “I can’t wake up, I have to get my baby back first!!” And I seriously wouldn’t let myself drop the dream… even though I appear to have known it was a dream, it was like in my head I thought it would be true if I woke up before fixing it.

Today’s dream was a lot stranger. First of all a very large portion of the dream centered around visiting a dairy. We got to make biscuits on this assembly line from the milk/dough that came out… and there was milk being made (different types of milk), and it was like a do-it-yourself-meal. Except it was going too fast and I got mad that all I got was one biscuit and no milk. Very weird. Why the hell would a dairy be in my head? Well anyways, the second half of the dream, after the dairy part, was that I was supposed to go get an IUI. I was there at the dairy with my dad and we were driving to wherever we were going, to meet my mom and brother. And then it was revealed that my appointment was for 12pm, and it was now 2, and they were all, “We get there when we get there, it’ll be fine.” And I was (yet again) shrieking and screaming that it’s NOT fine, you can’t just show up whenever you want to, we had to get there NOW. Something about this particular “IUI” was required during pregnancy, to fix the baby or something. I have no idea how my brain pieced together that one, but whatever.

I mean, seriously. I could make this journal all about the crazy dreams I’ve been having.

::

I think I’m moving KFC to my shit-list. … Yup, definitely moving it.

::

Is it possible to grow overnight? I felt so much bigger yesterday than I did the day before. I ended up throwing on an old pre-pregnancy t-shirt in the morning, and that turned out to be a bad idea. My poor belly was hanging out all day! Granted it was always a short shirt, but still. It just accentuated how big my belly is getting! (Longer shirts seem to not make it look so bad… probably because it doesn’t make it look like I’m busting out of all my clothes!)

It’s very round, too. Den just woke up and we both stared at my belly for a little while. :)

Unfortunately he’s still awake and getting cranky, so I need to shut off the laptop now!

This is really frustrating. I’m really quite hungry, I had a hot dog for early dinner and nothing much else since but a small little cup of applesauce. But I’m feeling such nausea that I don’t think attempting to eat would be at all a good thing. :( I really want to be able to eat!

All I’ve eaten today, besides the hot dog and applesauce, was a tiny couple-bites of Den’s beef sandwich, a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and a handful of cashews mid-day.

I’m trying, baby! I’m trying to give you the food you need! But you’re making it really difficult for me.

::

Mel posted about a cookbook that’s helping her feed good things to her very picky son: Deceptively Delicious. I’m honestly thinking of buying it… for myself. I really dislike most veggies, even though I know they’re good for me. And pancakes sounds really good right now. ;) Even sweet potato pancakes. (Actually… that sounds REALLY good right now.)

::

Know what tastes good? Toast. With jam. I’m eating a ton of that right now. White bread – I was buying only whole grain bread, because that’s what DH prefers, but I found I really wasn’t eating any sandwiches or anything with bread. I bought a loaf of white and went through it in less than a week. So clearly, even though white bread isn’t as good for me, at least I’ll eat it. And white bread toast, with butter to make it soft and yummy and Smuckers seedless strawberry jam on top? Truly, truly delicious. Nutrition value? Questionable. But it goes down, it stays down, it tastes good… and right now I’ll take any calories. I even ate the end slice. I never, ever eat the end slice. Ever.