Today has NOT been a good day for me and food. It started this morning when I got up, had a croissant for breakfast, then a little later I felt nauseated… and tossed my cookies. I felt actually pretty happy. Yay I’m sick again!

Went to work. Got a little hungry, so I ate some doritos. Got sick. Had a hot chocolate…. it settled my tummy.

I went to my doctor’s appointment, had 4 vials of blood drawn. I felt quite light-headed for an hour after that. Den took me home and fed me some dinner… some of his leftover pork fried rice. It actually stayed down!! The only actual food item that stayed down all day. I felt okay for a few hours.

Before bed I got hungry. I brought out a piece of cake. The same birthday cake leftovers I had some of last night. I ate it. It was good. But then I didn’t feel too well. No, I really didn’t feel too well. No… really… GET OUT OF MY WAY DOG, I MAY PUKE ON YOU! Ran to bathroom, breathing deeply to keep the nausea down. And it all. came. back. up. every little bite of that cake. And probably all my meds I take in the evening, too. It was nasty. Icky nasty, just-wouldn’t-stop puking.

I’m now feeling hungry and “empty” and yet scared to eat anything for fear of tossing it all again. I’m having a cup of hot chocolate (even though I’m alread hot) because it seems to have magical properties, as far as I can tell.

I doubt I got many actual calories today. I know, it sure sounds like I didn’t eat much today. To be honest, after the first two incidents I was afraid to eat anything else. Even the sight of food was making me nauseated. I sure hope tomorrow is better. We’re going out to a nice restaurant with Den’s siblings and I really prefer not to spend $20 just to puke.

I really really appreciate my body giving me a positive pregnancy “sign.” I really do. I am thankful. But… did it have to be quite so forceful?

Can anyone tell me what I need to eat to get rid of this light-headed woozy feeling?? I know I haven’t been eating a lot the last few days, though I had a big dinner last night, but I still have this really woozy feeling and it’s pissing me off. It’s hard to get anything done when I can’t concentrate, and all I want to do is sleep. (And I already got PLENTY of sleep!) I just want to get some work done now… without fainting! I might go dig up some yogurt, see if that helps.

I’m going through the magazines and stuff that the doctor’s office gave me. The “new parent’s checklist” right at the moment. Maybe it’s because I’ve been looking at baby stuff for two years now… but I just look at this huge list and “tsk” to myself. I mean, do we really need that much stuff for a baby? Do I need to buy a ton of bottles and bottle brushes and bottle racks and formula… if I’m going to be breastfeeding? (I know things can go wrong with that, so maybe I’ll have a couple on hand, but I’m NOT going to buy the whole stash!!) All kinds of toys for every known baby gear… “netting” for every stroller and playyard and crib and bassinet… cloth diapers and lap pads and burp cloths and blankets and swaddle blankets?? I mean, come on! You can’t use a normal blanket for more than one use? You can’t use cloth diapers as burp cloths and lap pads and general cleaners-uppers?? Some of this stuff just has me shaking my head. I know they put everything on a list because you never know what the person is going to be needing (breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding, etc), but yeesh!! No wonder new parents are broke!

Remember how I said my boobs were possibly growing at a snail’s pace? Yeah. They’re bigger all right. Ever since I got C-cup boobs several years ago (when I went from 110lbs to 130+lbs), I could “measure” my boob by putting the base of my middle finger on my nipple, and the tip of my finger would touch the crease right where the boob meets the body under my armpit. It’s always been like that, just that size. Well the other day I did that little measurement… wow, um… not even CLOSE to touching. My fingertip now falls mid-boobage. Maybe it’s not a TON of growth – I am still fitting nicely in my newest (9 months old?) 36C bra, just a little fuller than before – but they’re definitely bigger! I do notice, however, that the 36C bras are kind of getting a little tight around the ribcage. I may simply move up to a 38C, and fix both problems (since cup size is slightly larger with a larger band size). Hooraayyyy boobs!

By the way – I am 10 weeks along. One quarter of the way through my pregnancy. That sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor. I really really cannot believe it. I’m half-way to finding out what sex baby we have growing inside me!

Oh, and my 10 week picture is up. Sorry I forgot to post it here yesterday! :) Not much change from last week, IMO. Just ever so slowly creeping outwards. :) I loooove my belly!

Don’t love the zits quite as much. Been washing my face frequently, but I still have several little whiteheads popping up on my chin. Stupid chin!

Well, it happened… it finally happened. I had a Total. Meltdown. In a parking lot. On the phone. Tears and snot all manner of patheticness as I screeched at my poor husband (who was a bystander, btw).

And to be honest, on the scale of 1-10 terrible things that could happen, the actual rating of the bad thing that happened today was about a 2. It was far from life-threatening. It won’t have any lasting impact. It was an irritation, and something worth bitching about, but… oh man. Standing there in that parking lot? I easily ranked it as a 7. Maybe an 8.

(The terrible horrible thing that happened to me today was that when I went to register my brand new vehicle that I paid for today at the RMV they would only take cash or check… no credit, no debit. Bugger… who the hell only takes personal checks? NO ONE takes personal checks anymore! So I drove to an ATM. And the ATM wouldn’t give me money. I tried all my credit/debit cards, in two different bank ATMs, but each one of them had some problem that wouldn’t allow me to get cash out. For one card I don’t know the PIN number; for another the card isn’t authorized to make withdrawals; and for our joint account it was telling me our debit limit was exceed, which is completely retarded because we haven’t touched that account all day. And THAT was why I was freaking out. I couldn’t get money out. Me, an ATM, three bank/credit cards, and NO MONEY. And of course all banks were closed at that point… and the RMV was closing in 15 minutes. MELTDOWN. So we’re going to have to go there tomorrow to register the vehicle and get my plates. Not a huge deal, agreed? Tell that to my pregnant self. HA!)

But on the good side, is that I now OWN (or at least, a bank under contract to me owns – haha) my very own vehicle! I do not HAVE said vehicle because it does not yet have plates, but it is MINE. It is boootiful. I can’t wait to post pictures!

My head is still all woozy, however. And thanks to Kel, I now know that it may not be fixable until the pregnancy events out a little bit (hopefully then, right??). Oy. I consistently feel like I’ve had 3 white russians in short succession… except without the giddy, giggly feeling. No, I feel much too bitchy to be drunk.

I have decided that orange juice is a drink straight from hell. Well, no I lied – I decided that immediately after drinking the damn thing last night. But this morning’s puking has really solidified that opinion.

Here I was thinking, OJ is good for you! I did not fully realize the possibility for severe yuckiness.

If Den doesn’t want to take that shit to work it’s getting dumped in the toilet. Which really is quite fitting, because that’s where it would all end up anyways, were I to attempt to drink it.

:sick:

::

What I meant to post last night and then didn’t…

* Our A/C sometimes doesn’t work right. Like now, it is set to 62 degrees and it’s not supposed to deviate from that by more than 2-4 degrees. It says it is currently 70 degrees in here. I am about to go aptshit on it… oh, THERE it goes, finally. Just as I am about to MELT. :fist:

* OJ is to be banned from our household, effective immediately. Why doesn’t it have a biohazard symbol on it? Or at least a pregohazard symbol on it?? I had a little bit of OJ and now I feel so sick… painfully bloated, gaggy, gassy, wanting to puke. Please Maalox, work soon.

* I want my caaarrrrrrr.

* Something my dad always says in amazement: “You can still remember that???” Yes. I can remember things from 15 years ago in perfect detail. Yesterday, however, is a total crapshoot. (Although today’s comment was, “I always knew you had a photo memory… But I didn’t know you were crazy!” That’s what I get for singing a theme song to a cartoon I haven’t seen in 10 years.)

* I have posting ADD. When I’m posting something longer than one sentence I have to constantly flick over to other browser windows to read things. It irritates me, and yet I have to do it.

And then I forget to post things at 1am when I finally get tired, and wake up thinking, “Wait, did I…?” Well, at least after puking I think that.

Right now I really really want to drink water. But every gulp of the (fresh, cold, bottled) water that I take just tastes like the nasty bile I just puked up. Gag me.

Yep, 2am pukings. No particular cause, other than “pregnancy.” Just woke up feeling bloated and nauseated. I did eat a handful of those sour gummy candies before bed… maybe they didn’t agree with me. (Although they tasted good. And I do NOT like sour candy. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything like that since at least high school!) So I’m sitting here eating baby cookies and sipping on water and coke.

::

We got a new dishwasher months and months ago. Typically I am the one who loads, runs, and unloads the dishwasher. And I’ve been… slack. I do it when the sink full of dirty dishes starts to smell (although with my nose that’s been pretty quickly!)… I’ve been pretty bad… I just leave the clean dishes in the dishwasher, grabbing them from there until it’s nearly empty. So the other night when I got home from grocery shopping I brought in the first load of groceries and was just setting them down in front of the dishwasher when WHIRRR WHOOOSSSHHHH the dishwasher springs to life. I nearly yelped. For a half-second I thought the thing was possessed and had just gone off half-cocked. And then I glanced in the sink and realized… holy crap, it’s empty! Den unloaded the dishwasher… and loaded the dirty ones… and RAN THE DISHWASHER. I was shocked. I thanked Den!

Then yesterday I get home from shopping at Walmart about a half-hour after Den got home. He was, of course, on his computer. I was hungry so I went to grab a clean dish from the dishwasher…. and the freakin’ thing was empty! I swear to god, for a second there I really didn’t know where all the clean dishes had gone, I was thinking, “Holy shit, we couldn’t have dirtied all of them already…” I looked in the sink, it was empty. Then I cautiously opened up a cupboard and THERE THEY WERE!!! Clean dishes! In the cupboard! I think my jaw was on the floor at that point.

I told Den later that we obviously totally under-paid on our dishwasher, since it’s magical and runs and unloads itself!! Den’s totally getting brownie points for THAT one! I am just so very thankful that I had one less thing to do.

The other day, he scrubbed out the bathtub/shower. And ran a couple loads of laundry. And folded laundry.

Yesterday at Walmart I bought a couple of small things to help organize my purse. That was what I did during the evening – got rid of all the papers and sorted them into a little receipt filer. That’s about the extent of my energy level lately. I’m sorry to say the house is looking pretty bad.

::

I got my new car! Isn’t she beautiful??

It certainly doesn’t look like a car that we had a tight budget on. It has a ton of miles on it, the upholstery could be in better shape… but it’s a 2001, it has power doors and windows, remote keyless entry… basically everything I was hoping to get, but wasn’t sure I could afford. It’s technically a mid-size sedan, it has a ton of room in the back for people (or babies!) and yet it feels like a smallish car to drive. It just FEELS good to drive. I’m just so thrilled!! After 2 and a half years it feels so good to have my own vehicle again! I’m just so excited about my car. :D

Yesterday I was driving along listening to the music and Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” song came on. And for some strange reason, I almost started crying right there in the car, listening to the lyrics. Because of a country music song. Seriously, people. This shit is scaring me.

Here I am, 5:30 in the morning again. This time we didn’t get to bed until almost 2 (we were at a wedding), so it’s right on time…. this time, though, I just woke up with indigestion… nothing really I could pinpoint, just a weird pressure in my stomach that made it hard to fall back asleep. Well, and my foot/leg is really sore too, so that’s not helping. After a while I got up and peed and went to get a glass of water or something from the kitchen. I made it about 5 feet down the hall, then turned around and dashed back into the bathroom to puke. :( I swear, these midnight pukes are the WORST. And I just don’t understand it! Is it from lack of food? If that were the case, wouldn’t you think I wouldn’t be able to sleep during the day? Because after I get sick and have a little hot chocolate and stay up for a bit to let everything settle, I go back to bed and easily sleep 8 hours! But how can it be from food really, it’s been hours and HOURS since I ate last. I just don’t know what to do to stop this. If I eat before bed it just gives me worse indigestion.

I know there is more to say, but it is now 6:15 and I need to try to get more sleep. :(

So some friends of mine have suggested that my middle-of-the-night pukings may be reflux, not normal morning sickness/nausea… especially since it’s actually waking me up and happens when I lay down. So I’m doing some research. I haven’t really seen anything mentioning vomitting with reflux in pregnancy…. but I figure doing some legwork for reflux and avoiding trigger foods would be a good start. I found this list of foods to avoid. Some of them are easy to avoid. Citrus? CHECK!!!! Milk shakes? Learned that one the hard way. Marbled meat? Gag me. But others? Agh. No cottage cheese? But that’s healthy! Chicken nuggets and fries? Well, okay, I shouldn’t be eating those anyways. Salad dressing? Huh?? Brownies, chocolate, AND donuts?!?!?! WTF am I supposed to eat??

Okay, here’s a list of things I can eat. Apples and bananas. Okay, those are good. Veggies…. let’s skip those. Chicken breast, lean meat… all good, good. Fat-free cream cheese and sour cream… can you say yuck? The fat-free versions are SO bland and disgusting. Bread! Yes! Cereal, rice… definitely staples for me right now. Ooo, I can have baked potato chips. I like those. And jelly beans… no wonder I’ve been craving small candy sweets.

It’s funny, because that does seem to be the case… I’ve been eating a lot of those things… the grains, the apples, the candy when I do have a craving. I’ve totally NOT been craving chocolate since I got pregnant. And the one time I tried OJ and a milkshake left me… ummm… not very happy, so no more of that. My body seems to be on the right track. So why do I feel so yucky?

::

I have an appointment this friday with the midwife… we hopefully will get to hear the heartbeat with a doppler, and I’ll get my exam. Joy. I also need to remember to bring my list of questions so I don’t go, “Uhhh, nope, nothing I can think of…” again. Idiot.

No, I still haven’t made an appointment with the midwife group. Still mulling it over and putting it off for now.

::

I got some upsetting news today from my dad… my brother’s dog has injured herself. Apparently the vet thinks it’s a torn tendon in her leg, requiring surgery. Tess will be sedated on Monday so they can check for sure what’s going on. I’m just so upset and worried for Tess. She’s only 3 years old! And she’s the sweetest damn dog in the whole world. If it is what the vet thinks it is and she does need surgery it’ll be a long time in healing. Luckily she’s young so she should heal up well… but they’ll have to keep her restricted for quite a while.

I hate it when one of the “kids” gets hurt… and it’s worse when I’m not there. Tessa’s always been like a neice to me… I luckily got to spend a good part of her first year living there with them all. (I always threaten my brother that I’m going to smuggle her home with us. She really is the sweetest dog… she just has a drool “problem,” ha.)

Also, to continue the injury streak, my dad informed me that he’s put his back out again. :( This happens once a year or so…. never a fun time for him. He’s in a lot of pain. My dad’s always been exceedingly healthy, his back is the only thing that causes him grief. Unfortunately it’s rather major grief!

::

We were at a wedding all day yesterday… it was a very good wedding, absolutely lovely, and we had fun. We’re both suffering today, for different reasons. I’m sore as all hell from spending so much time on my feet… I was the photographer, so I spent a lot of time walking around and squatting during the ceremony, etc. Then during the reception we danced… a lot. I had to stop a couple of times due to little pangs in my stomach (the muscle, not the uterus)… my abs didn’t like the dancing all so much! But today what is really sore are my legs. OMG my legs. I could barely sleep last night because everything was so sore… and then today I had to work to make up for me not going in yesterday. Just walking up the stairs was hard! I was so happy to come home and take a nap. I hope they’re not quite as sore tonight so I can sleep better…. as long as the reflux/whatever doesn’t wake me up three hours later yet again.

Bedtime now. Wish me luck?

LOL Jen, I was just thinking that I ought to post.

The reason I’ve been so quiet lately is that I don’t want to sound like I’m constantly whining. This nausea shit sucks. The past two nights I’ve slept with an extra pillow under my head – which isn’t all that comfortable – but it kept the midnight sickies away. I was so happy!! And then I got to work today and promptly felt nauseated and puked. I threw up yogurt, which I have decided doesn’t taste so great coming up.

The list of what I can eat without feeling yucky is getting smaller by the day, it seems. I’m down to… let’s see. Bread. Crackers. Cheese. Milk is still fine, strangely enough… I didn’t have ANY milk until this evening (we were out) and I felt sick all day, so it’s not milk related (thank the light!!!). Some soups are okay. Apples. Peanut butter’s a good one. Spaghetti was okay when I had it. So basically, carbs and dairy are okay. And peanut butter.

Everything else…. iffy at best. All those little microwave dinners I bought for us… can’t touch them. All the nuts and chocolate at work? I don’t even bother trying, the thought of them makes my stomach go ugh.

So I’m kind of… eating what variety I can in my little bubble of happy foods. Like tonight I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich. For lunch I had a chicken caesar wrap from Blimpies, but it wasn’t nearly as good as I was hoping. And the caesar dressing didn’t really go down good. But oh well.

Peanut butter cookies however? That’s a YUM. I should restrict myself to just one at a time, though.

Thankfully the nausea does not appear to be smell-induced. I have not had any problems with grocery shopping, not even walking through the fish department. Today I didn’t really feel like buying much because everything I passed totally didn’t make me hungry, but no nausea or anything. Yay.

I’m up to week 11 in my belly pictures, and I’m continually amazed at how much of a baby belly I’m carrying already. I mean, I certainly was looking forward to having a bump and every week I eagerly look forward to seeing a change. But yeesh, I’m only 11 weeks! I wouldn’t really expect to be showing this early with my first pregnancy and all. But hey, I love it. :)

I’m tired and sleeping a lot… but not the so exhausted I feel like a Mac truck just hit me kind of exhaustion that I hear most pregnant ladies talking about. Just normal tired…. and lacking the energy to get much done around the house.

Unfortunately just this past week two of my friends on one of my forums found out they are miscarrying. I just wanted to cry when I found out, both times. It’s not fair, not fair at all. One of the girls is an IVFer, got pregnant…. and now is losing the baby. I’ve seen too much loss lately. It just makes me so sad… and so thankful for my own little miracle. It’s hard to navigate this pregnancy thing when you’re so aware of everything that can go wrong. But it makes you much much more thankful too.

This story just popped up on my news reader: Mom sues after IVF brings 2 babies instead of 1. My first thought was, “WHAT?!?!” Of all the things to be upset about…. after going through infertility… and IVF… and getting pregnant… to SUE THE DOCTOR for getting twins? Are you effing kidding me? Even me, who was in large part scared of getting more than one, was well aware of all the risks involved.

This part brings another aspect to it, though, I have no clue if it’s the news putting a spin on things or if there’s a lot more to the story than reported: “The 40-year-old mother said she told her doctor, Robert Armellin, that she only wanted one child. But an embryologist under the doctor’s supervision implanted two embryos in her uterus.” Now IF – and I do mean if – she made it dead clear that she only wanted one embryo transferred (transferred, you news retards!) and they directly ignored her wishes and put two in… then perhaps there’s something there. Because that’s not grey area, that’s pretty black and white – I want X, you did Y. At my clinic we have to sign a consent form stating how many embryos we want transferred at the time of transfer, and I suspect it’s the same in just about every IVF clinic across the U.S. Maybe Austrlia doesn’t have that set up (yet – if they don’t already, this will surely get them to consider it). But again, that’s a big if.

But if she had NO specific demands on the number of embryos transferred, she should have known damn well what her odds were. If she only said, “I want one baby,” and the doctor said, “Well this is the best chance of getting you that,” and she said, “Okay then,” well then, tough shit. Doctor’s can’t predict things like that. IVF, for how very highly scientific it all is, is still very much a crapshoot. There are no guarantees. Hell, they could put one embryo back and you could still get identical twins. It’s the whole question of informed consent – yet again, something we in the U.S. have to jump through hoops to accomplish (that includes a required class on IVF, required reading, and signing consent forms stating we have read all that reading, which includes statistics on success rates and twinning rates). So that when the client turns around and says, “I never knew that,” they have no case, because you signed a paper saying you understand.

I wish there was more to the story. Right now it just leaves you wondering. But I HATE the impression that it gives out. Like we really need more IVF bad stories out there in the mainstream media? It’s misunderstood enough as it is.

Oh, I love this part too… the couple’s combined income is over $82k US per year, and the costs they are suing for include private school fees. And she’s whining about the cost of a pram for twins. WTF? At what point did private school become a necessary cost of raising a baby? And you can’t tell me that you have no other options for prams (strollers)? That whole last part of the article just makes her look like a completely spoiled crybaby. Again, could be the article twisting things. But don’t you think it would have been a hell of a lot pursuasive to worry about, say, the increased health risks of carrying twins? The increased risk of premature birth? The increased risk of time in the NICU? No, instead of she’s upset over the damn pram.

Ugh. I’m just so freakin’ annoyed.