Undignified

And now I shall discuss some of the less dignified side effects of pregnancy. As a sidenote, I hope this post doesn’t sound too complainey. I’m SO thrilled to be pregnant and I haven’t forgotten how lucky I am. Just want to make that clear before I dive in.

Pretty much from the moment I got a positive pregnancy test I started feeling a low-grade queasiness throughout the day. It came and went, but was mostly there all the time. An undercurrent of nausea peppered here and there with instances of feeling okay and bouts of puking.

Maybe I should have kept a better timeline of my symptoms because when I describe them I find myself using a lot of wishy washy language, but alas. From around week 6 to week 14 I was puking nearly every day. Which, I didn’t think was a huge amount since I’ve heard so many stories of pregnant ladies puking, like, every HOUR or something. I would usually just feel kind of mildly queasy all day and then have one big session of puking in the evening after dinner. It was, on the whole, a rather frustrating existence. I would battle against the nausea to eat something and then either throw it back up or not, but either way I would be hungry again in like an hour and a half. Second verse, same as the first.

Once in awhile I would puke at work. Like this one day I felt like I really wanted to eat a cucumber, so I walked to the fruits & veggies stand down the road and bought one. Then I brought it back, sliced it, and ate it at my desk with a side of ranch. I was so smug and proud of myself like Look at me and my healthy snack! Gold star for feeding my baby VEGETABLES! And then as soon as I finished it I had to run to the bathroom (AT WORK) to throw it all up.

I’ve found that puking at work is especially miserable. Afterwards I usually do feel better, but I also kind of want to lie down and feel sorry for myself for a little while, which is difficult/impossible to do at work. Plus, it’s just grosser to get sick in a public bathroom rather than in my own at home. PLUS, sometimes I would be puking so hard that the toilet water would SPLASH ME IN THE FACE.

At weeks 14 to 18 ish the puking dwindled down to maybe two or three times a week. And at about that time I also started having, erm, accidents while I was puking. I would throw up and sometimes ALSO PEE MY PANTS, which just feels like a new level of undignified. This is my first baby! I thought incontinence issues weren't supposed to start until one has already given birth!

I brought an extra pair of undies and leggings to keep in my desk drawer at work, just in case.

Plus, there was the exhaustion. The entire first trimester I was JUST. SO. TIRED. So tired! How do women do this with other children? I don’t understand. It was literally all I could do to make it through the workday, get home, battle with my stomach for dinner, and lie down for the rest of the evening. AND the first trimester is traditionally the time of pregnancy when most people try to keep things quiet for one reason or another. So I was miserable and tired and pukey at work and I didn’t even feel like I could tell my coworkers. Of course, knowing I was pregnant since week THREE made the first trimester go particularly slowly and I ended up telling my coworkers I was pregnant when I was at week nine + change. Some of them had already guessed after seeing me run to the bathroom wearing my anti-nausea wristbands and looking all ghostly white and sickly.

Things that are especially wretched to throw up, an incomplete list:

-          Cucumbers
-          Sushi (hold your fire! It was just and avocado/rice roll) & soy sauce
-          Tuna sandwich
-          Fries & ketchup
-          Ramen noodles
-          Tomato soup
-          Potato soup
-          Caprese salad
-          Popcorn

Things that actually aren’t so bad to throw up:

-          Waffles
-          Ice cream sandwiches
-          Chicken tikka masala (surprisingly!)

At this point (21 weeks) I’m feeling a bit better. Within the past few weeks I haven’t puked nearly as much and I haven’t had that continuous undercurrent of nausea [*knocks on wood*]. I hope I didn’t just jinx that. I did recently vomit popcorn in the Target parking lot and the chicken tikka masala episode was last night, but really it hasn’t been so bad. I feel better overall. I am also starting to feel a big squished. And in the afternoons I’ve started getting heartburn pain in my stomach which later turns into feeling the hot stomach acid in my THROAT.

Oh, and I’ve been waking up for the past week all gross and soaking WET because apparently pregnancy NIGHT SWEATS are a thing. I don’t feel overheated, I just wake up in a puddle and it’s so gross and undignified. I just ordered a waterproof mattress pad from Amazon and I’m regretting getting rid of all my flat sheets because having an extra sheet or two would be useful right about now. I'm basically a hot mess. Well no, not a hot mess. Just a sweaty one.

nesting and resting

The nesting instinct is strong right now. I want to get baby Clover's room ready for him! I want to start folding and putting away baby clothes and organizing all of our adorable baby things (which is like four things at this point, but STILL the need is strong).

Here's the deal: Clover's room is our spare bedroom, which used to have a desk and some miscellaneous shelves and a bed in it. A friend was getting rid of her really nice gently used crib so we took it off her hands for practically a song. We got rid of the desk (and by that I mean we put it in the garage) so now the room has a bed, the crib, and some miscellaneous shelves.

I went into Clover's room full of purpose today, armed with trash bags. I was going to donate, toss, and recycle as much stuff from those shelves as I could!
But then I got in there and I sat down on the bed and I realized there really isn't that much stuff on those shelves. I have some little file boxes (not just regular cardboard boxes, the decorative looking ones) and those should go in my bedroom. And nearly everything else is office supplies, which need to be consolidated and also probably put in the bedroom, but right now there isn't room in the bedroom.

So I went into our bedroom to clear some space for the file boxes. But then I realized that the tall skinny bookshelf next to my side of the bed is kind of the perfect size for this weird tall skinny closet we have in the hall that has no clothes bar (we've been awkwardly piling things in the closet but that doesn't really make the best use of the space). So really I should move the tall skinny bookshelf into the hall closet and move then one of the littler shelves from Clover's room into my room to hold the file boxes and whatnot. And Niall is out of town for a few days for work and I probably shouldn't be moving furniture by myself (because (a) my arm muscles are purely decorative, and (b) all of my innards seem to be getting rather squished and I think my lung capacity is suffering from it (I got out of breath just from hurrying around the grocery store the other day)). So, okay. When Niall gets back, we (he) will move the shelves around and THEN I'll really do some organizing and move things from Clover's room into our bedroom.

But I really wanted to do SOMETHING, since I had been so full of purpose earlier. So I ended up cleaning out my nightstand. I cleared everything out of it, tossed a few things, moved a few things to other places, and put things away properly and neatly in the drawers. And after that I was exhausted and had to have a little lie down.