Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Being Pregnant Vol. 2

I'm almost halfway through my pregnancy, so I thought a "Being Pregnant" update was in order. I'll start with reviewing the things I touched on last time, and hopefully have a couple more to add.

1. Morning Sickness
Gone! No more queasy afternoons for me. Although there are some strong smells that will send me reeling.

2. Fatigue
I'm doing much better with this one. I can actually make it more than halfway through a movie again! Most of my fatigue is coming from sleep issues these days (more on that later).

3 & 4. Cravings and Aversions
Still no weird cravings (although there are some things I eat that Mike has always thought were weird - like dipping French fries in tartar sauce mixed with ketchup. What? It's good, I swear!). My aversions are all but gone, except for tomato sauce (which I guess is actually a new one). It's not that I can't eat tomato sauce, but there is a frozen lasagna that my dad microwaves for lunch every so often, and for some reason the smell of it just makes me gag.

5. Pregnancy-Induced Stupidity/Forgetfulness
This one is only getting worse. Examples: I have trouble typing sometimes. This morning, I needed to turn on my rear window defroster, and sat staring at my emergency flasher button with my finger extended going, "Wait, what am I looking for? That's not it."

6. Boobs
No longer hurt, and really haven't gotten any bigger... yet.

7. Sex (Ben, or any family for that matter, again, skip this section... for real this time.)
Let's just say I haven't been waking Mike up in the middle of the day when he's sleeping for night shift any more, but things aren't bad either :)

8. Sleep
Sucks. Most of the time. Tylenol PM is my savior. I still absolutely hate sleeping on my side, and since I'm almost 20 weeks, I really shouldn't be sleeping on my back at all. I really wish I had listened to all the things I read that said, "If you are not a side sleeper, start training yourself as early as possible. It will only get harder later on." Yeah. True.

9. Child-Bearing Hips
I seriously thought I had a pretty good set of hips for this whole child-bearing thing, but apparently not. I have had a dull pain in my lower back/pelvis for the past week and a half or so, and every so often I get a jabbing pain in my hips (think ice pick straight into bone). The latter of the two is especially disconcerting when it happens in the middle of the night after I have finally managed to fall asleep on my side.

10. Pregnancy in General
I've got to say, being pregnant is not easy. It is physically and emotionally challenging, and although my pregnancy has been relatively "easy," I have had some ups and downs. I see women with 5 or more kids and catch myself thinking, "Why would you do that to yourself!?" Don't get me wrong though, there are some wonderful things about it, too - hearing his heartbeat for the first time, seeing his little face during an ultrasound, feeling him move for the first time, thinking about what he will look like and who he will take after. As with most things, you've got to take the bad with the good.

To answer some of the most frequently asked questions: I'm feeling great now (except for that hip and lower back pain), we're having a boy, we haven't picked out a name yet - although we were getting quite a laugh last night from some of the lists in Meghan's books last night, and I'm just barely starting to show - if you didn't know I was pregnant, you'd probably just think I'm getting myself ready for winter.

I'll officially be at the half way point one week from today, and I can hardly believe it. It feels like it was just a couple of weeks ago that I wandered out of the bathroom with that ept in my hand and tears in my eyes. If it didn't seem real then, it certainly does now.

7 comments:

Ben said...

I won't give any naming advice... but seriously - don't name him anything that will lead to a lifetime of ass kicking... Being named Benjamin Wells Fargo has not been easy. And with the verbal taunting that comes with having a "unique" name like Alouisious, Moonbeam, or Dumpster Muffin, you've got a 50/50 chance of either winding up being a banker (not terribly exciting) or a serial killer. And if Junior doesn't take after his Uncle Ben (please withhold the rice jokes), well, let's just not think about going down that other road.

Annie said...

Do you honestly believe Mike would let that happen - either the naming leading to ass kicking, or the ass kicking itself?

Ben said...

Maybe not the "allowing of the ass kicking," but maybe if you catch him at a weak moment your kid winds up named something like "Cyril Moonbeam Farrell" or "Cletus Benvolio Fargo-Farrell" or... wait a minute, "Cletus" could be cool...
But do bear in mind that folks have gotten creative - like by spelling "Heaven" backwards... What's not to say that the next trend isn't "Ecafkcuf" or "Drut" or "Rekcuf"... :)

Meghan said...

Wait -- your brother's middle name is "Wells"? OMG.

So if you're almost 20 weeks that means Phoebe is almost 20 weeks as I think we determined awhile ago that you are the same number of weeks pregnant that Phoebe is alive.

And right now I totally forget about the pregnancy part (and I had HORRIBLE morning sickness). I can even smell a pastrami sandwich again without fear of upheaval, so to speak.

I can't tell you what a JOY it was to sleep on my stomach again. The worst part? That deep sleep that you can have now without being all paranoid about baby won't come back, as far as I understand it.

The best part? You always get to take naps no matter the time of day. Without shame.

*also I'd like to make mention of the fact that the lists in the books you have aren't OUR lists as we had a boy name picked out. I don't want folks thinking we picked out crazy names*

Meghan said...

Oh and -- maybe you have sciatica? :wincing: I would not wish that on anyone.

Annie said...

Oh, Meghan, I should clarify... we weren't laughing about names you had marked. One of the two books has lists of names with titles like "Future Gangsters" or "Likely to get into Harvard" those were the funny ones!

Katie DiSimone said...

I wanted the name Elvis if we'd had boys. Obviously, that might be part of the reason we ended up with girls. LOL. And...I love Tylenol PM too. Good choice of meds.