the stuff I don’t want to forget

Ok, because I haven’t done a single post talking about the pregnancy, and because a blog is, in part, a form of record-keeping, I am going to write one of those posts where I detail the pregnant stuff. It’s boring and probably extremely smug. So consider yourself warned. 

• I don’t think it started getting real until close to 12 weeks. It really just took a long time to sink in. 
• The story of how I found out is this: I had been temping, and on a Saturday morning, it was the cycle day that my temp had dropped in the previous cycle, and I had kind of made a secret deal with myself that if my temp didn’t drop that day, I would POAS. So I woke up, took my temp, and it was still up. Still not even remotely excited, I went to the bathroom and peed on a stick. Or more precisely, peed into my ceramic handmade Hello Kitty teacup that I use for collecting pee (have to find new, non-drinking use for it now), collected pee in the plastic dropper that comes with the dollar store peesticks, dropped required number of pee drops in the stick’s receptacle, and then stared at it for a while. Of course it was very white and I was thinking it would be another negative and my temp would wind up dropping the next day and I felt very discouraged. But I left it on the counter and went back to bed to play a Sudoku on my iPhone. When I was done the Sudoku, I went back and looked. A very faint but definitely clear line was there. Holy. Shit. I think at that point my brain just completely emptied of everything, and I went looking for Manny, who turned out to be in the basement sleeping with the dog who had scratched at our bedroom door early in the morning. (If we let him in to our room, he just scratches earlier and earlier and always wants to sleep with us, and as much as I adore the Luckster, I don’t want him to sleep with us.) I woke him up and told him to look at the stick. The whole time I felt like a zombie floating on a cloud in a parallel universe somewhere over the rainbow in heaven, a feeling which didn’t entirely go away until around the 12 week mark, as I said earlier. 
• I never threw up (or at least, I haven’t up to this point, 17 weeks and counting) but definitely had nausea. Eating regularly, ginger candy, strong mints, acupressure wrist bands and lots of rest have been very helpful. My nausea pretty much always got worse later in the day, and also if I ate too much. 
• My sleep has been screwed up from the start and I have had the most insane dreams. In one, I was attacked by someone’s pet rat named Alyssa and woke up clawing at my neck to get Alyssa’s biting, clawing self off of me. Good times.
• I have had trouble telling people because they get all excited and I feel like a massive killjoy when I’m not as excited as they are. 
• I’m worried about how to handle it when someone touches my belly without my consent. At the moment I’m thinking I’ll just grab their ass and see how they like it. 
• I’ve had cravings for the following: tartar sauce, oranges, Oreo cookies, pickles, apples, lemonade, potatoes, dairy products (like a crazy woman, I was! I had 3 Babybel cheeses in my purse at all times for the first 10 weeks!), bread, ice cream, ranch dressing, chips and dip, salt, pickled beets. More to come, no doubt. 
• I’ve had aversions to the following: meat (especially in the evenings), seafood chowder (duh).
• Gas. ‘Nuff said. 
• About the DI stuff – I thought I would be consumed with angst over our choice and early pregnancy would be consumed with wondering whether this really is the right thing. Instead, I’ve just felt so grateful that it was an option for us and that it happened so easily. This is such a surprise that in a way I keep waiting for the angst to show up – I’m sure it will at some point, but right now, I am totally at peace with it, something that even a year ago seemed impossible. 
• Leggings are my new best friend, and I’m currently enjoying a mini 80s revival in my clothing choices.
• The belly is getting visible now and yesterday I was talking to the woman working in the post office who was very obviously pregnant, and she noticed that I was, too – first time someone noticed who didn’t already know. Fun!
• We’ve had one discussion about names and we have way more common instincts than I expected, which is very good news.
• We both think it’s a girl, but we’re not going to find out. 
• I think I’m starting to feel movement but I’m not totally sure that’s what it is, so I haven’t got super excited yet. 
• I had the quad screening and the NT scan and the combined risk of a chromosomal problem after both of those tests is 1 in 18 million. I have to say that I was hesitatant about the quad screening because there are so many false “positives” but I’m glad I had it done now cause it does comfort me somewhat to know that all my results were far below the average for my age or for the general population. 

I started this over a week ago and reading over it I am cringing somewhat at how boring and self-indulgent it is, but since I’ve hardly had time to sit down the past few weeks, I’m going to publish anyway.  Cause the likelihood of me writing anything else before next week is fairly slim at this point…