I’m pregnant.
Now, under normal conditions this would be a free pass to eat whatever I wanted. Sadly, during this one time in my life where it is actually cute to gain weight, food is my nemesis. But it’s a love/hate relationship right now. On one hand, I am not hungry at all with this pregnancy (which I have read can be an indication that you’re expecting a girl..) but on the other hand if I don’t have food then I get sick.
Speaking of morning sickness (which for me is morning and late evening sickness these days), it’s still going strong. But here’s the catch. I get sick if I’m hungry and I also get sick when I eat something.
I just can’t win.
When I was pregnant with Bean, I wanted everything rich, creamy, spicy, and full o’ flavor. I lived and died by Mexican food. I had a sweet tooth that was unstoppable. I put hot sauce on everything. These days though, all I want is bland, bland, bland. And carbs, carbs, carbs. I even had an entire CAKE on my kitchen counter for a whole week and didn’t eat one stinking piece.
Topping my (short) list of favorite foods right now are:
McDonald’s plain biscuits - My friend, Anne, sent me an email about these and I about died when she mentioned them because I had just discovered the power of the plain McD’s biscuit last week. I don’t know what it is about them. Maybe it’s the salt they put on them? The butter? Maybe it’s the way they are chewy on the outside and soft in the middle? Who knows. But they settle my stomach like nothing else. And it’s so odd because I’m not a big breakfast fan OR of McDonald’s.
Cheese grits – I craved these when I was pregnant with Bean, too. Actually, I had never had grits before I was pregnant with Bean and one morning I woke up with them on my mind and that was it. It’s been the same with this pregnancy, too. Twice I have woken up in the middle of the night thinking about cheese grits. I have no idea why or where this comes from, but it’s an intense craving.
Oranges – With Bean, I ate strawberries by the carton. With this baby, I’m eating oranges by the barrel. Or bushel. Or whatever it is oranges come in. I’m eating a lot of them though.
And that’s really about it. Isn’t that sad? I’m a pathetic excuse for a pregnant woman. My only hope is that next week when I finally enter my second trimester this sickness will go away and I’ll finally be able to eat more.
Until then, I’m collecting donations in the form of McDonald’s plain biscuits.
I’m also collecting donations of foot rubs.
And naps.
And if anyone wanted to do my laundry, I’d accept that donation, too.
(By the way, I lost my camera again for the third time in two months. Remind me to do a post later on how irresponsible I am. Thank you.)
16Sep
Today was my first day at my new job, which means I am officially un-unemployed.
Can I get an amen?
You all have been so supportive and kind about me going back to work and especially about me starting down a new path as a teacher for the first time. The thing about teaching though is that I really can’t share too much about my job for privacy reasons. I think I’m going to like this job, so I’d like to keep it… That means I won’t be able to give you too many updates about work and I certainly won’t be able to share any stories with you from my classroom. But let me just tell you a few things about my new job and then I vow to never speak of it again:
1. I think I am really going to love teaching.
2. I think I am going to be a good teacher.
3. My fetus apparently hates teaching.
Yes, the New Guy seems to abhor teaching and is royally ticked off that I am now spending my days as a teacher, which would be why I felt like I was seasick all day long.
(Incidentally, the New Guy is what we’ve been calling this one. And contrary to what my mother thinks, this is not a gender specific nickname – it’s just what this little inch worm in my belly happens to be…the New Guy in our family. When we know the sex of the baby, I’m sure we’ll pick something a little more endearing, but for now there’s been a lot of, “Hey, New Guy – Put some pants on!” or “Hey New Guy – You want pizza for dinner?”)
First of all, I woke up this morning and yacked four or five times.
Don’t ever tell me I don’t share enough personal information with you imaginary people.
Then the nausea miraculously went away all through the school day, but the minute the bell rang and just after our faculty meeting, I was back in the restroom where I stayed for the next half hour. Awkward, awkward, awkward to meet your new co-workers and then upchuck in the faculty restroom for 30 minutes.
So, the short of it is that the New Guy just can’t hack it for a full working day. He (again, MOM, that’s a universal “he” not a masculine “he”…) preferred when I laid around on the couch all day watching Oprah and Dawson’s Creek reruns.
(In my tired state, I couldn’t figure out how to write backwards for these pictures. Sorry. I blame the New Guy.)
I, however, have missed working. This morning as I was sitting in stand-still traffic, I even thought to myself, “Man, I love rush hour!” I have really missed being in a working environment and I am thrilled to be back at work.
So, the New Guy and I are in a bit of a stalemate at the moment. Of course, by the time we got home from work (don’t you love how I am a plural now that I’m growing a person? I’m like a turducken!), we were so stinking exhausted that we called a truce and immediately laid on the couch until Bean whacked me with his golf club and demanded dinner.
All things considered, I think I am going to love working. Even with the whole fetal seasickness thing. And the New Guy is just going to have to chill out and deal.
BECAUSE I’M THE MOM.
And in my house, the mom always wins.
In the past few months as all of these life changes have been going on, I have been feeling a little under the weather. I was a little grumpy, a little tense, and a little sick on my stomach – all a result of my nerves have been shot. I don’t handle stress well, physically or emotionally. But after a while, I thought it might be time to check in with my doctor just to make sure that this really was stress and not something more serious.
Me:Â Hey, Doc.
Doctor: Hey, Katie. What brings you in today?
Me:Â Well, I’ve got a lot of stress going on in my life lately and it seems to be upsetting my stomach.
Doctor:Â Hmm…well, let’s take a look and see what the problem is, shall we?
Me:Â Yes, please!
Doctor: Hmm….Um…..Hmm…
Me:Â Is there a problem, Doc?
Doctor:Â Well, I don’t rightly know how to tell you this, Katie, but there appears to be something in your stomach.
Me: WHAT?!?! What’s in there, Doc?
Doctor:Â Well, it’s a baby!
That’s right, dear readers. It would seem that I am pregnant again – 11 weeks pregnant, to be exact.
SURPRISE!!!!!!
(I’ll wait here while you go change your undies…)
Yep. It would seem that in the midst of all of this chaos and confusion, Chris and I accidentally made a bambino. Oopsie. Trust me, if you think you are surprised, you should have seen me and Chris. Actually, you really should have seen Chris. He sort of looked like this when he found out:
So did I.
We had always planned to have two kids (maybe three?), but we thought we’d space them out a bit more. We were thinking next year or the year after we’d start to try for Baby #2. But when you’re unemployed and you have no money to go out and be entertained, you find that you stay home and entertain yourselves…if you know what I mean. And just like my sixth grade health teacher said, “That’s how babies are made!”
The thing that really threw us was how far along I was before I even realized I was pregnant. I was NINE WEEKS PREGNANT before I even realized that something was off. NINE WEEKS, PEOPLE! But if you think about it, a lot of pregnancy symptoms look like stress (i.e. nauseous, exhausted, grumpy, no visit from my Aunt Flow…). I simply thought it was my body physically dealing with what was going on around me. I had no idea it was my body dealing with what was going on INSIDE me.
Once I became pregnant though, it was like my brain sent all these signals to my body that said, “What?!?! We’re pregnant again?!?! BAM!”
And out popped my belly. Instantly.
I mean, seriously. I look like I’m already 6 months pregnant. Although, I have been so dang sick that I keep LOSING weight every time I go to the doctor. I have heard people say that your second pregnancy is easier than your first, but that definitely does not seem to be the case here. I have been sicker the second time around than I was the first by a long shot. But I don’t seem to be as miserable about it as I was before. Maybe it’s cause I’ve been through it already and I fully understand what is waiting for me nine months from now. That seems like it might make it a little more tolerable.
So, there you have it. The cat’s out of the bag and the bun’s in the oven.
Sometimes I surprise even myself…
22Jun
Last week my friend, Catherine, had a little baby girl. They named her Nora and she was beautiful. She didn’t come out all squished up like a lot of newborns. She was pretty and smooth and she looked like she’d been born a thousand times before. Like she was an old pro.
When I saw a picture of her, my ovaries instantly started chanting, “WE WANT A GIRL! WE WANT A GIRL!” And then Bean threw my keys in the toilet bowl (true story) and my ovaries paused for just a moment before chanting instead, “MAYBE WE CAN WAIT! MAYBE WE CAN WAIT!” And later that day as I paid bills and did our depressing banking, my ovaries paused one more time before chanting, “NEVERMIND, LET’S BUY A FISH! NEVERMIND, LET’S BUY A FISH!”
Occasionally, my ovaries chant. They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again. My ovaries are chanters. They demand things from me from time to time – usually more babies. And when they’re being particular, they demand babies of the female variety. Usually this happens when I find that I have accidentally wandered into the girl section of Carter’s or Target and frilly dresses and underpants with ruffles have somehow managed to jump spontaneously into my cart. For some reason this triggers my ovaries. I can’t imagine why.
But, inevitably, one of two things happen to silence my chanting ovaries. Either Bean does something that makes me sigh and say, “No, Bean!” For example, yesterday I looked over to find Bean feeding Big Molly all of his blocks. Molly had eaten four wooden blocks by the time I got over there. Or like yesterday evening when Chris and I were sitting down to eat dinner and Bean poured Chris’ drink all over the table – including all over our food. Yeah, those are the times when you sigh, “redirect the child’s attention” (according to the books), and think to yourself, “There’s no way I could handle two of him.”
If that doesn’t silence the ovaries, then they chant until Bean does something so incredibly funny or sweet or cute. Like yesterday morning when he learned to blow kisses. Or when he fell out of his school bus toy and Chris picked him up, but Bean held his arms out and cried for me. Those times when your heart melts and you realize that being Bean’s mom is the best thing in the whole world. My ovaries stop chanting then because I think that there would just be no way I could ever love another baby as much as I love him. And they stop when I realize how much fun it is to be a mom to a baby boy. I love having a boy. He’s into everything, always on the go, rough, ready to play, loud. He just fills the house with his boyishness and makes everything seem bigger and better.
But then SOMEONE decides to be all selfish-like and have a little girl named Nora and suddenly my ovaries wake back up again, demanding children. Please, people. Could you stop having such beautiful little babies so that my ovaries could focus on the task we have at hand – raising a little boy who throws keys into the toilet and spills drinks on my food and cries for me when he falls down? Because that is a full-time job in my house and I just don’t think I can handle adding another being to my list of responsibilities.
And yet…what is that I hear?…so faint in the background?…
“we want a girl, we want a GIRL! WE WANT A GIRL! WE WANT A GIRL!”
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