Cookies, and their tossing.

This growing a person business is starting to get more difficult. The morning sickness thing was okay for a while. The nausea was pretty mild and intermittent and I could handle it. And the barfing was quick and relieved the discomfort. Not so anymore. Yesterday morning I spent so much time puking that I had to leave for work without doing my hair or makeup. And I'm the kind of gal who always does my hair and makeup. Horrible florescent bile. I know this is extreme TMI, but I have to get it out of my system. Ick ick ick. Also, I cry when I vomit. Involuntary reflex. And I get puffy when I cry. And I remain puffy, for oh, twenty four hours or so. All in all, not such a good chain of events.

Anyway, for the first time yesterday, queasy acid-stomach feeling was not relieved by the up-chucking, and I was left with this horrible sour feeling all day. I tried to eat various breadstuffs to soak up the ick, but that didn't work at all. Since it was slow, I left work early, thank goodness, because I felt like I was about to pass out all day.  I felt a little better as I was eating the soup I demanded Kyle prepare for me, but the goodwill ended as soon as the bowl was empty.

I woke up this morning feeling slightly less awful, but definitely not entirely better. I tend not to have puking problems on days I let myself sleep in, but things are still unsettled. Great. I really fear that I won't feel un-pukey again for the next six weeks. A scary thought. The heaviest workload time of year is upon us, and then I'm spending a week in Paris, and I do not want all of this the be overshadowed by barf.

Pregnancy. Fun stuff.

Giving Thanks

Dear Baby,

Today is your first Thanksgiving. Or maybe it is your -1 Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, we will both be eating well today. I can only imagine that your Opa's stuffing will be one of your favorite foods, just like it is one of mine.

Today, and everyday, I am very thankful that you are here. I am looking forward to you getting bigger, to seeing you in an ultrasound, to hearing your little heart beating. I can't wait to feel you move and to share that with your daddy. But wait I will. It will all be worth it, I know. You need to take your time growing all of your important parts.

This time next year, although you won't be big enough to enjoy the food, you'll be celebrating with us. I know you'll love it!

Love, Mommy

Seven!

 

Seven weeks today! That's starting to sound like a reasonable length of pregnancy. I don't know why, but for some reason, saying I'm four or five weeks pregnant sounds ridiculous, but seven is getting to a place where it makes sense.

Anyway, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, my very favorite of the holidays. As a non-religious person, it's nice to celebrate a holiday that wasn't originally a churchy thang. I like Christmas as much as the next girl, but often all the Jesus talk will make me uncomfortable. And of course, religious people do bring their faith into Thanksgiving, and thank God for the bounteous meal, I suppose, but really, God doesn't have to have a thing to do with it, if you don't want, and that is nice for me and my family. Also, Thanksgiving is on or near my birthday and I like things associated with my birthday. And it's all about food. What could be bad about that?

I'm a little worried about actually making it to the festivities this year. There is still snow (and ice!) on the ground, and it's expected to snow again tomorrow. And my parents live on the tippy-top of a big tall hill. Whatever. Pregnant or not, I will walk up the hill if the alternative is no stuffing.

I might wear the maternity leggings my mother in law got me tomorrow under my dress if they will stay up. Obviously, I don't need the yet, but waistbands have been driving me crazy lately, and I can imagine that will only be made worse when I am stuffing myself full of food. We'll see.

So happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I have a lot to be thankful for right now, and I hope you all do, too.

25

Today is my 25th birthday. To be honest, I don't get very worked up about my birthday. The last time I had a party was when I turned 21. According to our original plans, baby-making wasn't going to start in earnest until at least this coming January, and so I wanted to go out with a bang, so to speak, and throw myself a big bash for my last birthday before babies. But here is my 25th birthday and I am pregnant. And I am so glad. Really, I kind of hate birthday parties to begin with. They are fine to attend, yes, but the organizing and cooking and baking and hostessing I could really live without. Someone could throw me a birthday party and that would be wonderful, but like hell am I doing it for myself.

Today was also supposed to be my very first prenatal appointment with the midwives at the birth center Kyle and I visited a couple weeks ago. But with the snow, no such luck. They called me this morning to reschedule, which was fine, because I was about to call them for the same reason. But it is kind of disappointing. I was looking forward to this, and all the other things that make this pregnancy feel more real. I haven't even confirmed that I am in fact pregnant with an actual medical professional. Just my two home pregnancy tests and a host of symptoms. I don't really feel like I need to, but... I don't know. I just want to get going on everything, and the snow is getting in the way.

Otherwise, though, my birthday has been wonderful. Kyle made me breakfast this morning, even thought the waffles were only of the frozen variety it was still sweet, especially since he got up hours before he would otherwise to feed hungry wife and embryo. Yesterday I got a package in the mail from my mother-in-law. We said we weren't doing birthday or Christmas gifts this year with his family, but she sent me one anyway. Maternity clothes. A little premature, of course, but also completely thoughtful and adorable. I'm glad she's as excited about this as I am. And the stuff she picked out is completely my style. It will be nice to have around, I imagine, when all of the sudden nothing fits and I haven't had a chance to really shop for my new wardrobe.

That's it, I guess, for all this birthday business. This post was supposed to be a lot more exciting, what with the appointment business, but acts of god, you know. I will say that twenty four was pretty much the best year so far. My biggest wish of the last five or so years finally came true. And I have it on good authority that twenty five will be even better.

Picture It

I wasn't planning on posting anything today. Everything exciting is happening tomorrow anyway. But I'm off of work and it's snowing out, which in Seattle basically means the apocalypse, and it just feels like a very bloggy kind of day to me. So blog I will. I guess.

My latest project is family photos. I've mentioned before how important family photos are too me. Being pregnant really makes me want to surround myself with all of these beautiful pictures of my childhood and of my parents when they were young and unencumbered with parenthood and of both of my grandmothers, whose memories are fading.

My parents on their wedding day in 1979.

My dad spent ton of time, when I was young, carefully picking out the best of the pictures he took, and artfully arranging them in big fancy albums. Not the cheap kind with sleeves for the photos, but the full sticky page with protective cover variety. There are probably twenty of them, mostly documenting from the early '80s on, but a couple with the earlier stuff.

These pictures aren't super accessible to me anymore, now that I am no longer living in my parents house. In the age of the internet you kind of expect everything to be at your fingertips with the click of a button. And I worry about their fragility, printed decades ago, degrading every day. Someday they will be lost forever.

Baby Astrid with parents visiting family in Toronto.

So, in conjunction with Kyle and I not having a lot of extra cash right now, for my Christmas gift to my parents I am painstakingly scanning all of our family photos, and uploading them all to a specially created Flickr account, so we can have them with us forever.  It's slow going. It certainly won't be done by Christmas, especially considering that after we finish with the physical albums there are disc upon disc of unorganized digital photos.  I'm in over my head, I know, but time is taking its toll, and some pictures are in bad shape already. So this is my project, for probably the next 20 years.

Sweaterpants

Hi blog! Here's Wednesday's six week picture for you:

Notice the sweatpants. (Actually, they are what I like to call sweaterpants, but they fill the same fashion niche.) I am not the kind of girl who wears sweatpants. Like, ever. Certainly not out of the house, and definitely not to take pictures in. So, this is how tired I am. So tired that I would take this picture in sweatpants (that I am only wearing because I thought it would be inappropriate to be wearing only underwears), with no makeup on, and post it on my blog for all to see.

Still no noticeable change, but you know, posterity, or something.

I had another pregnancy milestone (!) today. I for real barfed for this first time. Instead of all the gagging and dry heaving I have been doing. Exciting, I know. And I imagine this all has to get worse before it starts getting better. At least I'm pretty sure that the end result will make it all worth it.



Okay, I am definitely too tired to think of anything else to post.

Now we are Six.

Six weeks today. Time is starting to pass at a more regular pace. I took another "belly" shot this evening, but I have no desire to get out of bed and get the camera and cords and what have you to post it, but it will be here eventually.

I've been spending a lot of time in bed. The other day when I was apparently looking extra pathetic, Kyle suggested I take the laptop to bed with me, and here in the  bedroom it has remained. And so have I. I'm not feeling completely wretched. The morning sickness is getting progressively stronger, but I still have managed to avoid actually barfing thus far, so I think we can count that as a victory. It seems to be much easier when I am allowed to sleep in, and don't have to get up at the behest of my alarm clock.

Speaking of sleeping, I don't want to do much else. I've never been a morning person, and getting out of bed has often been a struggle for me, but I'm usually pretty good at facing the day when there are places (work) I have to be. Getting out of bed hasn't been this hard since I was a teenager, battling serious depression. Or maybe it's worse; it's hard to remember through the fog of the years.

Yesterday was my day off from work, and, I'm embarrassed to admit, I spent a good majority of it in bed. I got up a few times, to brush my teeth and take my prenatal, so fix myself a snack plate (that I could nosh on from bed, of course), and to do a single load of laundry, lest I have no clean underwear for work today. And I feel embarrassed about this, and I feel bad that my house is a mess and there are dishes to be done, and that I didn't even manage to fold that load of laundry, but I was feeling good and didn't want to, ahem, over exert myself and lose that feeling.

My work days are hard too. I manage to hold myself together okay while I'm there, because I have to, but it takes a lot of energy to think and stand and wear pants and to just be and when I get home I just collapse, often literally.

I hope this lifts soon. I wonder often if maybe it's all in my head, if maybe it's not really that bad--I know there are pregnant women that have it worse than me, women who are actually vomiting, perhaps, women who already have children that they have to chase around, tired or not, yet all I can to is fall into be at 3 'o clock in the afternoon.

It will be all right, I suppose. I should try not to feel too bad about how pathetic I've become. I supposed I'd rather err on the side of caution anyway.I do, though, hope I get my sea legs somewhere in the next couple of weeks, because I truly do not want to sleep away my France trip and my sister time. I miss her desperately. More so now also because she is somebody's auntie.