Week 14 Update

Today is the last day of being 14 weeks pregnant....

Here is what happened this week:

1. (-)I still feel sick if I don't take my meds
2. (-/+)I am working on getting my "system" back on track
3.(+) I eat food three meals a day plus snacks
4. (+/-)I haven't gained any weight... yet...
5. (-)I am still not "showing"... I think in the next month I will pop. My lower tummy feels hard.
6. (+)I notice my brain has enough energy to actually start thinking about the future.
7. (-)The future is freaking me out
8. (-)I realize this baby is going to cost us ALOT of money
9. (+) I am one week closer to getting to "see" the baby via ultrasound. Only 5 weeks to go!
10. (+) I learned about a super secret high end baby outlet store... maybe I'll find a good deal on a crib :)

Tomorrow is another dr.'s appointment. I am building a case for them to give me an ultrasound now and at 20 weeks, but we'll see how I do at negotiating this :)

Week 13- I ate lunch today!!!

I know you are probably thinking it is crazy that I find eating lunch a blog worthy event, but it is to me. For the past 13.5 weeks, I've been living off of very few and far between real foods. I listed them a few posts back so I won't bore you with repeating. Today at about 11:30am, I felt hungry for the first time in 13.5 weeks! I was shocked that I was actually feeling hungry. What did I want to eat? Something cheesy came to mind. So since Mike works downtown with me now, we met up and went to Q.doba for a Cheese Quesadilla. I ate half of it and felt great, then I had some chips :) How exciting! Hunger + Lunch= one happy pregnant girl :)

Also, over the past few days I can tell my lower tummy is changing. I can feel it getting kind of hard. No showing yet though. My pregnancy books seem to call it "skin thickening". Whatever you want to call it, I'm excited because soon I might actually feel pregnant!

Warning. Do not read if you have not been or ever plan on being pregnant!!!

Ok, you've been warned. Now comes the most horrific experience of my pregnancy to date. I can't even believe I am going to tell you about this, it is embarrasing, but I promised that I would share the details, so here goes....
Last week on Thursday I came home pretty late and went to the bathroom as one normally does before going to bed. I realized I had a VERY large poop that would not budge. I didn't want to stay up forever trying to force this thing out, so I went to bed.
The next day, I drank a ton of water, thinking that might help to slide it out...but it didn't work.
Everyday that passed I was getting more backed up... to the point that I was in pain when I sat down, so I did a ton of research and here are the steps that I took to "relieve" myself of this HUGE poop!
Step 1: Eat a Fiber Bar- these are always really helpful for me and tasty! Nothing.
Step 2: Looked up some home remedies online, found one I thought I could do. Mix 1/2 cup of oj, with 1/2 cup of olive oil. Disgusting... but if it worked I would be so happy!!! Nothing.
Step 3: Send Mike to get us Taco Bell for dinner. I had pintos and cheese and a soft taco, this was sure to do the trick! NOTHING!!! I couldn't believe it.
Step 4: Since the usual measures were not even beginning to help, I knew I needed a "real" solution. Looked up that I could take a "stool softener", such as Colace. Took it. It promised a BM in 12-72 hours... I didn't have 72 hours to wait, but I figured I'd give it a shot! 12-hours: nothing. 24 hours: nothing. 36 hours... OMG I can't wait anymore.
Step 5: Upgrade! I found out from my dr I could take Peri Colace, stool softner plus laxative, this will definately do the trick. I was so excited after I bought it, I didn't even wait to get home to take it, I took the daily dosage in the car, because at this point, every minute is critical!!! This promised I would have a "BM" overnight or in 6-12 hours! I could alsmost feel the freedom... I felt so close... 12 hours later... NOTHING!!! OMG I am DYING!!! I have a the worlds biggest and getting bigger poop in me. It is never going to come out. I am going to kill my baby from a toxic environment of poop!!! I am at the end of the line. I can't poop, and now I can't even sit comfortably because I am SO jammed packed with poop! This is so gross! I cry alot about this and continue to look online for another solution.
Step 6: I can't even believe I had to use this as a solution. I called around and got some input from one of my friends who is a nurse. I explained the situation and asked if she thought a solution I found would work? She assured me, that she had never not seen it work. I asked her if she was sure, because at this point I was thinking I needed surgery to remove this ROCK!!! She told me that there is no surgery to get poop out... :) So my last attempt was to try the dreaded fleet enema... oh my goodness... I have never had to use any sort of measures to help me in this deparment, now I've bought out the pregnant safe portion of the laxative section in the pharmacy... Who knew they were so cheap. Like $1.69! I think I spent about $50 on the other stuff... ok I prepped myself for the big moment. Read online about proper usage, positions and what can happen.
Needless to say, this didn't result in the explosion I thought it would... just a few big plops and still stuck. I cry and scream and tell Mike to never get me pregnant again, because I can't even poop, how am I expected to get a baby out?!?! So I kept working on it and somewho kept positive thoughts... I got enough out that I could at least sit without being in pain, that was a great advancement, but I was still very sad and disappointed.
Final step: Drink 1 million gallons of water. It has to come out... So I drank until I couldn't drink anymore, then I went on a nice long walk... and to my surprise without any more assitance 24 hrs post enema, I two not only 1, but 2 of the biggest poops I have ever seen in my life!

I'm pretty sure I"m all cleaned out. I couldn't be happpier or more proud that I actually got this taken care of!!!
Lesson learned: Keep the water and the fiber coming!!!

Week 12... I'm nearing the end of the beginning...

I have been looking forward to week 12 for awhile... this is the week that can be the beginning of the end of all the naseau and when the fun begins...
It also comes along with an unwritten rule to share your news with your boss this week.
I did, and it went very well. She is being really great about the whole thing!!! Hooray! A major hurdle crossed!
With the anti naseau medicine I knew it was too good to be true. Over the past weekend I began feeling super sick again...no, please not again...
This morning as I am waiting for my train to arrive, I have an uncontrolable urge to puke. So here I am crying my eyes out, puking in front of hundreds of people. A really nice lady asks if I am ok. No, I said... I'm just pregnant!!!

So here's to, week 13, lucky 13 maybe this will all be behind me then :)

2nd Dr's Appointment

Whew! Alot had happened in the past month and I had MANY questions for my Dr.. I jotted them down on the back of a receipt and off I went.
I give my "sample", get my blood pressure taken, and get weighed. Then I wait for my very pregnant dr to come and talk to me. When I first started seeing her, I thought it would be awesome that she has little kids and is expecting her third. She'll know what I'm going through... and be more empathetic. I don't think I was right on that... I think she is less empathetic b/c she is super prego at this point and still working and has to hear people complain about being pregnant all day...
I break out my list and start going over my concerns... as I am talking she is looking through my chart... all the sound she looks up and looks kinda of concerned. Amanda, you have lost 12 lbs since your last appointment 4 weeks ago! What happened? What happened is that I'm pregnant and I can't eat anything and I'm not hungry anyways. Oh and I've been puking.
Before I'm allowed to proceed with my questions she writes a perscrption for some heavy duty anti naseau medicine. She tells me to try really hard to eat anything I want, ice cream, cookies, whatever I can get down. Just focus on calories, nutrition comes later in my case. Most any other time in my life I would be going crazy saying the dr told me to eat ice cream and cookies, I need it. Instead, I have the free ticket in my hand and sweets couldn't sound worse to me.
So I get my medicine and seriously within hours I feel like a new person. I ate some potato chips...they were delicious! The next day, same thing I felt like a normal person. Freedom... Mike took me out for a date to celebrate. I ordered some chicken and ate it :) Hooray!

Bug bites everywhere?

In my opinion, up to this point I felt that I had been pretty lucky, I was able to find at least one food item daily to shove down, to keep from vomiting. Then the weirdest thing happened.
One morning I woke up, and thought that I had been attacked by like 50 mosquitoes in my sleep. Every inch of my body was covered in these huge red bumps and they were so itchy!
I had Mike inspect the house for where and how all these bugs got in to eat me alive. He looked around, but then made a very obvious statement, "I don't have one bite on me" I wonder how that could have happened. I have read that mosquitoes like pregnant chicks because of the exta blood they are toting around, so I thought maybe they just liked me better.
Through many conversations, an emergency call to the dr, and many google searches later, seems that I had a freak case of hives.
Hives. Are you kidding me? Why? No one has anything to say except that when you are pregnant your hormones do weird things... go figure!

I don't need a blog yet... I don't have anything to write about...

Oh, if I only knew what the weeks ahead had and have in store for me, I would have immediately started blogging about how great I felt! Not the case. Fast forward 2 weeks, putting me at about 8 almost 9 weeks prego and then the fun begins. All food sounds disgusting and unappetizing, but who cares, I'm not hungry anyway. Not bad, BUT the trick is if I don't eat something I feel like puking, so what do I do? I begin trying to rack my brain for anything that wont make me barf. Anything potatoes worked for awhile. Baked potatoes, potato soup, mashed potatoes. Then just pasta, very plain pasta sounded like I could force it down. That only last like 2 days though. I remember one night I ate a regular serving of spaghetti and I almost cried with excitment because it was the first real food I felt like I had eaten in weeks! After pasta, came a bread obession... one night Mike and I went on a date and all I could eat was the bread, what a cheap date!
By this point in the game, I also hate all types of crackers that I have been consuming each morning before getting out of bed. Although they will keep me from puking, the thought of eating them makes me want to puke? That was truly an anomaly!

Ok, so I'm pregnant... now what?!?!

I now know that I am pretty lucky girl. Positive pregnancy tests in hand and no other "symptoms", except big sensitive boobs! It was weird, I knew that I was pregnant, but I didn't feel any different, or look any different. I got a bunch of pregnancy books and started reading everything I could... although not too much to read about surprisingly... I had something about the size of an appleseed in me, and here are the symptoms you should be feeling or will be feeling in the next two weeks that was about it...
My little sisters wedding was just a few weeks away, although my family lives all over the country we are freakishly close and secrets don't last long, if at all with us. You tell one person, you might as well have sent a mass email. I really wanted to tell everyone in person, and with the wedding only a few weeks away I was confident that I could keep our secret until then...
Those 3 weeks were some of the longest of my life. In order to keep the secert, I just cut my phone conversations with my family really short, because I was afraid if I said too much, it would just come out...
Luckily for me, I was able to hold it in... and it paid off! I was the maid of honor for my sister's wedding and didn't want anything to spoil her big day that she had put so much work into, so I vowed that not only would I wait until I saw everyone, I would wait until after the wedding. Even more difficult than I thought. We all arrived on Thursday, with the wedding on Saturday, meaning I had to go 3 whole days, without spilling the beans... More difficult though was the idea that I wasn't able to drink... I couldn't make a big deal out of this... everyone knows I love a good time and if it's a good occasion I love a really good time :) I made a plan, so that my secret would be safe just a few more days... I had Mike order cranberry and lime for me at the bar, poured wine for myself and made Mike drink it( Mike was really a trooper drinking all these things for me), and faked a champagne toast... whew... this was a big production. But... no one had a clue!
The big moment came at breakfast following Jaime's wedding... I wore a t-shirt that said "Baby Loading... Please wait..." One by one everyone saw the shirt and quickly got the message. My mom hugged me really tight then made sure I wasn't joking :) My dad is pumped because the baby is due around his birthday... one of my sisters hit me and said "I can't believe you didn't tell me", and the bride saw the shirt and said... "I'm confused by your shirt" and went on to talk about something else... while everyone else laughed :) I'll give her a break though... she did get married the day before!

So now the family knows, they are excited. I am relieved that I kept my secret :)

How we found out...

To be honest, I kind of wanted to get pregnant... so did my husband. To be perfectly honest though, both of us were also pretty freaked out about the whole idea at the same time. When I got the news in the form of an EXTREMELY faint positive pregnancy test, I was happy, and freaked out... more happy though. Mike, my husband is extremely analytical person, so I showed him the test and asked for his analytical input... he was like, I don't know... maybe, probably not, it's like the reflection of the other line or something... so I went to the store bought up a bunch of varities of tests and began to take them, each with varying results, some positive (barely) others not. Instead of wasting too many more of these expensive sticks, Mike finally agreed that yes it probably is positive and I am probably pregnant! (Even though I was sure with the 1st one, I had to make sure I had his buy in)
To be sure I continued to take more pregnancy tests over the next week or so, just to make sure the 5 I already took were accurate :)

I should have started this sooner...

I definiately should have started this sooner. Many weeks ago (12 to be exact, which is not really 12 more like 10) I got pregnant! That's right... preggie, knocked up, prego, bun in the oven, whatever you'd like to call it! Here's how it happened... just kidding :) You know how it happened :) No, it wasn't after a drunken wedding, on a romantic trip, or the return of myself or my husband from a work trip, many of my friends and family seem to have these great stories of why they got pregnant and they often refer to their future kids as the events, such as cruise baby, California baby, you get the picture. I felt left out because everyone (surpisingly) seemed really interested in why this baby came to be. I shouldn't be that surprised, I've been telling everyone for years that I don't want kids for many years... little did they realize, it had been years that passed and I was getting older each one of those years :) So in effort for our baby to be included in the early nickname, I've decided to go with After Work Perk baby!?! Not as cool as Mommy got a promotion baby... but it will have to do!
As I said earlier I should have started this sooner because so much has already happened in such a short time... join me for this unique, exciting, and completely out of control experience. I promise I'll share lots of details :)