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September 4, 2003
Would you believe that I’ve been trying to write this entry for over a week and still can’t think of a thing to say? Not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just not flowing right now. And now I’ve procrastinated so long today that Aden is up from nap before I’ve even started. Well, I’ll see what I can accomplish with him climbing all over me and asking for a new piece of paper to “co-co” (color) on every 5 seconds! :)
Let’ see… I am 6 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I’m feeling a little writer’s block, or maybe it’s just the pregnancy exhaustion. I’ve been tired on and off since 4 weeks but it seems to be gradually getting worse. Some days I can barely function between 5 and 7 pm. Today I desperately wanted to join Aden and Katie for naptime. But yesterday I had energy galore, cleaned the whole house, and cooked a real dinner from scratch. And no matter how tired I am earlier in the day, by bedtime I have just gotten my energy back and don’t feel like going to sleep. Pregnancy is weird.
This pregnancy seems different that the one with Aden. Or maybe it’s not really different, it’s just that my selective memory has blocked certain things out. :) For instance, I can’t be sure, but I think I am much more nauseous than I was with Aden. During my first pregnancy, I had almost no morning sickness but was plagued with a quick gag reflex that threatened to hurl back up whatever I had just swallowed. That has kicked in a little bit this week, mostly with my vitamins, but mainly I find myself feeling queasy and unsettled for hours on end. For instance, Sunday morning I got up early with Aden and ate a light breakfast to settle my stomach, but I still sat on the couch all morning watching a bad movie and feeling like any wrong move might make me sick. By the time Derek got up 3 hours later, I was about to cry.
Luckily that’s the worst morning I’ve had, and I haven’t actually thrown up yet. After that morning I found that a cup of hot peppermint tea really makes me feel better, and it has been a lifesaver. I also can still eat anything I want, but sometimes after the first few bites I have to sit back and let it settle before I can eat more.
Other symptoms… not too many. My nose is definitely on the “super-sensitive” setting but smells aren’t making me nauseous. I have to pee all the time. No real boob growth yet and no belly growth either. Our weather cooled off this weekend, enough to need jeans and jackets, and I did notice that although my jeans fit just fine, my stomach started to find them too binding after a while. I found myself looking longingly at my new low-rise maternity jeans sitting in the spare room, but it’s still too early for those. So now I start out in jeans and change into something with a nice elastic waist later in the day. But man, I can’t wait to have a belly and feel the baby move. Sometimes with a second pregnancy, fetal movement can be felt as early as 9-10 weeks, which would be so amazing!
I thought it would be kind of neat to go back and see what I wrote in my journal when I was pregnant with Aden, so I could compare the two pregnancies better. By this point with Aden, I had already had a miscarriage scare and the possibility of twins mentioned, then an ultrasound to confirm there was indeed a beating heart (only one!) in there. At 6 weeks, 3 days, I wrote:
“Well, I am still spotting but it is lighter today so I hope that means it will stop soon. I am also having to pee more, starting late last week I can barely make it through class and I have to go during the night or at least in the early morning. I am also kind of tired during the day but at night I think my sleep is more fragmented, more dreams.”
Which leads me to say, oh yeah, how could I forget to tell you about the dream I had last night? It was awful! In my dream I went in for an ultrasound and my baby’s heart only had 3 chambers so he was going to die. Then they discovered there was a twin in there, and she had a cleft lip, and even though that’s not life threatening they were afraid the stillborn twin would make her die too. Talk about waking up crying…
Well, enough depressing thoughts. Aden has been at my side all this time, still coloring, but constantly asking me “Put dis pencil away, mama,” after which he immediately asks for another one. I think it’s just his ploy to try to get me to give him a marker instead. Like I’m going to make that mistake! Now he’s gone to his room and returned with a box of blocks, asking, “Help me with dis box blocks, mama, help me…” which is an endless litany I hear all day. Everything requires help and it requires it *now*. At least he is awesome at verbalizing what he wants, so we rarely have tantrums. If any meltdowns do occur, I just remind him that I can’t help him until he uses words, and it works like a charm. But sometimes the convoluted things he wants me to do just blow my mind. How did he get so complex all of the sudden? Two-year-olds are much deeper than I ever gave them credit for--before I had one of my own, of course. :)
In other Aden news, I think our first sibling rivalry issue has reared its head. He is generally very interested in the baby, so we talk about it often. He knows that the baby is “in mama’s tummy” although he often asks if he can hold the baby in his hands. The other day at the grocery store he was riding in one of those very cool shopping carts that have a truck in the front for the kids to “drive,” and when we put it away he asked (completely out of the blue) if the baby would get to ride in it with him. Another evening I asked if he was going to talk to the baby in my tummy when my tummy gets big, and he instantly pulled up my shirt to say “Hello!”, then said “Bye-bye!” and put my shirt down again. Derek and I thought that was really funny.
But as I was saying before I got off track, the first sibling rivalry issue seems to be about… mama milk. Aden doesn’t nurse anymore and hasn’t for around 6 months, but he definitely still remembers all about mama milk. Sometimes if I pull him on my lap for a snuggle he asks about mama milk and we talk about when he used to have it. Yesterday this happened, and I told him that when the baby comes it will drink mama milk. He pondered this for a moment before replying, “Um… no. MY mama milk!” So I went through the whole spiel about babies not being able to eat food, not chicken or peaches or watermelon or green beans or noodles, and only being able to drink mama milk. But Aden was not convinced, and remained rather possessive of “his” mama milk. Hmm. Guess we’ll have to resolve that one in the next 8 months, huh?
Well, Aden and Katie seem to be fighting like cats and dogs downstairs. It’s been nearly a year since I started watching her, and they are definitely starting to act like siblings… as in, they pick on each other for no reason and drive me nuts in the process! Only 30 minutes until her dad is here, I’ve only got to deal with this for 30 more minutes… As a quick side note to anyone who saw my requests for good thoughts early last week, Katie’s mom and the (still unborn) baby are doing well. Linda was in the hospital for about a week and a half but got to go home Monday morning on orders of strict bed rest for at least a few more weeks. She’ll be 32 weeks tomorrow so I don’t know how long before they ease up. But everything looks good, even better than expected, and she should be able to go on to a normal, healthy delivery sometime around Halloween. Thank you to everyone who kept her in your thoughts. It was very scary there for a while.
28 more minutes… (sigh)
Have a great day, everyone!
Tara
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