Now With Unisom!

After spending most of today feeling just wretched, I decided it's time to add the Unisom to my battling-morning-sickness regimen. So we headed out to CVS and were able to pick up a 32-count of generic doxylamine succinate for $8.99. Apparently there's also a version that's made with diphenhydramine (Benadryl), but the doxylamine is what you want for morning sickness.

Feeling desperate, I went ahead and took one with dinner, along with a B6, figuring that if it made me sleepy, I still had several hours to sleep it off before going in to work at 11.

I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but within about an hour, I had a pretty solid craving for some macaroni and cheese. Luckily, we'd bought some while we were at Aldi's this week--along with an embarrassing number of other convenience foods. What can I say--desperate times call for desperate measures, and the only things that sound good to me lately are things that don't require much cooking, even if somebody else is doing the cooking. Which is why, for probably the first time in our marriage, our cart contained things like mac n cheese, Spaghettios (!!), and chicken pot pies. And...White Cheddar Cheez-Its. So anyway, we whipped up the mac (topped with homemade hot sauce!) and so far I'm feeling really good, by far the best I've felt all day. Maybe even all week.

I'm consoling myself with the thought that my prepregancy diet, as well as my diet up until about 7 weeks when I started to feel so sick, was notoriously low in processed foods, and that I'm committed to returning to such a diet once my sickness resolves (which I'm hoping will be within the month). I'll have a good number of months to be concerned about food choices, but for right now, my main worry is just getting food in and keeping it in, period. And if it takes an OTC decongestant and a few processed foods to get me there, I'm just going to stay flexible about it.

So Far, So...Blah.

Vitamin B6 and antacid notwithstanding, it seems like I still have some pretty crappy-feeling days, generally interspersed with a good day in between (though I will say I feel like my heartburn has nearly resolved). Yesterday was great--we went to a dinner party and I ate pretty much like a normal person. Today? I woke up, threw up, and it's been downhill ever since.

I guess there's hope for tomorrow...

Or at least for the second trimester.

Let's Work On This

Tired of feeling like crap all the time, I've decided to get more assertive than ginger and small meals for my all-day sickness. The next two steps in my arsenal? Vitamin B6 and an antacid.

Thinking back, I remember that we prescribed Vitamin B6 and a drug called Unisom back at Iowa for morning sickness all the time, and I was interested to read this article and this one, which quote the head of OB-GYN at UI in recommending it. The dosage the doctor recommends is 75 mg of Vitamin B6 a day, split into three doses. I was able to get 50, 50-mg tablets for $2.99 at Whole Foods (meaning you could probably get more for less just about anywhere else, but that's where we were), so if I split those tablets I should be able to get over a month's worth of dosages out of it--and by that time, I should be almost 12 weeks, and hopefully feeling better.
Apparently, the effectiveness of the B6 is increased by adding the over-the-counter sleep medication called Unisom (which is an antihistamine, much like Benadryl). The combination used to be available in an over-the-counter morning sickness aid called Bendectine, which faced some lawsuits alleging it caused birth defects. According to doctors at UI and Johns Hopkins quoted in the article above, the lawsuits were overturned, and the drug's ingredients are considered safe to be taken together in early pregnancy, though Bendectine is no longer available as such.

At this point, I think I'm going to start with Vitamin B6 and an antacid, and go from there. I'm not opposed to adding the Unisom if my symptoms don't get better, but when it comes to medications--even over-the-counter ones, especially during pregnancy--I like to start low and slow. As for the antacid--a big part of my symptoms involves heartburn, apparently due to the relaxing effects of the hormone progesterone on my esophageal sphincter. I've suffered with heartburn and various gastritises throughout my life as well, including being diagnosed with a weak esophageal sphincter back in my teens, so I'm not at all surprised that it's resurging right now. I've also been on a variety of courses of daily acid-suppressing medications, including Zantac as a teenager and most recently, Aciphex just before we got married last summer. Based on my past experience, it seems like acid production might again be at the core of my stomach problems--they get progressively worse during the day, I get very nauseated by nighttime, and then I wake up in the morning not at all nauseous, but with a lingering achy soreness in my stomach, probably a result of being exposed to so much acid throughout the day and the night.

So what to do? I could pop Tums like crazy, like a lot of pregnant women do, but I feel like that really more treats the symptoms (neutralizing the acid once the problem develops) rather than the problem (shutting off some of the acid production at the source), and since they're calcium-based, can also lead in extreme cases to an electrolyte imbalance. Since I've had really good luck treating my past stomach problems with acid inhibitors, I think I'm going to give that a try. Ranitidine (Zantac) is the one I have on hand right now, and so I'm going to start with that once or twice a day.

There aren't a ton of studies on acid-suppressing drugs during pregnancy, but there are a few, and they appear to be very safe. As I've said before, I think every pregnant woman needs to educate herself about the choices facing her, and make ones she feels she can live with. These are mine.

So That's What That Taste Means

In a fun, ironic twist, not 15 minutes after I wrote the last post, I was complaining of the metallic taste in my mouth and one of Matt's coworkers, who has had two children, said "Oh, I remember that! It always happened right before I would throw up." I demurred, saying that I didn't actually vomit with my "morning" sickness, just felt terribly nauseous. I did ask Matt if we could walk out to the drugstore and get some gum, though, since the taste was getting really sickening even though I'd just brushed my teeth.

We were no sooner on the hotel steps than that familiar, hot-flash, saliva-running-like-a-faucet feeling hit me. I looked around desperately and managed to spot a garbage can across the street. Tearing off my scarf as we walked, I got there just in time to launch an amazing technicolor performance into the trash. A real kaleidescope yawn extraordinaire--I don't know where it all came from. It just kept coming.

Thankfully, I felt better after I did it, but this does represent a whole new low, on several different levels. And that metallic taste? I won't be taking it lightly in the future.

...No, It Can't.

I'm still feeling pretty nauseated, although with the interesting twist that it's now become a sort of inverse morning sickness--one in which I feel fine when I get up, do fairly well at breakfast, eat OK at lunch and then descend into a spiral of nausea that culminates in lying in bed in the fetal position at night, wishing for a swift deliverance.

Another interesting symptom I'm having is an odd, sort of metallic taste in my mouth which apparently isn't uncommon.

And heavy, tender breasts are pretty much a given, but I'm perplexed to note that the advice on the subject seems to be focused on increasing your time spent in a bra--wear a snug bra, wear it longer (like overnight??), wear it more of the time. I've noticed that the only relief I get is at the end of the day, when I take my bra off--so just on a whim, I tried wearing a sweater with nothing but a camisole under it today, and lo and behold, I find myself nearly symptom-free on that front. Which makes intuitive sense to me, even if it does fly in the face of all the advice I can find.

So in other words--I'm hanging in there, but excited for the days ahead when I've got more to show for my gestating than a sour stomach and a pitiful appetite.

Can it be?

I've actually had two relatively nausea-free days in a row! Yesterday was sort of odd in that we got up around 4am and were at the airport by about 5, and just as I was getting out of the cab, I was hit hard--not with nausea, but just the overwhelming bodily urge to throw up. The hard swallowing, the rapid salivation, the hot flashes, the whole nine yards. I kept frantically looking around for a place to do it and finding none suitable. I must have swallowed a gallon of saliva while looking around in a panic. By the time I found a bathroom, though, the urge had passed. And again--this wasn't the intense queasiness I've been feeling for the past week, it was just an urge, like that of a sneeze, to throw up. I didn't, but I came the absolute closest I have yet. But honestly--I'll take a quick and dirty vomiting session over just feeling like I'm going to, all day, day after day.

Other than that, I feel good! I know a lot of women complain of first-trimester tiredness, but I feel more or less like my old self, who has always worked hard, played hard, and slept hard.

And while I'm not showing or anything, and I've only gained 1.5 pounds, I realized while getting dressed for a reception last night that my body nonetheless doesn't have quite the same relationship to a certain fitted pair of black dress pants anymore. So things are definitely shifting, if not visibly yet.

All in all, it's great to be feeling better, and I'm crossing my fingers that it's going to stick. We continue to be very excited about the baby and becoming parents together, and I've thought to myself so many times that I don't know how women do this who don't have a loving, patient, sympathetic partner to pick up the slack when they feel like lying around with their head in the toilet all day. But I do, and I'm so grateful. Thank you, Matt: you're a wonderful husband and you'll be an incredible father.

From There to Here

All day yesterday, I just felt like total and utter dog crap. I was horribly nauseated, my sinuses were stuffed up, I had a bad tension headache, and my body ached all over. After work, I came home with chills and the shakes (though surprisingly, no fever) and fell asleep right after dinner. I felt terrible. I felt like I had the plague.

Then, I woke up this morning and felt FABULOUS. Full of energy, no longer nauseous, body aches gone. That continued all day. I didn't have a ton of appetite for breakfast (of course, at 6am, who does?) but I downed a glass of juice (can I just say that there are no words to say how much I LOVE ORANGE JUICE these days? --though only not from concentrate) and one of milk with no problem. Then at work, I got starving hungry at around 9:50 and bolted down to the cafeteria in a panic before it closed at 10. There was one lonely sausage and egg muffin sitting underneath the heat lamps, just calling my name. The guy in front of me was in the process of asking, "Well, how old is it?" The cafeteria worker shrugged and said "I don't know, it's just kind of dried up and not...fresh." I butted him aside and said "Well, do you want it or not?" He gave me sort of a disgusted look and said "Uh, no." I snatched it up and bought it--with a huge thing of orange juice.

Heaven.

And I've felt awesome all day, despite running my butt off at work for nine hours.

It's given me an appreciation for just how good I actually feel most of the time. Sometimes I look at all that Matt and I do in the name of health, the chemicals we shun and the crazy way we do things, and I wonder if it makes a difference. Now, I'm fairly convinced it does. It took being knocked on my butt for a day to realize that honestly, most of the time I am fairly bursting with energy, and that's something I'm very grateful for.

Now, it remains to be seen whether this is the beginning of an upswing, or just a fluke...

The Nausea Has Landed

I've now progressed from an "odd feeling" to full-on nausea and gagging (though thank goodness, not vomiting) for several hours of every day. Here are some things that have made me gag in the past few days:

-Holding a warm urine specimen at work
-Catching Scratches chewing on a piece of pork fat we'd left out in the kitchen
-Hearing Matt talk about cutting up a deer
-Opening the fridge and seeing...all that...food
-Just talking about some of the more off-putting smells that come up at work

I haven't actually been to work since the nausea has really taken off, so it will be really interesting to see how that goes. We made up a batch of homemade ginger beer and sipping that seems to help somewhat (unless I get a piece of ginger stuck on my tongue, and then all bets are off), but mostly I just have to wait for it to pass. Ick.

One of my other pressing symptoms is a terrible indecision. I'm usually pretty opinionated, and fairly intuitive about my decisions. Not now. Just the decision of something really basic like "What should we do first--this or this?" is enough to make me feel panicked and helpless. Which would be fine, if only my life or my job or, you know, impending parenthood didn't require any kind of decisionmaking.

Then What Is It?

It's kind of like fatigue, but not quite...
Kind of like dizzy, but not exactly...
Kind of like nauseous, but not entirely.

Not that naming it would make the feeling any more comfortable...

The day seems to come in phases:

When I first get up, I feel really good, and often hungry. But when I eat, I feel full after just a few bites.

Mid-morning, between about 9 and 11, I'm pretty energetic and get increasingly hungry and usually eat lunch around 11 or 11:30.

It seems like after lunch, I feel progressively worse for most of the afternoon. Sick, tired, restless.

Dinnertime is kind of hit or miss.

I start to feel better shortly after dinner, which lasts until about 9:00. Then I abruptly start to feel exhausted and nauseous, and usually fall asleep by about 9:30.

If you can see any rhyme or reason to that pattern, bless you, because I certainly can't.

On Second Thought...

I got a piece of apple peel caught in my throat today while I was eating homemade applesauce and I retched so hard I almost threw up. So I think I might peel the apples next time.

Funny Parenting Comics

Disclaimer: Navelgazing Midwife (the page I'm sending you to) has a lovely header graphic (and I do mean graphic) that involves a radiant naked pregnant woman.

That said, here they are.

Pregnancy, Naturally

photo by viewerblur

Let me start by saying that this morning, in typical fashion, we got up and made a batch of banana-walnut pancakes with brown sugar syrup. In not-so-typical fashion, we got really fired up about making a batch of decaf.

I'll admit that Matt and I have always kind of derided decaf coffee as a waste of time, something enjoyed by those who were as likely to appreciate a cup of hot prune juice. Well, pregnancy changes a lot of things.

And while there are sources that say it's OK to enjoy the occasional cup of coffee during pregnancy, there are others that say it's probably not a good idea, and my instincts tell me that at least this early, it's probably best to abstain. So decaf it is, and it was actually very good.

Here's the rundown on what else we're avoiding during pregnancy:

1. BPA. We've talked about it before. Sadly, our shatterproof French press carafe is, you guessed it, plastic #7. Our stovetop espresso maker is aluminum, which may not be much better, so as soon as it's in the budget we'll probably get a glass carafe for the French press. In the meantime, we're sipping very lightly, but there are those times when a Saturday morning just cries out for a hot beverage. We were drinking a lot of chai, which has the benefit of an entire cup of milk per serving, but now I'm running low on spices.

2. Teflon. We've switched entirely to cooking in cast-iron or stainless steel, and while we've had some sticky moments, we've found that tips like preheating the pan and using a liberal amount of butter have allowed us to enjoy (practically) stick-free eggs, pancakes, and everything else.

3. High-fructose corn syrup. I haven't seen research stating this is specifically bad for developing embryos (if it exists, it's probably been suppressed by the AMA anyway!), but it's a nutritional void at best (and therefore displaces healthier foods I could be eating) and a contributor to chronic disease at worst. No thanks. And now that I think about it, it's been linked to diabetes, which contributes to all kinds of problems in pregnancy.

4. Ultrasounds. I'm not planning on one at all--we don't want to know the sex, if there was something "wrong" with the baby it wouldn't change our plans any, and they haven't been proven to be safe in pregnancy. They may even be harmful.

5. Pesticides. The link is to an article from the EU, but my uneducated guess is that they're probably using far FEWER pesticides than we are--they're just more open about it. And according to Maternal, Neonatal, and Women's Health Nursing, over fifty pesticides are known teratogens, and they're suspected to increase the rates of miscarriage, fetal death, and physical malformations such as cleft lip and extra fingers. So we're going organic whenever we can.

6. Cosmetics. A host of chemicals abound in these, but in particular phthalates (how could you trust a word spelled like that anyway?) chemicals found in MOST cosmetics and many soaps and shampoos, have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and the feminization of male fetuses. The only beauty product I still use is Pantene Pro-V shampoo, and I'm trying to wean myself. I use castile soap for everything else, and for moisturizer, I use a couple of drops of jojoba oil mixed with a drop of tea tree oil, and if I do say so myself, my skin has never looked better. And then you know about the deodorant and aluminum and all, but I'll say it again--these days, we're using a 50/50 blend of cornstarch and baking soda with a couple of drops of tea tree oil for its antibacterial and anti-odor properties. And I've been told I smell pretty good.

Typical pregnancy worries we're not really concerned about (and why):

1. Toxoplasmosis. Traditional pregnancy advice was to get rid of your cat; in recent years, that's softened to having someone else change the litterbox, in order to avoid contracting the parasite, which can adversely affect a developing fetus. But being that toxoplasma is ingested through eating infected prey, and our 100% indoor cats subsist entirely on a diet of dry food (supplemented with the occasional cricket), I'm not worried (though I don't argue with Matt when he offers to change the litter, either). (I'm also sort of confused as to why changing the cat litter is associated with "ingesting infected cat feces." I, uh, have never found that to be part of my litterbox-changing routine, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.)

2. Soft-cooked eggs. We know the farmer who provides our eggs and we've met the chickens, and as such we know they're kept in very clean, natural conditions. Hard-cooked eggs (or dry scrambled eggs) make me want to barf, so I'd rather just eat high-quality eggs that are unlikely to be infected with Salmonella.

3. The same goes for unpasteurized milk, cheese, and apple cider. Once again, I believe that if you know your supplier and he/she is following strict, safe practices, you're probably eating safer food than what is put into the general anonymous food supply under the assumption that "pasteurization will kill whatever gets in there anyway." I also believe that these foods have other health benefits that are destroyed by high heat. Yes, there are risks in life, but people have been eating these foods (pregnant or not) for centuries, and it appears they've only been hardier for it. If you want to see a robust bunch of babies and children (and women who don't appear to have any trouble carrying a pregnancy--or two, or ten--to full-term), just look at the Amish.

3. The occasional glass of wine--in my third trimester. For now, we're on the wagon.

4. Counting calories. Conventional wisdom says the average, normal-weight woman should gain 25-35 pounds during pregnancy, but some doctors have considered dropping that down to 15-20. This article has a breakdown of where the extra weight goes during pregnancy, for a total of 25 pounds--but you'll notice it has nothing allotted for a few pounds of fat storage, which your body puts on instinctively to provide calories that can be immediately released for breastfeeding. (It also assumes a 7-8lb baby; I was about 8-1/2 and Matt was close to ten, so I'm not anticipating much less than a nine-pounder.) If you strictly limit your weight in the hopes of avoiding putting on a few pounds of stored energy, your body will divert the resources it should be using toward your baby and your placenta. And I'm convinced this probably has something to do with why so many American women have trouble with their milk supply. I can't tell you how many women I've had deliver their babies, then when I offer them some juice or ginger ale afterwards, ask me if we carry "anything diet." I'm not advocating free-for-all weight gain, but I am saying that the priority in the immediate days postpartum is making enough milk to nourish your baby--NOT slipping back into your high-school jeans! The kicker? Women who follow a restrictive diet are more likely to gain large amounts of weight when pregnant than those who don't. As such, I'm loosely following the Brewer diet (which emphasizes high-protein, high-quality natural foods "to appetite," including a quart of milk and two eggs a day, as a means to give your body and your baby's body the building blocks they need for a healthy pregnancy), eating until I'm satisfied, and avoiding junk food.

On a similar note, Grist has a pretty rational checklist for avoiding toxins in pregnancy, and I was happy to see that most of what we're already doing matches right up with what they recommend, right down to avoiding Teflon pans (though they do still bang the drum against cat litter, and also list as safe a number of the products the Dr Bronner suit has proven to have unhealthy petrochemicals in them). In the end, I think every woman has to educate herself and follow her intuition about what's right for her and her baby--because this video, while inspiring, shows us where you can end up by having blind faith in the medical establishment.

(Stereo)Typical

photo by Zombizi

In what may be my first stereotypical pregnancy craving, I woke up this morning with Chinese food on the brain. Which is funny, because I haven't eaten it in at least a year and it's never been something that drove me wild. I do remember my mom saying she ate a ton of Chinese food when she was pregnant with me, so maybe it's something that was hardwired, waiting for the right time to express itself. Of course, 7am is the exact wrong time to have any hopes of getting your hands on any, so I settled for our regular breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast.

Also, yesterday morning Matt stomped on a cave cricket and squished it, and I gagged so hard I think the neighbors could hear it.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know...

photo by Oberazzi

...how I'm feeling, apparently. It's very kind of everybody to ask. And since I won't be needing this blog for issues of conception prevention anymore, I thought I'd go ahead and use it as sort of a pregnancy diary. That way, as with the birth control issue, those readers of our regular blog who are interested in the minutiae of our reproductive life can tune in, and those who prefer more general fare can stay over at MattnKatie. So consider yourself warned!

How I'm feeling: for the most part, great. In the VERY early weeks of being pregnant (when I didn't know but suspected), my major symptom was feeling incredibly hot all the time. This is unusual for me, because I usually run a little chilly. It makes sense though, because my basal temp was up (and has stayed up--this morning was a record 98.5, when my normal basal was around 97.0).

Then I had the classic--breast tenderness. Hard to differentiate it from premenstrual tenderness at the beginning, but it seems now to have shifted into a more distinct category (though still very tolerable) and also seems to be translating into having... a little more up top than I did previously. I'll take that!

Energy level: Matt and I both noticed that I also seemed to bound out of bed at 5am in a way that was distinctly uncharacteristic. A friend who's been pregnant before asked me, "Do you find yourself waking up really early, feeling all one with the earth and natural?" Yes, I do. Though if I do go back to sleep, I could stay there all day. Throughout the day, my energy level has been great, maybe even a little better than before. Is that hormones or excitement? Hard to tell.

Every so often I'll start to get the smallest twinge of queasiness, but it seems to go away if I eat something. I've beefed up the protein content in my diet (more on that later), and also made it even more of a priority to eat at regular intervals, and I'm praying that morning sickness might just pass me by entirely. Probably wishful thinking, but heading into 5 weeks, I'm cautiously optimistic since I've heard a number of people say they were really sick before that time.

I've been a little bit achy and crampy, but only just noticeably so.

And I peed about once an hour before I got pregnant, so if anything, I'd say that might even be a little less.

For the record, my hunch is saying boy (yes, we've talked about names, and no, we won't be sharing them ahead of time), although I'm notoriously wrong about other women's pregnancies --even more often than the 50/50 statistic would project. Does that mean it's in fact probably a girl, or are my powers of prediction more astute now that it's my own? Either way--we're ALL going to have to wait nine months to find out.

Beyond that, I might be a little quicker to tears than I was before, but we've always had a pretty emotionally open household and so that isn't anything dramatic. My main emotional symptom has been sort of disbelief--especially since I'm feeling pretty good so far, I don't really "feel" pregnant, and so Matt and I are prone to saying to each other "Dude, you know what's weird? We're going to have a baby." I'm sure it will all start to feel a little more real with time.