Feeling Faint

...happened to me today at work, for the second time. Today I was in a training from 9-1, which actually ran until 1:30. Just before that time, I started to feel really crappy, so at least I had the good sense to sit down. Once my vision was almost totally black, I turned to the person next to me (whose face I couldn't make out) and said, "I am feeling really faint and I think maybe I need something to eat." A glass of juice, a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter, and a few minutes later, I was feeling much better.

I've always tended toward low blood sugar and feeling crappy when I don't eat at really regular intervals, and evidently pregnancy has really exaggerated this tendency. I think it was also worsened by the fact that I'd felt myself getting shaky earlier, but the only thing around was a mini-Twix, which I'd hoped would bolster my blood sugar until I could get home and eat lunch (which I usually do around 11, even when I'm at work). I think it probably caused an insulin spike which just made things worse, especially since I've more or less done my best to cut out refined sugar since I've been pregnant, and so it's not something my system was especially used to. Luckily, I was surrounded by maternity nurses at the time, who took great care of me and who didn't seem especially concerned-- the reaction from most people, when I told them, was "Well, duh, you're pregnant, and you waited too long to eat!" Still, there are few things worse than that terrible feeling you get before you're going to faint!

The game plan: drink even more water and eat even more protein, to keep my blood sugar levels steady. I have also always tended toward swelling easily (in heat, in cold, after exercise) and that too seems to be worsened by pregnancy, but I've read it can also be improved by adequate intake of protein, fluids, and salt (so that fluids stay in the cells where they belong, instead of seeping out into the extracellular space). The Natural Pregnancy is a wonderful book by a midwife and herbalist which contains tons of helpful information on nutrition and all kinds of pregnancy topics, and she recommends dandelion tea for help with circulation and swelling (and it's also a great source of all kinds of trace vitamins and minerals).

The extra protein has been a challenge for me because I've never been a voracious meat eater, and it's appealed to me even less since I've been pregnant. I'm just getting to the point where I can eat eggs again, and I drink 2-4 big glasses of milk a day, and try to eat plenty of cheese and nuts. Still, I know I could be doing better--the incident today is a reminder of that. Tomorrow is another day!

Photo update

Approximately 4 weeks, 13 weeks, and 15 weeks

Again

So I got cocky. Most sources will tell you that by the second trimester, morning sickness is nothing more than a bad memory. So, not having learned from previous experiences, I went a day and a half without taking my magic pills and found myself miserably hugging the commode, throwing up so hard it made my eyes and nose stream and my entire body ache. So. Especially since I had a cousin (the only childbearing female in my family in my generation thus far) who suffered from severe hyperemesis during both of her pregnancies, and seem to have a really tendency toward vomiting myself, I guess I'll take my well-meaning husband's advice and just stay on the damn medicine already.

On a more appetizing note--still unable to stomach traditional prenatal or multi-vitamins, I've found a happy substitute in Trader Joe's Gummi Vitamins...

Big Week

It's been a big week for me. Literally. I've really popped out, much to the delighted commentary of everybody I work with. It's fun for Matt and me too, to at last have a tangible, visible symbol of what has occupied so much of our thoughts for the past three and a half months.

It's made me think about some of the women I take care of at work, women and their husbands, who are either terrified of birth or disgusted by it or plain inconvenienced by it, to the point that they want to schedule it in advance so that they can sufficiently numb themselves so as to avoid any connection with the process at all. I'm always surprised, when I ask dads if they want to see the baby's hair, or moms if they want to reach down and touch it, as evidence of progress during the pushing phase of labor, at how many of them look shocked and disgusted and hurriedly refuse. Really? Because this is your baby, whom you'll only give birth to this once--and the only other thing down there is your body, which you'd think one would already be reasonably acquainted with by this time.

It makes me really sad, that people can go through life wanting to cut themselves off from something so completely elemental, yet so completely miraculous and spiritual--not to mention universal--as birth.

For my part, I couldn't be more excited about being pregnant, or more anticipatory about the birth. I know that whatever happens, it will be an experience that draws Matt and me together and changes us as a family like nothing else in the world, and for that I look forward to it.

On a practical side, we have names picked out for a boy and a girl, as well as symbols picked out for each of them. Yes, symbols. Those who remember our wedding may recall that our invitations, programs, and wedding certificate (signed by those at our wedding and hanging now in our living room, with a copy of our vows printed on it) were all embellished with starfish of various sizes, a nod to having gotten married at the beach. We felt like it lent a fun unification to the whole event, and for the same reason I wanted something similar for the baby's birth announcement. The same way I felt vaguely troubled before we settled on names (at least for now), it niggled at me that I didn't know what we'd put on the baby's birth announcement.

I spent some time thinking about it, and now I have one picked out for a boy and a girl, just in case. And I feel much more settled now!

Getting Bigger, Eating Better

I'm 14 weeks now, beginning to have a need for maternity jeans, and still experiencing the occasional unfortunate vomiting episode if I'm even an hour or two late taking my medications. My struggles with my stomach have made it very difficult to follow through on my high hopes of following the Brewer diet--particularly early on, I had to resort to eating whatever didn't make me sick with the thought of it, however strange or nutritionally empty, and half the time it didn't stay down anyway. I've been pretty consistently good about drinking plenty of milk, but eggs--the so-called superfood of pregnancy--largely lost their luster for me. However, this past week, I felt my appetite coming back with a vengeance, but since I was at work, I had to make do with what meager (and greasy) offerings I could find in the hospital cafeteria. Feeling sluggish as a result, I've resolved to approach my eating with fresh conviction now that I'm beginning the second trimester, I should be feeling better soon, and my expanding waistline is a constantly growing reminder that our baby is no longer the size of a piece of punctuation like he/she was in the early days, and is depending on me to meet his/her increasing nutritional needs.

Given that, I'm resolving to eat MORE of the following:

-Leafy greens
-Free-range eggs
-Red/orange fruits and vegetables
-High-protein snacks (like nuts and cheese)
-Whole grains (like bulgur and whole-wheat bread)

Doesn't exactly make for a cheap shopping cart, especially in the middle of January, but priorities are priorities. To that end, I've started making bread again (substituting half or all whole-wheat pastry flour), keeping a bowl of dark salad greens in the fridge (along with a batch of simple balsamic vinaigrette: a 3:1 ratio of olive oil to balsamic vinegar, a dash of salt, a pinch of sugar, a splash of lemon juice, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, and some freshly ground black pepper), and packing myself nuts and cheese as a snack at work.

Since I still can't stomach prenatal vitamins and am instead determined to get my vitamins and minerals from food and herb sources, I've also started drinking Traditional Medicinals Pregnancy Tea. I was originally planning to buy loose herbs and concoct my own pregnancy tea, but since this one contains organic versions of just about every herb recommended for nutritional enhancement during pregnancy (including nettle, alfalfa, fennel, lemon verbena, and red raspberry leaf), and they can be hard to find individually around here, I went ahead and picked up a box. (I got mine at Whole Foods, but it's also available on Amazon at around $4 for 16 bags when you buy 6 boxes at a time, with free shipping.) It has a pleasant spearmint flavor, with a hint of black licorice flavor from the fennel. I like it sweetened with a good amount of honey.

You'd think I would learn

But I never do. Which is why, twelve hours after deciding that at 13 weeks, my nausea and vomiting had probably abated enough to stop taking the Unisom and B6 at night, I found myself violently retching the contents of my stomach into the toilet just before heading off to work this morning.

Guess we'll go ahead and stay on that a little longer, then...

Progress So Far

The picture on the left was taken October 29, when we found out I was pregnant.
The picture on the right was taken yesterday, at almost 13 weeks.