For more accurate results, stay tuned next week, where I'll be answering the questions..."What color should I start buying?" and "Are there twins in there, because I'm fat enough!" and "It's really a baby and not a food sucking alien liquefying my brain cells, right?" Ultrasound finally will happen at 20 weeks. Yay!
For now I'm dealing with the ever-surprising depth of my hunger....and diminishing brain power. I am finally gaining weight after a pretty light first trimester, and boy is it on. I am ravenous. Mostly for sweet things. I read that women crave carb-rich sugar laden foods as a protection mechanism to keep them from eating bitter, poisonous, bad for you leaves and twigs back in the caveman days. So I'm going with that story. I made the mistake of buying Apple Jacks in addition to my supply of High Fiber Flax Seed Bran Flakes with Wheat Germ. Guess which one I pick when my howling stomach wakes me up? Three bowls deep this morning and I finally had to reign in the beast. I'm not proud. (But I'm pregnant so it's ok! See below.) Suppose I need to cultivate my choices more carefully.
I'm not eating too terribly though. I have not allowed myself to cave to a daily ice cream fix or even too many holiday cookies with the frosting, or the fudge or peanut brittle that I love so much or .... all the visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. And I actually have made peace with vegetables again, although broccoli, once my most steadfast ally, will not yet surrender. But in spite of the salads and fruit, my body is holding on the every last calorie. It's just shocking to gain 5 pounds in a week, no matter how you slice it. Blame it on my fat baby...but still it's incredible.
Good news is I feel pretty darn good. That first trimester, man oh man. That's enough to make you swear off going through these shenanigans again. Fortunately it ends - isn't it amazing how God plans that? This whole thing is quite surreal actually. I know that this whole pregnancy thing is not some grand secret biological Davinci-like code that I alone have unlocked. But when it happens to you for the first time, you stand in awe (shock? I was looking in the mirror at my naked body at the time) of all the incredible, miraculous inner workings that perfectly synchronize to make a baby. It's almost impossible to wrap your brain around it. Though if I could wrap my mouth around it, I'd probably eat it.
Speaking of my body doing incredible things, there have been several adjustments to being the physical host to another person that I've had to get used to. Top of the list is the strange way my bladder has taken on a life of its own. It's not controlled by me anymore, is my point. I was sitting here a minute ago laughing at an article on Christmas Toys That Suck and, well, I peed my pants - and more than a little bit. And on my last trip to Phoenix, after several nights of rough sleep, I finally fell into this blissful respite with the only unfortunate side effect being that I did not wake myself up (during one of those "pee dreams" where in your head you're already on the toilet) to go to the bathroom and instead, did a full-on bladder release on the new mattress.
What's even crazier is that I'm not embarrassed to tell you that! If I have to deal with this kind of nonsense on one side, what's great is on the other side I get to blame everything I do on being pregnant and it's all ok. I pee on everything! And you all (women especially) nod and say, yup, I know, but you're pregnant, honey. I put the milk away in the cabinet and found the toilet paper in the fridge! And everyone chuckles knowingly. I act like a crazy person nearly all of the time! And in unison we all accept that its just the way things go when a little person inside you is siphoning off your brain cells to use them as her own. I love it!
Although one very unpleasant brain-loss episode happened recently that still has me reeling. You might have heard that I had an accident with Coco at the Chicago airport on a layover to Philadelphia. The gist is that I let her walk on the escalator and did not have the wherewithal to pick her up. Seriously, duh. I often can't time the fricking disembarkment right and end up tripping over my own stupidity, so what makes me think my dog can do this? You can see where this is going. In the chaos of the moment of ripping her lodged paw out of the moving escalator before it was swallowed into the abyss, I nailed my head on something -who knows what - knocking myself off balance and ending us both up in a heaping, whimpering, bloody mess on the airport floor. A bandaged, toe-less foot (on Coco) and black eye (on me) later, we finally boarded our aircraft four hours after the fact. Coco had drugs to settle her down. I had to spend the rest of the flight drowning slowly in watery guilt without the aid of chemicals. This was two weeks ago and I'm not even close to getting over it. It's been exhausting trying to keep my head afloat above the waves of remorse for so long.
The whole turbulent event has left me questioning my ability to parent. Honestly - if I can't even keep my dog out of trouble, how am I supposed to do this with a kid? And the guilt, my god it's oppressive. When an accident happens, how do you forgive yourself? What am I gonna do at the first banged head or - heaven-forbid - broken bone? It's so scary out there and my job is to protect those that depend on me for their safety, and I failed the test. I almost wish I could rewind back. Ha ha, oops, thought I was ready for this but I'm not! Better luck with someone else!
But there's no going back. I'm in this, and have to go through with it. And I suppose all I can do is my best, and leave the rest up to fate. I will learn from these lessons placed in my path. I will learn slowly, eventually, how to let go too, I guess. I know that there's a plan in all this chaos, here somewhere waiting for me to discover it.
Wonder if there's a cookie in there too...?
I have never heard of Crystal Draino before, but now if anyone asks, I'll tell them the one scenario I know of and that it was not correct.
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