Every day I feel changes. My mood changes. My emotions change. Some days I am elated. Other days I am ornery. Today I got really scared.
Did you know an infant can urinate up to 18 times a day and poop up to 8 times a day!?!
AND THAT IS A NORMAL DAY!
On top of that I was sick for the past two weeks. Right now I have the immunity of a 3-year old who just licked every chair in preschool. Everyone tells me this is totally normal in pregnancy. My cousin, 24 weeks pregnant, told me that she has been sick several times. When I asked her what she took to treat it, she gave me what has to be the typical everywomanwhoispregnant answer: I just suffered through it. I swear you become this machine of suffer. Sure, running over 2 hours used to be my suffer (WHY do people like to run that long!?!) but suffering through sickness with no medicine (specifically, no Nyquil) – that, my friends, is true suffering.
What about suffering through every day? All of my defenses for survival of daily life have been stripped away:
No coffee
No sushi
No hot tubs
No Advil
No wine
How I survive every day? Beyond me. But I believe it is because of something very little. And right now growing rapidly and about 4 inches in my uterus.
Back to my sickness. This was a full blown angry cold that finally ended in a Z-pack and a 5-day headache that only responded to only cure that I’ve ever believed in:
Coffee
Yes, I drank my first cup of real coffee in nearly 15 weeks on Saturday. It tasted good and for the rest of the day I was wired on all sorts of pent up energy. I can’t say that I will be going back to coffee any time soon because I never wake up craving it any more. This has been a huge lifestyle change. Sometimes I am sitting at the kitchen table working and my hand reaches for a phantom mug of piping hot brown liquid goodness and it is not there. I know you can drink coffee in pregnancy, the problem is I don’t want it. It doesn’t taste right. And decaf? Ditto. I can get by on decaf but it’s like the difference between white and red wine. You drink red wine because you love wine. You drink white wine because you are at a cheap wedding and that is all they are serving. From a box.
Everything also tastes salty and metallic. Pregnancy changes your taste buds. Don’t believe me? I cannot stomach peanut butter and do not crave ice cream. I know, sacrilege. A few months ago if you have told me I had to live off of coffee, ice cream and peanut butter for the rest of my life I would have said amen. Now, all three of those have no interest to me.
The only thing I do crave is meat. Lots of it. Steak, veal, lamb. Bacon.
Seriously – bacon?
BACON!
Speaking of changes, I realized that I have gone through an entire trimester without posting any belly pictures. The one thing several women said to me was to take pictures of my belly – often – because you will love to look back at them. I thought about taking them every week but it wasn’t really until week 14 that I realized my belly looked different. “Different” doesn’t really hit home until you see yourself in a picture.
This is my first belly picture in my 15th week of pregnancy.
I was running and realized that if I was ever going to take a belly picture, this would be the only type I would settle for – a picture of me being me. A belly picture in action. I have to confess that I asked Chris to do two things while I was running: take a picture of me and take some video. I wanted video so I could watch my run form and make sure I wasn’t getting all flat footed and shuffly at the pregnancy pace. I realize that makes me sound crazy. I never said I wasn’t crazy. Just pregnant. That is all I am admitting to.
Check out who else is in this photo. That’s right. Boss. You know how dog people say that dogs have a sixth sense? Like they know something is up with you? I am telling you, Boss knows there is something up with me. He sits guard by the treadmill for the entire time. This is a change because he has never done this before. It’s like he has access to some secret panic switch in case I fall. I’m not saying he’s gifted because I’ve already said that before. I’m just saying that my 10.2 lb (winter weight) chihuahua is not only utterly adorable and cute beyond words but also looking out for me.
Things change. My fat pants are getting tight. Every girl has a pair of fat pants. No, not pajama pants – those are what I call my work uniform because I sit around in them all day. Fat pants are that pair of jeans you reserve for days when you are feeling really fat and you put the jeans on and they end up falling off of you because they are so big and you’re like – see, I’m not fat, I’m still skinny after all. The fat pants are now tight. I might have to buy new pants but then I heard about this thing called the bella band which is like cheating with your fat pants, making them extendable fatter pants. Even fatter fat pants is what I will call my pants + bella band.
One of the hardest changes in pregnancy is the complete unpredictability of your energy levels. Some days you wake up feeling like you could sleep all day. Other days you wake up on 3 hours of continuous sleep and feel like you could climb a mountain. This is frustrating because as an athlete we are so tuned into our body and realize the rhythm of our energy levels. Day after hard workout —> lousy swim and insatiable hunger. It is like some days I am stuck in a loop of post-hard workouts even though my heart rate hasn’t left zone 1 in weeks. That is the rhythm of pregnancy.
As far as workouts go, I had a great run today, and lasted 60 minutes on the treadmill. That is a long run for me right now. I realize I was completely fueled by coffee and that is ok. Tomorrow I will probably crash and need 3 naps. I was also up all night with a headache. The strange thing about being pregnant is that you can be awake on and off all night but wake up the next day feeling ok. Any other time you do this, you feel like the walking dead all day. In pregnancy it is like you are meant to come alive at night. I think the body is smarter than we think. It prepares you for all those nightly wakenings and feedings by disrupting your sleep for 40 weeks. I cannot remember the last time I slept through an entire night without waking up for something.
Especially dreams.
For awhile I was calling them progesterone dreams because they were especially bizarre and vivid while I was still on the progesterone shots. There is something crazy about dreams in pregnancy. I am not typically a dreamer. I used to go to bed and wake up 8 hours later. Whatever happened in between then, I didn’t know because I was asleep. Now, I think I am waking up so frequently that I keep catching myself in the middle of dreams. Last night I caught myself dreaming about Bobby Flay. True story (about the dream), we were in a hotel talking about swimming when I asked Bobby if he was ready to throwdown. Throwdown what I have no idea but I was totally ready for it.
This just in: I ate pizza tonight. I believe some time last year I made the shocking announcement that I was the anti-pizza. But lately, pizza sounds really good. Vegetables do not. I had one piece of pizza tonight along with salad. I took three bites of salad, ate my pizza then ate half of Chris’ pizza slice. When I offered him the piece back, it was torn into a rhomboid-like shape and missing half the crust. He just shook his head. I just pulled the pregnancy card.
I’ll tell you one more thing that has changed. I have started watching more television and it’s not good. I am shamelessly addicted to the E channel. Chris told me that channels like this actually make you dumber. Too bad I didn’t hear him because I was too wrapped up in the Kardashians.
You definitely do not see the changes day to day. But every Monday I step back and realize that I am that much more pregnant than the week before. Whether it is my changing side profile, the thickening of my waist or watching as another month comes to a close…changes are the theme of all of this. And in the next 6 months, there are many more to come.
