I'm Stuft

End of the 11^th week, and I was pretty darned excited about eating again.

I went grocery shopping to prepare for the week. Normally, it is a rule in our house that if you can’t buy a food anywhere along the outside perimeter of the grocery store, it doesn’t come home because it’s probably not food. The rare exceptions being nuts, popcorn, canned tomatoes, and oatmeal. I pranced around the outside of the store, grabbing fruit and veggies (still no leafy greens, bleah), fresh meats and cheeses, and even eggs. When it was time to go down the canned food aisle to grab tomatoes, there was ne’r a twinge of nerves in my body. Until of course I passed the Chef Boyardee ravioli. I did a double take. What what? Ravioli in a can? I haven’t had that since I was a kid and my mom set a timer for me to finish the ravioli so the entire world wasn’t waiting on me for lunchtime to end. What was I doing passing by these cans for years and years?! It’s ravioli! In a can! Well, we must buy this. I grabbed one can, until I saw it was 4 for $8. Then I grabbed 3 more. I mean, this is lunch for 4 days!

So I wandered along and grabbed my canned tomatoes, at which time I noticed the pickles. Not just any pickles. Pickled sliced the long way. Now, I’m no pickle fan, but pickles sliced the long way looked delicious. We had some pickles sliced into rounds in our refrigerator at home, but these were much better. Pickles slicked the long way...Check.

Hello? Oreos?! I forgot about these! Oreos are the best! And what…what is THIS?! DOUBLE STUFT?? That’s not even spelled right which makes it sounds even more DELICIOUS! I’ll take a package of those, please!

Ramen noodles! Look how inexpensive these are! I could buy 6 for $3! Well, 6 it is! Look at all the flavors! It’s a perverbial rainbow of noodle choices! Where have these been all my life? Ketchup! I forgot about Ketchup! It is good on EVERYTHING! I can put this on chips! And bread! And bacon! Ooo! Bacon!

By the end of my shopping trip, I’d spent about a third the amount that I normally spend on groceries and ended up with a lot that looked like my college dorm pantry. David shook his head instead of scolding me for bringing home not-food. This was a good choice on his part because over the next few weeks, nothing would keep me and Chef Boyardee apart. Nothing.

What is Baby Brain?!

People kept using the term “baby brain” around me.

“Did you get the baby brain yet?”

“You know, that baby brain doesn’t go away when the baby is born.”

What the heck is baby brain? Is this just an excuse mothers use when they forget things?

During my 11^th week, I started feeling pretty happy about food again. I was making late night snacks and eating almost all day long. It wasn’t because I was starving or anything. I was just excited to be hungry for food. So one evening I decided to make some popcorn. We make the stove-top kind. Buy the kernels, put oil in the pan, and shake it all together over heat until it pops. Much healthier than microwave popcorn (and much better tasting, if you ask me). My mom always used to make it that way and when David and I moved in together, he started making it that way, too. It’s a special little thing we do.

While packing for a trip we were taking down to see my family that same evening, I walked out into the living room from the bedroom to a scene out of Backdraft. I shouted an expletive and David, startled, shouted, “WHAT?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!” I replied.

The entire living room was filled with dark brown smoke. I saw both the dogs so I immediately knew not the panic, we were all okay. The house was just burning down. I started hunting for the culprit and after a few seconds I made my way into the kitchen. “Erin, what happened?! What’s going on?” The smoke detectors started screaming at the top of their lungs. “Erin?” The dogs began barking. “Erin, oh geez!”  David opened up every window and door in the house.

That’s right. I mindlessly put 2 tablespoons of oil and 2 tablespoons of corn kernels on the stove to make popcorn and then simply walked away to pack for a trip. Somewhere in my brain, I just sort of assumed the automated kitchen feature I asked for when buying a house had been installed between dinner and late night snack.

“I’m sorry!” I repeated over and over again. Of course, David wasn’t angry, but he wasn’t altogether thrilled. It took about an hour and a half for the smoke to drain out of the main rooms, and another week before the house no longer smelled like burnt popcorn. (And if you’ve never smelled a house that smells like burnt popcorn, you’re really missing out on a special treat.) And, to boot, I ruined a perfectly good pot. It was the oatmeal pot. Now what would we make oatmeal in??

I went to bed that night in my smoke-filled sheets with an empty tummy and hurumphy husband. As I drifted off the sleepland, it suddenly occurred to me...

Oooooh. That’s baby brain.

BIG Changes

One morning in my 10^th week, I woke up, ate a little something, and started working on my computer. Suddenly, I came to a dramatic realization.

I DON’T FEEL SICK!

Could it be over this quickly?! Could I have dodged the “sick until 16 weeks” bullet? It didn’t seem fair after all I had been through that I suddenly feel fine. I almost felt guilty. Maybe REAL moms felt sick longer and I was just getting away with something?

While the nausea was all but gone, other symptoms started creeping in. I’ve never been a girl people thought of as “flat”. It’s not that I’m a Dolly Parton look-a-like, but there were many pictures in college taken by males at BBQs and beach days that somehow didn’t manage to include my head. So when I put on my unmentionables one morning and they NO LONGER FIT, I had a mild panic attack. How big could this baby be that it needs another size’s worth of milk? I walked into the kitchen that morning at breakfast and I think David said something along the lines of, “HOLY CRAP, WOMAN.” I decided it was time to go to Target.

Our 10-week appointment was bittersweet. It was our last appointment before going to a regular OB. The wonderful nurses and doctors began saying their goodbyes almost the moment we walked into the door. Everyone was a little bit teary. I had been at this office once, sometimes twice, sometimes even three times every week for the past 6 months! These people had become like family, helping us to grow our own family.

They gave us the big ultrasound room so that everyone could come in and see how our baby grew.  (You can hear everyone in the room commenting.) We all oooed and ahhhed at the baby’s fingers and toes and crazy little movements. It was one of the best days I can remember.

Before I left, I asked the nurse about that shooting pain I felt in my stomach the week before. This nurse, very southern, shouted, “OOOHWA! YOO MEAN SHOOTERS?” I just looked at her. “Like, shootin’ pains, riiight?”

“Yeah, right in my belly.”

“Yep. Those’re shooters! It’s just yer tendons stretchin’ to fit the baby in there! I had ‘em, too! Totally normal.” Cute name for a horrible, paralyzing pain. 

With questions answered and my last beautiful baby video at the reproductive office recorded, the nurses and doctors (literally) hummed the graduation song as David and I walked down the hall and out of the office. We smiled at each other as me made it almost all the way to the car, before I doubled over in pain.

“Shooter?”

I grimaced. “Yep.” 

Baby's First Snow

So I headed to the airport and hopped on a plane to see my best friend. It just so happened that weekend there was a HUGE snowstorm blowing through that part of the country. Being pregnant, I took the wiggling baby as a sign that I should go as opposed to the weather reports’ warnings not to. It was now my 9^th week, and I was actually starting to feel OK for several hours everyday.

It snowed nearly 12 inches the next day. The snow was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, I couldn’t think about whether or not I was actually going to be able to get on my plane and fly home in a few days without facing certain death via snowbank. I just knew the baby wiggled and I was supposed to be there.

My friend got me a massage with this very hippy dippy, spiritual-type guy. This is right up my alley, so I ate up all of his, “Let your body breathe,” and “Love your baby and your breasts,” comments. After the massage was over, he told me that my baby was very healthy and it was going to be a beautiful pregnancy. You had BETTER believe I called my husband and immediately told him we had nothing to worry about because the hippy dippy massage therapist told me everything was OK. There was just something about him that made me think he knew what he was talking about. Later, I read somewhere that massages so early in pregnancy meant inescapable destruction for the baby. Glad I read it AFTER.

We went out to several lovely meals while I visited. During one, I ate an entire pastrami on rye sandwich. I can’t explain this, because the thought of hot meat has always made me gag. But something about that warm, spiced beef, or pork, or…wait, what IS pastrami? Anyway, I coverd it in mustard and ate the whole thing. At another meal, I drank a huge glass of lemonade, ate only the colorful vegetables out of my salad, and ordered clam linguine. What? Yes, I said clam linguine. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I liked it that night.  The next day it made me want to petition the government to have clams banned from the United States. Liking weird food one day and hating it the next day became a pattern my poor husband got used to.

On the day I was set to leave, I stood up from the couch and felt a pain so incredible in my lower abdomen that I was pretty sure my appendix ruptured or my baby was The Incredible Hulk. I didn’t want to alarm my friend’s husband, so I did the “Ooo!” noise and tried to hide my wincing by “looking out the window”. For a split second, I thought I was in deep trouble. And then, the pain went away. “Oook,” I thought, “Don’t Google this until you get home.” And I didn’t.

SCOREBOARD

Erin: 1

Google: Well, who cares how many points Google has? I have ONE.

Somehow, the snow cleared up for a single day. And that one day? The day I was flying home. Nothing delayed. Nothing cancelled. But the next day the same area of the country was hit so hard the airports actually shut down. Thank you, wiggling baby. Very good advice.

Baby's First Snow

Decisions, Decisions...

Week 8 wasn’t as bad as the others. Either my symptoms were starting to subside, or I was getting used to feeling like a used dishrag.  

My best friend invited me out to her end of the East Coast during my 9^th week. I wasn’t sure about flying, frankly because I Googled it. (I think if you learn nothing else from this blog, it should be to ban Google from your life unless it’s to check your email or map out the quickest route to ice cream.) Can the pressure in the plane squish the baby? Is there some sort of radiation or rays or waves that float around in a plane that cause brain damage? Could the lack of oxygen cause the baby to tug on its umbilical chord in search of that oxygen mask that drops from the ceiling of my uterus? I asked my doctor who told me the only risk was me puking on a fellow passenger. This seemed almost as bad as the squishing and the tugging. I decided to do something I often do when I'm pregnant and I’m not sure what the right choice is: I leave it up to chance. I set up some ridiculous “if…then…” scenario in my brain and decide that then and ONLY then will I agree to fly. This time, I decided that if my baby didn’t wiggle during the next ultrasound, which would be almost 9 weeks, I wasn’t going to see my friend. Of course, this made perfect sense to only me, but during the first trimester there’s really no point in trying to reason with a pregnant woman. Even if you're trying to reason with yourself and you are the pregnant woman in question.

I headed to my ultrasound. You can guess whether or not I decided to go...

After seeing this, David and I walked around the house for the next week doing the "Baby Dance". It's slow, and mostly involves swaying your hips back and forth with a little smile on your face. 

Go With the Flow

End of the 7^th week and the nausea and exhaustion are killing me. It’s like having the flu for weeks with absolutely no medication and no relief. Whoever said that pregnancy is beautiful was a dirty liar.

I was eating whatever tasted good, which was mostly fruit. And have I mentioned the constipation? If somebody’s going to tell you, it might as well be me. Never in my life have I experienced anything like this. And with all of the fruit I was eating, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how this poop was staying in there for DAYS. I read in one of my pregnancy books that constipation could be so bad that women might actually consider utilizing breathing and muscle control techniques that are used during labor. LABOR. For poop. There’s just nothing else to say about it.

Getting up to go to the ultrasounds was the only time I ever set my alarm anymore. And it was pretty worth it every time. But this time, I was a little bummed. We were eight weeks by this ultrasound and we were hoping to see some wiggles. The doctor said a lot of times they move around at eight weeks, and you know that when my baby didn't wiggle, I focused on that and only that for the next week. :) No, not really. I did try to go on with life as usual. However, I will add for all the nurses out there, it might be a good idea to NEVER joke that the baby is in a coma. That makes "life as usual" a little more stubborn.

 

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Around the middle of the 7^th week, David announced he was getting me a cleaning person. If you’re close to me, then you’re aware of my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning people. I’m not one of those people who cleans before the cleaning person comes, so more often than not, they walk in and tell me I don’t do a good enough job caring for my floors or cleaning my stove-top. Hello? I didn’t clean them because I KNEW I WAS PAYING YOU TO COME CLEAN THEM! Why would I hire someone to clean if I’m just going to do it myself?!

Being that I was feeling fairly emotionally unstable, I immediately took this as a personal affront to my cleaning abilities and cried. So, later that day, David decided to explain it differently. “I want to hire someone so that you don’t have to do the cleaning. You’re doing enough everyday just growing our baby. I don’t expect you to CLEAN, too!” He’s very good. So I seceded and allowed him to choose a cleaning person to come over once a week. He told me I could just go upstairs when she arrived and enjoy some quiet time with the dogs.

“Shifty”, we’ll call her, arrived about a half an hour late. She explained that the traffic was just terrible and it took her almost an hour and a half to get to the house. At that hour, about 9:30am, I had already experienced 2 hours of severe nausea and trudged through a shower so that Shifty didn’t think cleaning me was part of the job. So, I did my best to sympathize with her long drive and quickly explained that I would be upstairs with the dogs. “Go!” she said. “Go on up there and relax. Leave it all to me.” So I did. I took an hour-long nap and woke up to watch an episode of Friends while she cleaned.

I finally came down to check on her. She was in my bathroom. I asked her how things were coming.

“Oh fine. Except everything in here is broken.” She pointed to the bathtub, inside of which was the shower head, a wall hook, and a pretty silver stand-up mirror usually positioned next to my sink. “See? It all broke while I was cleaning. Seems like everything in here is falling apart.” Mind you, our house is 5 years old. And the wall hook and mirror didn’t actually come with the house, so I couldn’t imagine that things were just suddenly “falling apart.” Too nauseous from the fumes to care, I told her to leave them there and David would fix them. I should have taken it as a sign from God to send Shifty back where she came from, but my sign-reading skills were glazed over with nausea and general ickiness.

I walked into the kitchen searching for something to eat. I found some macaroni and some ketchup, which I combined in a large bowl and began to carry back upstairs with me. On my way, Shifty asked me, “Oh! By the way! Did you mean to put this table here?” She pointed to the table along the back of our couch. I considered what the hell kind of question this was for a few moments. Did I mean to put it there? No, I dropped it along with a carrot when I came home from the grocery store the other day and just left both of them there in hopes the dogs would eat them.

“Yes, I meant to put it there. Why?”

“Oh! Ok!” Shifty exclaimed. “No problem. I just thought it looked weird and you wouldn’t want it there. It would drive me crazy, personally. Do you care if I move it a little closer to the wall?”

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. I shook my head and continued upstairs.

I ate all my macaroni and went back to sleep for another hour. When I woke up, I prayed that she was finished. I walked about halfway downstairs before a force greater than myself stopped me in my tracks. I could not believe what I was seeing. I stood there, holding onto the handrail for several seconds. Shifty happened to walk by and see me. “Oh hey, Erin! Doesn’t it look better?”

Shifty had completely rearranged my entire living room. She didn’t just move the couch table. She moved the couch table, the coffee table, both the couches, the side table…I’m surprised she didn’t pull the TV off the wall. I was completely stunned that she would have the audacity to rearrange my living room while I was paying her by the HOUR! I wasn’t completely sure how to respond, and honestly I’m pretty sure I just shrugged my shoulders and walked into the kitchen. You can’t make this stuff up.

Shifty followed me. “Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl?” You’re asking me questions about my baby now? You invade my life and insult my decorating and then ask me what I’m HAVING? I was so annoyed with this woman, I didn’t even answer. “Well, I hope you have a boy. I had boys and they’re so much better than girls.” Awesome. Thanks for that opinion. I’m a girl, by the way.

I cleaned up my lunch and walked into my room to go to the bathroom. I made it almost to the bathroom before I did one of those cartoon double takes. I turned around, slowly, and looked back at my room. Shifty shouted from the kitchen. “Oh! I did your room like my son’s room! Great, right?” She had completely rearranged our bedroom as well.

Holding my ears to keep the steam from damaging my hair, I b-lined it to the office in the front of the house and called David.

“Hey babe! How’s Shifty doing? How ya feeling?”

“David, she rearranged our house.”

(pause)

“She what?”

“SHE REARRANGED OUR HOUSE! ALL THE FURNITURE!”

“By herself?”

“YES, BY HERSELF!”

“Why did she do that?”

“WHY DID SHE DO THAT? THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!”

We discussed what Jerry Seinfeld would do in this situation. I decided I was most comfortable just letting her finish and then NEVER INVITING HER BACK.

In the kitchen, Shifty was cleaning up her things. “It’s been 4 hours and that’s my limit. I didn’t get to the mirrors or the windows because there were other things that obviously needed my attention a lot more! I’ll do them next time.” Continuing to insult me after you rearrange most of my house. Certainly there will be a next time because I can still find my SILVERWARE.