08.16.04

(Non-pregnancy stuff at the bottom)

Well, we�re back from traveling--again--and I am sitting here at work totally exhausted. It was a fun trip, though. Telling my dad was the best. I also discovered that I have a terrible poker face. We were planning on telling everyone at the same time Saturday night, but when I saw my brother and his wife on Saturday morning, the first words out of his mouth were, �Are you pregnant?�. I think my clever response was something like, �Wha�well�um��. Ha.

He was excited for us and really looking forward to becoming an uncle. He told his wife that they need to hurry up and get busy so that we can both have little ones at the same time so they can be buddies. Actually, I think his exact words were, �Yeah, we can stick them together in a playpen and make them fight! I�ll bet mine would totally win.� Yes, my family has a sick sense of humor, why do you ask?

Fortunately he was able to keep his mouth shut around the rest of the family until that night. We had a bunch of pictures from the family Lake Powell trip that we had just developed and slipped one of our ultrasound pics into the mix. Then we had my dad go through them at dinner. It was so funny when he came to it in the stack. He stared at it for a minute with this extremely confused look on his face, then he smiled as we all started laughing. Aw. He is so excited to be a Grandpa. He was positively beaming.

As far as everything else, I�ve been feeling okay; not great, but not as bad as I could be, I guess. Still no throwing up, just constant queasiness. Food is my enemy. I hate it. It is so strange because I�m definitely a big eater for fun and entertainment, but nothing ever sounds good to me. I�ve been trying to get to the gym, but it�s been tough with all the trips we�ve been taking. Then there is my general anxiety issues.

First up is the fact that being pregnant has kind of brought back a few of the symptoms I had when I was having panic attacks; namely heart palpitations and shortness of breath. I pretty much expected this (those symptoms are so sensitive to hormonal changes), but it still makes me nervous sometimes. My biggest fear is that I will get a blood clot in my leg. This may sound silly, but it has been a genuine fear for a while now due to the following.

(This is a very sad story, sorry.) About a year ago, my parents called with some terrible news about a very good friend of mine from high school. She was about 8 months pregnant with her first and had just had a huge family baby shower the week before. She was happy, everyone else was happy for her. A few weeks later, she was at home but feeling dizzy. By the time they got her to the hospital, she couldn�t even hold her head up. She had a blood clot in her leg that traveled up to her brain. She lapsed into a coma and died that night. They were able to save the baby, but still, what an awful, awful tragedy.

Enter my weird anxiety and fixation on blood clots. I realize the chances of something similar happening to me are so ridiculously slim (well, I think the actual statistic is 1 pregnancy in 2000, which is still a little too close for comfort for me), but I still worry. I definitely need to ask the doctor to reassure me on my next visit.

Second on the list of pregnancy worries is, of course, miscarriage. I haven�t been too bothered by the possibility, but then something happened this morning. Well, actually, the thoughts started yesterday when I woke up a) not feeling as sick as I have been feeling, and b) when I realized that I only had to get up once to go to the bathroom. I didn�t worry too much about it until last night. I woke up around 3:30 and went to the bathroom. I once again noted that it was the only time I had had to get up that night. Then I noticed when I got back into bed that, hey, my boobs don�t hurt at all when I lay on my stomach. That was when I really started to get nervous. One of the earliest signs of miscarriage is loss of pregnancy symptoms. I lay there in bed worrying so much that I couldn�t get back to sleep.

Finally, I gave up and got up around 4:15. I didn�t feel any nausea. I was really convinced at this point that I was going to lose this baby. I even cried about it on my way to work (about an hour earlier than usual due to the inability to sleep).

So there I am at work, exhausted, anxious, upset. Fortunately, when I went to my favorite pregnancy forum, there was a post about losing pregnancy symptoms. A nurse there had posted in response to concerns that often times pregnancy symptoms will diminish around weeks 8 or 9 when the placenta begins to form and take over for the hormones. Since I�m not spotting or cramping, I�m going to go with that theory to stay sane. Other than that, there�s nothing else I can do.

Ooo, and I think the queasiness just came back. I never thought I�d be glad to feel so crappy.

Anyway, this is all extremely not interesting, but there you go.

:::

In other non-pregnancy news, J just got his number for residency assignments next year (four 3-month rotations). We were all set to try and get the first two here (so we don�t have to move) and then the second two closer to my family, but then we heard that they were opening up a residency site in Germany. Now, how cool would that be? 3 months living in Europe? I would LOVE it. And it would be the only opportunity to do something like that. I had it all planned out--we'd do a different country two weekends at a time--we'd become so one with the experience that when we got back we'd be mistaken for Euro-trash! Yay!