Pregnancy Timeline

As of today I have a month left of being pregnant. It's crazy, I can't believe how fast it goes. Realistically, it probably wouldn't have gone so fast if I could remember anything from the first 5 months. . . Next week I am officially "full term" and can have her any time. I hear that this is the month I won't gain weight, but I will grow like mad! We'll see if my skin can handle it.I haven't posted everything as this pregnancy has gone on because I didn't want the whole blog to be about my pregnant life. So now I will post pictures and tell about the pregnancy. Here is a look at my growing and shrinking act as a preggo. No one acts like I might not be pregnant anymore so I feel like I have arrived in the preggo club.

I am going to post pictures but first I am going to tell you that Ben likes to take pictures of me when I look HORRIBLE!!!!!!! Now this has been a problem our whole marriage but it's much much worse since I got pregnant. Whatever I am doing, he waits until it the WORST time to take a picture and then does. If I am holding a baby for 3 hours happy and content, Ben waits until the baby is making one cranky face with me holding them and takes a picture. He takes them when I first wake up, he takes them right after I have thrown up. I mean HONESTLY!!!!! Now he is on a kick of whenever I am putting food into my mouth he takes a picture. Like anyone wants to see a picture of me eating. . . six hundred times. It's infuriating and I told him he is not allowed to use the camera anymore because I'm not keeping pictures like that and it's a waste of time. In his defense there are some things that I eat being pregnant that I would NEVER eat and he likes to document that I liked these things. I'm sure there will be stories about them later that are embellished (when he tells stories that aren't true about me I say "that isn't even the real story" and he will say "no, but it's better") So take things with a grain of salt. Like when he says that I am on the ice-cream-every-night-diet or three times a day diet. . . We have purchased ice cream from Costco one time this entire pregnancy. It comes with 2 quarts of ice cream (possibly even less because of new packaging) and one of them we shared with friends on Ben's birthday and the other still sits in the freezer. I have eaten ice cream other than from those cartons 3 times this pregnancy, gelato 5 times and custard 2 times. . . in 9 months I hardly see how that is everyday, but in Ben's story it is everyday. We need to divert that creative energy into writing books.

Here we go. . .




JANUARY

Pregnant. . . but didn't know it yet. Feeling good but have given up on getting pregnant after 6 months of trying. Apparently giving up is not always a bad thing.
FEBRUARY

The day we found out (Valentines Day) Week 5. It starts with the food pictures. Incidentally this is the last time I can eat sugar or smell sugar or think about sugar for 15 more weeks. It was my worst food aversion. I could handle vinegar or tar before so much as the smell of sugar. I knew I was pregnant because for a week people had been asking if I was. I was SO hungry, eating twice as much as Ben at every meal, wanting specific things RIGHT NOW, and getting a bit nauseous if I didn't eat. By the time I took the test I knew something was up. I would have been dumbfounded if it came out negative. Of course I started craving sushi, which you can't have when you are pregnant. I eat the veggie rolls with crazy amounts of ginger on them and start the countdown to when I can eat the real thing again. I also start to wonder if the real craving is for the sushi or the ginger.


MARCH
Week 9: 1 week after being in the hospital for dehydration. I had three bags of fluids put into me through an IV (including one bag of sugar fluid because I was depleted of it from the aversion), and had my first experience with Zofran (anti-nausea medication that they use for cancer patients and preggos with hypermesis gravidarum or severe sickness with dehydration and weight loss). The nurse put a shot of it into my IV and I thought she was the most wonderful person in the world. I got to eat dinner that night, it was so wonderful. I realized in North Carolina being with 2 other preggos who were further along than me that this too would have to end. They could eat and they weren't sick anymore so I would have to get there someday too. It was a much needed vacation. Also fulfilled my craving for crab, yummy. Ginger is now out, in any form. Instead of settling my stomach it started coming back and it's MEAN and painful, especially when it's in carbonation.

Between weeks 9 and 15 I saw Ben for about an hour each day. He got home at 6:00 or 6:30, he would find food that didn't make the house smell for us to eat and I would fall asleep on the couch by 7:30. He carried me into bed every night for a couple of months, it was so sweet. I craved fruits and vegetables and if I didn't eat the one I was craving, everything else I ate tasted wrong until then. Grapes tasted like leaves, cheese tasted like wax gum, pretzels tasted like chewing on salt cubes. I loved carrots and would wake up in the middle of the night to eat them at least twice a week. Not the baby carrots, the huge ones straight from the ground. We got a bag of them from Costco. Ben started calling me Bugs Bunny. My fingers were stained orange for probably a month. I also could go through a gallon of milk by myself in a week, easy. I was not a milk drinker before getting pregnant. Maybe 24ozs a month if I had it with cookies.


APRIL
Week 15: By this point I was supposed to be feeling better, I wasn't, but I had decided I was done letting myself be sick. With my Zofran in tow at all times I went back to life as usual and stopped waiting for the magical day. I even stayed up until 9:30 one night! At this point I have started eating mushrooms, tomatoes, bananas by the bunch, all things that I do not like in normal life but had decided sound really really good in pregnancy. I still couldn't handle junk food. I ate Doritos once because they sounded good but I threw them up an hour later. I didn't have many long lasting repetitive cravings, I just had to have whatever the food I was thinking of at the moment right at that moment, no lead time. Also I had started sucking on Pink Starbursts to get the acid taste out of my mouth. Only the pink ones. Later I could eat the other ones too. Somehow those didn't trigger the sugar sickness. Sour things were my favorite too.

MAY
Week 16: Ben thought this was a crazy pregnant craving but in my defense I really really like pickles. I have always liked pickles and my mom craved them when she was pregnant with me. I actually eat them less while pregnant because they are not a big craving. And cheese and mustard are always winners. About this time I had eaten really dark, bitter chocolate and thought it was good. Chocolate is another thing I am not interested in when not pregnant.



Week 18: This was the hardest week of my pregnancy. By this point white rice was out, crackers, dried fruit, soda of any kind, spaghetti sauce, all noodles, anything sweet including juices, toast, apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, all out, the B.R.A.T. diet for sick stomachs, worthless. They all made me sick, and then I got to this week. I was sicker than sick and not even the Zofran could keep food in me. I threw up 4 times in 30 minutes a couple times a day more than half of that week. I couldn't think of anything on the planet that wouldn't make me sick. Unfortunately our anniversary was in this week. Fortunately I kept all food down that day.
Week 19: evidence of week 18. I didn't eat in week 19 because I thought I might die if I was sick one more time. This was a week of the super sour lemonade Jamba Juice, ice water with a good tablespoon of lemon in it, and probably two pieces of bread, oh and the horrible Pedialite I had to drink to keep from going back to the emergency room. Cold and sour were all I could handle. I just slept and worked until we left for Utah. I didn't need a bella band this week, my clothes fit again.


JUNE
Week 20: I started eating this week, and liking it. This was also the first week I didn't throw up without the Zofran in my system continually. (I had given up on it since it didn't work in week 18) It was a milestone! This was also my last week of work, fabulous. Our little baby kicks a lot and she knows her daddy. She responds to his touch more than she does to anyone else. She also kicks when she hears his voice when he gets home from work. For months she will rub up against his hands wherever he puts them. I don't know how she knows it's him but we try it with different people and no matter what order we go in, she only finds Dad.

Week 22: Started really getting into this pregnancy thing just in time to start my 6th month of it. Lots of baby movement and kicking, didn't have to work anymore, had people coming into town and friends having babies, could stay awake until 10:30! It was great. Everyone says the second trimester is the best. I say, third trimester takes the cake.


JULY
Week 26: This was when Petunia learned that she didn't have to stay on the inside of my hip bone all of the time so she pushed her head and back straight out toward my belly button. It was funny, I had a really high straight out oval belly for like 3 days. This was also about the time we decided to start calling her Petunia so that people would stop asking us her name which we still do not know and won't until we see her face. I had another random sick week in here but it was way mild in comparison. I would be fine and then just out of the blue need to throw up and then I was fine again. My friends were sweet about it and told me I was a pretty puker so it was okay that all the people around us were staring at me instead of the band playing in preparation for the fireworks.
Week 29: Feeling great and eating and walking like mad. All food is back in and the new addition is meat. I ate ribs, and loved it. This doesn't happen. Roast Beef for dinner, pulled pork, ham, bacon, all of the things I would never eat and never be able to digest before. Still loving tomatoes in or on anything and everything. Petunia learns about spicy food. I was afraid to eat it for so long because I didn't want it to come back but I felt safe by this point. Nachos with jalapenos, salsa with habenero pepper, she didn't mind any of them. Also at this point Pepsi is my favorite thing and I have let myself have it two times before the picture (and two times after) It has to be fountain Pepsi from either Billy Goats Tavern on Navy Pier or Wrigley Field though, otherwise it's not even enticing.


AUGUST
Week 33: I drink apple juice ladies and gentlemen. Also I made steak and mushrooms for dinner, and at them, and loved them. Ben thinks I'm getting weirder and weirder by the minute. I have started gaining weight like a madwoman. Instead of 1/2 pound a week I gained 2 pounds a week for weeks 29-31! It was quite frightening. Also as soon as we moved to the suburbs, literally 5 days after, I am having pain in my right calf. I think it's from the horrible leg cramp I got in the middle of the night but after 3 days I ask my doctors office about it and they go berzerk. I have to drive in to the city because they think I have a blood clot. I picked up Ben from work and we made the drive really really worried. After hours at Northwestern and ultrasound scans on every inch of every major vein in both legs (that takes a really long time), they were satisfied that I did not have a clot and I was cleared to fly to Utah for my baby shower. New doctors orders, I am benched for 3 days (that didn't work well since day 3 was my cousin's bridal shower that I was part in charge of) and a new lifting weight limit- 10 pounds. Lame, everything weighs more than 10 pounds. from this point on you see my husband carrying groceries, paint cans, even my purse on many occasions while I carry things like paper, empty bags, phones and keys.In my defense though they told me I had to keep the lifting weight to 25 pounds after trimester 2. No one specified how many things that were 25 pounds you could lift in a row or for how many days straight you could do it. Apparently putting "heavy" things away in your new house for 5 days causes muscles to swell and legs to cramp. . . who knew?


SEPTEMBER
Week 34: I still eat apples too. I have something behind my back so my belly looks extra huge but after a large jump in weight again (6 pounds in 3 weeks!) I finally hit 22 pounds for the pregnancy (not from my starting point but from my lowest point. 12 pounds from starting point) which my doctors love and I. . . am getting frightened that I hit that with a over a month to go. This is the day Petunia finally flipped! It was a painful process but her head is down. Whether or not it's in the right place I don't know, but it's below my belly button and it was not an easy transition to get there so I don't think she will be coming back up any time soon. She moves like crazy!!! So much so that I don't even do my silly kick counts anymore because she was supposed to kick at least 10 times in 10 hours and the longest it took her was like 45 minutes. She shapes my stomach all the time. A shoulder will poke out, a whole foot, her head will bulge out of the corner, it's hilarious. She is getting much more crowded so she doesn't kick wherever you put your hand anymore, you have to go to where she is and then she will kick you or punch you.

Week 35: I am ballooning in my mind but still smaller than most other preggos around me so it can't be all that bad.

Proof that I can still see a little bit of my toes :)So now the weight gain slows and possibly even dips but the wait game starts. We are waiting on furniture for the nursery and for a baby to put in it. As I sit here our little one is doing what I can only imagine is the Cha-Cha. My stomach is moving back and forth back and forth as she "dances". I am so anxious to see her face and see how much of what we think about her is true, like that she is a spunky little thing, and a mover and a shaker, and a Daddy's girl. Plus the question everyone has been asking, how big can this little girl be in only that much space? This ties in to the question about whether she will get her dad's planet head and high birth weight-8lbs 9 ozs and 23 inches (love you Ben), or her mom's normal size head and very small birth weight-6lbs 6ozs and 18 inches. Also whether she will be early like Mom (3 1/2 weeks) and Dad (2 weeks), or wait it out until the due date that is so arbitrary? (my due date was October 16th, then they said the 18th but the 16th will work, then she measured 4 days ahead of schedule but I don't know which schedule so either that would make it October 14th or the12th, but again October 16th works because it's already in the computer system as such, so we just stick with that). All I know is I have a baby inside of me and sometime between the 21st of September and the 23rd of October she can come out safely.