After few months of trying, aiming to be due at the end of the school year, we found out I was pregnant in September. Hooray! The first baby! While three months of trying isn't too long (they say the average 25 year old couple takes 6 months), it sure feels long when you have to wait those few weeks to see if you are pregnant! I'm sure someone out there knows how this feels too. Anyway, I am due in May, and since I'm a teacher, I will probably take leave in May and then will be happy to be off in the summer for the baby's first few months.
It wasn't too hard to figure out some of the side affects of pregnancy. The most difficult one for me is being SO TIRED ALL THE TIME!! The first few weeks of school I was wondering why it was taking me so long to get back in the swing of things, but once we confirmed the pregnancy, it made a little more sense. Being tired has been tough for me, because normally I am such a high-energy person... go, go, go all the time. I have had to release myself from some of the guilt of letting a few chores go undone (the dishes aren't getting done until we run out of silverware), and also taking naps nearly every day when I get home from work (who needs melatonin? my head's practically dropping over my plate at dinner). I've also backed out of a few commitments at church, though we still have small group to lead and Sunday school to teacher twice a month.
If you remember, I ran the half-marathon in September, when I was about 7 weeks pregnant. I bet it would have felt different if I wasn't. But I'm still super glad that I did it, and I thought it was funny when my dad said he had no clue. (Does that mean I'm good at hiding things?) Now, I have scaled back quite a bit, though I am still running 2-3 miles, three times a week. It is healthy to do this! And I'm going to keep it up as long as possible.
Besides being tired, I've also had some food aversions, like sitting down to eat dinner and suddenly not wanting to eat it. Not a particular food, just that it doesn't sound good. Sadly, sometimes nothing really sounds good. I've had some skin issues too, which are not cool and make me feel like I'm still a pimply high schooler. No fun!! Oh, and the mood swings. Poor Justin. I've definitely had a few sobbing bouts...
I've found that I really have to eat throughout the day, breaking my three meals down with a few snacks so that I'm eating something every 3 hours or so. I probably add and extra 200 calories in healthy snacks (fruit, veggies, cheese sticks, peanut butter). This seems to help with moods and energy. I'm happy that I haven't gained any weight yet, which is normal too. I'm guessing when I get into December or so, I will start to see a few more pounds add on. I have to admit though, this is one aspect that freaks me out. I have always had to really try to eat right and exercise to maintain my weight, unlike my siblings, who seem to eat anything and not really exercise and keep this super fast metabolism. So anyways, since I'm being honest about everything else, I figured I would write about that too.
Another area was when we would tell everyone. Of course we were excited, but once you announce it's like baby mayhem. People ask you tons of questions, and while it's fun to answer, it's the same questions over and over. So I broke it to a close friend first, so I could complain about some of the first trimester symptoms. A few weeks later, after the 10 week ultrasound, we told family. After that, I started telling at school and on Facebook. Common wisdom says to wait until the first 10 weeks are over, since that's the highest risk of miscarriage, so that's what we did. The downside is that I couldn't complain about anything, because no one knew. While my husband is a good listener, I still think another woman can sympathize more in this area. We used some of the pictures below to send to family, taken on the self-timer on my camera. (Everyone always asked about the baby swing, even though it just came with the house, so we thought this could be cute to announce the news).
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