According to Plan

This post was written back in the first week of February 2014:


Sometimes I wish I could join in with all the people who share their stories about how their lives didn't go at all according to plan. They're always exciting tales full of interesting and unexpected turns. But either I'm one of the most boring people alive or I quickly forget there was ever a time that I wanted something different. I'm not sure which it is, but my life doesn't have many plot twists.

All  that is to say: a year ago, Skylar and I decided we would start trying for a baby in the fall of 2013. When I peed on that stick on October 18, I was looking pretty hard for a line. I couldn't be sure if I just wanted to see one or if there really was the teeniest shadow of a line, so I peed on one the next day. And the next. And the next. That line got brighter and brighter each time I went for another stick until finally there was absolutely no doubt about it: these sticks were telling me there was a baby coming.

Being the realist that I am, I planned for a very difficult first trimester. My mom and one of my sisters were incredibly sick the first few months (if not the whole pregnancy) and my other sister had bad acid reflux and migraines while pregnant. I stocked up on crackers and ginger ale and every time there even a hint of queasiness, I downed those things. By 7 weeks I was sure I was going to hit the morning sickness wall and live hovered over my toilet. But by 12 weeks I finally started to relax a little. I never came close to getting sick beyond a few days of mild nausea here and there. In fact, I felt remarkably normal the entire first trimester. No fatigue (except for a 48 hour period where I slept about 36 of those hours), no sickness, no moodiness. I even took a couple more pregnancy tests just to make sure I really was pregnant (as if hearing the baby's heartbeat at my first appointment with my midwife wasn't enough). I gained more weight than I "should" have, but I was feeling fantastic. I was even still working out at exactly the same intensity I had been before getting pregnant.

Then the second trimester rolled around and my body decided to do things backwards. All of a sudden my gag reflex turned on. I gag when I sneeze. I gag when I cough. I gag when I see a few tiny leftover hairs in the sink from Skylar shaving his beard. I gag when I think about gagging. Still no throwing up and not too much nausea, but lots and lots of gagging. And the exhaustion. Holy moly. I run a lot of errands around town for work and after 2 stops I'm pooped. I have to sit in the car and give myself a pep talk for 15 minutes before I can go into the next place. Just doing housework wears me out so badly I can't go more than 30 minutes at a time without sitting down and taking a break. You'd think I'd sleep like a rock at night because of this, but you'd be wrong. I'm a back sleeper by nature, but sleeping on your back is a no no after the first trimester so I'm trying to train myself to sleep on my side. But I wake up every half hour because that's not where my body wants to be.

And the pregnancy hormones finally really hit the other day. It was a Saturday morning and I had a bunch of errands I needed to run. Skylar had left his car at the office the night before so I was going to take him over there on my way out to take care of things. Once we got in the car, however, the demon within woke up. Now this demon is not referring to the baby, but rather to the insane hunger that strikes quickly and randomly and causes me to become a raving lunatic until I have food in my belly. I'm told this is caused from growth spurts, but that sounds too plausible. It's that bad. SO, I realize this is coming on as we're pulling out of the driveway and I tell Skylar we would need to stop and get me something to eat on the way because there was no possibility of me making the 8 minute drive to the office in one piece. The thing is, there's no fast food places directly on the way, so we would have to make a minor detour. Long story short, he was annoyed by this, I ended up telling him nevermind, I'd just try to find something at a gas station (that he was going to stop at on the way to get Dr. Peppers), I got a disgusting sandwich from Shell, and after 2 bites I broke down in tears. I sobbed through a few more bites before I couldn't stomach anymore nastiness. What? I know. Ridiculous.

But really, who can complain when you've had a pregnancy like mine so far? I'm not uncomfortable and I'm not throwing up. Maybe my third trimester will be hell. Or maybe this baby will come out super colicky and never sleep. But so far, it's easy to forget I'm pregnant most of the time because I feel relatively normal. At 17 1/2 weeks, I'm feeling pretty thankful this pregnancy so far has been very different from those of the other women in my family. If this keeps up, I may just have 10 more babies.

(This picture was actually taken while we were on a cruise with the McCorkle family at the 20 week mark - but that was when I finally got around to start taking belly pictures. 17 1/2 weeks looked pretty similar, but a little less belly.)