While grocery shopping with my husband this weekend (because we have a working fridge!! It is no longer hotter in my fridge than in my house! Wahoooo!!) I was rushing to get the few things we needed to get us through to payday. (I don’t know about you guys, but replacing everything in your fridge when it bites the dust can be quite spendy. Especially on top of those other repairs we have been forced to pay for recently. Urgh.) In trying to stick to the “pregnancy diet” of all-things-healthy-that-I-can-actually-stomach, we bought some milk, bread, eggs, butter, fruit (oh the glorious fruits! Raspberries! Blueberries! Cherries! And Grapes! Oh my!) and several kinds of yogurt.

Being the loyal brand shopper that I am, I look for labels. So it really throws me off when they change the packaging on a product I have been buying for years. I can stand there looking at the shelves for a good five minutes and not see it right in front of my face. Well, they went and changed the packaging on my Lucerne yogurt. Since Simeon was with me, I didn’t want to make a big production of it and complain over something I cannot change (’cause you know he is just gonna blame my outburst on pregnancy hormones, when Hello! this is something any sane person would complain about, am I right?), I sucked it up, tossed 10 individual containers into my cart and went on about my shopping.

You can imagine my surprise when I went to have my healthy mid-morning snack only to tear back the silver top and discover a horror above all horrors: I accidentally bought *shudder* fruit-at-the-bottom yogurt. I don’t know if there is anything more horrible. I tried not to look as I stirred up the contents of my snack. The fruit just wouldn’t mix with the yogurt. There were unnatural globs of each section just refusing to blend. Who knew I should have brought a whisk to work?? Now, after five minutes of non-stop stirring, it looks like I poured cottage cheese into my yogurt. So. Gross. Luckily, if I distract myself enough and eat each bite without looking, I think I just might be able to eat my yogurt without gagging….any more than I have already.

Thankfully I have some fruit to eat later that I KNOW will not be making me sick to my stomach.

Well, I have officially done it. I am wearing maternity pants. I know I could probably have held off until the start of my second trimester (which was my original goal) but the three pair of pants I can still fit into comfortably were all in the laundry when I got dressed this morning. I could have squeezed into one of my smaller pair of pants (I even tried!), but it would have been pure torture and possibly causing injury to passersby should a clasp happen to fly off at any given moment. Everyone has recommended the rubber-band solution, but my work pants don’t have buttons, they have clasps/hooks, leaving me with the option of just not closing my pants. Which in my mind, really isn’t a solution as much as begging to humiliate myself.

In preparing for this sort of “emergency” I have been slowly acquiring some maternity clothing. Months ago even. What can I say? I am a planner (and a bit of an optimist). I watch the sales and when something cute is really cheap, I pick it up. It’s just good sense. So I have a (very tiny) section of my closet reserved for maternity clothing. It goes against all the organizational logic of my closet (clothing sorted by shirt sleeve length, then pants, skirts, and dresses–all broken down by color within the sections) but I have heard the horror stories of pregnant woman crying when getting dressed in the morning, surrounded by the entire contents of their closet, because they can’t find a single thing that fits. So I have interrupted the system and created a special “maternity” section to prevent any mental break-downs.

And let me tell ya, this morning I was very grateful for the special section.

One of the first pregnancy symptoms I noticed (besides the boob thing) was the fatigue. I understood the reason I was so tired All. The. Time. was because I was busy growing a tiny person inside my body. As well as the placenta, which would be the life support system for my baby. I also knew that as soon as the placenta was finished being created, around the beginning of the second trimester, I would get a surge of energy and the exhaustion that has me in bed every night by 8:30pm would pass. This was one of the thoughts that kept me going during those dark and exhausting times.

However, I was not prepared for the simultaneous exhaustion and insomnia. Every morning from about 3:00am to 5:00am I lay in bed and wish for sleep. I look at the clock and pray that more than two minutes have passed. I keep tapping Sim to have him roll over so I don’t hear him snore. Or breathe. I get up and pee. I re-adjust my pillows. I drink some water. Then I do it all over again. I know all the books say if you can’t sleep you should get up and do something else. But I am not about to leave the cozy comfort of my bed when I am this close to falling back asleep. No way man.

Now I know you are all thinking, “Well if you didn’t go to bed so early, you wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night/morning.” But you, my friend, would be wrong. I have thought this as well and propped a couple toothpicks into my eyelids and stayed up until the ungodly hour of 10pm (when I would normally go to bed). Then, not only do I wake up at the crack of dawn, but I also do not function the entire following day. Not good.

While I was never a napper before, I am able to slip in a quiet snooze on the weekends, which helps when we have plans to go out during the evening (all set pre-pregnancy. Natch. Who would make plans in the evening with a pregnant woman?) but during the day I work. And they tend to frown on me sleeping at my desk. Simeon and I have taken to getting take-out for lunch and eating in the car and then reclining our seats, closing our eyes, and listening to an audio book. We don’t allow ourselves to sleep because I have not yet mastered the Power Nap and would probably awaken hours later, creases on my face, make-up smudged, and drool dried on my chin. For some reason I don’t see that working too much either.

So for now, the early bedtime sticks. As does the early morning insomnia. But part of me thinks maybe my body is just preparing me for those 3am feedings you always hear about, so I don’t worry too much. Heck, if nothing else, it’s a great time for me to think through possible blog posts.

Urgh. So much frustration. So you know that old adage, bad things come in three’s, well it has taken full affect in the Bateman household over the last couple weeks. Firstly, my camera broke. Yeah, my super-expensive-extra-fancy camera. The whole back display part just stopped working. Nope, sorry, I don’t wanna play anymore. The camera part works fine, but since the back part also connects to the memory card (you are all laughing at my technical verbiage, aren’t you?) there is no way to save any pictures I take. Making the whole camera virtually a $1,500 paperweight. So Simeon and I have been looking for a good repair shop to take it in to. We took it to the place where we bought it and they said it would be $250 just to send it in for repair. Then it would be more depending on what needs to be fixed. Oh and it would take about 6-8 weeks. WEEKS. So yeah, we said we were gonna shop around for a better deal.

Then there was the incident with Heather’s puppy ‘Quila. Forgetting that she is only 9 months old and not yet trained to be alone for any amount of time, she decided to chew through a bottle of fabric softener and an entire bottle of hand soap. On the couch. Each one of different ends of the couch. So we had a little cleaning up to do. Then as we were cleaning it up, we realized one of her claws ripped the fabric on one of the cushions. The next day we took the couple cushions that were damaged into the place where we bought it. Luckily, we have only had the couch for six months and there is a one year warranty on the fabric. So they are in the process of making us entirely new covers for the ruined cushions. At least we dodged the bullet on that one. (The fabric softener and the hand soap, not so much.)

Finally, on Thursday morning I opened my fridge to get some milk for my cereal only to find that my milk was warm. I checked the temperature and it was a cozy 70 degrees in my fridge. For those of you who don’t know, a fridge is suppose to be a chilly 38 degrees. Just for shits and giggles, I checked our house temperature and it was set to 68 degrees. That’s right, it was warmer in my fridge than in my house. I hit the “max cool” button to make sure we hadn’t just left the doors cracked open on accident or bumped one of the digital controls. An hour later I checked again and it was now up to 73 degrees. CRAP. Sim pulled out the paperwork on the fridge (that we bought less than six months ago, thankyouverymuch) to see what kind of warranty we have on it. We were pretty sure we bought the extended warranty but weren’t sure what that meant. Regardless, Maytag has a 1 year warranty that we were well within the limits of. (We found out later that we got the 4 year extended service agreement, but on the paperwork it doesn’t say anything comforting like “warranty” or “guarantee” but it does have a cryptic “ESA4” which means our asses are covered) So I called Maytag and they said they would send out a repair man on Thursday. Yep. A week away. In the mean time we were terrified to open the doors of the fridge because just walking past it was making me gag it smelled so awful and we didn’t want to release that stench out into the rest of the house. Securing his title of “Best Husband in the World” Sim waited until I was going to be out of the house for a couple hours and took care of the task of tossing out the entire spoiled contents of our fridge. He took pictures (with our old camera) of everything because there is a $100 food spoilage clause that you better believe we are gonna claim. He also made sure that all the food (and its accompanying smell) was properly disposed of before I got back home. He even put the garbage can outside of the garage so that my car wouldn’t retain any smell that might have escaped his secure tying of all the garbage bag. Isn’t he the best?

So right now we are camera-less, missing a couple cushions on our couch and without a fridge for an entire week. Luckily we have a mini fridge in the family room where I am keeping a gallon of milk and my Brita, because Maybe Baby and I would have to move out if we couldn’t at least have cereal and cold water. Urgh. Can’t a pregnant lady catch a break??

Wow. I have definitely started a trend. A happy, growing, life-changing trend. Everyone is having babies right now! My friend Chelle is a few weeks behind me and now Carole just announced that she is preggers too! She is five weeks today, which puts her just seven weeks behind me. I gotta say, it’s a good club to be in.

When we started planning to have a baby, we were in the minority among our friends. Sure there were a few other people with little ones, but not many. Everyone was single, dating, or just newly married. (Not that it should change anything, it just felt like we were in a place not many other people our age were.) But now it seems like babies are springing up everywhere:

Our friends Ryan and Sarah came to dinner last night and brought along their new (to us anyway!) three-month old son, Elliot. Our other friends, Mitch and Jen, are expecting any day now. Toss Chelle and Carole into the mix and we are gonna have quite a few babies in our circle of friends.

And I gotta say, I think that is the best thing I have heard in a long time.

The extent of my holiday weekend pretty much consisted of sleeping, eating and watching movies. Just keeping up with the doctors orders, of course. But along with all the eating was much talk of all things baby. Natch. Particularly entertaining were the conversations with my niece and nephew.

Hayden, who is four years old, was very excited that I was going to have a baby. He is just reaching that age where he started hassling his mother for one and she (or rather her husband) is no longer able. So you could say he was a little excited. We had the following conversation:

Hayden: Aunt Carrie. When you have the baby, it can come over, right?
Me: Sure.
Hayden: And I can watch it? And play with it?
Me: Of course.
Hayden: But…not if it’s wild. Cause I don’t want the baby to be wild.

Hayden was also showing me an adorable clock he made at his Kindergarten orientation. It was made out of a paper plate and pipe cleaners with a little mouse dangling off the clock face. He proceeded to sing Hickory Dickory Dock and show me the mouse moving along the clock when all of a sudden he stopped dead.

Hayden: Should I give this to you? For the BABY?
Me: Why don’t you keep it and then you can teach the baby how to sing that song.
Hayden: Ok. That sounds like a good idea.

My niece, Emily, on the other hand is nine years old. She was excited for the baby in that shrill way that only a pre-teen girl can be: giggly and squealy. My sister insisted on checking her midwives chart the second I told her I was pregnant to see if I would be having a boy or a girl. Upon declaring that based on my age and the due date, I would be having a boy, Emily stated, “Check again, Mom. Aunt Carrie is supposed to have a GIRL.” So I was not at all surprised by this conversation:

Emily, dejectedly, to my stomach: Hello in there little boy.
Me: You know, your mom might be wrong. It could be a girl.
Emily, perking up: Really?
Me: Sure! So just keep thinking “GIRL” and we just might get one.
Emily, to my stomach: You ARE gonna be a girl, aren’t you? And what a good little girl you are gonna be!

I want to preface this post by saying that I think I have done pretty good so far about not getting all stressed out over this pregnancy. I didn’t worry when I accidentally ate a salad with feta on it. I didn’t freak out when I couldn’t keep down any vegetables even though every book I read stresses how important a well balanced diet is to a developing fetus. I didn’t even think twice about eating only Jello and Gatorade when I had that nasty round of food poisoning a couple weeks ago. But the other day I got worried.

I spotted.

I went to the bathroom and happen to notice blood on the toilet paper. Bright red blood. My hand started shaking and I proceeded to get a little light-headed. I tried to breathe deeply to keep from passing out on the toilet (because that is never any good for anyone) and told myself it was probably nothing. Blood didn’t necessarily mean a miscarriage. I would just keep an eye on things and call my doctor in the morning.

I went to the bathroom an hour later and things were significantly better. There were only minor traces of drying blood. Throughout the rest of the evening things were back to normal. But I looked into my handy bible, What to Expect When You are Expecting, and it said I should call my doctor and let her know what happened, just to make sure everything was ok.

In the morning I called my doctor’s office and spoke to a nurse who asked all sorts of questions (Yes, it was pink/red. No, there was no cramping or pain. No, it hasn’t happened since.) for her to report to the doctor and call me back with instructions. I tell you, that was the longest 10 minutes of my life. She called back and said my doctor wasn’t in the office, but she spoke to another doctor who said I just really needed to monitor the situation. Since it was most likely an isolated occurrence, it is probably nothing to worry about (yeah, tell that to a first time mother!) but they want me to take it really easy until I go in for my next appt in a few weeks. So no exercise, no sex, and no heavy lifting. Whew. So it looks like I am gonna be sitting on my butt this holiday weekend, snapping my fingers for Sim to bring me more ice cream.

Morning sickness. Urgh. It has been the worst pregnancy symptom so far. Heh. And I thought the breast tenderness was bad. No way man. (Turns out the simple solution to that problem was to wear a bra around the clock. A good one. Oh and gentle hugs, people. Gentle.) This morning sickness (so badly named by the way, cause it is not just in the morning) is really getting in the way of just about everything.

Ok, I have to admit, some days are good. But some days are NOT. And those days are the ones that stick out more vividly in my mind: clinging to the toilet bowl, wrenching my guts out, resting (if I am lucky) long enough to catch my breath, and my most loving husband waiting behind me with a cool washcloth and a glass of water. Yeah. Those are the memories etched in my mind.

Saturday was a good day. Sim and I got up early to head to Seaside to meet my mom, his dad and his brother for breakfast before picking up my little sister, Darcie, for our family reunion later that day. The weather was lovely. The sun was shining but there was a nice cool breeze. I told the rest of my family the big news and was met with great excitement and enthusiastic congratulations. I didn’t even feel pregnant. I was happy. I was smiling. I was feeling gooooood.

Then there was Sunday.

Sunday started out harmless enough. We got to sleep in. We went out for breakfast. We came back and cuddled on the couch and caught up on some TiVoed shows. Heather and I went to a scrapbooking club. Then just as Heather was pulling out of my driveway, I barely managed to make it up the stairs to the bathroom before I emptied the contents of my stomach down the toilet. And continued to heave until I almost passed out from sheer exhausting. (My stomach muscles ACHE today like none other.) My eyes hurt so bad it felt like I was vomiting out of every orifice in my head. I weakly washed my face, slipped into my comfy pajamas, and crawled back into bed. And stayed there for the rest of the day. Did I mention this was only about 4pm?

Simeon is a trooper through all of this. He takes care of me like his life depends on it (which sometimes it does). He lets me sleep. He quietly refills the Gatorade on my nightstand, complete with a bendy straw so I don’t even have to lift my head off the pillow. He can order take-out like nobody’s business. And he doesn’t even feel too badly when I refuse to let him kiss me if he has had beer, garlic, onions, or whatever happens to make me gag that day. In fact this morning even watching him brush his teeth made me dry heave a little. Poor guy. I guess it just goes to show that pregnancy is truly a tremendous undertaking, but if you chose the right guy, it’s not too bad.