Week 14: A Light at the End of the Tunnel?

It's the beginning of my fourteenth week of pregnancy, the beginning of my second trimester, and hopefully the beginning of the more enjoyable section of my pregnancy.

Things have slowly began to progress in the positive direction, as far as me feeling better is concerned. I no longer feel nauseous 24/7. On good days, I only feel nauseous when I allow myself to get too hungry or too sleepy. On bad days, the nausea comes and goes in constant waves throughout the day and I feel like a someone's backed over me with a Mack truck. But still, even on bad days, I can definitely say I don't feel nearly as bad as I did that first month and a half. With that said, hopefully that explains why I haven't been posting to my blogs or keeping in touch with my beloved family and friends as well as I normally do. It's a strange experience so far, this whole pregnancy thing: for months I was dying to get here, and now that I am, I've unfortunately felt as if pregnancy is just this giant boulder that has fallen on top of me. There for quite some time, my days consisted of being miserable at work from 8:30-5:00, coming home and crawling into bed, forcing myself to eat something for dinner in bed, and then moaning and crying myself to sleep. Weekends pretty much were the same, minus the being miserable at work part, spent in bed trying to muster the energy to take a shower, which would wear me out so much I'd have to spend the rest of the day in bed. E-mailing or calling anyone, let alone doing any social activities, seemed to be impossible tasks, and I had zero desire to be on the computer for more than ten minutes at a time.

Thankfully, things are improving. Though most weekday evenings are spent at home in my pajamas whining, at least I'm able to spend them outside of my bedroom. The past several weekends have actually been busy and required traveling. Though these trips have been exhausting, I have to admit it's felt pretty darn good to get out of the house for a day or two. My appetite still isn't anywhere near back to normal and I'm still sharpening my skills at toothbrush puking, but overall I am hopeful that I'm on the road to second trimester bliss and leaving crummy first trimesterville.

What I am most happy about, though, is that with the first trimester woes waning away, the excitement and joy of having a baby is finally starting to set in. I've been well enough to shop in small doses and have bought a few baby clothes, blankets and toys. We picked out colors for the nursery this weekend. The most exciting thing that has happened, though, is that on Friday we went to our second doctor's appointment and got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. That's right! Baby Neener has a heart! And it beats! The nurse, of course, thought I was a dumbass for proclaiming this realization, but she just didn't understand how I had convinced myself I was plagued with some rare and horrible illness that had symptoms identical to those of pregnancy. It was mind-boggling to hear those swish-swish sounds of our baby's heart and, again, realize that a person is growing inside of me. How is that possible?! Probably like most people, I was never able to fully grasp the whole concept of the miracle of life until now, as it's happening inside of me.

Anyway, we won't have an ultrasound for another two whole months, which is agonizing because we're dying to know whether Baby Neener is a girl neener or a boy neener. I, personally, am predicting it'll be one of the two.

Also, I'm apparently at the fringe of beginning to show. I've had two people, one a stranger and one who works in my building, come up and ask if I'm expecting. Thankfully for them, I am and having them recognize this made my day. The first was an elderly woman whom I encountered in a McDonald's restroom last week. I was wearing a baby doll top that day, so I'm sure that's really where she got the impression I was pregnant, but it was fun nonetheless. I've read about how random strangers will give you unwelcome advice when you're pregnant, but I haven't found any suggestions on how to receive unwelcome life stories from people when you're pregnant. Case in point: elderly McDonald's fellow restroom user shared with me while she tinkled how she never got married or had children, and now is a lonely 79 year-old woman who has no one to care for her and she regrets every day her decision to be so ambitious in her younger years. What do you say to that?! I was like, oh, I'm so sorry, um....(awkward silence). Don't get me wrong, I really feel bad for the woman; she was so sweet and nice and I'm sure she deserves a nice big family to take care of her in her golden years. And, I'm sure she only told me all of that to make me appreciate what I have going on in my life. But I'm a stranger. In a public restroom. It could only have been more awkward if she had directly asked me to take her home with me. Anyway, second time my pregnancy was spotted was on Friday, only a couple of hours after my doctor's appointment. This time I was not wearing a babydoll top, so I count this as my first official belly spotting. How exciting - I'm getting fat and the world is taking note!

According to my weekly e-mail update from the American Pregnancy Association, Baby Neener is about four inches long and weighs almost two ounces. The arms are lengthening and becoming more proportionate to the rest of the body. The liver is now producting bile, and the spleen is producing red blood cells. The brain has developed enough to allow Baby Neener to start making facial expressions, such as squinting, grimacing and frowning. Baby Neener may even be able to start sucking his/her thumb already!

Here's a picture of my 14-week old gut. Thanks to Angela for the comfy pants - she gave me several much appreciated bags of "fat"/maternity clothes to borrow. Please excuse the panty line - my word, how crude of me!