First Trimester

Now that my secret's out, I can finally talk about the last few months!

Joke is, there's really not that much to say. Because I hardly did anything. Haha!
(Second joke is, it's a really long blog post anyway!)

This pregnancy started out interesting because for the first time it caught me by surprise.

November 8th was a very bad day. It started out with a negative pregnancy test, then discovering I returned books to the wrong library, and every time I tried to renew them the website wouldn't work so I owed $1.20 on them (the indignity mattered more than the fee), and then I hadn't confirmed things with a friend so they weren't having us over for dinner. And then of course I was right about the election (I have the texting conversations to prove it) which, well, I'd already begun being depressed about that back in like March so I mostly had a dark sense of humor by that point.

I'd had plenty of negative pregnancy tests recently (bodies are fun, tricky things, especially when a nursing/weaning toddler is involved), but this one really upset me. So suddenly, I found myself crying at the park with all these people around.

Guys, I'm pretty sure the last time I cried in public was the day I thought my sister was going to die of cancer in February 2009. I don't cry in public. I was embarrassed and confused. Surely a library fine and cooking my own dinner didn't warrant this! I hauled my kids back into the car, calmed down, and drove to a different parking lot of the same park since my kids still wanted to play there but I didn't want to see the same people.

***

The next few weeks were rough. I was stressed about scout rechartering and the Primary Program and visiting teaching and other various things (that I made into a highly detailed list). The whole time I kept fretting about not having a period, and why was I suddenly so tired after just a few minutes of exercise? Why was I so tired? Why did I have to eat breakfast the minute I woke up? Why was I so cranky?

One day, I agreed to watch a little girl in the ward while her mom was at work from 6 am to 4 pm. 6 am is several hours before I wake up on a normal day, and it was a long stint, but I felt way way way way more exhausted than I thought it warranted. Also nauseated.

So then I started to finally catch on. But then it was Thanksgiving, and I didn't want to find out while family was in town. But when all of our fun plans sort of turned into me sitting/sleeping on the couch, they figured it out anyway. ("It was just like the time you visited us in Chicago," they told me. Glad they know I'm not usually this lame.)

***

Overall, I think it's been easier than either pregnancy with Joseph or Matthew. Most days up til about 11 weeks I felt mildly to moderately nauseated all day, but I never threw up, and just dry heaved a few times. (To my poor dear friends reading this who can't keep anything down, I am so so sorry! I can't quite say I feel for you, but I feel at least a little of your pain and it is no bueno.) Most days I tried to take a nap, but I didn't always get one. Even during Matthew's naps, Joseph would usually choose to watch a Mr. Rogers episode instead of the 116 wonderful minutes of Lightning McQueen that I suggested, so I would only get sleep in 27 minute increments. If that.

I actually had to tell him pretty early because he was getting mad at me for being so lame. I wasn't quite ready for him to tell his Sunbeam teacher or other Joy School moms, but I felt like he ought to know that the baby in my tummy was stealing all my energy. And he was good at keeping it a secret and good at being patient with me. I did have a good laugh the other day when he asked, "Do you know who the laziest person in the family is? You!!!!! Because you have a baby in your tummy." I mean, he's right.

***

We kept things on a need-to-know basis. I only told two people outside the family before my official blog and Facebook announcements, and only told my mom (because she somehow already knew) and my sister I saw for Thanksgiving (almost as an apology for being so lame). I normally tell another sister everything over gchat, but I spent several weeks not complaining about every physical malady, which is unusual for me. I told Kevin's parents within minutes of walking into their house for Christmas, because I figured they needed to know why I was going to be little more than a useless lump, especially in the mornings. I held out til Christmas with my family, but I was grumpy and tired enough that it didn't come too much as a surprise when I started handing out the pioneer clothes as my announcement. Except for my brother. Then again, he's in Spain.

I also kept it a secret from the ward, in contrast to last time when I started announcing before even the 4 week mark. As far as I know, only one person suspected, and that's because she once heard Kevin ask me if I was feeling okay ("husbands only ask that if you're pregnant"). The day after my positive pregnancy test, I was singing before church with the ward choir to prepare for a performance that day, and I did not want to stand anymore. I felt lightheaded and hungry and nauseated, and all I wanted was a chair. But then I saw every other pregnant soprano grabbing a chair. "You can't give yourself away like this," I chided myself. "You've known about this less than 24 hours!!!" I managed to pull myself together with the help of a few trips to the drinking fountain, and all was well.

Same with stake choir. I was more than happy to do any and all accompanying (ended up doing two songs) if it meant I didn't have to stand. Pleased to say I never passed out.

***

Emotionally, it was a little bit of a roller coaster. I spent November pretty anxious (well, as I've thought about it, I'm pretty anxious most of the time) and probably pestered 2 out of the 3 members of the bishopric more than I should have about callings and scouts. Actually 4 out of the 6 if you start counting ward clerks.

But by December I just didn't have energy to be anxious. After Kevin's surprise birthday party (which I was relieved I did not throw up for, haha), I barely cared about anything, except about missing socks in the laundry. I also was less likely to panic after a close call, whereas I usually fret about what might have been long after the danger is over (which made the minute or two my purse was left in the terminal when we were on the airplane with the doors about to close less stressful, as well as the time a car slid in the snow and barely missed crunching right into us). I wasn't even that anxious about potentially miscarrying again. Matthew was fine, so this baby was probably fine too. And sure enough, at my doctor's appointment, there was a heartbeat. And a baby that was a week smaller than the estimated due date predicted, but that also made sense given my negative pregnancy test. It just meant one more week of morning sickness. And one more week of being pregnant in the summer.

I was a bit depressed though, which wasn't fun. I think I walk around with a rubber band attached to my leg, and sometimes the rubber band just gets stuck on pegs and I stay fixated on them for a while. This particular peg was called, "I have no friends!!!!!!!!!" Which is silly. And false. But I was compiling a pretty impressive list of people in both Michigan and Connecticut who weren't responding to texts, emails, phone calls, invitations or anything, so I began to believe it (even as Christmas cards, emails, and texts from other friends came rolling in). (If I had written the Beatitudes one would say "blessed are all they who respond to emails, for they shall inherit the earth.")

And to be fair to myself . . . I'm probably not the type who gets invited to all the girls nights, or meets up yearly with old friends, or is able to call friends to shoot the breeze the same way I talk to my sisters and mom. And perhaps that's what's terrifying -- to feel so attached to people but not have the familial ties to them that will ensure we'll actually see each other ever again after we live different places.

So yeah. After a bright sunny October with plenty to do outside, November and December rolled around with significantly less socializing. And I began to long for the days the past few winters where I could just go with Joseph and Matthew to a friend's house and have a play date there for a few hours, often unplanned. I sadly realized that sitting in someone's house being able to talk for hours didn't translate to being able to connect with them in a different setting such as phone calls. That combined with the mood swings of pregnancy made for a lot of angst as I felt like I had lost something extremely precious, and I was actually pretty angry at Ann Arbor for a while. (Not New Haven, which would have made more sense.)

This dark mood regarding friendship made it so that I didn't bother seeing any friends while in Utah, and I also stopped emailing friends that I'd been emailing regularly for months. Overall, I think these were good decisions to stop my victim complex, and I don't think anyone missed me or my emails too much. Ultimately, a really good email exchange with a friend from a long time ago helped me get out of this funk, and I was finally able to pinpoint the causes of my anger and sadness, and even find them kind of funny.

And hopefully being in the second trimester will help too! After a week with hardly any pregnancy symptoms, I've gotten back to the nausea and exhaustion, with headaches thrown in too. But I've also enjoyed some of the baby's movement already, so the best is yet to be!