May thru July - Reality Sets In

Telling Our Parents
Some people wait a while before telling people about their pregnancy because of the risk of miscarriage, etc. This wasn’t us—call us impatient, but we just couldn’t keep the news to ourselves for very long. So the first step was figuring out how we would tell our parents—this would be the first grandbaby on both sides.

Ira’s parents, my in-laws, were a breeze. Because they live in Oregon, we simply made a phone call and had the whole family on speaker phone. His mom suspected the news right away (and got the giggles)—but needless to say, they were absolutely thrilled.

Because we were going to tell my parents in person, we tried to figure out a more creative way of breaking the big news. We thought we’d show them the pregnancy test, and let that speak for itself. We gift-wrapped the test and told my parents it was a late Mother’s Day, early Father’s Day gift, that we’d just found it in the last week, but thought that it was perfect for them, and that they’d really like it. We should’ve asked them to put on their glasses before opening it. Oh, but hindsight is always 20/20.

They opened it together, and had absolutely no idea what it was because they couldn’t read the writing on it. My dad thought it was a thermometer and took the cap off—to which we immediately cried “NO! Don’t take the cap off!!” as I had visions of him actually touching my pee. Clearly flustered and confused, he replaced the cap. Still clueless a few moments later, my mom joked about it looking like a pregnancy test. We smiled and nodded. And she stared back at us with the biggest eyes and most frozen grin I’ve ever seen her give.

I’m not sure they knew quite how to react. My dad laughed, said “my daughter’s knocked up” jokingly, and made Ira drink a shot of tequila with him. My mom was tickled pink—but I really think she just couldn’t believe it. And thus they were introduced to the knowledge that they would soon be grandparents.

NAUSEA
I felt great for about 2 weeks after the pee-test. Then a slight feeling of nausea introduced itself. And it became worse over time instead of better—pretty much all of June and July. NOTHING seemed to help all that much. I tried soda crackers and ginger ale, and candied ginger, and all those things that are supposed to help. But all I really felt like doing was lying down and trying not to heave. I just received “Preggie Pops” in the mail this last week—I wish I’d had them in June since they are supposed to aid in morning sickness. I pretty much felt green all the time—but in to work I went, and I only missed 2 days for feeling icky. I threw up 3 times a week at my worst—but felt nauseous all the time. I really got to hand it to you women who throw up 3 times before breakfast and still manage to clock in. I have no idea how you do it.

Prenatal Vitamins
By about July I was blaming my icky-ness on my cheapo-brand prenatal vitamins since the iron in them can really upset your stomach. I ended up finding some—Apex Prenatal Vitamins—that dissolve in your intestines rather than in your stomach. This helped quite a bit on the nausea actually.

Active Sinuses
I’ve read that the hormones in your body actually boost the productivity of all of your body’s mucus activity. In the nether regions it’s called leukorrhea, and is healthy body-function in pregnancy. This also increases your sinus activity as well (and I thought I was getting a cold all that time). Some women have such active sinuses in pregnancy that they get nosebleeds. Mine produced an unpleasant gagging reflex—often causing me to vomit—wonderful.

Good News
By August I was feeling MUCH MUCH better. The nausea had subsided by week 16, we were getting into the grove of the new “us.”

And on August 2nd, in only week 15, we felt our little baby kick and roll for the first time! Ira just happened to put his warm hand on my tummy, and we felt what I thought at first was a tiny gas bubble, but then there was an unmistakable roll right against Ira’s hand. It was absolutely incredible. Nothing like a good dose of reality to put all things in perspective—there was a little life growing inside of me, and we already wanted to meet our precious little one! In fact, we were already thinking about names… (but more on that later =)

COOL STUFF
One of the little perks of being the Mom to Be is that I get to review different products and tell you all about them! So I will have this little section here that will outline some of those items with each post.
Preggie Pops--All-natural lollipops that are designed to reduce the symptoms of morning sickness. They can also be used to aid mommy during the fun, vomitous stages of labor and delivery.