To preface this post, I love being pregnant.  There’s something so magical about the whole process.  I missed being pregnant.  Which is probably why we didn’t wait very long before we decided to try for baby #2… There are many many positive experiences that pregnancy brings.  It is a feeling that many many women long for and only some are lucky enough to experience.

Now that I’ve cleared that up…

Some days, especially these days during the middle part of the first trimester, I wonder why I would want to do this to myself all over again.  MORNING SICKNESS = the shittiest way to start off such an otherwise wonderful experience.  How your body is supposed to think it’s a good thing that you feel like total crap is a mystery to me.

“You have that pregnant lady glow”

“You try throwing up all morning, you’d have that glow too”

– Friends

If you’ve had to experience morning sickness, you will wish that the first trimester moves at the speed of light…There’s nothing fun about the first trimester outside of learning you are pregnant and hearing the heartbeat for the very first time somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks…

With J I don’t remember my MS being quite this bad…but then again I was getting a full night sleep, and had a few extra pounds on me too.  These days I’m being sucked dry by a voracious 1-year-old and still being waked 1-2 times a night by said little monster.  I guess that’s part of why people said I was crazy for wanting another baby when the first doesn’t sleep through the night yet…

With J I did have crazy awful heartburn…bad enough I had to be on Zantac for 75% of my pregnancy. And I remember having some nausea with J until my 14th week or so, but it was never bad enough to keep me from functioning.  This time around I’ve had a few days where I’ve struggled to get out of bed.  On a really bad day I’m lucky to be functional before 10am.  And on those days I fight strong nausea all day long.  Eating helps (assuming I have enough energy to get food down) and water helps too.  I make sure to keep lots of snacks at the office so that I don’t get too hungry, and I suck on Jolly Ranchers like they are going out of style.  I’m just at 9 weeks now, so I’m readying myself for another 4-6 weeks of MS hell…hoping that this is the trade-off for not having heartburn this time around.  I think that’s a fair trade!

I am also going to continue to breastfeed J through this pregnancy.  If he self-weans in the meantime then so be it, but otherwise I don’t have any real ready to wean him otherwise.  My midwife is supportive of this, which is awesome, but she did warn me that I need to really watch my nutrition (since I should basically be eating healthy for 3) and that I will be extra tired.  Oy, well nothing like preparing myself for 2 babies right from the beginning huh?!

We’ll go in at 12 weeks for our first ultrasound and will get to hear the heartbeat then too.  Most docs will do an ultrasound at 8 weeks, but mine waits until 12 for the first one.  And sometimes you are lucky enough to hear a heartbeat at 8 weeks, but my uterus tilts back towards my spine and would make it impossible to hear a heartbeat that early on.  So 3 more weeks till we get to see/hear all that fun stuff.