Those First Three Months

When you find out you're pregnant, a lot of stuff goes through your mind. And when you're not telling people you're pregnant, well, all that stuff has no where to go. And so I bring you the random ramblings of my first trimester. Not necessarily in order, and definitely some gaps while the moving process was happening, but still probably some interesting bits in here somewhere.
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I thought it would be difficult to not tell people I'm pregnant. Especially since the day we found out, we spent the entire afternoon and evening with close friends who have known us since we first began dating. Surely we'd be eager to share our excitement?

Instead, it's been like our awesome little secret. Exchanging knowing glances and whispers. We know something no one else in the whole world knows. And we're not telling.

There's also something to be said for it not really sinking in yet. I peed on a stick and a line showed up! Woohoo! My life has changed in no real perceptible way!
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I can sum up my early pregnancy obsession in one word: BOOBIES!!!

While it makes me feel like something of a pre-teen boy, I can't get enough of the boobies. They fascinate me. I long ago came to terms with the fact that I would always have small breasts, and even think I have quite nice ones. But they've never been anything anyone would notice. Bras were basically expensive nipple covers for me. They didn't lift, they didn't create cleavage, there wasn't anything for the bra to work with. They just prevented me from blinding people when the A/C was too high. 

Before I even suspected I was pregnant, my breasts started announcing themselves. Sure, they were sore and felt...fuller, somehow. But no big deal, I'd had that before and still got my period. But then, my period didn't come. And I started to wonder if just maybe... Almost instantly The Boobies jumped in with a chorus of "yes, you're pregnant!" Suddenly they were bouncing around like water balloons. Bouncing! Previously, I could have done jumping jacks topless and had no response. But now simply walking down stairs generated a jiggle I could feel without even touching them, mostly in the tissue bulging out of the top of my bra. Bulging? ABOVE my bra cups? I do not know these words! Me, the girl who has to special order bras small enough to fit, has cleavage! 

Now, I am aware that the whole pregnancy/breastfeeding experience will change my breasts irrevocably, leaving me with a whole new set to learn to live with all over again. But for now...oh, for now I'm going to revel in the fact that my low-cut tops show off more than just my breastbone.
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Holy nausea, Batman!

On TV and in the movies, morning sickness comes in the form of one quick vomit that clues the starlet into the fact that she's pregnant. And it's over.

Not so much in real life. To date, I have not yet vomited or even felt like it was a likely possibility (knock on wood). I have, however, been queasy like I'm on a roller coaster and can't get off. Eating makes me queasy; NOT eating makes me queasy. Lying down makes me queasy; sitting up makes me queasy. Moving, not moving, someone else moving or not moving, all roads lead to Queasy.

Now I know that sitting at home staring off into space gently rubbing my stomach while munching on crackers is not a long-term solution. That's ok for your 24 hour stomach bug, not so much for what will likely be a daily, six week minimum ordeal. Queasiness is a lifestyle when you're pregnant. Yay.
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I never realized cocoa butter smells like...well...cocoa. I don't know what I expected it to smell like, but it definitely took me by surprise. A cup of hot chocolate is exactly what I want my own body to smell like when all food smells are making me nauseous. You can't get away from your own skin. Also, at the risk of sounding horribly racist, didn't I go to a black school? Shouldn't I know what cocoa butter smells like? Oh my education has failed me.
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That first week, it was easy to completely forget that I was pregnant. Especially when I came down with the mother of all colds and it was all I could do to breathe for two seconds without coughing. Not much energy to think about anything other than my certain impending death by suffocation.

Even now, two weeks later, with the first doctor's appointment under our belts, it still seems like something we're merely discussing the possibility of. "Hey, you think we're ready for kids?" "Yeah, maybe." Except now it's more like "ready or not, here it comes."

We saw the doctor. We saw the little tiny baby-to-be on the monitor. We saw the heartbeat (that really just resembles bad reception more than anything). Hubby had his first "your feet are in stirrups and did the doctor just call that thing a probe?" experience. Our jaws dropped and we giggled uncontrollably (or maybe "nervously" is a better description) as we looked at our first baby photo. And yet...

I'm nauseous all the time and having to completely revamp the way I eat (literally, like an eighth to a quarter of a meal every hour or two...that seems perfectly sustainable right?). And yet...

When does it start to feel real? When my clothes don't fit anymore (cuz that's already happening, though I know it's from my newfound bloat rather than from the baby itself, like a perpetual post-Thanksgiving dinner feeling)? When I start "showing"? When I can feel the baby move? When its feet are poking out through my stomach Alien style? When I'm pushing the kid out cursing my husband in multiple languages (bet he'll regret teaching me those words in Hindi then)? I guess I'll find out.
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For the love of GOD the nausea! When we were teenagers, sitting in sex ed in school, they should have just told us "Remember the worst stomach bug you've ever had. The inability to eat, the hugging the toilet, the crying in agony. Now imagine it goes on and on for two whole months. That's what happens when you have sex." Bam! The most chaste bunch of teenagers the world has ever seen.
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You usually hear a lot of positive terms surrounding pregnancy: "miracle," "glowing," etc. People talk about how beautiful pregnant women are. You find out you're pregnant and think "I'm going to look friggin radiant with my cute little bump."

It's all a marketing ploy to propagate the species.

I couldn't feel less radiant, or even less human, right now. It's like my body has been taken over by an alien. An alien that's super powerful even though it's only the size of a kidney bean.

The hollows under my eyes show the lack of sleep, and the drawn look of my face shows the lack of nourishment actually getting into my body. The only thing glowing about me is the sweat on my face after a trip to the bathroom.

And yet, no one knows. No one knows that I'm pregnant except my doctor, and there is no cute bump to give away my condition to strangers. The "miracle of life" looks a lot like the flu.
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Tonight I pulled my hair back to wash my face and noticed a little something strange. A lot of little strange somethings, actually. My hairline has been taken over by quarter inch long hairs. I'm sprouting fuzz. I'm sprouting fuzz on my hairline and shedding clumps of hair in the shower. And apparently this is all perfectly normal. What the what?
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Today we had our second ultrasound. A mere FOUR WEEKS after our baby appeared as a fuzzy blob in the first ultrasound, there was suddenly a full on baby-looking thing on the screen with arms and legs flying about like it was at a rave.

It never occurred to me we could see the baby move during ultrasound. I saw the pictures online and in books of what the baby is supposed to look like at each stage, and I guess I just assumed that's what you actually see during an ultrasound: the baby just sitting there like it's posing for a photo. Oh but no, our bebe had other ideas. It was so beautiful and...human! Later, when we were given a photo from the ultrasound where the baby just resembled a blob with maybe a head, it seemed way less exciting. But during those few minutes where we could see our baby moving and hear the heartbeat...I may have cried like I was in a movie. Don't judge.
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Miss me?

I originally wrote this post in July. And never posted it. I even failed at my comeback. Anywho...enjoy, and be sure to catch the update at the end so you can revel in the irony!
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"There's no good way to write the 'I'm back!' post after being away for too long, but sometimes you have to take a break, and then when you return it has to be awkward and uncomfortable. It's a rule." -- the wise wise words of Alice Bradley over at Finslippy.

Hello, world! The favorite blogger you didn't know was your favorite is back!

I realize it's been...oh, nine months or so since my last post. (Make that over a year now...) And it had been three months before that one. And before that my posts were spotty at best. If this were my job, I would be fired, I know. Actually, I probably wouldn't know, because it's kind of hard to fire someone you can't find.

My reasons for being away so long are two-fold. Actually, they're probably 500-fold, but I'm not so great at sorting out the causes of things, so I only came up with two.

1) Winter sucks. As in, sucks the life right out of me. From about the time I have to start wearing a jacket in the fall up until the time I can start wearing shorts in the summer, I am in an annual funk. I'm not interested in doing anything or talking to anyone. I just want to hibernate and hide from the cold. Someone wake me when I can feel the warmth of the sun on my bare skin. This is part of the reason I have spent the past year advocating moving to a sunnier, warmer place (and by "advocating" I mean "insisting at the top of my voice every day that we move right this instant"). Turns out, sunny warm places that still have the city life we're used to and a big tech scene so hubby can find a job he wants are hard to come by. Apparently every company worth working for is in San Francisco, where it is neither sunny nor warm at any point in the year, and that big ol' ocean right there is just taunting you because you'll never ever be able to swim in it unless you're a seal. So ditching winter may take a little more time. Just hopefully not another winter.

2) This blog is mostly about my life...and my life is B-O-R-I-N-G. I've lived in the same place for over 7 years. It's lost its charm. There hasn't been much in the way of fascinating travel in the past year and a half to tell you about. I have no earth shatteringly interesting job to keep ME interesting (a point that is like social suicide in a career-centric city like DC). And my Point #1 winter-time slump kept me from being all that interested in reading other blogs or non-mainstream news and sharing my views. And what news has elicited strong reactions from me have mostly been angry rants that you don't want to read anyway. So when your day-to-day life is reeeaaallly not blog worthy, what do you write about? You wait for inspiration to strike. And you wait and you wait and you wait. And nine months later you finally write a post, but it's just an apology for having nothing to write. And then the waiting recommences.

But apparently some of you out there don't mind that I haven't been writing! In June, I had 269 pageviews. On a blog with no new material for nine months. And that's the month with the lowest number to date. (Which is now surpassed by October. But still.) I'm not quite sure what this says about me (I'm not necessary for the success of my blog?), but I don't particularly care, either.
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Update:

So....all of this post is completely irrelevant now. Well, not ALL of it I guess. Winter does suck, I have not changed my stance on that. But it no longer matters! Because all my kvetching about moving somewhere warmer paid off, and we have now moved somewhere warmer! Huzzah!

We are now residents of sunny Los Angeles, California. It has not yet fully registered. Our things finally arrived after weeks, but it still feels like I'm staying in someone else's house. BUT, it's going to be fantabulous, I can already tell.

Most of the time so far has been spent furniture shopping or trying to make our belongings fit into a space clearly not designed for our stuff (who decides how kitchen shelves should be spaced? Because really? That person needs a new job). But we have some nice neighbors, we've already found some great reliable restaurants (the tally is already higher than in nearly 8 years in DC), and every weekend we walk to the beach in Santa Monica. And contrary to everyone's warnings about the people here being "rude" and "fake" I have had more awesome conversations with strangers in checkout lines and on the street in a few weeks here than in all my time in DC. (Not to make this sound like DC bashing, I still love that place, but the food is crazy overpriced for the quality and strangers are just not friendly. It's a fact.)

Oh! And oh...there is no tax on groceries! Like, none of it! Do you have any idea how much money that saves? Not to mention I can go to the regular ol' non-Whole Foods grocery store and find fresher organic produce for cheaper. So let's see, bigger apartment for less rent, better groceries for lower prices and no tax...cha-ching! Restaurants seem to be priced about the same, but as long as the food is delish I don't care. Not to mention there are still farmers' markets happening in November because the weather is so awesome things are still growing! (I have not yet checked out said farmers' markets, but it's on the to-do list.)

There are definitely some weird things about LA. Like apartments don't usually come with a refrigerator. Yeah. You have to buy your own or rent one. Luckily our place did come with a refrigerator, but our neighbor's didn't. So weird. That to me is like an apartment not coming with a ceiling. Kinda important.

So I imagine being in a fabulous new city whose weather doesn't trap me inside for six months out of the year will bring a lot more interesting days to my life.

But the MOST interesting part of this ride is going to be the BABY that's on the way. Yep, in addition to moving cross country, we're about six months from welcoming our first little Indian American (not to be confused with American Indian...we're not Columbus here folks) child into the world, which is going to bring a whole new perspective on everything. Life in general, this city, travel, this delicate cultural balance we have going in our household, all of it. So hang on to your boot straps people. It's about to get crazy up in here.