Everyone Poops...Except for Pregnant Women

Warning: This post is about poop. If you do not want to read about poop, stop reading now.

About 6 week into my pregnancy I was not able to eat and was barely able to drink water. I was becoming severely dehydrated and needed something to help me to be able to get some nutrition in. I went into the doctor and they put me on Zofran. Zofran is an anti-emetic; it is one of the only anti-emetic drugs that is prescribed to pregnant women in their first trimester. While I was at the doctors office, they gave me a pill and told me that I was not allowed to leave until I was able to drink 8 oz of water. Surprisingly, within a half hour I was feeling much better and had consumed all 8 oz. I was given special instructions for my medication: "Start out taking a full pill every 6-8 hours. Then, after a couple of days cut the pills in half if you can and take a half pill every 4-6 hours. One of the major side effects of this pill is constipation. You should probably start taking a stool softener now." For some reason, the only part of the instructions that really stuck with me were the first part. I took full pills for a couple of days, tried to cut back to half pills and had to go back up to the full pill. I was taking a full pill every 6 hours, not realizing that I was really shooting myself in the foot...or rather the bowel.

I have always been what I would call an optimum pooper. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm3da12qHf0 for a Pedigree commercial about puppies who are optimum poopers; this doesn't really have anything to do with pregnancy, I just really like the commercial for some reason.) I can only remember being constipated one time in my entire life. It was an unpleasant situation, caused by a radical change in diet, but it only lasted a day and then I was back on track. This is probably why I decided to ignore the nurse's instructions. I thought that if I started to feel constipated then I could run out an buy Colace. The problem with this plan is that by the time you start to feel constipated, it is probably too late to take a stool softener.

After about 3 days on Zofran, I hadn't pooped. This was odd since I pooped most every day on a regular basis. I figured it was time to take drastic action and start taking Colace. However, I didn't think I would need it so I never bought it. I didn't really feel like making a trip out to Walmart, so I figured that I would just wait one more day and see what happened. One more day passed and still no poop. I finally decided that it was in my best interest to start taking a stool softener as soon as possible. I got a large bottle of Colace and read the directions. It said to take up to 3 pills a day and that you should have a bowel movement in 12-72 hours. Since I hadn't pooped in 4 days I thought it was reasonable to take the maximum dose. About 16 hours later, however, I was paying the price for all of my short-sighted decisions.

I didn't really think fully through the mechanism of action of Colace when I decided to take the maximum dose. You see, stool softeners act by making your stool bulkier. They pull water from your body into your intestines to prevent your stool from getting too hard in the first place. However, when you let your stool get really hard, it is difficult to reverse the process and to get it to turn soft again. So, essentially I wasn't doing anything that would help my current constipation. I was helping to prevent further constipation by making the poop further back in my intestines softer, but there was not really much hope for the poop that had been sitting in there for 4 days already. The Colace was helping to create more mass, however, which caused me to feel the urge to expel the old poop from my body. All I will say about that experience is that it was a miserable 3 hours. I had never been in that much pain in my life. During those three hours on the toilet I broke out into a cold sweat, got severe hypotension at a few points and had to lay down on the floor of the bathroom to prevent passing out, and nearly threw up several times (all classic responses to severe pain). I also couldn't sit down for the rest of the day and instead had to lay on my stomach.

I am fully convinced that constipation is one small way that your body prepares you for giving birth. You have something big and hard inside of you that must get out through a smaller hole. While I believe that childbirth is infinitely worse than constipation, constipation is like doing a 5K when you are training for a marathon.

All that being said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If I would have listened to my nurse from the start and would have taken my Colace I would have never found myself in this situation. Colace is safe for the baby, so you might as well prevent constipation from happening if possible.

I warned you that this post was going to be about poop, so if you read it anyway and wish you hadn't that is entirely on you.

First Trimester Recap: Updated

So today is the ACTUAL last day of my first trimester (unlike last week when I was pretending it was over). And because so much can change in 1 week (unfortunately, not in a good way) I thought it would be worthwhile to update my blog.

Weight loss: 9 11 pounds
Vomiting: 2 3 times
Pairs of pants that still fit: 4 I finally bit the bullet and bought a few pairs of maternity pants, so I have no idea how may pairs of regular pants still fit
Nurseries painted: 1
Baby Registries made: 2
Types of vitamins tried: 4 While I have tried 4 types of vitamins, I have been having trouble taking the gummy vitamins this week.
Prescription medications stopped because of pregnancy: 2
Migraines: 6
Avg hours of sleep: 10-11
Avg fruit and vegetable consumption daily: 0-2
Avg bagel consumption daily: 1-2
Free baby gear obtained from generous people: 3 (thanks Kristen, Jess and Dad)
Health insurance policies: 0
Prescription medications stopped because of no health insurance: 1

Score: 1st trimester: 8 11, Sara: 2 3
Here's to hoping that I successfully conquer the second trimester.

Pregnant without health insurance

I currently do not have health insurance. This was a surprise to me when I went to the student health center pharmacy to pick up a prescription yesterday and they told me that my prescription was $77 instead of the usual $10 co-pay.

They asked me if I remembered to enroll in summer student health insurance. On a regular basis this might have been the case. I did forget to enroll for insurance once. There were extenuating circumstances however. I had transitioned from a graduate program in which I received a stipend, all of my tuition and fees were paid (including my insurance) by the program, and someone on staff magically made all of our paperwork go through each and every quarter. I switched into a graduate program in which I received no stipend, was responsible for my entire tuition and fees and had to struggle to get all of my paperwork to go through each quarter (God bless the person on staff in my former grad program who made the paperwork go through - I can barely manage myself when working with the graduate school, financial aid, the bursar, etc - I have no idea how they handled the paperwork of 100 graduate students). All that being said to explain to you that I had no idea that you had to enroll for insurance each year since it had always been done for me. I thought that if I didn't opt out I would automatically be opted in. This, apparently, is not the case. However, I was able to explain my special circumstances (read irresponsibility) in an appeal and the health insurance company had mercy on me and enrolled me insurance for that school year.

Based on my previous experience, I didn't want to have to deal with forgetting to enroll for insurance again. I was especially vigilant last quarter because the hubs just started residency and we had to decide what to do about our insurance: should I just enroll in student health insurance and then have a primary and secondary policy for a quarter? Should I buy a temporary 1 month policy to get me from the end of my quarter to the beginning of my benefits period on my new policy? One thing that I knew from growing up with a dad who was an insurance agent was that it is BAD to let your health insurance lapse. When this happens the new policy is not responsible for covering preexisting conditions (including pregnancy) for 6 months. If you have continuous coverage, however, the new policy is responsible for preexisting conditions from day 1.

I examined my student health insurance policy carefully, opted in for summer coverage (making sure that I met all of the credit hour requirements to be eligible for insurance) and let the thought of insurance exit my mind knowing that I had been a responsible adult and had made the best decision about my health insurance coverage...

...and then I went to the pharmacy. I was shocked, based on the special care I had taken in making sure I was covered, that they were telling me I did not have insurance. I was especially shocked since I had already paid my bill for the summer quarter INCLUDING over $500 for insurance. I don't know about you, but I get a little peeved when I pay over $500 for something and then don't get to reap the benefits. The pharmacy employee started looking through their records and they told me that on the front page of the computer system it said I was insured. However, when they went to apply the insurance it wouldn't apply. Well, at least they agreed with me that I had opted in for coverage. Now why wasn't my insurance working? Unfortunately the pharmacy couldn't give me my prescription for $10, so I made a phone call to the student health insurance office. And I made quite the discovery: online classes don't count. Yes, I was taking enough credit hours. Yes, I had opted in for insurance. Yes, I had even paid for insurance. But no, they wouldn't provide me coverage unless I went through an appeal process.

I am usually a calm and polite person, especially when talking to customer service people over the phone. However, a switch flipped and I went off on this woman. "What do you mean online classes don't count?!?!?! I read your entire website to make sure that I would have coverage and now you are telling me I don't have insurance?!?!?! The website said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT ONLINE COURSES AND I PAID FOR MY INSURANCE ALREADY AND I CAN'T GET MY PRESCRIPTION AND I AM PREGNANT AND I HAVE PREEXISTING CONDITIONS AND I CAN'T HAVE A LAPSE IN COVERAGE. I don't understand how I can opt in and the only reason that I found out that I DON'T HAVE INSURANCE is because I went to get a prescription AND THEY WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME!" She went on to assure me that the appeal process is quick and that my coverage would then be considered to start at the beginning of the quarter so I would have no lapse in coverage. At least my pregnancy and preexisting conditions would be covered.

However, I am currently without insurance coverage. If I got hit by a car today everything would be out of pocket. Furthermore, even after appealing I am sure that student health insurance is going to make my life miserable if I try to go back and submit claims from the first 2 weeks of this quarter while I am uninsured. So thank you, student health insurance, for being such a scam. I think you are the only business in the world that I could pay hundreds of dollars to who would then try to not give me the product I paid for. If I had the time and the money, I would take legal action against you, but I know that you have more lawyers and would drown my lawyers in paperwork making your questionable practices something that I just have to deal with. All that being said, thank God that there will be nationalized health care coverage for everyone soon because if I had any choice other than giving $2200 a year to a company I hate I would do it.

First Trimester Recap

I am 13 weeks pregnant today. I really thought today was the end of the first trimester all along, that is until I was reading a pregnancy calendar yesterday that said the first trimester isn't technically over until the END of the 13th week (40 isn't divisible by 3, so I guess one of the trimesters had to be the long one). However, since I just learned this and have been planning all along for this to be my second trimester I decided that because of the difficult nature of my first trimester now would be a good time to say goodbye to it. Here is a recap:

Weight loss: 9 pounds
Vomiting: 2 times
Pairs of pants that still fit: 4
Nurseries painted: 1
Baby registries made: 2
Types of vitamins tried: 4
Prescription medications stopped because of pregnancy: 2
Migraines: 6
Avg hours of sleep: 11
Avg fruit and vegetable consumption daily: 0-2

Score: 1st Trimester: 8, Sara: 2
Okay, you win first trimester. But I'll get you second trimester!

Growing Pains

Before becoming pregnant I had a glorified view of pregnancy. I was overjoyed that for 9 months I wouldn't have to deal with all of the hassles of having a period. Plus, if you breastfeed you can stretch that out to a year and a half or so! When I first became pregnant I was, of course, overjoyed about the little bundle of joy growing inside of me (and at that point, baby was only a mass of undifferentiated cells, so baby was a REALLY little bundle). But following close on the heels of that thought was the happy recognition of being period free.

Well, it is true that you don't have a period (unless you are among a small minority of women who still have periods...that just doesn't seem fair). In fact, when I was at the grocery store yesterday I felt a little twinge of joy when I didn't have to stop in the tampon aisle. However, one of the most annoying, awful parts of having a period DOES stick around throughout all of pregnancy. This is the period cramp. Doctors try to sugarcoat this uncomfortable, often painful, phenomenon by renaming it "growing pains." They think that if I can associate this with my child growing inside of my womb that the pain won't be so bad and that I won't care one lick when the pain starts. But every woman who has been pregnant and experienced these pains knows that they are just glorified period cramps.

All that being said, the pain is worth it. And, if nothing else, it may in some very small, microscopic way be preparing me for what is going to happen in 27 weeks.

Venomous Vitamins

I am 12 weeks pregnant today, and I have only been able to take vitamins for about half of my pregnancy. For some reason, my body has decided to reject all nutrients. When my morning sickness started and I could only eat junk food (as everything else caused extreme nausea and possible vomiting) people said, "don't worry - that's why you are taking a prenatal vitamin. If you aren't getting your nutrients from your food, you'll at least get it from your vitamin." When my prenatal vitamins started to upset my stomach to the point of vomiting the doctor said, "If you can't take the prenatal vitamins, take a break for a few days and then try taking two chewable vitamins instead. Some people just can't stomach the prenatal vitamins." I took a break and started to take the chewable vitamins. I was able to successfully take those for about a week until the chalky consistency got the best of me. I thought that my chewable vitamin problems were because I was taking Meijer brand vitamins instead of the higher quality flintstone vitamins. I switched to the Flintstone vitamins, and was only able to get one down before realizing that I had not escaped the chalky consistency.

This weekend, after not being able to take any vitamins for a few weeks, I remembered that gummy vitamins exist. I was visiting my in laws so I asked when we were on the way home from an event if we could stop at the market and buy some Flintstone gummy vitamins. I critically evaluated the nutrition label on the gummies vs the chalkies. Unfortunately, there is no iron in the gummies (legally, you cannot add iron to gummy vitamins because they are too candy-like. If a kid decided to eat a whole bottle of vitamins containing iron the iron could kill him). The content of other vitamins is also much lower. However, the main reason that the prenatal vitamins were bothering me was because they were so concentrated. Maybe a low vitamin content is ok? This does unfortunately mean that I have to take 8 gummy vitamins in 24 hours to get 100% of my pregnancy RDA for folic acid. And considering that there are only 60 gummies in a bottle, a 60 count bottle only lasts for about one week, this may not be the best financial value, but you've got to do what you've got to do. So I decided to shell out the $7 (making my vitamin budget for the rest of pregnancy about $200...expensive, but in the big picture one of the cheaper expenses in the next 6 months) and give the gummy vitamins a try.

I was so happy to have these vitamins in my possession that I undid the child-proof lid, tore off the inner seal and took two gummy vitamins before we left the parking lot. In hindsight, this was ill advised. I had eaten the equivalent of maybe half a meal in the entire day leading up to this point (9:30 pm), due to morning sickness, so my stomach was pretty empty. While I enjoyed the taste and texture of my new vitamin friends, I didn't realize that trouble was brewing below. After about 10 minutes of driving I felt an unpleasant sensation in my stomach. It felt like someone was tying my stomach in a bow. I asked Keith how long until we got back to the house. He said about 5 minutes. The only words that I was able to mutter were "I don't think I'm going to make it." Unfortunately, I was in the back seat on the drivers side of the car, so I couldn't even stick my head out the door to throw up without sticking my head into oncoming traffic. There was a church up ahead that Keith pulled over into so I could jump out of the car. I opened the door, but there was no grass in sight. Also, this was a Saturday night and I couldn't stand the thought of throwing up in the parking lot of a church just hours before the Sunday morning service. Thankfully, when the car stopped moving, I got out of the van and was able to walk around and get fresh air, the nausea subsided somewhat and we were able to make it the rest of the way back to the house without incident.

The next day at lunch, after eating part of a meal, I decided to give gummy vitamins another chance. Thankfully, I was able to tolerate the gummies after eating.

I learned two valuable lessons this weekend: 1.) always take vitamins after eating, and 2.) make sure to ride on the passenger side of the vehicle so if you need to vomit you will be aimed at the grass rather than oncoming traffic.

Immune dysfunction - this post isn't as lame as the title makes it sound

I have what I will refer to as a cranky immune system. It's never really worked correctly. Some people have a theory that if you don't get sick enough as a child then your immune system will focus its efforts on benign substances like pollen. This leads to asthma and allergies. I have been taking medication for my asthma since I was a toddler. It manifests itself both as exercise induced and allergic asthma. Certain types of exercise don't bother me. I can do five hours on an eliptical and be completely fine (aside from the muscle fatigue). But if I try to run a quarter of a mile I can feel all of the tubes in my lungs starting to get narrower and narrower. This isn't to say that I don't go for runs. It is just really difficult and I need to have my inhaler with me at all times.

As for the allergies, I sometimes feel like I am allergic to everything. I am fortunate in that I do not have any food allergies, which can be some of the most restrictive and dangerous allergies, but each and every spring I feel like I have been punched in the face by all of the flowers. They gaze at me with their little, happy, pollen-filled faces and laugh as I sneeze. While I dislike the "hay fever" that I have to suffer through yearly, it is nothing in comparison to my allergy to animals. I have been allergic to dogs and cats my entire life. For much of my childhood, I could be around dogs, we just couldn't have one (other than hypoallergenic breeds) in our house. Since childhood, however, I have become more allergic to dogs and have symptoms around all breeds of dogs except for toy poodles. Cats were another story. I was so allergic that I never touched a cat until I was dissecting one in my anatomy class in college. My animal allergies pretty much extend to any animal with fur or dander. I tried petting horses at the fair one time when I was in high school and my eyes almost completely swelled shut before I could drive myself home.

But these are not my only immune system problems. I also have something called psoriasis in which my skin cells don't know when to stop growing after I get a cut. They grow and they grow and they grow until they create too many layers of skin. This doesn't happen every time I get a cut, but it happens in zones of skin (right now on my right forearm) until I can use steroid creams or foams to get it to go away (steroids pretty much act to beat down your immune system - when you are suffering from an overactive immune system, steroids can bring things back into balance).

Pregnancy, however, has brought me to a whole new level of immune dysfunction. Pregnancy does some funky things to your immune system. Some of these changes are for important reasons, and some are just because you have crazy hormones zooming around your body that throw the natural balance off. The first problem that I noticed was when the hubs and I were visiting some family. I decided that I wanted to play with they hypoallergenic puppy that one of my husband's family members owned, but after about 30 minutes of being around the puppy, with only about 5 minutes of direct contact with the puppy, I was wheezing, my nose was running and my eyes were watering. Finally I decided to pop a couple of benadryl and I spent the next 3 hours sleeping. I visited my mom a couple of weeks later. She still owns one of the dogs that I grew up with (he is 14 years old and blind, but still gets joy out of his daily hamburger patty). I was never allergic to this dog growing up, but when I went away to college and started visiting home over breaks I realized that I would get sniffly when I got home. Then I went away to graduate school, visited less often, and became severely allergic to her dog. Finally, about a year ago, the hubs and I had to make a decision that we could no longer stay at my mom's house overnight because, without taking my inhaler every few hours, I would wake up unable to breathe by morning. We still visit during the day, after heavy antihistamine administration. However, when we visited a few weeks ago the antihistamines were not working. Then the hubs and I went home, I used my inhaler and more antihistamines, and my symptoms still didn't go away. I took a shower and went to bed, and I was struggling to breathe. I finally was at the point where I thought I would have to go to the emergency room (the day after we visited my mom was a Sunday), but I didn't want to pay the $75 co-pay so I decided I would tough it out for one more night with a coca-cola (caffeine can cause bronchodialation) and sleeping sitting up. Thankfully after the second night of sleep I was breathing much better and the pharmacy was open so I could get a new inhaler.

At least with the asthma and allergies, however, there are medications that are safe to use during pregnancy. That is not the case with psoriasis. In fact, there aren't a ton of reliable medications for psoriasis that can be used even if you aren't pregnant. Topical steroids can be harmful to the fetus, especially during the first trimester. So I just have to watch daily as my skin gets worse and worse.

At least this is all for a greater good. I remind myself of that every time I have to skip a meal because I feel to sick to eat, cannot take an ibuprofen even though I am in pain, or when I notice a new little cut that is going to be sticking around with me for the next 7 months.

Sara Van Winkle

My sleep patterns have vastly changed over the past few years. When I was in college I would generally fall asleep at around 2:00 am and then would set my alarm clock for 6:30 am. I knew that if I got to the coffee shop before 7:00 that I would be there by myself for a good 45 minutes before the rest of the college began passing through for their 7:50 classes. That was 45 minutes of uninterrupted study time. Thankfully, as I said before, that study time was in the coffee shop. This meant that I could sip on a coffee or latte with only a small risk of falling asleep over my books (I did take many-a-nap in the coffee shop however - both intentional and unintentional. It is a wonder what a 12 minute power nap can do for you).

When I reached graduate school I lost my magical ability to be able to study at all hours of the day and night. One time while I was in college, I went on a trip just before Thanksgiving break to Chicago, spending very little time studying for the test I had the day after I got back. Not only that, but when I got back from Chicago at dinner time, I went straight to a bridal shower for my roommate that didn't end until late evening. At that point, I had to learn several chapters of Biochemistry including all of the structures and steps of glycolysis and the Krebs cycle before morning. I set myself up in a study room with a white board and set to writing the structures down over and over until I finally learned them all, finally going to bed at about 4 or 5 in the morning (no matter how great my magical power for study was, I still needed 2 or 3 hours of sleep to let all of the information sink in - I never once pulled an all-nighter). Once I got to graduate school, however, I realized that I couldn't study after 10:00 pm! I could still stay up late, no problem, but once the clock struck 10 my little studying brain cells shut themselves off and said, "Go watch a movie, call the boyfriend (the previous name of the hubs), or go to bed."

I left my first graduate program (well, technically my second program, but since I quit Medical school so quickly after starting that one doesn't really count) the same summer that I married the hubs. He was just starting his third year of medical school and I was transitioning from a graduate program in biomedical sciences to one in medical dietetics. It was that summer that I broke my brain even more. I am mostly a night owl. I once read a journal article from Nature that explained that people are hard wired to be either "Night Owls" or "Morning Larks" and that by forcing yourself into being the opposite you can seriously damage your health. This night owl, for the sake of love, decided to try to match the hubs' sleep patterns, since we had been married for less than a month, and become a morning lark. I had the summer off of school, so I had no real reason for being awake or asleep at any given time. My day consisted of steaming ugly wall paper off of the walls of my new home and then painting those walls. Given the ability of man to harness electricity and the invention of the light bulb, I was essentially able to do these tasks at any time. The hubs did not have the same flexibility in his schedule. He was doing his OB/Gyn rotation, which for those who don't know is a surgical rotation. Not only is it a surgical rotation, but the med students have to get in before the attendings and the residents because they have to look up all of the information for their patients and then present that information to those who have already earned the "M.D." This meant the alarm clock was generally set for sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 am and that we would go to sleep at around 7:30 to 8:00 pm. This is a prime morning lark schedule and was not agreeing well with this night owl. However, after the surgical rotation was over and we were once again able to sleep in to a more normal time (5:30 to 6:00 am) I still felt a need to go to sleep between 8:00 and 10:00 pm.

I maintained my approximately 9:00 pm bedtime throughout the last year while I was completing my internship. This worked out well because I would often wake up at about 6:00 am which provided me my perfect 9 hours of sleep each night (my need for sleep doubled in the 4 years since I graduated from college). This worked well until about 8 or 9 weeks ago. Pregnancy hit me like a ton of bricks and, for the most part, I lost my ability to make it through an entire day without taking a nap. This nap can last anywhere from 1-4 hours. Yet, surprisingly, even during a day in which I have taken a 4 hour nap, I am still able to fall asleep anywhere when bed time comes along. Then, when I sleep through the night I usually aim for 9-10 hours. This didn't seem unreasonable until I realized that I am sleeping greater than 50% of the day every third or fourth day. On Sunday night I fell asleep at 8:00 pm and woke up the next morning at 9:00 am. Then I sat down a few hours later to watch a movie with the hubs and I only made it halfway through the movie before drifting off into a peaceful nap. Apparently, even though my baby doesn't want me to eat for two, it does want me to sleep for two. I guess I should be thankful and embrace this now since it won't last after the baby is on the outside.

Baby bliss

I am pregnant/preggers/prego. I have a bun in the oven. I am in the family way. I am with child. I am on stork watch. I am going to have a baby. Yes, the hubs and I are expecting. Today I am 11 weeks pregnant and my due date is December 27.

One pregnancy symptom that I was not ready for was the vivid dreams. Last night I dreamt that I was unable to regain all the weight that I have lost in this first trimester (I am down 6 pounds right now). I was 40 weeks pregnant, went in to give birth and they told me that I had only regained 4 of the 6 pounds. Because of this, my 40 week gestation resulted in a 24 week fetus and they told me that I had to keep the baby in for another 16 weeks. I kept on saying "But the placenta!" (For those of you who don't know, the placenta starts to degrade at about 42 weeks - this is why they go ahead and deliver the baby by c-section or induction if you haven't given birth by that point. Scientific facts tend to invade my dreams.)

Another dream that I had recently has to do with my old job. I was a research assistant and I performed postmortem dissections on mice to harvest parts for experiments. I dreamt that I had dissected about 25 mice, and then I realized that I had done all of the dissections on fully conscious, live mice. I woke up from that dream in a cold sweat.

These dreams at least had to do with things pertinent to my life. I had worked in a mouse lab, and I am a little bit worried about my weight loss in pregnancy from morning sickness. I have been having other dreams that make absolutely no sense. Two nights ago I dreamt that I was being held hostage by a group that was making me work but was trying to make me think I was there of my own free will. At one point, John MacClane tried to save me (if you don't know who this is, go watch Die Hard...any version will do but my favorite is the original) in a daring car chase, but to no avail. Finally, I worked with the entire cast of Grey's Anatomy to solve puzzles to win my freedom, eventually discovering that all I had to do was leave through the emergency exit door. My dream then transitioned into getting ready for elementary school gym class. I got in trouble for taking too long to change into my gym clothes, but the reason I took so long was because I needed to eat two pieces of flat bread (I have been having bread cravings, both while awake and apparently while asleep).

The other symptoms I was ready for. I know that pregnant women get nausea, but I never realized that it would incapacitate me. Thankfully, from what I've been told over and over again by reassuring friends and family, my morning sickness should go away in another 2 weeks. At this rate, I should lose no more than 2 more pounds and, from what I've been told again and again, I will have no problem regaining the weight and then some. I think what has horrified me most about the whole nausea thing is that I am a dietetics student. I know how to eat healthy. I strive to eat healthy. You will never find a refined grain in my home...at least until I was 5 weeks pregnant. At that point, any healthy food began looking disgusting to me. I couldn't eat fruits. I couldn't eat vegetables. I couldn't eat whole grains. I could, however, eat pop tarts, wonder bread and kraft macaroni and cheese. In fact, these were things that I could pretty reliably eat every day. The next hit to my health conscious diet came when I realized that I was producing excessive saliva (yes, that does happen to some people during pregnancy - it's called Ptyalism). This wouldn't normally trouble me, but excessive saliva production on top of excessive nausea and excessive heart burn caused my stomach to turn every time I thought about drinking water. I tried and I tried, but no matter what I did I couldn't get down more than about 4 cups of water a day (with the goal during pregnancy of being 8-10). Finally, I found a solution: Fruit Punch Gatorade. I would show up to class surrounded by my med diet classmates who were none the wiser to my pregnancy and would pull out my fruit punch gatorade and my brown sugar and cinnamon pop tarts. Did I look like the nutrition poster child, or what? Thankfully, this bizarre diet is turning around somewhat. I am still having trouble with fresh fruits and vegetables, but I am once again able to drink water and to attempt foods other than pop tarts. The doctor did give me a prescription for an anti-nausea medication to get me through the tough times as well. They warned me when I started it that a major side effect was constipation and that I should take a stool softener. I thought, "I don't think that will be a problem. I think I'll just wait to see if I need one." To avoid going into too much detail, I think I will listen to my doctor from now on during pregnancy.

My other biggest bother is that I can smell EVERYTHING. This can be kind of nice when someone is baking fresh bread, but it is more or less a nuisance in every other situation. Example 1: Simba, the poodle. I love Simba. He is a fabulous little dog and I am thankful every day that we have him. That is, unless he sits on my lap. Then I have the overwhelming smell of ear wax filling my nares. Thankfully, Simba is a tolerant little dog and the hubs is good with a Q-tip. Simba has also been receiving weekly baths in order to remain tolerable. Example 2: The pantry. I am not sure what it is, but I cannot stand opening our pantry right now. I don't really have aversions to foods based on smell - I can smell most any food and be fine - my aversions are based on simply thinking about eating a food and either producing excessive saliva or wanting to toss my cookies. This is why I don't understand the pantry problem. I have asked the hubs several times to smell the pantry and he cannot detect whatever minute signal I am picking up. I was tempted one day last week to go through the entire pantry to find the offending item. Unfortunately this would mean that I would have to spend time in the pantry which is something that I am unwilling to do at this time. Example 3: The house. Our house smells bad. This is something that I never noticed before. We keep it really clean in here, but if the windows are kept closed for greater than 24 hours I find the smell unbearable. I tried burning candles, but I don't like the smell of candles right now. I finally dug out an old bottle of febreeze. It made the house smell much better, but this bottle must have been pretty old because there was a ring around the inside of the bottle where the liquid had been sitting at the same level for quite sometime and there were some things floating in it. I felt that for the sake of our health I probably shouldn't spray febreeze in the house when it has things floating in it. Example 4: Dryer sheets. These are the worst smelling item in the world. I don't know who came up with the description "fresh breeze" but this is inaccurate. The hubs was trying to be nice and washed several of our living room blankets, wanting to make them clean and fresh smelling for me. Unfortunately, after one whiff I discarded all clean blankets and receded to the refuge of my one dirty, unblemished blanket. Finally, yesterday, I decided, mournfully, that my dirty blanket needed to be made clean again. I reluctantly gave over my blanket to be washed with a "scent free" dryer sheet. In the mean time, however, I became cold. I tried to put on the blankets that the hubs washed so valiantly one month ago but realized that there was still a lingering scent of "fresh breeze." Thankfully, my allergies are set off so I was unable to smell the blankets well and was soon able to transition back to the "scent free" blanket.

While this pregnancy has been anything but smooth sailing, the hubs has been extra great. I have been essentially useless (actually, more like a liability than useless - useless implies that you simply are not making things better...I am making things worse many days by saying thing like, "I think I may be hungry, will you make me food?" and when he says, "Sure, what do you want?" I say, "I don't know" and make him list off all of the food that we have in the house. Then he makes an item for me after revisiting the entire list three times, then I leave dirty dishes for him to clean. Then I say that I have a tummy ache and I ask him to just sit with me until it goes away and to scratch my head to make me feel better). He has taken over the majority of the housework and has been willing to provide for all of my needs and most of my wants on days during which I have been unable to meet my basic needs on my own. I don't know how I would do any of this without him and I love him very much. I especially appreciate all of the grocery runs that the hubs has been willing to make when I can't imagine eating anything but a cheese pizza hot pocket.