Thursday, August 30, 2012

Pregnancy is Not For Wimps

According to our calculations we are on Week 7, Day 6 of Baby Byrne's gestation.

I've determined just why I can't remember the first trimester from my other two pregnancies. Oh, I remember finding out, making plans and all that. Then it's all a blank. If they were anything like THIS pregnancy, I don't remember anything because I spent my time working, being sick, sleeping, and NOTHING ELSE.

First trimester sucks. Oh, I know Chris said I would need him most in the second and third trimesters. Hah. Not even close. But we can excuse his assumptions; this is his first pregnancy rodeo.

If I'm awake I'm nauseous and unable to move without wanting to puke, with an extra special bonus of being severely nauseated by normally inoffensive smells. If I treat the morning all-day sickness I'm half asleep because the medication makes me drowsy. Oh, and I'm stuffing my face at every non-nauseous opportunity.

On the other hand, splitting my time between nauseous and sleepy (and always nearly useless) means that the other first trimester symptoms aren't ruining my life. Imagine the worst PMS/ PMDD you've ever seen. Now magnify it by a factor of 100 and you have first trimester hormones.

I wish I was kidding.

I decided early on that this pregnancy would be as stress-free as I could make it given the circumstances. This means I also decided to avoid any situations that might make my emotions go a bit nuts. And that I decided to avoid making any assumptions about my emotions having any basis in reality at the moment.

Thank fucking God I remembered.

If I'd actually been paying any attention to the mood swings Chris and the doggies would all be dead 10 times over. Touchy? Oh hell yes.

Well, they would be, if I had the energy to get off the couch. As it is, I get irritated and about the time I'm actually tempted to do something I decide that it isn't worth getting up for.

Nature's failsafe. Raise the estrogen levels so the emotions go nuts. Raise the progesterone levels at the same time to ensure there's not enough energy to actually do something about it. Raise the hCG levels so any thought of moving is enough to trigger debilitating nausea. This is how we survive as a species.

Chris has evidently decided that discretion is the better part of valor and has therefore abstained from saying anything that might "trigger" me or make it harder for me to ignore my mood swings. Smart man. It's almost like he read up on the hormones beforehand or something.

So to recap:
Nauseous or asleep.
Constantly tired.
Eating a ton.
Extremely emotionally unstable.
Feel like I've lost about 40 IQ points.

Yep, sounds like a typical first trimester. Good news is that within the next 2 weeks my hCG levels will start dropping and I will start acting like myself again. The second and third trimesters should be a comparative breeze.

Well, except for the whole "giving birth" bit.

Mel