I am happy to report that I am feeling generally normal these days. I had a fair bit of nausea from about weeks 6-16 which kept me from being very productive and which lasted longer than I expected. Actually, what I expected was that my pregnancy would be like my mom's pregnancies--meaning NO nausea at all. I pictured that for my first 6 months of pregnancy, I'd go skipping along and barely notice. Yes, I was so naive! Reality was a lot harder than I had imagined.
I can't complain too much, because I know a lot of women have a MUCH harder time than I have had--vomiting all day long and losing 20 lbs and such. I myself hardly ever vomited--I just felt like I was going to all the time. Plus, my advisor has been understanding about the whole thing and hasn't given me (much) trouble about hardly getting anything done for a couple of months. So that's good.
And what is also good is that the nausea seems to be over and done. The last 2-3 weeks I have felt WAY better, with just an occasional upset tummy here and there.
Another thing I was naive about was that I also told myself I would be uber careful with my eating when I was pregnant, to make sure I got all the right nutrients and everything for the baby. The sad reality is that my eating habits have been WAY worse, because most everything seemed disgusting and if something sounded actually good to me, then darn it, I was going to eat it! Plus, I had no energy to cook (and cooking SMELLS so strongly which was hard to handle). So we ate a lot of packaged or frozen stuff, which we usually rarely do. Thankfully, though, I am doing much better now that I don't feel so nauseous. I am back to cooking and can even stomach vegetables. :)
I am to the point where my clothes don't fit for the most part, so I've been venturing into the world of maternity pants (or shorts, since it is already MUGGY around here). Actually, they are surprisingly comfortable, although they don't stay up very well. I feel like I am getting pretty big, but I know I have a lot more to go!
I do have to take shots of lovenox to my tummy everyday to make sure my blood doesn't clot. They sting a bit, but are not too bad. Plus, we have good insurance through Kevin's company so that I just have to pay $65/month for it instead of $4,000/month! Yay!
I've had two ultrasounds so far to check that everything was okay (I am a high risk pregnancy because of my blood clotting disorder) which was really fun to watch but were too early to see the gender. I have another one scheduled for June 10th (I'll be at 22 weeks by then), so hopefully that will be the date of the big reveal (assuming the baby is cooperative, of course.)
Besides spending lots of time planning and dreaming about various baby-related things, Kevin and I are both desperate to GRADUATE! I am still hoping to finish in August (although I am behind because of my morning sickness "vacation"), and Kevin hopefully will be done by Sept. We're going to stick around in Urbana until at least December, though, so if Kevin's not done by then it wouldn't be the end of the world. I, however, gotta get DONE. Aaaaah, I can't wait to get there! So much work to do first, though....
