Blllleeeeehhhhh I'm tired....I can't wait for January when I will (hopefully) not feel so tired anymore. I used to have such an abundance of energy. I could go to town on my apartment and clean and tidy for a hours, do laundry and go grocery shopping all in one day. Now all I can do is vacuum and the dishes and now I'm more tired than when I started. And I still have to make dinner *insert over-exaggerated, teary and upset anime face here*

Yesterday I got roped into working overtime today. My boss was pretty flexible because I was doing her a huge favor, so I only worked 4.5 hours, BUT STILL! I'm already exhausted as it is, so why in the hell did I decide to sacrifice a whole day off (and ultimately two days off in a row) for a few hours of time and a half? ...I don't know. I have a hard time saying no. At least all these hours contribute to the mat leave I'll take next summer...mmm a whole year of making half of what I make.

So at least tomorrow I DO have a day off and I'm having lunch with my Dad. It will be the last time I see him before Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas! Thank Christ it's almost over! Honestly though, I'm looking forward to spending it with my mum and grandma. I'm not looking forward to working from 4am to 12:30pm only to go home, grab my bag and make the 2-3 hour journey via transit and ferry to get to her place. I'll be that person snoring in the ferry seat with drool coming down her chin and then later I'll be the party pooper on the couch fast asleep while everyone else catches up.

Anyhoo, the lab I went for my prenatal blood work allows patients to view their results online now. So I set that up and had a look earlier. Of course, they all mean nothing to me right now. I wrote it all down (because I'm old skool and don't have a printer) and I'm going to have my dad decipher it for me tomorrow over lunch. I'm pissed though because they won't display my actual prenatal results. It has a phone number for physicians ONLY. BOOOO!!! I have a right to know what MY results are, man. I really want to know my blood type once and for all. I've always thought maybe O+, but I don't know that for sure. If I turn out to be A or B I'll be surprised and I better not be negative. Oh that would just...complicate things.

Exciting news that I'm too slow to update on. My father in law is buying us our trip to Mexico in the new year. We go every year anyway, but gotta love the fact that we don't have to pay for airfare this time around. We'll see how I do down there. Normally I quite enjoy the humid heat when we go, it's the part I look forward to the most, but being at least 20 weeks pregnant might make me change my mind on that. I look forward to showing up with a biggish belly. Our Mexican friends have been waiting for us to get pregnant. We've already told our closer Mexican friends, Carlos and Carlos, but I'm hoping those at the beach front bar, Bigote's, we frequent don't know yet. Hell, I'm hoping that Bigote's is still there since Melaque got pummeled by a typhoon earlier this year and lot of places flooded. Half of the beach front of Barra de Navidad was taken out, but I'm not sure how Melaque fared. Anyway, usually we have tickets booked by now and it's just a matter of waiting, but this time around I was wondering if we were even going to go and disappointment was starting to set in already. Instead Nate just needs to find two weeks to book off of work and we're in business.

Nate said there is a chance that no parents will be around this time, that we'll just go and have the house to ourselves. That would be so awesome. We could use the master bedroom where the king sized bed has a much comfier mattress. Mexican mattresses tend to be really hard and the guest bed is a little on the hard side for my liking. Not to mentioned we've never gone to Mexico as just the two of us, we always go to visit and stay with family. Since this will be our last trip anywhere childless, it would be that much better if it were the two of us.

So, I may sounds crazy, but I think I can feel my baby moving already. Since I've read about other ladies feeling fluttering starting at around 9 or 10 weeks (though they already had other children) I've been trying to see if I could too. I have to stop what I'm doing and look for it, but I feel this tickly feeling right around where my uterus should be. It's so faint and subtle that it's totally easy to miss, but it feel different from gas. I know when I'm about to fart and this feel different, tiny and different.

I'm already starting to feel big. I can certainly feel my enlarged and hard uterus in there. When I move certain ways it's like I have something in the way. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when it's bigger and growing out front. I already look like I'm pregnant because I had a "pot belly" to begin with. All I can say that I definitely feel pregnant now and all the time. My boobs have been more consistently sore too. I'm getting a weird prickly feeling every now and then.

10 WEEKS!! Huzzah! Double digits AND I'm a quarter of the way there!

I have my first ultrasound appointment on the 30th, so two more weeks to go! I've been having fearful thoughts about a missed abortion, but this afternoon I did a pee test and I still have a nice solid line. That seems to be the only thing that puts me at ease, at least until I have the ultrasound and I can see my baby and hear a heartbeat. I really wish I had a doppler. I might be able to hear it using a doppler at this point. I do have a stethoscope, but those don't work until about 20 weeks.

I've been feeling a little tight chested today, which is making me feel like I can't breathe very well. I don't have any history of anxiety either. It doesn't help that my nose is all stuffed up too. I know the stuffiness is a symptom, but feeling like I have a tight chest? I dunno. I was walking around the apartment making dinner and such and felt short of breath. I took my pulse and it was about 120, just from walking around the apartment. It felt like I was coming down from a workout. My apartment is hot and stuffy with electrical heating, which doesn't help either and Nate doesn't like me leaving the window open because he gets cold. But I need fresh air! He should just put on a sweater and deal with it, lol.

The last couple of weeks have been going well. I had my first prenatal appointment with the midwife on the 6th. It was really uneventful, but I'm getting the ultrasound I've been dying to get which is scheduled for the 30th. I wish it was sooner, and maybe if Christmas wasn't in the way it would have been. Oh well, I'll be 12 weeks when I go which means we'll have more to see, like an actually baby not just a peanut.

I've been eating wheat since my last post. Right after I wrote it I turned to Nate and declared I wanted a burger for dinner. I reintroduced wheat into my gut with little to no consequence, but now I'm hungry all the time and I'm not sure if it's pregnancy or wheat causing it. Maybe both. I've been doing pretty well to snack on fruit when I do get grumbley again. It's been frustrating though because I have a hard time eating a full meal. Half way through I lose my appetite and sometimes feel nauseated. I wonder if I'm just eating too fast. I'm also having an aversion to meat. The idea of making it seems great, but then I start cooking it and then I try to eat it and it's gross. I don't like the flavor or the texture. Eating has become nothing but an inconvenience.

So my belly is starting to show ever so subtly. I have this pot belly that I've always had with me. It's how my body is built and when I put on weight it gets bigger along with my hips, but I just weighed myself the other morning and I was only about a 2-4 pound difference and bear in mind that my boobs are also growing, but my belly is clearing sticking out more and it's getting that round preggo shape. I've been taking belly pics every two weeks and comparing my belly form this week to week 5 there is so clearly a difference. This excites me like you don't even know. It's the one clue I have until my ultrasound that my baby is growing. The ultrasound will provide me with both a visual and a heartbeat.

I'm almost a quarter of the way!

I'm having second thoughts about being gluten free. It most DEFINITELY has its health merits and if anyone wants to try it I say go for it, but lately I feel like my diet is so freaking limited and my hunger is increasing as my pregnancy progresses. I just want to be able to have that muffin at Starbucks or even that donut at Tim Hortons. I want to be able to eat normal cookies AND I would like to be able to order a chicken burger anywhere. Besides, if I'm gluten free while in Mexico (which we have been talking about going to next spring before baby comes) I'll be hosed. It's true a lot of their tortillas are corn based, but I can't be scrutinizing my food while I'm down there. I'll be on vacation and just want to EAT.

Anyway, I think the trick is to eat what I like, but still keep it limited. I don't need to be eating bread every single day, though come to think of it that maybe more difficult said than done which is why I had an all or nothing attitude toward going gluten free. Besides I got pregnant too soon to benefit from any weight loss and pregnancy has screwed up my guts regardless. I'm still bloated and gassy and flip flopping from constipation to other end of the wonderful colon spectrum.

When I read Wheat Belly the most important piece of information I walked away with is that eating vegetables is the most important part of a diet as well as limiting simple sugar intake (which is what wheat turns into when digested) and increasing consumption of healthy fats (from nuts and seeds). This seems like the "healthy eating formula" for anyone gluten free or otherwise. So I think while my efforts were genuine, they weren't necessarily what I needed to change.

Now, it's not that I crave these wheat-loaded things. I'm merely finding it inconvenient that I cannot eat them in a constant state of pregnancy induced hunger, a hunger that has nothing to do with the things I'm eating already (or does it? o_O).

So I'm going out and getting a chicken burger (bun and all) at a gourmet burger place down the street from where I live. The difference is I will have the salad instead of the fries

7 weeks already! Where has the time gone?

I just told my mom that I'm expecting. And she wasn't remotely excited. She tells me it's a lot of responsibility as if I'm still a teenager and have no idea what responsibility is. She then talks about my history of potential cervical cancer and how it would affect something like this. She then says she has all kind of stories that would scare the crap out of me. WHAT THE FUCK? WHY CAN'T SHE JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME?????????????????????????? Why can't she just get over her own depressing history for a moment and think that perhaps there IS hope and just be happy for me?!

Wow...if I feel like this this week...what am I going to feel like next week? -_- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Well thanks to a coworker I now have three days off in a row to look forward to after the weekend. Allll riiiight. If I don't end up sleeping for three days I'll hopefully get some reading in. Anyone who reads Stephen King knows his books aren't exactly short novellas. 11/22/63 isn't as long as Under the Dome, but I have another novel to read after Mr. King's that probably is. So two books stupid long, but both, I'm hoping them to be, purely enjoyable. I've really just started 11/22/63, so I don't really have an opinion yet other than I am truly enjoying it, but my attention span is short these days. Can we say the baby brain has begun? Even at work I'll forget what I'm doing in the middle of doing it. Bye bye mental acuity, hello hormonal stupidity.

I think symptoms are starting to pick up a little. My boobs are much more sore today, I'm much more tired and I'm much more hungry. I have this unsettled feeling that isn't morning sickness, but feels like it could turn into it at any moment. I have no motivation to do anything and thinking about cooking and the food involved kind of disgusts me. In a time where good eating habits are paramount I just want to give up and eat chips and chocolate all day long. I'm still sticking with this gluten free thing as much as I can, avoiding wheat heavy products. I'll cave a little and still eat sushi (the rice vinegar has wheat in it apparently) and other very minute to small amounts of wheat, but even those are giving me bouts of the runs so I'm terrified of what a slice of bread or a cookie might do to me. Since food in general is less appealing these days (is there such thing as a generalized food aversion), being limited by a gluten free diet is making things even more difficult. Right now I'm just snacking on lots of fruit, salads loaded with goat cheese, and yogurt (the fullest fat greek yogurt too). Tonight I'll be eating sushi again because I crave it and Nate's going to comedy show that I opted out of because I work at 4am tomorrow morning.

I went to my chiropractor today and complained about my back. She was sympathetic with my daily body changes. I used her muscle tapping device on both of my legs to loosen them up and get some blood flow moving through them. It seems like my legs are worse than when I initially started seeing her, but my spine is doing well. It hardly cracked today. The main issue seems to be my muscles, which makes sense because hormones cause ligaments to loosen and I guess the muscles react accordingly. She mentioned I should get some prenatal massage to compliment the adjustments she gives me. Anyway, in order for me to really benefit from treatment I need to follow through on my end with stretching, stretching and more stretching as well as some strengthening exercises. Can't let that pelvic floor go weak, otherwise I may find myself a little incontinent.

Only two more weeks until my first appointment with my midwife!

@grizzlybearr

Work really needs to stop calling me when I'm not there. They call me on my days off asking if I can either come in or change my shift, and now they're even calling me on days I start later, probably to ask me if I want to start earlier. GO AWAY! I just want to work the schedule I've been given and leave it at that. Besides all this extra bullshit that I'm required to do because it's mandatory, you also want me to bend over backwards and help you with staffing problems? Fuck you.

Since getting pregnant I've been hating my job. Absolutely HATE IT. When I get frustrated like this I start getting these thoughts of overreacting such as never going back once mat leave is over. But is it overreacting? After all, once my mat leave is over I'm not obligated to go back. I am obligated to go back to work so I don't piss off EI and they make me pay back my mat leave income, but I don't have to go back to LD. Whatever, I'm sure this is the hormones talking, but either way I'm always getting these 8 hour shifts that I physically cannot do right now with my achy back and hips and the round ligament pain that come from it. I need to let my body rest. I need to start thinking about my bean growing inside me and take care of it and frankly standing for hours on end is not a good thing. I should remember to ask my midwife when I see her in December about the standing and the pain and perhaps get her to write me a "doctors note" so that I cannot be scheduled for so many 8 hour shifts. They got rid of the opening shift on the desk (4 hours) recently too and I feel like I've been totally boned by this. The only short shift is in the evening when I'm at my most tired. But as I feel like I'm continually getting screwed over, I am still getting raises. It's a good thing they have an automatic wage increase program that's based on the number of hours clocked, otherwise I'm pretty sure I'd still be making $9 an hour after almost 5 years of service. But, that is not the case. I got a raise on November 6th apparently, so I will be making a little more every hour when in fact I am liking my job a little less every hour. Also my "me time" has decreased since working time has increased and I feel like that is contributing to all this frustration.

Also, I'm pissed at Nate because he took his owed day for Remembrance day TODAY rather than December 6th when my first prenatal appointment is. I don't think he's figured out exactly how much his attendance is required. I need him, but since he's not the one who's physically pregnant he probably thinks he doesn't have to do much.

SOOOOOO.....other than the rant above things are going great in terms of pregnancy! Still hardly any symptoms. I think the hunger is picking up, but still no morning sickness. Boobs are barely sore, no headaches, no nasty symptoms. Just the aching. The aching is awful and it's making work hell. I'll be six weeks tomorrow, though! Hurray!! My beanie is starting to take shape and should have a heartbeat by now