Pregnancy Week 12

How little bird is growing:

Nail works. Last week nail beds formed at the tips of your little one's fingers and toes. This week, fingernails actually start to grow from those nail beds and will continue to grow until birth. Many babies are actually born with long fingernails that need to be trimmed soon after delivery.

Parts in place. The truly critical period for your little one's development is coming to a close. By the end of this week, the monumental task of growing new body structures will be complete. All the parts are there, from the pinky fingers to the little toes. Even the sex organs have developed, though it's too soon for an ultrasound to determine if you're carrying a girl or a boy.

Lights out. By this week, the eyelids have formed and will close. They'll remain fused together until late in your second trimester.

Measuring up. For the next 28 weeks, your little one's job is to keep growing and developing. This week your baby weighs 0.3 to 0.5 ounce and measures around 2.5 inches.

You just don't know how much I want to know right now if boy or girl. Although, DH and I seem to disagree mostly on baby names for girls. I've become very attached to my grandmother's name, but I'm afraid to say it in case anyone will shut it down. I think I'll keep it to myself for a while and then announce it once the baby is born. That way, nobody can look at a newborn baby and say "I don't like your name". Bwahahahaha, that's my evil plan.

As far as pregnancy goes, I've turned into such a pregnant bitch. Not to DH, but everyone else, especially my students at work. Don't feel sorry for them though, I should've been a b to them in the first place, but pre-pregnancy I was just too nice. Now, they're not bothering me as much. So there you go.

I fly to Baton Rouge tonight to visit my family and some friends and the SPoos for a week. I think DH will spend the time bonding w/his Playstation2. That's fine, he can play it all he wants while I'm gone, as long as he goes to work and showers when necessary.

Progress in a wet paper bag

I'm still spending my precious time occupying my anxiety with the tiny but there risk of taking an antidepressant while Pregnant.

I wish I had a better resource of health professionals to ask, but sadly I belong to an HMO where I get 30 seconds with each, and none of them want to say anything definite. Why leave something up to somebody who is NOT medically qualified? I don't mind making my own decision about natural birth vs. happy medicated birth, but I'm not informed enough or educated enough to make a decision about whether or not taking Zoloft will hurt my baby or worse, have the baby come out a little crazy, like me.

Also, as I am nearing the end of the first trimester, the more I worry that I've already lost my baby. No, I have no signs of miscarriage, but the nausea is letting up (don't get too excited, I mean that I can eat a piece of chocolate now and actually swallow without gagging). And I just have that feeling, that nothing alive is in my belly anymore. It worries me, but I won't be able to see an OB until the first week of June. It would serve me right, for telling people that I'm pregnant before I got out of the first trimester.

The progress though, is that I spoke to my old airline boss (TransCaribbean Airways- the airline that never flew). He claims that they actually will begin flying in August, with domestic flights (New Orleans to Nashville to include another region to have access to the islands) beginning in October. He wants me back as his executive assistant of marketing, in charge of Public Relations again, and he wants to hire Pete on the Freight side. Of course, he didn't say when, but asked when we were moving back to Baton Rouge and made promises like he wouldn't make me travel a lot with a baby at home, so he'd put me in charge of U.S. operations until I was ready to take on either the Islands, Spain or England (which would be years ahead anyway). It all sounds great, but ever since I first interviewed for that job, I've heard it all before. Flights will begin next month, blah blah blah. It never happened, and the aviation industry isn't picking up either. It was the only job I ever loved, and he was the best boss. So, fingers are crossed. It means we would move back to Baton Rouge, and probably for a longer time. The office will most likely be in New Orleans so eventually we'd move, maybe into our own house, closer to New Orleans - and in a few years, maybe back to England. We'll see. I've heard it all before, but this time I'm hoping he's right. I'm going to try to meet w/him when I go to Baton Rouge for a visit next week, and we can talk about it. Last time I spoke to him, he offered a pretty high salary, and he is the boss I would most rather have when pregnant or taking maternity leave. So, let's hope!

This weekend I'm having a girly window shopping day with Slush. Let's hope I have enough energy and don't wimp out on her.

Psych Help

Saw the psychiatrist today who sent me on a rollercoaster.

I went in with infinite knowledge of Pregnancy and Antidepressants from my own research and talking to my OB and Doctor about it (who think it would be fine to take one of the drugs considered safer than the rest). We spoke a little bit and the first thing my Psychiatrist told me was to quit my job, or take a break for six months to a year, for the health of the baby and my own emotional health.

So my fears have been confirmed. I am too crazy to keep this job right now. While I welcome to opportunity to not deal with this stress and work on my own emotional health which I hope would help my husband as well (who would probably benefit from seeing me slightly happier), it is my job that provides the 6 weeks of paid maternity leave (albeit paid at 60% only) and my health insurance.

We'll get back to that later, meanwhile, I'm busy trying to convince the psychiatrist that life without the antidepressants has been just impossible. The more I speak to her, the more she realizes that I should be on at least something, so she agrees. However, she has to scare me first.

Liability and all. She's just trying to avoid malpractice.

So she spends the rest of my appointment warning me about taking antidepressants while pregnant. Sure there is a tiny, tiny, miniscule chance that anything would happen to my baby - but what if that happened to my baby? Am I ready for that risk? Is my husband ready for that risk?

Immediately I feel my blood pressure rising and my headache from crying just throbs even more. No longer am I confident about all the studies that I have read and what my OB doctor told me. Now I'm worried, will I ruin my child's life by delivering a down's syndrome child just because I didn't want to spend the pregnancy in the depths of despair and possibly in the path of self-harm? How selfish can I be????

Why is motherhood so damn difficult? 11 weeks of being a mother and I'm already ready to commit myself in an institution. No wonder my sisters and I thought we were driving our mother into a straight-jacket - we were working on that from the womb without even trying. We should just be amazed right now at how sane our mother sometimes seems to be.

After visiting w/the psychiatrist, I had another breakdown on the way to work from her office in speaking to my husband - who although tries his damndest to understand chemical imbalances and depression, still tries to cure everything with a kiss and telling me just how illogical it is to think the way the depressed-me feels. Poor flower just doesn't understand it, and he's not the only one - but his mouth sure gets him into a heap of trouble when he thinks he understands. It all ended with more crying, and a frappuccino from Starbucks (my new crack), and us discussing me waiting until two more weeks to begin taking the meds (Zoloft 100mg) that the psychiatrist described.

I've wasted most of my day at work doing more research on Zoloft and pregnancy, and can't find a happy medium with what I've read. About 95% of reports and studies and articles from Doctors that I have read, say that Zoloft is perfectly fine - the problem is that it has only been around since 1992, so they don't know the long-term effects, but that in comparison to the rest of the antidepressants, Zoloft is one of the safest. There have been some negative findings in studies done on animals who are fed 10 times the adult dosage and their offspring, but it is still minimal, and the human studies have not shown any negative effects - yet. The other 5% are the wishy-washy kind that just say not enough studies have been done.

So what to do - risk my job, marriage, and the ability to not do self-harm to not have that tiny risk to the baby -- or have that tiny risk to the baby? No doctor is going to give me a non-liable answer. They don't want to take responsibility. My Psychiatrist knows depression, but doesn't know pregnancy (she admitted). My OB knows pregnancy but not depression. And they have conflicting ideas of what to do.

So today I am feeling even worse than yesterday, thanks to my attempts at getting professional help.

DH would rather I quit my job to relieve that stress and do without the drugs - but who is to say that no job equals sane lady? To be honest, all I want to do is go home to nurse Mommy, curl up in bed, watch daytime tv, and spend the afternoons playing with the most therapeutic Standard Poodles in the world. But I guess that's not what a pregnant 26 year old married woman is supposed to do. That's why life sucks sometimes. Plus I'd miss autumn in a place that actually has it. And isn't it silly that after all of this, that is what ultimately keeps me here? Leaves changing colors.

Maybe we should move back to England where DH will definitely be happy, healthcare is free (albeit a little dodgy by American healthcare standards but I heard they give pregnant ladies in labor a bath before giving labor, doesn't that sound nice?), and baby will have a handwritten birth certificate, which is just darn cute.

And thus you have seen the mind of a certified crazy lady. I hope you enjoyed it.

Baby check-in

I'm nearing the end of my 10th week, and my depression has been worse than ever.

In between brief moments of "We're having a baby" happiness, I seem to fall thousands of feet into a dark abyss of sad, and shame for feeling that way. I feel as though I am two people - one tsking and shaking her head at the other who is drowning in despair. One feeling ashamed and fearful for the other who is headed straight for the looney bin.

I've even begun to hate our apartment, probably b/c I associate it with the place where I crash in between going to work - another place I hate, or at least is the source of most of my anxiety and stress. I never look forward to going into our apartment anymore. No longer can I view it was our accomplishment - getting out and living on our own - but now it is some sort of prison where I'm stuck and suffocate while preparing to go to work. DH parks the truck in the parking lot and I break down in tears sometimes because I just can't go in.

I see myself going through this and wonder what happened. Why am I feeling like this and going through this? Isn't there a sane person underneath it all? Or perhaps there never was, and my brain is finally taking over. I feel so desperate and hopeless, and nothing I do helps.

I can list more positives in my life right now than anyone looking at this. I know how blessed I am more than you could guess. I remind myself of this everyday, several times a day, yet it doesn't help. It is really the pregnancy hormones, or am I just this crazy? How can I raise a child while I am this crazy? I belong in an institution. If it weren't for my husband's love and care, I probably would be in a padded cell right now, or somewhere worse.

Tomorrow I meet with the psychiatrist, and I hope she gives me something. Even my OB (well, the third one I saw since my HMO won't allow me to see the same one over again) thought it was crazy that when the psychiatrist took me off of my antidepressants, that she didn't put me on a different one that has been found safe with pregnancy. There are at least two kinds out there, and one of them has worked well for me in the past. If my psych doesn't put me on it, I hope that I can keep my temper.

I'm wearing down my husband as well. He feels underappreciated, even though I've tried my best to appreciate what he does. I think this is an example of the language barrier between us, however. I tell him nonstop just how much what he does for me means to me, so it hurt my feelings to hear he felt underappreciated - yet our argument revealed that to him, underappreciated means overworked. He does everything and has nobody to complain to (he won't complain to me). To me, it means that I'm not letting him know how much I appreciate what he does. So we had a very silly argument arguing over two very opposite things. It didn't last long, probably a stoplight on the way home.

I go to Baton Rouge in a little over a week for a short visit. I hope it will relieve my stress and anxiety and help me feel less hopeless. Work has become more difficult to put up with (long story about a boss who doesn't understand our jobs), and the sooner I get out of here, the better.

Don't get me wrong, I am extremely excited about this baby. It's just that all the exercise, fresh air, and thinking positive in the world can't change the way I feel - and that makes me feel more hopeless than ever. I just hope my baby doesn't inherit my crazy chemical imbalance. Things will be perfect if it inherits everything from DH.

Notice

To all women who have been pregnant before:

It is in the best interest of your physical health to NOT tell me that you weren't sick at all and had no problems during your pregnancy. If you do, please duck quickly to miss the back of my hand hitting your face.

Thank you.



And second notice -

Dearest OLDest auntie Dalene:

Please refrain from telling me how my super-cousin's superwoman wife is starting law school while 5 months pregnant and taking care of renovating their second house and their 2 year old daughter. I'd rather not know, and rather not feel how much of a failure that makes me. Thanks for making a pregnant woman feel pathetic for feeling sick.


And to the rest of you - Please send lots of sympathy and understanding to my mind going crazy, my stomach not wanting to eat anything yet making me sick if I don't, and my body being so exhausted that I am winded and sore from carrying in a few groceries. And be extra sympathetic and understanding to how I can't sleep at night because I am never comfortable, and how my fingers are tingling nonstop (do not say it's just a pinched nerve, it's a pregnancy symptom, I read it!).

Do not proceed to tell me 'how odd' or 'really? when i was pregnant i was fine'. Or you will face the consequences.

Thank you.

There are no doubts

as to whose baby this is. Not that there would be anyway since Pete and I have been in a committed relationship for at least the past 5 years, but if I were a Jerry Springer guest, he wouldn't even need DNA testing - just the ultrasound tape.

Most of you know my husband's goofy dance moves. It seems to be some sort of family bonding that occurs when he and his sister are in a bar with music and they'll share goofy dance steps all night. There's no stopping them.

So yesterday when the new OB stuck that horrible painful dildo looking internal ultrasound thingy where the sun don't shine - I saw baby. And baby was dancing - Just.Like.Daddy. At 9 weeks, the baby barely has limbs, but yesterday afternoon they were swinging and pumping away, and I swear I even saw baby do a flip and land in a split. There's no question, this baby already has Daddy's dance moves.

Speaking of ultrasounds, seeing baby on the screen made me feel incredibly embarrassed for how I had been complaining about my pregnancy. Some of my friends had misinterpreted my complaining to mean that I didn't want the baby when the truth was - I just didn't want to put up with the 9 months of pain to get baby. Of course I want baby. Ever since I found out, I've been wondering and imagining just how much Mommy love will swell in me, and thinking that I've already reached that point.

I had it completely wrong.

The second I saw my 2.4 centimeter Little Bird dancing away, I felt so overwhelmed with Mommy love. Which I now understand consists of a helluva lot of worry. Just look at all that extra uterus space, what if Little bird bumps his/her head? Am I giving baby enough room for all that disco fever? How on EARTH am I going to keep baby safe when it's out of that protective circle? Oh man, how did we ever manage to make such a beautiful little screen blob?

In between all of those emotions I had to calm myself down and convince myself that I would be okay if we lost baby. The first Dr. couldn't see my ovaries and immediately thought baby was IN the ovary. She made us rush to radiology for an emergency external ultrasound (those are much more comfortable by the way) where the tech also could not find ovaries and left me lying there under a pile of ultrasound goo next to a freeze frame of dancing baby, to get yet another doctor to see.

Two more ultrasounds later (internal and external), they decided that I just had gas hiding the ovaries and baby is okay, and due December 9. And although I bathed, I am still finding ultrasound gel in crevices that I didn't know I had.

It helps the excitement to see DH looking at the ultrasound pictures with the biggest smile I've ever seen him have. I can see he's proud and also full of that worry-love as well.

In the meantime, I still have every pregnancy horrible symptom known to woman. I finally got drugs for the nausea, but they're the kind that knock you out for hours even if you only take half. I guess there's nothing for the working pregnant woman to do but tough it out, go certifiably crazy from being expected to tough it out, and cry every night from frustration like I do.

I did, however, find a temporary cure for nausea when I'm at home - popsicles. It's like chewing flavored ice, and works wonders on my tummy when I can't eat anything else. I'd bring them to work but I don't think it's professional to have a huge orange/red or purple clown lipped face and tongue all day.

News or not, here I am

I'm a little scared to write in the blog today b/c I've been so depressed. Work has been the evil little cause, and I see no solutions in the near future.

Apparently, although I am having enough trouble as it is being pregnant and having to come into work and work an 8+ hour day, seeing a therapist AND a psychiatrist for my depression during this, and having trouble w/the learning curve to my new job - the Director decided to double my job duties b/c my office-share chick is stressed.

I'm stressed too, but the difference is that I haven't expressed my stress to work people in fear of losing my job. It has only worked against me. Now I am beyond stressed. I can't finish a thing b/c I feel so overwhelmed right now, and I have 10 different people barking at me to complete separate projects YESTERDAY. In the meantime I still cannot eat and have the shakes from allowing my blood sugar to drop so much from not eating not the count the horrible nausea I get when my stomach is empty.

Do you know how awful it is to force-feed yourself a saltine? And speaking of saltines - I AM SICK AND BLOODY TIRED OF PEOPLE TELLING ME TO EAT SALTINES TO HELP MY NAUSEA. THEY ARE BLOOMIN' PROBLEM, NOT THE FREAKIN' ANSWER!

Oh, and did I mention my temper? Yeah, that may be getting a little out of hand as well.

It hasn't helped that I overheard DH tell one of his family members that he is sick and tired of having to do everything. I try to help around the house, but it is really less possible than one may imagine in my condition. I apologize over and over to DH and try not to request him to do anything - except the kitty box b/c I'm not allowed to touch the kitty litter and the smell makes me nauseous after a cat has freshly crappd in there... and he smiles and says it's no problem and give me a kiss.

So, I have some issues to talk about with DH. We had also agreed on things like the possibility of moving closer to my family where everything is cheaper and we will be able to afford a family much easier - at least for the first few years when a good free neighborhood school system doesn't matter, then consider either moving back here or to England then - and he seemed happy about it. Overheard him telling a family member - he's not so happy about it.

To all the DHs out there - be honest with your pregnant wives, or the lies will come back to haunt you when your wives' hormone levels are at the highest, which is much worse than lying at the time to appease your wife - Trust me.

We've solved the Playstation2 problem, and at the moment I don't have to sell it. I have bigger fish to fry anyway -

This is the scariest part of my pregnancy, and I must warn you, it's horrendous -

Ready?


Like, really, ready?


Okay, here goes...


THERE IS UNEATEN CHOCOLATE IN OUR HOUSE THAT I DON'T EVEN WANT.

Good chocolate, like british kit-kats, boxes of Mint chocolate covered Oreo cookies, homemade brownies that DH made, and Magic Shell with ICE CREAM!

I want none of it. No appetite for it whatsoever. I hear my Mum-in-law thinking how lovely that is, but I am scared to death about it. This isn't me, and this certainly isn't what I thought would be the pregnant me! I eat chocolate, I live on chocolate, I use the seratonin-inducing chocolate to be happy... and I can't eat it! Don't want it, don't even want to look at it. What's a woman to do???

This is so damn frustrating. I am STARVING, and have the shakes from low blood sugar. All I have in front of me is a peanut butter sandwich DH made for me b/c this morning I couldn't think about food when he was making my lunch. Now, the smell of peanut butter (Note - my second favorite food next to chocolate, normally) makes me sick. I've got to eat, and there's nothing appetizing in sight. I'm frustrated.

Someone send a cure, quick. I'll trade you my useless birth control pills.

How to Eat

The general idea I had of a pregnant woman was that she would have no problem eating anything, ever. Of course there would be the occasional morning puke in the toilet, but after the morning the preggo would just be hungry all day and eat everything in sight.

That was the part of pregnancy that I was looking forward to. Eating things I would otherwise have no excuse or reason to eat. Things I loved to eat before pregnancy but felt guity about and would get looks from DH if I tried to eat it. Things that I couldn't wait to eat using the reason, "Don't tell a pregnant woman what she can and can not eat!". I was excited.

So now I'm confused about my problem. I never in my 26 years had trouble eating food. Even when I was so ill with flu or pneumonia, I could scarf down anything and not throw up or even feel nauseous about it. But now, at a possible (*Ultrasound still hasn't confirmed it) two months pregnant, I have to force-feed myself even a saltine cracker.

The problem isn't that I'm just not hungry, it is that my body just will not allow me to eat anything without consequence. I must eat, or the nausea will overwhelm me when my stomach is empty, but I can not eat. Not even my favorite cereal, the brownies my husband made for me, or McDonald's fries are appetizing anymore. I will crave a certain food for days and beg my husband for it... then after he buys it and I either look at it or take a bite, I realize that I just can't eat it.

What's a pregnant woman to do? I have to eat for the nutrition, and I have to keep my stomach from becoming empty, but there isn't a food in the world that I can easily force myself to eat. Baby doesn't want food, baby wants to learn the basics of anorexia early. I've lost ten pounds in this pregnancy already (not that you can tell, I look as though I've gained twenty), but apparently that's not a path I'm supposed to take.

The only thing that keeps me going are my crave-spurts. For the past few days I have been able to eat Pepper Jack Doritos and a Slurpee from 7-11. Not healthy, I know, but you try eating healthy when you can't even take a bite of a saltine without dry-heaving. I've tried all of the methods other moms and the pregnancy books say - Suck on a peppermint, drink green tea, sip ginger ale, eat saltines (HAH! more like shove them down your throat and chew while trying not to think about spitting them up)... they don't work. I know every pregnancy is different but why couldn't this one thing just be easy? Why is it so hard to eat all of a sudden after 26 years of finding it hard NOT to eat? The one time in my life when my doctor TELLS me I have to eat, I can't.

Although, right at this moment, I am craving fried chicken. I doubt I'll be able to eat any once it is in front of me, but will someone take me to Popeyes please?