Are we positive?

So yeah, I’m pregnant again. I unfortunately miscarried on January 3, 2008, just over five weeks into my pregnancy. It was your garden-variety miscarriage, but really I don’t think there’s such a thing as an easy miscarriage. It was painful, physically and emotionally.

But enough about that. Forgive the long post. I’ve been a bit wary of writing about this pregnancy, so now that I’m starting to feel a little more confident, I have lots to catch up on. I don’t know what the future will bring, but I’m going to go ahead and get excited and start documenting this pregnancy.

I was due for my period on March 26, but since Chris and I had been pumping away at the procreation game that month, I couldn’t wait to see if I missed my period.

I tested before I left for work on the morning of March 24 and got a faint positive line on a First Response Early Result. I lovingly woke up Chris, ready to share the exciting news.

“I don’t see anything. It’s not dark enough. You’re wanting something to be there when it’s not.”

Oh that mother fucker. He was not telling me that it was a negative test. I’d been obsessively looking at other people’s faint positives online and he was not about to tell me what my test said.

In my anger, I pulled out one of those fancy digital tests (I was hoarding tests. I’m a bit obsessive at times) and peed on it. While the test did its thing, a vague fear filled me. What if he was right? No, he would not be right. I would be pregnant!

A minute later, the word “Pregnant” appeared on that lovely digital screen. I triumphantly called Chris back into the bathroom to see what I’d accomplished.

“See? Pregnant!” I dared him to defy me.

“You know what I think? I think that’s a false positive. You’re not pregnant.”

Yeah, not exactly the loving, supportive response I’d hoped for.

Angry—no, enraged—,I headed off to work. My defiant self just rationalized, “Well fuck it. Fuck it and fuck him. I’ll just have to leave him and raise this baby by myself. I don’t need him.”

I am happy to report that I didn’t have to resort to such measures. After some discussion, we worked it out. Within a few days, Chris started warming up to the idea and actually started getting a little bit happy about it.

There have been all sorts of little things since that fateful day, but I’m going to just do a list of stuff I’ve observed and experienced in the past three weeks to catch up.

The birth center.
If it’s medically okay, I’m dead set on a natural birth, preferably in a birthing home. Chris, on the other hand, was pretty set on a hospital birth with an epidural and a doctor and lots of counting to 10 and pushing.

Luckily, my husband is fucking awesome, so we attended an open house of a nearby birthing center. During the hour and a half that we were there, Chris made me so proud. He was asking lots of questions, reading the literature, chatting with the birthing assistant, observing everything around him…. Despite all of this, I really didn’t think he was going for it, which crushed me.

At the end of the class, if you were interested in setting up an appointment, you were supposed to stay later and start filling out paperwork. With a heavy heart, I told the birthing assistant we’d get back to her. As we walked to the car (heart breaking… I wasn’t going to get to labor in this lovely garden!), I asked, “So? What did you think?” To my shock and surprise, Chris was on board. He was really digging the idea of getting in the birthing tub with me and catching the baby. I am ashamed that I underestimated him—and I’m thrilled to have his support.

The symptoms.
Yep, I’ve got ‘em. I will be documenting them in detail. Here’s most of what I’ve got so far.

• Nausea. Pretty much non-stop. It came out of nowhere one morning. I was really hungry, so I put a little dollop of PB&J on a cracker. I bit into it and ohmyfuckinggodthatissodisgusting. My mouth overflowed with saliva. I rushed to the trashcan to spit it out, but the trashcan was full of wet cigarette butts. The stench filled my mouth and nose, which caused a severe gag that had me rushing to the bathroom. Chris lovingly said, “You’re so pregnant.” This was just about 4 ½ weeks in. There have been a few times where I thought for sure I would hurl, but no go (so far?).
• Food aversions and cravings. At first I really craved tomato-based foods: fries with loads of ketchup, pasta doused in marinara, pizza overloaded with tomato sauce. Now, my cravings happen on a day-by-day basis. And perhaps it’s inaccurate to call them cravings; it’s more like foods I feel I can stomach. I’ve already discovered that what sounds digestible changes on a daily, even hourly, basis, which means I can’t buy things in bulk and I have to go to the supermarket every day to satisfy my hunger. I must say, though, that I’m very lucky to have things I can eat at all, more than just the crackers and ginger ale that other women can eat. Pizza is still a reliable food for me (so far, and only on some days). PB&J is also a friend. Even chocolate is really still delicious. On the aversion side, I started feeling sickened by coffee even before I found out I was pregnant. I can no longer drink any sodas—not just because I’m supposed to avoid caffeine, but because it tastes horrendous. Pickled and vinegary things are also out: pickles, olives, ketchup. I must say that what really broke my heart was my disgust with cheese. One night, I found this “miracle meal” of cheese-covered blue corn nachos with a diet root beer. I thought, WOW, this is the BEST food EVER. A few days later, nothing sounded good so I figured my miracle meal would rescue me. Wrong. It was so wretched I could barely sleep that night. Now, I can only handle cheese if it’s incidental or secondary to the main meal: pizza’s okay, grilled cheese is not. And I can’t even stand the smell of root beer now.
• Sore boobs. More than sore. Fucking painful. Seriously. When I take off my bra at the end of the day, the pain sets in within seconds. I have very small breasts, so this is disturbing. On the bright side, I finally filled out an A-cup strapless bra! This is especially important because there are no straps to force the boobs to fit. I just might hit a B cup before this whole thing is over.
• Slobber. Yes, slobber. They say “excessive saliva,” but really I’ve got a slobbery mouth. At random times for no apparent reason, my mouth will fill with slobber—you know, sort of like it does before you vomit. So of course, I gag when it happens.
• Restless legs. Luckily this seems to be subsiding, but for about a week there, my legs had that stupid creepy-crawly feeling when I was trying to go to bed. It SUCKS. I highly recommend avoiding this one. I’d rather hurl than have this.
• Moodiness. I feel like crying and hiding under the covers one minute, throwing plates and breaking furniture the next. Because I have a long history of depression and/or possibly a form of bipolar, this freaks me out.
• Peeing a lot. They call this “increased frequency of urination,” or something more palatable, in those books. But really, I just have to pee a lot. All the time. I’ve read the hint to put your feet at 10 and 2 and lean forward to get all the pee out. That helps.
• Constipation. I’ve always struggled with this, and pregnancy has made it worse. It got so bad the first week that I went to a walk-in clinic for some relief. The doctor was totally weird. After prescribing Miralax and agreeing to do a blood test to confirm the pregnancy and get my HCG hormone level, he high-fived me. Yeah, I told you he was weird. (By the way, I did some reading later about the Miralax is a Class C drug, meaning that there aren’t any studies on the effects of it on a fetus. So I stopped taking it. It wasn’t that miraculous anyway.)
• Tired, but can’t sleep well. I’m asleep by 10:30, but wake up either from squishing an incredibly sore boob, having to pee or thrashing awake from some bad dream.
• Lots of things going on downstairs. By this I mean discharge. I read that this is normal, especially since the mucous plug is forming. Good. Form, I say, and plug the baby in there!

Overall, what I really care about is that this baby sticks. We’ve even named her Sticky (though she’s also being called Shrimpy after seeing that she resembled a prawn last week). I have my first ultrasound on Tuesday. We need lots of good vibes!