9 weeks

Because I am inundated with the side effects of growing a human, I have nothing interesting to tell you all, except my symptoms, which I will look back on someday and say, "Oh, it wasn't all that bad!" I am telling you now, future Me: It's pretty fucking bad.

Just to lay it out, super TMI style:
-Nausea, but not just the morning kind. All the damn time kind.
-Extreme hunger. But only for strange, unattainable foods, stuff I never keep in the house.
-Round ligament pain. What's new?
-Constipation. Yay me.
-Diarrhea. My body can't make up its mind.
-Pregnancy-induced allergies. My eyes, ears, nose, throat are all itching constantly, and I have the eternal drip.
-Exhaustion. Need I say more?
-Breathlessness. Seriously, the stairs are killing me, yo.
-Inability to go back to sleep. What a bitch.

That's me. Can't eat sunny-side up eggs anymore, can't get comfortable, can't take most allergy meds.
Such is the life of pregnant me. Can't wait for the second trimester.

Also, this is nice:

Words

Dana Gioia

The world does not need words. It articulates itself

in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path

are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.

The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.

The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—

illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.

Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands

glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow

arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot

name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.

To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—

metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa

carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,

painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving

each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.

The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—

greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

Heyo, Nut.

A baby-sized southern pecan.

Today is 8 weeks. I don.t know how I feel. Tired. Not especially pregnant, just worn out. I hope all is well under the layers of skin and muscle and bone. I hope there is a strong little heartbeat that is getting more powerful every day. But you never know, right? You never know how long we are here on this plane of existence. We'll see. No sense in stressing. Just nap. Just read Dune and dream of other things. Take long walks and look out at the duck on the lake. Kiss my boy too much.

I have been having dreams that are hard to see and harder to escape. The kind that will rerun the bad bits, just to make you relive them a little longer. Snakes and deep water and things I can't change. I am trying to rewrite them, but that brings sleeplessness, which is another kind of dream world. I'll try harder.

I would write more, but I am behind. Behind on so many little things. The kind of things that if you ignore them, they will make it to tomorrow, but then tomorrow is harder. Chip away at it, Kate. Get that shit over with. It's holding you back.

More whenever.

Taking one day at a time.

This is why I named my blog what it is. I need to take one day at a time.While I understand planning ahead, I am trying NOT to do that. Here are my reasons why:

-I started bleeding. As I have had a previous unexplained miscarriage, I called up the midwife and had my blood beta levels tested and an ultrasound. I showed to be measuring 5w5d, with levels at 14,000. Normal. within 48 hrs they had almost doubled. Pretty normal. The ultrasound showed a blood clot between the placenta and the uterine wall, which could cause miscarriage, or just be absorbed. Also, pretty normal. Instead of freaking out, I got frustrated. I spent a week frustrated. I have another ultrasound tomorrow to see if we have growth and a heartbeat. If not....well, such is life. I have realized that while it hurts to consider losing another baby, life goes on.

-I am raising two kids right now. That shit is hard. Between mountains of laundry, homework, class trips, library time, making sure they meet their book reading quotas, getting them outside to exercise and play, and breaking up tiffs, I've got enough on my mind. Life goes on.

-I am married. Married life has its own balance. It requires maintenance. It needs love and touch and kisses, too. My husband is a wonderful man with needs as well, and I don't drop the ball on him. He is my lifeline, and we help each other. So what if I need new toenail polish applied pronto? I've got to go snuggle my man. Life goes on.

-I am trying to decide if I am enough of a warrior to stop letting the medical world scare me and just make a decision on having a homebirth. I have been battling the insurance companies enough, and have realized that while they will give me what they want, that isn't what I want. I am not going to go through another birth where I feel pushed around. I need to be strong and let my body do what its made to do. Life goes on.

-I am tired. I have been pushing back against technology lately. Leaving my phone places and forgetting about it. (It helps its also seriously malfunctioning.) I am getting sick of Facebook. Instagram isnt so fun anymore. I want to be a hermit and be left to my own devices...namely not tech-y ones. Weird.

-I want to remember how empowered motherhood is. I want to remember the immense strength I felt holding my newborn and knowing I could take over the world. But right now, I am worn out and in need of quiet. Naps. Pickles. Library books. Cats. Yarn. Things like that. Hibernation sounds good for a short while.

So here we are, at this point in my life. I am taking it one day at a time, quietly. Hoping for heartbeats, spring winds, more love and some peace. Life goes on.

A blueberry.

Since I am taking this pregnancy one day at a time, I will be celebrating mini achievements. Like this week: surviving week one of knowing I am pregnant, driving to  12+ hrs SLC and back, having Hubby and Son get sick and then infecting me with their head cold and having to survive that, and being super, super tired. So yay me, I survived this week! Sunday is my day to roll into the next pregnancy development week, so today, Baby Rowan is a blueberry. A tiny one. How cute. Now, if only the cuteness also came with NOT feeling like every smell is going to make me upchuck. The first trimester is such a joy.

Anyways, to make myself feel better, I read funny pregnancy things. Here are a few, for the rest of us that are incubating tiny things:

Six Stages of Pregnancy by Scary Mommy

The Only Pregnancy Calendar You Will Ever Need.-Alphamom

Everything on Pregnant Chicken

And this, because children's book do blow.-I like beer and babies.

See you all back here whenever I get the idea that my blog is missing my big ol' pregnant butt!