Friday, April 27, 2007

Randomness - 16 weeks 1 day

First - can you believe I've made it to 16 weeks? For some reason the even-numbered weeks feel like bigger milestones to me than odd-numbered weeks. Not sure why. 14 weeks was a milestone. 15 seemed like no big deal. 16 seems like big deal.

Getting to 20 weeks is a very big deal for me. I know a woman who was pregnant from twins (a girl from my IVF board actually), and she lost them both at 20 weeks. It was heartbreaking. And I can't get it out of my head. Her cervix gave out and she went into labor. Even though her cervix had been just fine at her check a couple weeks before. They got her in the hospital and stopped the contractions, but she had dilated too much and after a few days started to get an infection. And they had no choice but to let her deliver. Of course it was too early and the girls did not survive. This haunts me. So I think of 20 weeks as a big hurdle to get over. I don't know anybody who has lost twins after 20 weeks (and please don't tell me any stories that will freak me out!) - so I think after 20 weeks I will feel much more confident. One month to go.

I think I'm feeling some little flutters again. I didn't feel anything for several days. Maybe they were sleeping a lot because of me having a cold? But today I think I feel some faint flutters.

I'm still pretty snotty today. This cold is taking a while to kick.

Update on random pregnancy symptoms:
  • My sense of smell: I've always had a pretty sensitive nose. But these days I can smell everything. I'm not really having aversions to smells, but I just notice them all. Somebody referred to this as the dog nose - perfect!
  • Hunger: just in the last few days really, I've started to experience this extreme feeling of hunger. I don't just get hungry like normal - I instead get ravenously hungry - like "I must eat right now!". But despite this - my appetite overall is relatively normal, I am eating normal quanties of food. I'm actually back to eating normal meals finally. It's just that when I do get hungry, it is extremely urgent.
  • Nausea: happy to say this is basically gone. Unless I let myself get too hungry. I really hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying this.
  • Still no real food cravings to speak of. Everything tastes pretty good these days.
  • Dreams: technicolor ones. Random ones. Usually I can't even recall a specific narrative in the dream, just a series of very wierd moments that make no sense. Sometimes they are stressful dreams, but usually just very strange. And almost every night I dream about food. I've never done that before. Earlier in the week it was popcorn. Once last week it was ribs. Last night I was cooking a big turkey dinner in my dream.
  • Boobs: a lot of people report extreme breast growth. I think I've maybe grown a cup size, but that's it. I had normally been about a 38C. I had one or two bras that were 38D, actually I don't really know why I had them - because they were too big. I think at one time I let my mother convince me that I was wearing the wrong bra size. But really my 38C's were just fine. Well now it's the D that fits better. Although the older, more stretched out C's are just fine too. But I have not yet felt a need to buy new ones.
  • Belly growth: still seems like not much to me. Especially seems like I haven't grown in the past week or so. I guess it happens in spurts. But at 16 weeks with twins I would have expected to be bigger. Perhaps because I'm tall, I've got more room to hide them still.
  • Headaches: I have been having a lot of them. They're usually not real bad though - tylenol takes care of them. But it happens almost daily.
  • Ok.... um, bladder control.... Yeah.... I knew this was a pregnancy thing. But I expected that this wouldn't happen until closer toward the end. It's only happened a couple times - when I already knew the bladder was full. And I sneezed. Oops. Not much. But a little definitely did leak out. Not sexy.

Other stuff:

I know that a few of you are big into Yoga - so I need your advice. I've done a bit of it - beginner yoga classes a few years ago. I enjoyed it, but never totally got into it. I've heard good things about yoga as a good prenatal exercise. And there's a place just down the street here that has a weekly prenatal yoga class on sunday mornings. So my question is this - if you show up for the prenatal class - do they assume that you already know how to do yoga? Or is this something you can do as a beginner? I recall a few of the basics, but by no means am I anything beyond a beginner. Is this not something you should take up while pregnant, if you weren't already doing it regularly?

Poor J has a toothe ache. He has to have a root canal on monday. In the mean time, he's in a lot of pain. My poor guy. But still - he's more concerned about how I'm feeling and he's still waiting on me.

Here's a little thing - probably seems silly - that's been bothering me: That I never heard from my RE again after my positive pregnancy test. It just worked out that the two times I went into her office for my early pregnancy ultrasounds, she wasn't in on those days. So I never saw her again after my transfer. I guess I had expected that I'd at least get a phone call from her with a quick 'congratulations'. But I know she's not one for getting very emotionally involved. I loved the level of care we got from her, but she was always very business like. I know it's a little silly thing, but I had just expected some kind of word from her.

And another probably silly thing - I still experience pregnancy envy. Stupid, huh? When I see pregnant women out and about - I still get jealous. I look at them and assume that they probably got pregnant easily, that they didn't have to struggle like I did. I need to get over that one.

Did you see that story on the Today Show this morning about the couple expecting sextuplets? wow. Still not sure how an RE could let that happen - did they not know that she had 6 eggs? Anyway. not for me to judge.

Well that was a load of randomness...

7 comments:

beagle said...

Keep the count coming! I hope that cold lets up.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget that some of your congestion could be caused by the pregnancy and not necessarily cold or allergies. I had it with my son and I've got it now too.

And the prenatal yoga is great! You don't need to have ever been in a yoga class before, and because of the hormones letting everything stretch you'll probably be able to do asanas with a big belly that you couldn't do pre-pregnancy (I had lots of fun with that one.)!

Anonymous said...

Random can be a good thing - it means there is usually nothing really wrong. I hope things continue to go smoothly!

LJ said...

A hallmark of a good yoga class/instructor. They should ask if there are any folks relatively new to yoga. If not, let the teacher know. The best thing about a prenatal yoga class is the fact that there need to be modifications made for each pose (Asana) as each woman is at a different stage of pregnancy. Go for it!

Nickie said...

randomness is good.

Missed the Today show story, but that does seem a bit irresponsible of the Dr to move ahead with odds for that many.

congestion - I had a few weeks of that at about that time too. I could fill a tissue every 15 min it was so gross! Finally, it passed.

yoga - yes, take the class. no, you're probably not expected to have much, if any, prior experience. that's actually one reason I chose NOT to take a prenatal class, I wanted a higher level challenge since I've been doing yoga for several years now. I didn't want to feel like I was stuck in a too-easy class for me. Not to say I wouldn't have gotten benefit from it in other ways, but I'm very happy with my teacher and the way he's incorporating my pg into the regular class.

I hope this next month flies by so you can get past your mental hurdle of 20wks and be on the downhill side of the pg soon. I bet your belly is bigger than you think. I felt like mine hadn't grown much recently just from looking down, but my progression of pics showed me otherwise. Speaking of belly pics - where are yours missy????

Have you told work yet? I can't recall if I read an update about that or not recently.

food dreams? that's a new one to me. I never got the extremely urgent hunger either though. With my first son, I had literally one pg craving - for Pizza Hut deep pan pizza IN the restaurant with the dim lighting, the red plastic cups. Basically, I craved the experience. We used to go as a family when I was kid.

The pg envy thing isn't silly at all. Very normal. I try to assume that they had at least a small struggle to get/stay pg as it makes it easier - sometimes.

Ms. Perky said...

I love the phrase "dog nose" because it's so incredibly accurate. I think the first time I heard it was in the book "Diary of a Mad-Mom-To-Be" but it might have been something Jenny McCarthy said. I'm not sure which. Either way, I love it!

I have neither any specific food cravings nor any specific food aversions (though I do seem to have a DIFFERENT food aversion every day... I just never know what it wil be until I look at it)

I'm also with you on the technicolor dreams and the bra size. In my last (short lived) pregnancy, I swear I went up 2 or 3 cup sizes by 10 weeks, but I haven't changed my bra size yet in this pregnancy. Not that I'm complaining. I was plenty well endowed in the first place. And totally, COMPLETELY, with you on the bladder leakage thing!

(I'd be pretty pissed with your RE, too... not getting emotionally invested is one thing, but you WERE her patient. She ought to care about the outcome to a certain degree)

Ms. Perky said...

oh, and the pregnancy envy thing? Yeah. I'm with you on that one too. In fact, I was thinking of making a post about that very topic.