Somebody Kill Me

Oh my god, the morning sickness. The horrendous, terrible, infamous morning sickness. Who knew it would be this bad??

I spent Friday night, Saturday, Sunday and Monday on the couch. Or in the bathroom. Nowhere else. I had three stages: 1. Nauseous, but not ready to vomit. 2. Nauseous and needing to vomit. 3. Vomiting. Those were the only three stages, not a speck of relief. My progesterone supplements made me so sick I couldn't even think about them without throwing up. Commercials made me sick. Smells made me sick. Eating made me sick. Hell, the sight of pregnant women on TV and my dog's barking made me sick! What the hell?? How do women deal with this?

I managed to make it to work today just a shade under noon. It was impossible before that, but I did get to watch a good episode of ER while I was pushing back the vomit. It's the little things, right?

Luckily, I was smart enough (okay, my husband made me) go to the doctor today. They told me to take Bonine, which is over the counter motion sickness medication. If that doesn't work, they said we can move on to a prescription. So there's hope, thank goodness. This weekend, I was thinking I'd just have to deal with this for the next 5-6 weeks and let me tell you, that thought made me want to gauge my eyes out and run into traffic.

Needless to say, my healthy eating/exercising plan has gone flat out the window. The only things I've been able to get down are fast food sandwiches, nutter butter bites, corn chex and lemonade. I have hopes of resurrecting said plan in the second trimester, but who are we kidding?

All you readers out there who had kids (or those who know of others with kids), tell me your stories! Were you this sick? What helped? When did it go away? And most importantly, when you look at your newborn, it's all worth it, right? RIGHT?!

Dread for Nothing!

I got my test results back and they are wonderful. My hCG went from 1600 to 23,000 and my progesterone jumped from 6 to 19.1. I am sooo happy! And yet, my happiness is tempered by the sudden onset of morning sickness. Ooohhhh, it's bad. No actual vomiting, it just feels like a giant hangover. Without the fun that comes before the hangover. Why did no one tell me the first trimester feels like a three-month hangover?

I get to schedule my first OB exam, which seems like a sort of milestone since I've been to my doctor's office four times now and never seen an actual doctor. Maybe I can get a better idea of my due date since now they think I'm 'somewhere between six and seven weeks along'.

I would write more, but all I would be doing is moaning about feeling like poo and that seems sacriligious since feeling like poo is actually a really, really good thing in my case.

Dread

I'm dreading my doctor's appointment tomorrow. No, that's not really true. I'm not dreading getting my blood drawn, which is all that will happen. What I'm dreading is the wait, the interminable wait from 8:30 am until whenever in the afternoon they deign to call me with my results. I know I shouldn't be dreading it like this since the news was good last time, but I can already hear it in my head:

"Your hCG did not double. We're afraid you're miscarrying."

I never feared miscarriage until the possibility of it happened to me. I knew it happened, it's happened to almost everyone I know who have kids and some who don't. Yet I always thought I'd deal with it splendidly. Why do we convince ourselves of such craziness? Of course I won't handle it well. I mean, I have a baby right now and tomorrow I might not. Not that I let myself imagine the baby yet. It's too soon for that. Kirk and I don't talk about the baby. It's like it's taboo until we at least hear the heartbeat.

I even have the numbers written down that I want to hear tomorrow. hCG of 14,000. Progesterone at least 9. How am I going to handle it if the numbers are significantly lower?

It's not like I don't feel pregnant any more. My boobs ache, I still eat every two hours or my stomach starts devouring itself and the nausea has made a surprise appearance today. It's that I'm so afraid of that low progesterone number. Like an idiot, I have been researching it on the web and what I've found does not look good. Why can't I listen to my doctor and stop torturing myself?

So, until tomorrow afternoon, I will be sitting in dread of the phone ringing with the bad news. And if the news is good? Will I let myself believe in it or will the dread just build until my next blood draw? I think if both of my levels are good, I'll relax. At least a little. But if it's going to end, please let it end now before I get even more emotionally invested in something that might not be.

The News, She is Good!

I got my blood test results back today. My HCG jumped from 90 to 1600, which is great and definitely means I am still pregnant and progressing. The bad news is, my progesterone is still sitting at 6, which is very low. My doctor switched me to a new type of supplement that is, let me tell you, absolutely revolting. They're called 'troches' and you have to put them under your tongue and they melt. But they're not like those allergy pills that melt in like 2 seconds. These take like 5 minutes, releasing an assy (yes, assy) flavor the entire time. However, it was between these and vaginal suppositories, so I think I made the right choice.

I think I'm anywhere from 5-5 1/2 weeks pregnant, though I probably won't know until the first OB appointment. My only symptoms so far are sore boobs, light headedness and a ravenous hunger. I'm serious, if I don't eat every few hours, the tummy starts rumbling and I need me some food. Other than that, I feel good. Of course, by posting this, I will probably jinx myself and have my head stuck in the toilet tomorrow morning. I really wouldn't mind, though, because it would be reassurance that things are progressing as they should.

Four Day Rollercoaster

Well, the past four days have been absolutely crazy. If you're ready to hear a long story, keep reading!

Tuesday morning: My boss finalizes our travel plans to Florida.

Tuesday evening: My period isn't turning out to be a normal period, so I decide to take a pregnancy test, just in case. A very, very faint second line shows up. I think I'm imagining it. Take another one three hours later. Another very faint line. These are the $1 internet tests, so I don't trust them all too much.

Wednesday morning: Take another internet cheapie test. Another faint line. Wait four hours and go buy an EPT. Take it in the bathroom at work. There's a line there. Run home to tell Kirk, then call Paige, who freaks out because our trip is already planned. Schedule an appointment with my doctor for that afternoon because I'm spotting and they want to do blood work.

Wednesday afternoon: Go in to doctor and tell them I need the results that day because Paige can still change the name on the travel plans until five o'clock. They tell me they can't get the blood work done until the following morning, but they do a urine test. It comes back negative!! So now I don't know if I'm pregnant or not. Tell them I need the blood results ASAP Thur. morning. My nurse obviously doesn't know what the hell is going on. I even wonder if she was a nurse because she seems to have about the same amount of knowledge as some random person off the street.

Thursday morning: No call from the doctor's office. Call them and am told ALL OF MY NURSES ARE OUT OF THE OFFICE ON THURSDAY. When I explain the situation, the bitchy receptionist says, "Well, maybe they were going to have someone call you. I guess you'll just have to wait and hope they call."

Start fielding frantic calls from Paige who insists we need to know RIGHT NOW.

Call the doctor's office again and insist to talk to someone who can help me. They put me through to another's doctor's nurse's answering machine and I leave urgent message. Wait and wait and wait and get so pissed off that I call a DIFFERENT doctor's office and explain my situation. They tell me if I come in and sign a release, they will call the other doctor and get the results. I go in to sign the release. As I am talking to the nurse practitioner, my cell phone rings and it's the doctor's office. My blood work is positive. She tells me to make another appointment and I tell them I'll call back.

I tell the nurse practitioner at the new office that I want to switch to them. They agree to get my information and the numbers on my blood work.

Thursday afternoon: Get a call from the new doctor's office. My numbers do not look good. My HCG and my progesterone are both low. They are afraid I'm miscarrying. They get me a prescription for a progesterone supplement and tell me to come in for more blood work Monday.

I have two meetings to go to and I cry on the way to each one. When I walk in the door of the first one, the receptionist is sitting there with her brand new baby. I somehow hold it together and actually make a sale. Am convinced the rest of the evening that I am miscarrying.

Friday morning: Call the new doctor's office and ask if there's any way I can get more blood work done that day instead of Monday. They say yes. I go in at 10:30 and they tell me I will have results by 2 pm that day.

Friday at 2 pm: No call.

Friday at 2:30 pm: The call comes. My HCG has risen from 60 to 90, so they are much more optimistic. They tell me to continue taking the progesterone and to come in for more blood work on Wednesday. So now it looks like I'm still pregnant!

In the past four days, I have gone from not pregnant, to maybe pregnant, to pregnant, to pregnant but probably miscarrying, to pregnant and probably not miscarrying. I'm exhausted. I am hopeful, but trying not to be too hopeful. Wednesday can not come soon enough.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Crazy for this Important Vacation

The Crazy is about to be put on hold for approximately a month and a half. Why? Gather around and let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a nice boss who wanted to take her employee on a vacation to Key West. The problem was, her employee was trying to have a baby and who wants to go to Key West when they are in the early stages of pregnancy and will probably be puking all over the plane, the hotel room and the pretty sand beaches of Florida? More importantly, who wants their vacation ruined by said puker? And so, the employee (that's me if you haven't figured it out yet), sadly said she would have to turn down the trip as she was not going to come up with yet another excuse to put off having a family (especially since her husband's biological clock is ticking so loudly she can barely hear herself think any more). So the boss, who so very much wanted to take the employee because she's just the most fun, greatest and did I mention prettiest? travel companion ever (I'm writing the damn story, I can embellish), cut a deal with her. She could continue to try to have a baby up until a month before the trip. If she was not successful at that time, she would take one month off from trying and go on the trip to Key West. Of course, in her blushing I'm Going to Get Pregnant The First Time I Try naivete, the employee agreed with the idea that the trip would never happen. Three months, 10 ovulation predictors, one seriously fucked up BBT chart, 20 pregnancy tests and innumerable number of cuss words later, the employee is still not pregnant but hey! She gets to go on a trip to Key West. Not a bad consolation prize.

The trip will be June 15th. One whole month of not worrying about when I ovulate, timing sex, and obsessively wondering if being able to smell the dog's breath when he's five feet away means I'm pregnant. However, it's also one whole month of Holy Crap Everyone's Going to See Me in a Swimsuit working out/dieting.

So the Crazy is put on hold in favor of The Vacation That I Never Really Wanted to Take But am Now Getting a Little Excited For. Let the bicep curls and lunges begin!

Book Bitchin: April Edition

It's that time again! Time to talk about the books I read in April and to get some feedback from you guys on what you've been reading. Here goes!

Year Zero by Jeff Long A very interesting story about a killer virus that is unleashed by someone searching for the DNA of Jesus. The virus, named Korfu, wipes out nearly the entire world. The only survivors (mostly scientists who have gathered to try to cure the virus) band together and attempt to clone people from Jesus' era to see if they can find an immune person who was exposed to the virus in its inception. The first 5/6 of this book was awesome and I couldn't put it down. Unfortunately, the ending left a bit to be desired and didn't come together as I'd hoped. Still a good read, though.

Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride This is an excellent first novel by Scottish author Stuart MacBride. A detective who has been out of the business since being stabbed by a suspect returns to work and immediately gets involved in a case involving murdered children. The suspense is breath-taking, the dialogue perfect and the Scottish backdrop delightful. Lovers of police mysteries should definitely check this one out.

Some Like it Haute by Julie K.L. Dam I really wanted to enjoy this one since I like Dam's blog (she takes pictures of the ridiculously expensive shoes she wears every day--I LOVE it!). Unfortunately, this book about Paris fashion week and haute couture didn't do much for me. Lots of name-dropping and snobbery, not much plot or characterization.

Dark Debts by Karen Hall This is one of those books that sat on my shelf for over a year. Every time I picked out a book to read, I'd avoid this one, obviously thinking I wouldn't like it. Well, as soon as I picked it up, I couldn't stop reading. A tale of love, forgiveness and demonic possession. Excellent characterization, thrilling plot, great writing. The end could have been a little better, but I still loved this book. The only problem is that Ms. Hall hasn't written any other novels (though her Amazon blog promises she's working on one).

The Session by Judith Kelman Bleh. I was excited about this book, the story of a therapist working at Rikers Island with insane female patients who is blamed for one of her inmates getting killed, but it just wasn't very good. The characters were stale, the dialogue ridiculous (the main character is 31 and uses the word 'blasted' as an adjective at least once in every chapter) and the plot has a ton a holes. My first and last book by Ms. Kelman.

So there's my five books for the month! If I'm going to reach my goal of 100 books in 2006, I need to step it up.

Feedback time! What are you reading and loving? And, more importantly, what are you reading and hating??