Week 12!

We are officially 12 weeks along in pregnancy today! Perhaps it is not the best thing to do but I enter week 13 tomorrow (my last week in the first trimester) with some pretty hefty expectations.

First and foremost, I hope my body makes good on what most people say about the second trimester--that the nausea and exhaustion goes away and, as my good pal Helen describes it, you feel like Superwoman. I look around the house at all of the things I want to get done before the baby arrives (actually, more like before I begin the fall semester): clean, redecorate and reorganize the 2nd bedroom (soon to be nursery), clean up the backyard, etc and I wonder when I will have the energy to do all of this?? One of the gals in my iVillage expecting club started a thread called "You know you are pregnant if..." and someone contributed: "if every time you walk by a couch you want to take a nap" and even this far along, I feel like that!! Granted, even before the pregnancy I loved to take naps but this definitely a different deal!

Another thing I look forward to is--and I feel like such a bad mother for saying this--enjoying this pregnancy! Because of the sickness and exhaustion, I don't feel like I have really enjoyed being pregnant thus far. I know it is still early on and the fun stuff (feeling the baby kick, etc.) is yet to come, it's strange how I already feel a little bit guilty for not enjoying every minute of being pregnant. So many mothers have shared with me how much they loved being pregnant and frankly, while I am so excited to nurture this little being inside of me, I mostly feel like, "ugh...when will this crappy feeling end?"

I remain hopeful for both of these things!! I shared both of these with my mom last night over the phone and she said, "well, it's not like magic." While I do dream that I wake up in a week from tomorrow feeling like a million bucks, I am fully prepared for the reality that I might still feel yucky. I do feel very strongly that I need to stay super-positive and keep my mind in the right place, however--that this pregnancy will not only meet my expectations but exceed them.

I also have to share something I have been dealing with since we heard the baby's heartbeat last week! It was an incredibly joyful event but as I mentioned in a previous post, it made the pregnancy feel super-real. The fact that there is a living, breathing and moving being inside me has been mind-blowing--in both joyful and somewhat scary ways. Generally, I feel like I am dealing just fine with the changes happening in my body due to the pregnancy but at the same time, it is somewhat disturbing to wake up every day knowing that my body has been somewhat taken over by this kid! While I think it is amazing that all of this is happening, it is still somewhat strange to really think about what is going on...another human is living in my body? He or she is slowing down my digestion to absorb nutrients from the food I just ate? My body is producing and will eventually be pumping almost double the amount of blood it did prior to the little dude's implantation? It's somewhat wacky to sit back and really think about what is going on inside what I always considered "my" body!! It doesn't really feel exclusively mine anymore and that, in and of itself, is a wacky concept to deal with.

And I do have to say one more thing...even though the laundry and dishes don't get done with the frequency they did before or dinner isn't as exciting as it used to be, I still feel so damned productive at the end of every week! I am, after all, making a kid! I can nearly feel my uterus now in my lower abdomen (I also expect to begin to look pregnant rather than just chubby during the second trimester!) so I know the little dude is cooking away...hopefully happy as a clam. So--and maybe this is for the benefit of Doug, primarily--even though he sometimes doesn't come home to the cleanest house or we are again eating beans and rice or pasta, I'm working hard to cook the best kid ever! Hehe. :)