AHHHHHHHHH!

So I started having pains every time I wake up for the past few weeks, at first it just seemed to be from having to pee really badly, then I stretch out a bit, and I have horrible shooting pains from my lower abdomen to the area just below my right rib cage. I payed no attention to it, until yesterday when it lasted for a few hours after I woke up.

I called the doctor when the pains became severe, and I was told to go to the ER just incase.

I went to the ER, and they sent me to the 4th floor labor and delivery, because I am 20 weeks, they checked out the baby who seemed fine, my blood pressure was impressively low, no protein in the urine. The doctor said that the pain is way too high to be caused by the baby, and it seems to be radiating around the gall bladder, most likely it was a gall stone attack, or associated with appendix or liver.

I have PCOS and hypothyroidism, and I decided to do some checking on my soul cysters message board, and apparently there is some sort of link between gallstones and PCOS. Quite common, and I should reduce fat intake.

However I also have gestational diabetes and I have lost 11 pounds, and I have to cut out the carbs. What else is there to eat? I am having aversions to meat so that eliminates proteins and I am sorry but I cannot eat nothing but greens. Lately no food looks good but I get sick if I don't eat. I vomited the last time I ate meat, and I really havent gotten sick much the entire pregnancy, I felt like I needed to and I couldn't. The only foods that dont seem to disagree with me are oily fast foods, burgers and such which are so bland that they dont taste like meat to me., which I never liked to eat before the pregnancy. I know it isn't healthy of me, especially with the other issues, but I wind up eating nothing all day because nothing is appetizing or something smells like it will make me sick.

I spend all night making a dinner that I barely touch.

I am so frustrated by everything right now, and the pain has made it unbearable to sleep, which is why I am still awake at 4:19 in the morning.

Everyone has made it painfully clear of the many complications that can occur because of my health conditions, and the chance of a still born and preeclampsia are astronomically high, and I am beyond terrified.

It almost makes me terrified to eat now, I went from just a couple weeks ago eating anything in sight to this because I found out about the gestational diabetes.

Help! Does anyone understand these frustrations? Googling just terrifies me even more, and I am trying to avoid it, and tonight I have some and it has only scared me more.
I have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow, and I should be excited but I am losing it.

Chinese Gender Prediction

So I am 20 weeks pregnant!

Cravings:  Grape fruit juice, I don't even like the stuff but I have to drink it, and I have been. I also still always want shrimp, and I don't want or even like other meats anymore. It all tastes terrible. Especially pork.

Worries:  I got really sick a week ago. I had nausea in the first trimester, but I only actually threw up a couple of times, and then at 19 weeks I was suddenly vomiting and had food aversions back for one day. And now its fine.

Turns out I have to go back for a 3 hour glucose because they want to confirm that I have gestational diabetes. Turns out that vomiting and weight loss are also signs of gestational diabetes.

I have been consistently losing weight instead of gaining it, though the doctor doesn't seem concerned.  I am huge now though. Ridiculously huge.

Everyone at Thanksgiving was telling how positive they are that I am having a girl, and my Memaw has already decided she is going to call her Trixy. *palm face* We all told her that was a stripper name and it was hilarious.  A couple of my aunts insisted that I am having twins! It is possible, I have two sets of twins on my moms side, all second cousins though if that matters.

GENDER TEST TRICK: Try this if you want to find out the gender of your baby. My aunt came to town from Georgia, and they have been trying to concieve a boy for a long while now, they have been blessed with all girls, but in Georgia they have a trick for finding out the gender, and they swear it has worked for everyone who has tried it. 

1. Pee in a glass * Do not use plastic
2. Take it outside and pour CRYSTAL DRAINO into the cup of urine
3. Wait: it will turn GREEN for a GIRL  or BROWN for a BOY

I am going to wait to find out at our reveal party with everyone else, but try it and let me know if it works!

Our Baby Pictures!

 I finally found some baby pictures of me! I was quite adorable. :)

I also found out that I carry the red head gene on both my mothers and fathers side of the family, and because Kyle obviously does carry it, there is anywhere from an 8-25% chance of us having a ginger!

Pregnancy Brain

I'm glad I am not the only one, thing is though I have had it since before I realized I was pregnant, and its been really bad and getting worse. I never had the best memory to begin with but sometimes I can't remember the most basic things, and it is frustrated. I am scared to have conversations with people who don't know me very well because they have to be thinking of how stupid I am when I can't think of every other word, and I always am saying the first stupid thing to come into my head.

This made me feel better though.

http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/emmas-pregnancy-brain.aspx

So Please, when I sound stupid at my wedding in a few weeks, don't judge me, and DO NOT ask me for a speech! Please!

First Kick

Okay, I know I am only 11.5 weeks, but I swear I felt a kick today, I have never felt anything like it before, and I know that is what it was, some kind of movement in there, and I got reallllly excited! The reality that I am carrying a child sunk in, and my body feels a bit alien to myself, in a good way. I feel almost powerful with the ability to carry and grow children.

Strange Pregnancy Dream

I had always been so terrified of the future.

In the direction we seem to be headed, it always seemed like a place so dead to reality, living as a virtual presence, an extension of one of sea of faces on the interweb, a Brave new world void of choices and freedoms, accidentally self sacrificed over many years of online surveillance.

There is something though that is very import. Something that I left out of that original equation.

The dream started suddenly, as they usually do. Many of them take me to dark places better left out of the imagination, and so fluently captured in the film industry. My physical pain seemed to become a alternate reality of mystical root causes. If I fell asleep to bones and my stomach happened to be hurting, I would be suffering as the infamous characters tortured me alive.

But this dream was different, and I revisited a world that I usually cannot remember upon waking,a world who’se amusements are endless, and built on a completely different set of priorities than the one we experience today, with a vortex of importance encircling excitement.

If 10 people were to make a bucket list in a research lab, I am willing to bet that each of them would have something on it involving travel, exploration, trying new things outside of our own realms of reality.

In my dream I had with me my father, and a faceless friend who I did not recognize, a blur of many perhaps. I felt as though I were surrounded by this person, and their face acted as many. My dad, is not the most adventurous person in the world. I fought him tooth and nail to go see Avatar when it came out, and he refused after a month of begging. “Too many people there” he would say. But in my dream, for the first time it seemed, I saw him open up to the idea of adventure. It was as though these two people had been aware that they were travelling with me, but unaware of our destination, they took my lead, as simply as anyone might in a dream, and I only aware that it was one. As soon as I saw that deep blue sky I remembered this place. I knew four distinct places within this world, and there was somewhere that I wanted to take them first.

The airway system is so beyond my simple comprehension, that I would fail at any attempt to explain it, but I felt as though I were simply riding a boat through the air at a lightning speed, so fast that I did not realize we were actually moving, and I could see the puffs of cloud and I guided us toward the line that I knew would lead to our destination.

We disembarked and we all including I looked around puzzled, and then when I saw what I was looking for, not knowing specifically, but I knew that I would know it when I saw it, as soon as I knew what it was, a cloudy slide seemed to open up beneath our feet and we were sliding toward it, and as we came closer, it was sundown and we could see lines of people in floating structures, all set up like a giant amusement park, and this place was simple one ride. The faceless friend asked me where we were.

Hawaii, I replied, not believing my own ears, but my body moved before I could react, and I was suddenly remembering my last visit to this place, in a another dream, all alone and lost I found it, and it was a safe haven from everything in the world, it was my happy place. How long has it been my happy place? I am not sure how many times I have been here, but as I climb the forested steps and wait my turn in line, with each step I remember a different experience here, and each with a different trusted person that I have brought here, and as we moved slowly forward up in the line, the face would change.

It felt like I was in line for an amusement park ride. The line was circular around a large patch of trees that seemed infinite but we moved quickly.

The faceless friend took the form of Alex who I had known in Milwaukee, and she said:

“I cannot go to Hawaii, I do not have the proper paper work and visa to go,”

and I replied, “Where do you think you are?”

Her face took a few more forms, as each face contemplated the surroundings, the world began to shift ever so slightly with the mood of the person, as though I were experiencing it all through the eyes of others. We reached the top, and we looked down and before we could think to react we were being swept up, on a giant roller coaster from a plane and soaring in circles around Hawaii from the heavens we lept, going round and round like a roller coaster, without the flipping of the stomach, and sickness, only the awe as we experienced the world in a new way. I looked back at my father who was smiling and delighting in the experience. The eminous joy was unending and the way down simply sped up when I became eager to reach the bottom. There was no landing. We were simply in a hotel of sorts as tall as the heavens, we had somehow travelled upward and we were suddenly in the true lap of luxury. Outside of one window I could see many other building just as sky high, and below, I could match each building to landmarks in my life of places I could have been, had gone, dreamed of and beyond. If I lept I could land in one of those placed in a moment, and I did. Only I lept without thinking, without bringing my companions with me, and I was in a place of dread. A place that I have dreamt about for years and feared, a place of darkness.

My description might not seem so dark to you, but in my dreams it is quite a crippling place. It is a tiny apartment building as large as a cubicle cut in half, with no windows. There is one door and a hallway that seems to never end, a labyrinth and each door leads to another similar room with people crammed inside, I smell drugs, and filth, as people lie in their quarter cubical unaware when I open their door right beside them, and each person has a device on their head connecting them to the internet. The device allows them to eat virtual food which tricks their bodies to believe that they receive nourishment but their bodies are merely shells. I find my cubicle and I am in it, also a shell, only I am dead, blood draining from my head from where I tried to rip off the device, it pulled large screws out of my temple, and I had yanked the couplet off my arm covered in different IV’s.

I started screaming and I was suddenly on the beach below the hotel like structure, having lept once more, and I wanted to find my companions once more when I saw a stream that I had taken before in another dream. But they seemed lost to their own devices so I continued alone, searching for the way into the stream. It was a river and I could choose my own means of transport, and I chose to swim, though I thought about sailing or riding it like a lazy river, but I felt the sudden urgency to swim. It was beautiful and almost made me forget my last jump, the water got in my ears,and my head started to spin for a moment so I climbed onto a beautiful raft built by the natives. I just floated by and the river opened up into the ocean where I was guided by the waves of where I wanted to go. Eventually I found another coast on what had to be the smallest island known to man. There was a market on the coast, and people were collecting sea shells and trading them for different items. These people were natives with dark skin, and an unusual build, with a lion like face, though still human. People talked to the vendors as though they were barmen, and they would speak in parables, and they spoke with the wisdom of God to people they had never seen before. It was the island of answers.

I waited in line listening to one vendor speaking to a woman in front of me and I was mesmerized by the truth in the mans words. He said that reality is what you make it, and your values are how you live in this world. The woman was clearly new to jumping as I was, he explained that you cannot choose your direct path here, you can only choose the things you value, the things that matter to you. For some it is their past and they find themselves trapped in one place. For others it is the thrill of excitement, or knowledge, though in such a realm of possibilities it is usually entertainment. What you seek you will find, but if you find all that you are looking for, why leave? There would no longer be a need to move, you would be stuck in place with everything your heart desires. If those things are not  fulfilling, you become one of the shells. Then he looked at myself and I could tell that he was killing two birds with one stone, answering my questions as well. The woman started crying when she realized that she might never find her family again, because they all valued so many different things.

I looked at the shell in my hand, placed it in the crate in front of the man and thanked him for his wisdom. He said something else to me and I was suddenly in a house surrounded with family. My aunts and uncles were there, and it was completely crowded. The house was a wreck, and I was tired as though I had lived this life for a long time with them. Words left my lips before I could speak, and there was nothing odd about my sudden appearance. There were no longer any adults left, and it seemed to be all of my little cousins. As they grew older, each one of them disappeared as their values changed. I realized that our love and need for family is innate, and its role in our life changed how we value it as we grow older. I became the only one left in the house, all alone for years just waiting. And then Kyle emerged, and we raised our children there. It was a little house on the side of a mountain covered in snow, and we had leveled out a yard and built up the house, making our own wonderful little village all by ourselves. We built tree houses with our children, and we raised our children there, and when they grew up they each made a house for themselves and their children. This cold place was the warmest place that my heart had ever known. After years of waiting for my own family to materialize back, I found my fathers house up the mountain.

WEIRD CRAVING ALERT

I desperately need a

A. strawberry/raspberry/rhubarb cream cheese streusel, with chocolate chips, and caramel drizzle,

B. Shrimp

separately of course!

 and maybe possibly, definitely a desert from Heine bro's coffee. They have the best stuff ever!
and a salted caramel milkshake from steak and shake.

I made soup for dinner, broccoli cheese which is my favorite. but I got sick when I sniffed it, and now all I think i can safely eat without vomiting are listed above.

Nesquick is a no-no!

I was terrified when I went to purchase Nesquick last week, in hopes of finding strawberry and banana flavors for milk. (For some reason I do not like chocolate very much right now which goes against my personality.) They didn't even have banana but the strawberry mix is ungodly unhealthy.
NO I am not one of those skinny pretty perfect ladies who we all want to be when pregnant. I am medium/ normal with a thyroid problem and I like my sweets, and my body. I just want to keep it! So yes I had a fit when I saw how much sugar and how many carbs are in nesquick. MAKE YOUR OWN!!! Its so much healthier!

recipe:

• one vial of banana extract, or immitation banana (or whatever flavor you want like vanilla, strawberry, or rhubarb if you are having a craving lol)
• splenda  (approved by the FDA for pregnant women)
• a half gallon of milk

And shake up the low carb magic!!

A small glass of this is great for so many reasons!

A. heartburn
B. filling and great breakfast
C. alternate choice for someone with a sweet tooth
D. You need to drink more milk anyway

Even if you aren't pregnant, this is a great recipe because it tastes just like the banana nesquick at the gas station, cheaper and with less carbs.

How far along am I?

I just had it confirmed by the doctor, I am 8 weeks and 5 days along. I also had an MRI approved by the neurologist to check out my tumor because its still early. I have been referred to a neurosurgeon. The ball is rolling.

The Smell

Wow, I feel like I am in a febreeze commercial and they are doing the unveiling of everything that I am "noseblind" to.

So what did I do about my stinky pet odor infested house?

What anyone else with a laptop would, I googled remedies for house odors. I don't have vinegar at my disposal, and I am thinking that even if I did, it wouldn't be a good idea for my super sensitive nose at the moment.

Another remedy that I found on the internet is hydrogen peroxide and baking soda.

Baking soda is amazing for everything apparently. The only baking soda that I have is in my arm&hammer litter box deodorizer. That actually worked out wonderfully. I first tried to mix the two in a squirt bottle, but the arm&hammer clumped up, so I screwed the nozzle of the sprayer in the hydrogen peroxide bottle, and voila, I sprayed all the carpets, and then sprinkled the arm and hammer and it smells great in here!! I have all the windows open and fans going to air it all out while I clean all day. I am going as far as to scrub the walls. I have never felt so much like a germa-phobe until I got pregnant.

My wonderful Grandma ordered me a Dyson animal which will be here in a couple of days and I cannot wait. I am scrubbing down the entire house until all odors are GONE!

If anyone has a carpet cleaner I could borrow I would really appreciate it!

BTW MOM'S: If you have any super-top-secret tips and tricks to keeping the house spotless please share with the class!

Baby photos of Mommy and Daddy - (will update with pictures of Kyle)

One thing that I definitely want to have for our baby, is a ton of pictures of him/her growing up. I really don't have that many. But then again the digital age did not come until I was much older. I have a feeling we will have so many it will be ridiculous. These are the two youngest pictures that I have of myself. I have a couple more buried somewhere, that I will dig up and add. I also need baby pictures of Kyle! I would love to hang all 3 baby pictures side by side on the wall and start a family tree wall. 

If anyone reading this blog has baby photos of Kyle, please email them to me at esallee92@gmail.com or send them to me on facebook.  As soon as we have some I will add them to this post.  

NO this is not me, this is a photography prop that I really want from amazon. Click the photo for the link. I think it is the most adorable newborn photo ever. 

T

First Ultrasound

Baby Room Themes

I definitely want to do a neutral theme. Not because I am impatient, but because according to all of the money saving baby pins on pinterest make it abundantly clear that one of the main penny saving ideas is to have everything neutral.  Not only that but I really don't care for gender specific rooms.

However, there are a couple gender specific nurseries that I do happen to love.

Number One: Fabrics

I love this one because it would be the simplest, and easiest to do without need of paint or anything else, and it is easily removed from the wall. Best of all, super cheap. 

You can buy squares of different fabrics at walmart or any fabric store super cheap, and use burlap or some other cheap fabric to cut out the trunk of the tree. It also accommodates multiple colors, so that other objects we might be given wont clash. 

 #2: Hot Air Balloons

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this, and it isn't gender specific. I would want simple one color bedding, red and white splashes of color.

#3: Calvin and Hobbes

As most people know, I deeply love snoopy, and Charlie brown, and my first reaction was to make the room in snoopy. But then it didn't feel right. Snoopy is my passion. Of course I will have our child grow up watching them, but another great and amazing comic is that of Calvin and Hobbes. I also read and loved those as a child, and I would very much like to create this mural. I am confident that I can. If not this one than I might choose another. This is also gender neutral, bright,colorful and gives us the nice option of a simple white bedding that is easy to bleach clean. 

I am obviously not a big fan of patterned bedding. 

#4: Nautical

I really love this. I think it is brilliant. I love nautical things, and its much easier to find as a theme. I love the warm orange accents too, it keeps the blue from being too masculine. I love that this is a style that could be transformable, for a boy it could grow up to be a pirate room, and for a girl it could grow up to peachy coral colors, and mermaids. 

#5: Gender specific- Girl

I cannot resist these girly designs. If I am going to do femine, it will be something like this in a carnival syle. 

Plus I love love love the quilt.

#6: Harry Potter

Need I say more???

The pregnant cat lady

No, as confirmed by my doctor, I do not need to get rid of my 3 cats.  I have to avoid their feces.
At first it was as simple as don't mess with the litter box.
I have spent some time contemplating this and I realized that my cats are digging their paws into their litter and then walking around on my kitchen table, my bathtub, my toilet seat... I have never felt quite so germaphobic. Go ahead and get into the habit of baby wipes, take some toilet paper and a folgers coffee container, or any container really, and soak up some toilet paper in a disinfectant that is safe like hydrogen peroxide. (I would check with more reputable pinterest sources and consult on the best home made baby wipes, this was just an example.) Keep them by your lap top, tablet, toilet, ect, the things you touch most. If you pet your cat, wipe your hands before touching a door knob for example, or wipe down your hands every time you use your lap top if your cats live in your lap while your on the computer like mine. I will mindlessly stroke them.

Grandparent names

I don't know about you, but growing up in my family, I had to have a different name for each grandparent because I have a ridiculously large family, and having the same name makes them seem unimportant to me.

My grandparents were as follows:

Grandma Charlotte, George, Paw Paw, Grandma Jamie, Memaw, Pepaw, Maw Maw, Pah-Paw, Grandpa Talley, Grandpa, Nana, and Mwa Mwa

I was the first to be born in my family,the oldest of my cousins I mean, so the names that I chose for each grandparent stuck. Or the names my parents chose more or less.

When my mom found out I was pregnant last week the first thing she said was: I AM NOT GOING TO BE CALLED GRANDMA, I AM ONLY 43.
"Okay mom, how do you feel about Nana?" She really didn't like that idea.
Then I told my dad, who told my step mom, who happily announced that she had claimed Nana. Wonderful! I was thrilled, so then I started a post on facebook where I announce who gets what grandparent name. My fiance and I both have divorced parents, so there are quite a few grandparents, so we made it a game among them to choose their names. It encourages the idea to the younger and less eager grandparents. So after a few days, my mother chose to be called G.G. for Gorgeous Grandma :). Adorable!

My mom:                                 G.G.

My step mom:                         Nana

My dad:                                   Paw Paw* Very important Heirloom name in the family. The one who gets Paw Paw wears the crown and                                                                                 volunteers to be extremely involved in teaching life values to the child

My Grandma:                          Grandma Charlotte

My Grandpa George                Grandpa George

My Memaw:                            Memaw   (Pronounced Meh-Maw)

My Mwa Mwa:                        Mwa Mwa

My PehPaw                              Pehpaw Frank

My Maw Maw:                        Maw Maw Barbara

My Pow Pow Mark:                 Pow Pow Mark

My Great Grandma Molly:      Nana Molly

His dad:                                    Grumps  I have no idea if he was kidding or not. But until he says otherwise, its there. 

His mom: __________

His step dad:__________

His Grandma Sandy: _____           Maw Maw Sandy?

His Grandpa Charlie:_____            PehPaw Charlie?    Pronounced differently than Paw Paw. 

Update:
Aunt Courtney wants to go by Auntie :)

and so on... for both sides of the family, or all four sides for each parent. It is another way to make a daunting task more fun and great for the baby book. When the baby is born take a picture of each grand parent holding the baby, and caption the photo with the name that grandparent chose.

Baby registry

Okay using the internet definitely has it's advantages. But knowing next to nothing about a baby and trying to decide which bottle you need when you had no idea the nipple of a bottle made a difference, makes shopping online a bit.. overwhelming.

GO ZAP THINGS AT TARGET. You read that right, go to target, on the left side usually is a help center with little computer registry things, and when you fill it out, they hand you a zapper, and you run around the store and zap them onto your registry. This accomplishes so many things at once. Looking at the baby categories online made my head spin, but when I could go look at the items, everything seemed much simpler and more tangible. Plus it was really fun to kill a couple hours shopping without spending a dime, and hey it gets your butt off the couch, and we ladies need to workout. I was so tired by the end that I almost fell asleep on the way home. This engaging activity is also a nice way to get your hubby involved in the process. They are more susceptible to it, if they can see it. It's also a great way to bond with your mom or a friend who can tell you more about the products, and you can go home and revise the list later, checking reviews for each item.

FOOD TIPS FOR PREGNANT WOMEN

Tip: Drink milk for breakfast or eat yogurt. I don't like milk so I drink banana, or vanilla, or strawberry milk. It is filling, good for you, and helps with the heart burn and morning sickness. When you are full or getting there, stop eating immediately! Never take that last bite of doom!

Tip: Do you have a sweet tooth? Go for a target trailmix. They have the most amazing archer farms variety that you can only get there. Seriously unless you have an amazing metabolism, choose healthier sweets like trail mix. Not to say that it isn't loaded with carbs, it is, but with trail mix you get protein that you wouldn't and you make better habits by avoiding the ice cream, and frickled pickles. Plus, all the fiber from the nuts, and crazy good stuff in there for you, and all you taste is the sweet goodness of archer farms. Don't forget that later on you will get constipated so eat up the fiber. AND it is re-sealable. Need I say more?  Sure, your Ben&Jerry's has a lid, but do you really expect to use it? The espresso mix is my favorite, and great on days when I am trying to switch the coffee for water. I never would have done so in the past, but after my edima episode last night, I am a different animal.

DO NOT WATCH FOOD NETWORK, OR ANY FOOD COMMERCIALS IF YOU CAN AVOID IT.

(I will add more to this as the list of tips grow.)

My Symptoms: First Trimester

Before I knew I was pregnant-

How on Earth did I not know I was pregnant? Our best guess now is that I am 9 weeks, unnoticed, even with the following symptoms:

I had what I thought was the stomach flu for a little over a week. I felt so horrible that I drank a bottle of pepto in a day. At least it was a small bottle, but when I was admitted to the hospital for parenthesia in the left side of my face, for what I later found out was a symptom of my tumor, I embarrassingly mentioned to my doctor that I had black poop. I had no idea that Pepto Bismol could cause that.  Consequently, my boobs had been sore for a while, and it was hard to lay on my stomach. This should have been a dead giveaway clue. I suppose that I was just hoping that my A cups were finally growing, after all this time. I had been dieting and losing a lot of weight, eating so many green veggies that I was attesting any pain to.

The next week I had a migraine, that left me exhausted, and motion sick. I usually play video games when I feel too miserable to move, but this time when I played minecraft, I thought I was 12 again and puking in my friends car due to motion sickness. Maybe if someone had described morning sickness as motion sickness, I would caught on.

Morning Sickness:
Okay, for those of you who would like morning sickness explained, yes mine started as motion sickness, but after a while it transformed into a smell induced sickness, accompanied by occasional heartburn, burping, gas and farting, and being generally overly bloated, and everything you eat seems to expand quickly, so it is easy to over eat. Most people vomit, somewhere around 80%, I have only felt like I needed to. If I am really hungry and I smell something, (and when I say really hungry, I mean that pain in your stomach every 5- 30 minutes that can be remedied by food.), if I smell something strong, whether the smell agrees with me or not, while I am hungry I feel unnervingly sick. It is like the hungrier I am, the more susceptible I am to smells. That pizza can smell delicious, but if your too hungry when you smell it, you will want to vomit. Other people might experience morning sickness a little differently, and I currently envy those people.

Dumbo brain: There are now times of day when people must hear me talk and wonder how in the world I will make it as a mother with a brain as slow as mine lately. Especially if they don't know me.

Crying so suddenly that you surprise yourself. I can't say that I cry over nothing, because of course while I am crying, whatever it is about, I promise it is important. I cried last night because I was so happy to lay down after my long day. Tears of joy.

Losing weight: Apparently that is quite common in the first trimester. With every appointment (for my tumor) I was losing weight, but if it weren't for the scale, I would have thought I was gaining because I have been so bloated.

Overwhelming sense of smell, but you just think everything around you suddenly stink.

And last but no least: I desperately needed a Long John from Krispy Kreme. I needed one so bad that I dreamt about them. I had a dream that there was a long john donut inside of a tiny cookie dough ball, that much like the Tardis, was bigger on the inside, and all of this was going on in an imaginary DQ blizzard. I currently live in the middle of nowhere, literally, I am not on google maps. So a few days pass and we found a truck stop that had donuts, and my favorite flavors in the world are pumpkin. They had nothing but pumpkin donuts and I cried because I needed a long john.
(he found me a long john a few days later :)

Quitting Smoking: While Pregnant

I have known many people to not succeed at this task, but the one person that I know who did succeed, and by her definition "cold turkey" for 6 years, with a smoker in the house, is my mother. Yesterday she let me in on her secret to success. One cigarette a day, until the cravings go away.
Psychologically it makes more sense than the e-ciggs that I tried, and I crave ciggs much less now that I am smoking one a day, and I don't even need the e-cigg now. I am sure that anyone who is not a smoker is judging me really harshly right now, but this post is not for you. Sorry, what is important to me is that I stop.

Why it works:

With E-ciggs, you are still exposing yourself to nicotine, and you are self injecting much more than your cigarettes. You puff the thing over and over craving more or less the habit of smoking, and the impulse to puff on it more than you need to in order to compensate for the lack of actual smoke, and you intake more nicotine than you would if you actually smoked and you never lose the cravings. Especially if you are as stressed as I am. OF COURSE YOUR STRESSED, I don't care how happy you are to be pregnant, your raging hormones combined with the knowledge that your world is about to dramatically change, as it physically changes is enough to stress out anyone, plus the added element of quitting smoking, and the world telling you how to raise your child stresses out everyone. Trust me, it's even more stressful when you have to squeeze your wedding plans into a month, being fat in your wedding dress, and finding out that you have a brain tumor that must go unattended until after the pregnancy. I was the lucky girl in the hospital to take the precautionary test before my MRI, just in case I was pregnant because of the damaging effects of the contrast fluid. I cried with tears of joy, and shock, don't get me wrong. But it is terrifying, Especially if you have PCOS and a 1/3 chance of having a stillborn or miscarriage, and knowing that people blame 10 million things for losing their babies, the only thing that becomes important, and keeping yours. 

If you are a smoker, my advice is to smoke one cigarette a day. If you know you aren't going to have one ever again, it is all you want and think about. But if you know you can have one tomorrow, you can rest easier, and think about it less knowing that time will come. My other piece of advice if you are receiving a lot of pressure about it is to keep it to yourself. One cigarette a day is not worth the fuss that non smokers will make it out to be. You are the one who has to quit, and many people never stop. So if you have tried and failed, try this. 

My super-top-secret list of BABY NAMES

THE VALUE OF NAMING:
Nope, I am not going to list my baby names to the public, or choose from a top 200 list from the bump. I recieved an awesome goodie bag from my OB/GYN yesterday full of baby magazines, and I was shocked at how many lists of popular baby names there were. I had to read them of course to eliminate any names on the list from my own. But I still find it hard to believe that anyone would read a top list of popular names to choose their baby's name from. I will stress that I was given a name that has become so common that my step sister had my name, and 10% of my all girl catholic school class. I had 3 step siblings, and all of them had the most common names. Maybe I could find plenty of key chains with my name on them, and it's not hard to find a "share a coke with Emily" bottle, but these things lose their value with their frequency. Something with a unique name custom engraved is like owning a one of a kind purse, or a limited edition x-box, it's certainly more special than that key chain with a common name.
So without further ado, I am going to hide my list of super top secret baby names, so that people like you don't have them engraved on key chains, and maybe the name will stay rare enough to become a family heirloom of a name in the future!

Thou Shalt not drink both coffee and tea while pregnant.

 The consequence is a swelling pain in your hands and feet while you are trying to sleep, after a very long day of playing zap at target with the registry, a Doctor's. Apt, and planning a wedding, cooking dinner and cleaning house, sleep will not find you well if you have drank both a cup of coffee and an iced tea, no matter how exhausted you feel. Feet swelling, body turning, steam protrudes from your ears (not literally), but an effect similar to a hot flash accompanies this already unbearable feeling of losing your limbs.  Drink some water and actually get some sleep instead of trying to sleep through it. Poor Kyle only gets as much sleep as I do it seems. 

This swelling Phenomenon is commonly known as Edema, usually triggered by dehydration. Check the thermostat too, because letting your body get too hot can also cause Edema.

** update** Apparently drinking too much water also causes the same thing. Make sure you have enough sodium with your water!