A Brief List of Updates

Just to keep you up-to-date:

1. Today is the beginning of week 27 - it's the last week of the Second Trimester!

2. I had a 3 hour fasting glucose test last week, and I passed with flying colors! This test diagnoses gestational diabetes, which is a growing concern for pregnant women. Special thanks to Dave for always making me eat my vegetables - it helps that he makes such great food. Last night he made his first sauerbrauten roast with cabbage and potatoes... what a feast!

3. In the past week both Dave and I have dreamt about the baby as a human being, and both of us have attached a face to the baby in our dreams. It seems strange to dream about someone's face whom you haven't even met.

4. I can no longer read aloud - I become winded and start panting like I just raced up the stairs two-at-a-time. My lungs are squished!

5. We bought a crib. It was becoming an existential dilemma, but then we asked our landlord John point-blank what he thought, and he gave us some very sound advice: all new cribs are built with safety in mind, so go with what you like. It was a good thing we went ahead and ordered the crib, too - it takes 10-12 weeks for delivery, which in my book is cutting it a little close.

6. We are starting a baby registry, but we aren't going to tell you the site yet. I need to tweak a few things first.

7. My uterus is the size of a basketball, which is exactly what I look like. A basketball with four limbs and a head. Today I tried on four different shirts while getting dressed, and when Dave asked what was taking so long, I told him that I felt like a lump. He said, "You don't feel cute and pregnant and adorable, which is what you are?" I reiterated that, no, in fact, I felt like a lump. But it's nice to know that my husband isn't thinking, "Why is there a lump in my bed?"

Baby Loves Ovaltine

And we have a winner... the food/liquid that makes baby do flips and twirls and spins in utero is Ovaltine. I can feel little feet against my stomach, then a whole body flip, then feet, then a whole body flip, around and around like a Merry-Go-Round. All because baby loves Ovaltine. Yum. More Ovaltine, please! I think we'll buy stock.

My Breyers' Ice Cream Commercial

Here I am studying hard and consuming ice cream from the tub. Yum!

When I haven't felt the baby move in a couple of hours, I like to eat or drink something sugary, because it's like an on-off switch. It'll be quiet (maybe baby is sleeping?) and suddenly, it's a party! Yay! Welcome to my sweet-tooth, baby. I hope you're not one of those kids who doesn't like ice cream, or else we're sending you back to the baby factory.

A Sore Throat Makes Me a Crabby Lady

It's official - being ill while pregnant is a horrible combination. No NyQuil, no cough syrup, no nasal decongestant. Just me and the Riccola cough drops and a whole bunch of water. And a whole bunch of water plus a diminished bladder means a trip to the bathroom every 20 minutes.

The only way to make myself feel better is to substitute cold remedies with food - genius!!! I ate a bowl of ice cream today in lieu of cough syrup, and it did the trick. I had chili for lunch yesterday, and that worked like nasal decongestant. Maybe for dinner I should eat a large Thanksgiving turkey meal and that can work as my sleep aid?

Hungry. Really Hungry.

I woke up to a growling stomach Friday early morning at 4am. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore my hunger, but no-can-do. I was awake and starving.

Only 6 hours earlier I had eaten some soft-serve ice cream with M&Ms on top, and 3 hours before that I had eaten pizza for dinner. Pizza + ice cream = hunger so bad that I had to get out of bed at 4am and find something to eat? Unbelievable.

Dave and I were in a hotel room in Fredonia, NY, and there was a package of granola bars in my bag, so I quietly got out of bed and proceeded to eat the noisiest granola bar ever created. Dave woke up, thinking I was nauseous, but instead found me standing at the foot of the bed, shoving a granola bar into my mouth.

3 hours later I was awake again, and starving. I felt like a machine. I am a machine - a baby-growing machine. I couldn't understand all this hunger. And then Sunday morning I woke up, looked in the mirror, and... oh my. Look who finally looks pregnant! Ah-hah!! Hunger every hour = Quickly Growing Baby. Now it makes sense.

Welcome to My Eating Trimester

I left class this morning and headed straight for the vending machine, where I bought a bag of potato chips. Then I headed for the clinic office to begin my workday. The potato chips were for later, I swear. But then I decided to eat the whole bag while I checked my email. It was not yet 10am, and I was eating potato chips. Normally, I would find that a little disgusting. Now, I'd like another bag.

The first email I received was from my friend Liz, who is celebrating Thanksgiving with us this year. She ended her email with, "Less than a month 'til Thanksgiving, yey!!! So exciting! Especially since you're in your eating trimester."

Liz nailed it on the head... a great description for what my world really revolves around right now: The Eating Trimester. And I am rather fortunate that my eating trimester coincides with Halloween candy corn and Thanksgiving pumpkin pie and Hanukkah fried donuts (I can't spell the name Dave calls them) and Christmas peanut butter cookies and Birthday cake! We couldn't have planned this better! Pass the potato chips, please!

A Note to the Baby from Dave

"I just offered Sarah some yummy dessert. She said, 'No, I just want some water.' Then I saw her grab the milk.
"'Water?' I asked.
"'Well,' she replied sheepishly, 'I saw the milk, and Ovaltine sounded so good all of a sudden.'
"You're making Sarah act awfully funny."

Hiding McDonald's Chocolate Milkshakes from Dave

If there is one thing that Dave is good at, it is insuring we eat healthy meals all the time. There's the occasional dinner out where no vegetables graze our plates, but this is a rare instance, especially with our vegetable garden and CSA-farm membership. Right now we have tomatoes and squash galore... and the last things I want to eat are tomatoes or squash. I want chocolate milkshakes.

Today I drove out to Target for a prescription pick-up, and suddenly I was starving. The past two weeks of school have been very busy for me, and I've been eating and running, or not eating regularly and then finding myself famished at 4:30pm, my last meal at 7:30am. And when the hunger hits, the blood sugar level drops dramatically. So I was walking to the car with my prescription and suddenly my body was crying out for something to eat. So I drove the car through the McDonald's drive-thru, ordered a small chocolate milkshake, and proceeded to suck it down as fast as I could before getting home.

It was around 5:00pm, and rush hour traffic should have saved me from having to come clean about ordering a chocolate milkshake, at McDonald's, no less, but unfortunately I was driving the wrong-way in the traffic, and I got home too fast. Plus, I was about to give myself a monstrous ice cream headache to boot. So I sulked up the stairs and hoped he wouldn't see the milkshake cup I placed on the kitchen counter.

But he did, and being Dave, he only said, "A milkshake, huh?" And thus I felt guilty that I had consumed a milkshake right before dinner. I told myself I shouldn't drink these things. But that's what I wanted. And it had to be better than a Big Mac and fries.

All of this is in my head, of course. Dave isn't passing judgment on the McDonald's milkshake; he's sad that he wasn't around to share one with me. It's my own guilt recycled around - you're feeding this baby WHAT? You don't want your children to eat junk food , and yet you're ordering it through the drive-thru and forcing the fetus to consume this milkshake? Yes, that's really where the guilt comes from - all the perfect mommy books and perfect parenting guides that tell me drinking one McDonald's milkshake will destroy this child growing inside. So dealing with my food guilt is really dealing with the perfect parent brigades - and it's about ignoring those people for a little pleasure, taken in small doses. Because I'm pregnant, damnit. And I should be able to have a milkshake.