This Pregnancy

What? I’m blogging again? 2 whole days in a row? I must be feeling better! Let me just say that I love life returning a bit to normal and hope I fall back into my regular routine, which includes blogging! At some point soon I’ll have to edit the blog a bit, because I just found out that Knut was not so keen on me deleting the links to our friends’ blogs on the right hand side. It was nothing against those blogs, I just found the right hand side of the blog starting to get cluttered. So, I’ll have to work on that sometime.

Today though, I thought I’d reflect a bit on this pregnancy so far. Maybe no one cares, but the nice thing about blog friendships is when someone is rattling away about something boring, you can just move along! So if you find preggo talk boring, you can move along, but I’ll have fun rattling away!

Knut and I are both thinking it might be a girl this time around, but as I’ve been wrong in guessing the gender of all 3 of my children, I don’t trust this instinct much either! The only thing that has been keeping food down for me has been, ironically, chocolate. Not chocolate brownies, or chocolate cake,or chocolate cookies but actual pieces of chocolate. Throw some nuts in there and I’m set! Normally, I down Oreos like nobody’s business, especially when I’m pregnant. (With Silje, I would wait until Knut went to work, go to the store and buy Oreos, and finish the package before he came home from work.) However, I can’t seem to stand them right now, or at least not more than one. I just want chocolate.

As I gave up caffeine a few years ago (except for chocolate in moderation) this increase of chocolate in my diet has brought about some symptoms resulting in why I gave it up in the first place, but I’m hoping that as I’m entering the second trimester now, that my intake of chocolate will go down a bit, and I’ll go back to normal as well.

The other odd thing about this pregnancy is my temperature. Knut jokes that it’s a preview to menopause. Every 5 minutes I go from being shivering cold to being sweaty hot. I have no idea what’s going on there. It’s become something to laugh about in our house, though. We’ll be sitting at the supper table and I’ll put on a sweater and say “It’s freezing in here!” and wish we still had a fire going so I could stand next to it. Within 5 minutes, the sweater comes off and I’m fanning myself as my whole body is sweating. What in the world? Not to worry, give it a few minutes and I’ll be freezing again.

I think that I’ve had enough practice being pregnant to master the art of grazing all day long, which proves difficult when I’m at other people’s houses and we just sit down and eat a whole meal, because I know if I make myself even mildly full, I’ll feel sick. It’s also a challenge at home too, because I try to feed the kids somewhat on a schedule, just for the logistical fact of I can’t be feeding one of them in the kitchen all day. So I’ve once again tried to sneak food when they’re not looking, which the boys catch me at way more than Silje does.

Hmmm, what else. I’m partly in maternity clothes and partly in my old clothes, but more on the maternity side for 2 reasons: I don’t have enough room for both in my closet, and I do need some and I don’t have the time to go in and out of my storage closet every week to gather more. So I just brought out everything. Second, for some reason my maternity wardrobe is way cuter than my regular one, and with styles today, they don’t really look that maternity-ish. Still, I do feel a bit frumpy sometimes, and look forward to filling them out a bit.

It’s still hard for me to believe that the baby is growing just fine and there’s a heartbeat that’s strong because it has yet to become really real to me. I’m so little that I tend to feel little kicks very early, so it’s just a matter of weeks now. Still too early, but soon. The baby has become a regular part of conversation in our house, but it just feels like we’re still talking about the idea of a baby, as I don’t know this one yet.

However, the ultrasound showed me that even though I may not be feeling kicks, that doesn’t mean the baby isn’t moving! He/she had the hiccups a bit during the ultrasound, and kicked a bunch, and even put his/her hands over the eyes. It’s so amazing that at just about 12 weeks, the baby is so active and had so many distinct little features! 10 little fingers and 10 little toes. The pictures from the ultrasound did not turn out as well this time, but I think that’s mostly due to the baby’s position. I’ll have my regular (not just for fun) ultrasound in 2 months, and as long as everything looks good, that will be our last one. That’s my favorite one, though, because you can see into the brain, and all 4 chambers of the heart, and the stomach, and if the baby cooperates, the little boy or girl parts. My children have never been modest inside the womb though, but who knows. Each kid, and each pregnancy is still different.