It was right around this time that I got a message from a friend telling me she was expecting her 3rd baby near the end of October. (That must mean she's only a week or two ahead of me.) She was lamenting that every pregnancy symptom seems to be so much more exaggerated the third time around. She definitely didn't know our news at this point, and I read her entire message laughing out loud! All I could think was, "If you think that about the 3rd time, imagine what the 4th is like?"
I feel like I am experiencing symptoms that I had only heard about prior to this pregnancy. I have one friend whose first indication of pregnancy has always been round ligament pain. I always thought she was crazy. I had read about it, knew about it, never really experienced it too much, let alone known I was pregnant because I was feeling it. But this time around, I can now say that I not only know about it, but can definitely tell you what it feels like. Except I'll spare you. It's just weird to me that it's taken 4 babies for me to really identify with what it is.
And the bathroom trips. Geez, Louise, can I PLEASE sleep through the night without having to get up to pee? It's never been so bad for me this early on. One middle of the night trip doesn't seem to be enough for me this time around- there's usually at least one more, very early morning. As in, it's too early to really get up yet, but too late to be able to fall back asleep for any decent kind of sleep. Maybe, for me, I would consider this one of the worst symptoms of pregnancy.
Cravings? Like never before. For the most part, I haven't ever had too many pregnancy cravings. In fact, Tim often bemoans the fact that I am no ordinary pregnant woman. He has long awaited his ability to demonstrate his knight in shining armor abilities by making late night runs to the grocery store for pickles dipped in chocolate and ice cream.
Here's where it might be important to note the new page we turned in our family this year. Sometime in January, we decided this would be the year that we would pull together as Team Nielson and give up something for Lent. Somehow, something became some things and we decided to forgo both sugar (for the adults) and all beverages besides water and milk (for the whole family). (On an unrelated note, that's kinda a cool story that doesn't belong here. If you wanna hear about it, ask me and I'd love to tell you about it.) Anyway, at the time we made this decision, I was not pregnant. Had I been, that might have been a (major) factor. So...I pretty much endured the first trimester without any kind of sweets or coffee. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Tim's still waiting to ride the proverbial white horse disguised as a Honda Odyssey for a midnight pickles and ice cream pick-up.
Tiredness? Check. To the extreme. As in, I'm living for my next opportunity to sleep. My poor family. This growing a life inside of me stuff is making me next to worthless for them. It's amazing my 3 little people have survived the first trimester in tact without any major catastrophes for how I've been rendered ineffective on the couch. Ice cream for breakfast, anyone? (Except we're not eating sugar- for breakfast or any other time.)
In fact, Tim took an almost 5 day trip this week. I'm not sure how we survived. I have no idea what the kids ate for the duration of that week. Thankfully it was the perfect time for me to capitalize on some pre-made, healthy meals I had mistakenly purchased on Groupon. My meals were delivered to my door, and simply needed to be warmed up. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they were all good. And healthier than what I would have prepared at that point in time. Somehow, we all survived. I had this monsterous list of catching up on life tasks that I had wanted to accomplish while Tim was away. Instead, I napped harder than the kids during nap time. I figured there was always after bedtime to be productive. Except that by the time the kids were in bed, I managed to muster up enough energy to crawl in bed and find Grey's Anatomy Season 1 reruns on Hulu. (And sadly enough, that's no exaggeration for literary sake.)
Holy smokes: there's 31 more weeks to go! How am I...and my kids...and my husband going to make it? I think it was at this point that I started thinking maybe four was a good number after all and maybe this would be the last time.
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