Monday 8 April 2013

The fog is rising and plans are formulating

The past few days it feels like I have pulled my head out of the sand.  I've been looking behind me and what has been going on the past few months and I'm just in awe with how much I shut down mentally for awhile.  It probably seethes through my posts, but that's okay.  We're all human and when rough patches hit, some of us just go into ourselves for awhile.

Some of you might know, and some of you might not know that I react badly when I go through a hormonal shift.  When starting new medication for PCOS I was given pills that where under the "birth control" label, but where a much stronger mix of hormones meant to deal with the severity of my symptoms.  I know it's normal to go through about 3 months of emotional "crazies" when you start new birth control pills, but these sent me wwaaayy over the edge into crazy-dom.  I couldn't be happy, I was either raging with anger, paranoid, or sad.  If I was happy, it was manic and quickly changed into another mood.  After that I was put on low-dose pills and even those gave me a hard time sometimes.

So now here I am, 15 weeks pregnant and it's been so SO tough to keep emotions in check.  First I was angry at the world for being unable to work, for the doctors not taking me seriously and it seemed like not a damn soul cared that I was lying at home, practically immobile.  You know, except for a few mom's because that's what they're for!  Then I just got sad, sad that I still couldn't work, sad that people kept asking me when I could go see them.  Sad that I couldn't leave the damn house by myself or without Dan, and sad that I couldn't be a "proper" wife for my husband.  Then I was getting irrationally sad when Dan went to work.  He's been my number one support, and he's been working an average of 14-18 hour days, plus helping me around the house.  I was sad that he had to do that, and sad that he wasn't around to keep me company and help me out of the house.  Sad sad sad.  Looking back, I don't blame myself one bit.

I still don't leave the house without Dan, I still can't exercise, I still have days where I can't even wash dishes.  But for the past few days the fog has lifted and I am starting to feel ambitious, and looking forward to the future instead of afraid of it.

I'm so grateful for the visitors that I have had.  Every single member of my family has come to visit me at least once.  Some had to travel across the width of the province to do so, and I'm so grateful.  They've all seen me cry, and they've all comforted me and for that I'm so grateful to have a family to rely on. I think I would have gone crazy and would have been worse off it it wasn't for those few visitors.  Waking up to find Dan gone for the day, and going to bed with him still gone wore me away.

For the past few months I've been a bit rickety with my food journal.  I did track a bunch of whole days, and other times I did not, and tried to eat according to what my body was telling me.  I found that to be helpful when I had lots of morning sickness.  I knew if I tracked calories I would get so discouraged by how much I was consuming just to keep from being nauseous.  Needless to say I ate nothing but carbs for pretty close to a month.  I'm also glad I didn't work during that time, I would not have been able to do my job properly!

Now that the majority of my morning sickness is gone, I feel much better about my eating habits.  I've obviously been tracking again in my journal and have been doing my best to make healthy choices.  I've found that I only had cravings during the first trimester, especially when I had morning sickness.  I would prefer not to have any more cravings for the remainder of this pregnancy! (Although Feta cheese is my new love, seriously!)

Dan gave me a fantastic idea to research pregnancy friendly recipes to share! Specifically recipes high in Calcium, Vitamin D, Iron, Magnesium and Folate.  And for the women with morning sickness, maybe a recipe or two with ginger? Haha! I even have an idea about "healthy" chocolate recipes since chocolate and sweet things seem to be a popular pregnancy craving!  I know I had my plan to make new recipes with new-to-me vegetables.  I'm officially tossing that out the window.  My plan is to switch to easier to make recipes to be beneficial for my pregnancy.  Easy to make because I still can't stand too long in the kitchen for now.

Tomorrow Dan has a blessed day off and if I'm feeling well enough we will be going to find me some maternity clothing!  I'm so excited, I have two pairs of casual yoga style pants and one pair is waaay too small.  All of my jeans now require elastic bands around the button to be worn! I'm happy none of my shirts are tight yet though!

I also got my first baby item from one of my friends!  They're done have kids and didn't need their car seat any more, so I got it!
I'm tickled pink by it! And so astounded that someone could just give us such an expensive gift!


And now, since I love photos in my blog posts, I have a photo of me and my baby..bump? :D
This might not look like much, but there's a bump there! 15 weeks!


This blog post from Holly really resonated with me today.  I've done this cycle of eating myself numb and finally days/weeks/months later pulling my head out of the sand and realizing that it needs to stop.  If you fall into that cycle, you might find her post inspiring!

Thank you all for sticking around, I know that a blogger who rarely blogs is pretty boring.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Easter weekend

I hope everyones Easter was fantastic! I had an absolutely fantastic week!

Dan had his scheduled days off at the beginning of the week, and then he ended up getting Saturday and Sunday off because there was no work to do! He got pretty anxious by Monday mid-morning wondering what the heck was going on, but a quick phone call to work confirmed that he would be working later that day.  They're on to night shifts right now, since the roads are un-passable during the day due to mud.

My brother decided to come and visit me for the weekend and showed up Friday and stayed until Sunday.  When I told my mom I was so thrilled to have people over for Easter she decided that she'd like some turkey too.  So I had over my brother, his friend, Mom, Step-dad, my sister, Dan and two doggies for Easter! I thought I'd be all alone, so this was a fantastic treat!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the feast, but we had made two Butterball turkey breast turkey ma-bobs, stuffing, potatoes, carrots and mom brought over three THREE pies! It was a feast to be-hold! I'm just wishing I had paper plates!

Health wise I feel okay.  I went out to dinner just over a week ago with my mom and I couldn't make it through dinner.  My leg starting jerking around and lifting off of the ground and my toes starting wiggling on their own and spasming.  When that happens I know I need to lie down and put my foot up ASAP.  So I had to ditch out of supper (I literally ran out of the restaurant!) and sit in my moms vehicle until they where finished eating.  I put my foot up for the rest of the night, but I still had occasional spasms and jerks in my leg and foot for a few days afterwards.

Right now I'm usually okay doing a few things around the house.  I can usually do the dishes and make a meal or two.  If I still feel good then I can usually tackle a load of laundry or tidy up a bit.  Unfortunately I can't do any more than that.  I get a deep ache in my foot and I know that if I continue it'll feel like my whole foot will cramp up or the spasms/jerks will start.  I haven't heard back about my X-Rays or blood work, so I assume they're fine.  However I'll be making an appointment soon to ask my doctor what's next.  I've only left the house once this week with Dan, and quite frankly this is pretty inhibiting.

Yesterday Dan and I where hanging out before he had to go to work and we got a knock at the door and we found a package on the doorstep.  I ordered a Fetal Doppler and it had arrived!  For those who don't know, the Doppler allows you to hear your baby's heartbeat and this one even allows you to record it onto any device that has a line in.  We tried for probably 40 minutes and didn't get anything at all.  So I decided to have lunch and try again.  Within 3 minutes we found it!  It's so neat to hear your baby's heartbeat!  We heard a sweet little whomp whomp whomp!  Of course I bawled my eyes out!  Sometimes it's hard to remember there's a baby in there!



So anyone remember me saying how I love The Game of Thrones?  Well I didn't have a big premiere party/supper like I wanted.  But I did make an awesome soup!

Bean and Bacon soup

A lot of the dishes in the cookbook where.. weird.  Like snake, locusts and so on.  Some sounded great but included making dough, which I'm terrible at.  Seriously 80% of the recipes where a pie or tart of some sort!  I decided on this soup because it sounded good, and easy to make.  Im contemplating changing up the ingredients to make them healthier, but overall it was a fantastic soup!

I really wanted to make more recipes.  I had so many pages marked but I just ran out of energy and my foot was killing me by the time I finished this recipe even though I had Dan help me make it.  I have a sauce in my fridge for making Honey fingers, but I've yet to get up the energy to make the dough to finish them.  It's taking me a few days to recover from such an active weekend.

What else have I been doing?  Well Dan and I started our baby budget and have scoped out a few cribs we want and other furniture.  I've been looking up baby onesies like crazy, but very few cute ones come in a unisex colour, so I'm going to have to wait until our gender scan to buy clothing.  Besides that I've been watching endless amounts of X-Files and I have been working on old crochet work.  I'm currently working on a big afghan as practice for when I start my baby blanket for our little Bean. 

So despite the fact that I can't do much, I have been keeping busy!  Thanks everyone for the continued awesome comments!